8:15 pm | 1 recommendation | 16 comments

Work/Life: Don't Talk About Kids to People Without Kids

Right at the outset, I'll do the politically correct thing and say, I've got nothing against kids.

In fact, I'd happily trade places with a lot of them right now: I'd get fed, watered and put to beddy-bye under duvet dotted with cotton tail bunnies with a gentle kiss; I'd get adored and cuddled when I least want it but that's OK, it's better than begging for it; I'd get driven around to a smorgasbord of expensive activities like soccer and baseball (remember when the school throw-the-beanbag P.E. session was free?); I'd get handed the latest iGizmo (some tots are already killing this blog entry on their iPhone) and told to go fly my Millenium Falcon XIII. I could smear jam all over my face and get called 'cute' rather than be committed. Oh to be a kid!

But if you want my business, or even friendship, then as one of the handful of people who don't have kids, please spare me the harping on about your kids, and see what turns up.

Someone wanted to engage in a lunch appointment with me, seeking my business. It required a bit of to-ing and fro-ing on email and phone. Every single communication of his somehow entailed a logistic around his stepdaughter Mish. I wasn't particularly interested in a blow by blow account of his nose blowing and taxicabbing or playgrouping activities with Mish, I just needed to know if we could make the appointment or not.

Thinking back, every other conversation with this person over the past few years has also involved the same long diatribe. We'd become friends of sorts, but I knew little about him because we never got beyond Mish. It left me wondering why I had this family man in my life at all. An acquaintance certainly, but we can find any number of those in a phonebook or the checkout line at SafeWay.

How could this harping on about his kids potentially leave me feeling, even for a fleeting moment?

Left out. Inadequate. One of those poor sods hovering on the fringes of the seething furry mass in March of the Penguins, eggless and forlorn, while thousands of happy pair-nguins protectively guard their orb. But only for a moment. I'm human, I react, I get over things, I move on. But if you knew your words had that effect on me, AND you were trying to engage me for business, would you be so inconsiderate?

Did it make me want to do business with him? Not really. It made me feel we're not pedaling our trikes in the same cul-de-sac.

Now extend this notion – smalltalk is fine, it brings people closer, but choose your subject matter with care for relevance and relatedness to your audience. A former business partner would talk ceaselessly about his wife's health as a reason why he could not honor a contractual obligation to me. As much as I empathized, and lost money to him to prove it, there was nothing in the contract about her health. I'd have preferred it if he'd simply said, 'I'm sorry, I just can't deliver.'

I am not saying that you cannot talk about things that are important to you. In fact, by doing so, you can bring people closer. But be mindful - it takes two to make a conversation. You can have all the creds in the world to do a particular job, but you might be sabotaging yourself from real success just by what you're putting out. Bit like having awful BO but being a brilliant hairdresser - you might find yourself relegated to clipping poodles - though at least they'll love you to death.

So if you want to do business with childless wonders, spare them your kiddie talk, and I promise I'll spare you the tedium of eating guinea pig in Peru or slumming it in 4-star converted fortresses while biking across Italy.

Besides, if you harp on about your kids, I might just decide I gotta have one.

The Gal

Oh no, I forgot to have children!