151 Quick Ideas to Deal With Difficult People

28The Office Isn’t a Day Care

“Dad, how do I get an outside line to Washington again?” the young son of a coworker asked on his visit to the office. The son was visiting the office and spent a better part of the day making phone calls from a colleague’s desk. The calls included several long-distance ones to Washington, D.C.

Assignment

Put together a policy for kid-visitors if you don’t have one. Or if you have one, review it to make sure it works.

Most employees empathize with coworkers whose childcare arrangements break down at the last minute, leaving them with no option but to take their children to work. But people have no tolerance for colleagues who fail to supervise their children in the office.

Very few offices ban children. But too ...