I am slowly emerging from maternity leave. As February rolled around, my baby turned one and my mat leave expired. I wasn’t planning to return to work until September but my previous employer made me an offer I couldn’t refuse “in these difficult economic times” and four days later, I was back in my old job.
Working means that in exchange for a pay cheque, I get a whole LUNCH BREAK. For you stay-at-home moms, a lunch break is a fabulous invention of the 20th century whereby you get to sit down and eat a meal somewhere between snack and nap-time. I know, it’s that crazy! But you know what? I’ve been home with young children for too long: for me, lunch is still stuffing sustenance in with one hand while doing something useful with the other. Hence the blog post. I hope you won’t mind a couple of goat cheese crumbs. It’s not like I can eat goat cheese anywhere else. If anybody asks why I decided to work outside the home, it all comes down to sushi and goat cheese. Yes, I’m that shallow.
Have you ever heard the tidbit “if a really nice guy is rude to waiters, watch out: he’s not a really nice guy”? I am not exactly a waitress but in my line of work – which I cannot better describe than “miscellaneous nitty gritty and random, er, stuff” – I am often the first point of contact between my boss and the world at large. I have noticed that you can tell a lot about a person by the way they treat the lowest rung in the office hierarchy. Some people are nice and respectful and make me want to find time for them. Others think that throwing weight around in a “do-you-know-who –I-am” kind of way will intimidate me into service. Others treat me like their foot servant: “I’m emailing you a document (from across the office where all the hardware is on a network), can you print it for me?” Because pressing “attach” and “send” is much more impressive than “print.”
What does all this have to do with pro-life? Just like I can tell a lot about a person by the way I am treated at work, I am wondering if future generations will judge us on the basis of our treatment of the most vulnerable members of our society. The frail, the elderly, the handicapped, the helpless, the unborn. And when historians look back on the medical means at our disposition in parallel with our increasing tolerance toward euthanasia and assisted-suicide, what will they think of us?
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Andrea adds: For Facebook followers, this post, automatically imported into my profile, is not mine. Similarities between me and Veronique include that I do like sushi and goat cheese and I harbour disdain for people who think they are very, very important and try to make others feel small. Differences include that I do not have a one-year-old and am not coming out of maternity leave.
“The management” will look into ways to make it clear who is posting what on Facebook but for the time being, be advised that not every post imported into my Facebook profile is me.
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