SFL #1

Reaction Note #1 Parents Are Important
On the first day of my SFL 240 class my professor purposed the question, “Are parents important?” to the class. My professor pulled us out of our shock her seemingly ridicules question by explaining that researchers across the world purposing that parents matter very little in a child’s development, and even if parents matter at all. All I could do is sit at my desk and wonder what the parents of the researchers who stated that parents don’t matter were thinking. Do those researchers have children of their own? and if they did what kind-of parents are they? I believe that children are influenced by their parents because children watch their parents to learn how to act in public.
After the hour class I went to work. I am a secretary at Seven Peaks (a local water park) In short I sale season passes to people, and file customer complaints. At first, I was horrified by the countless stroller-pushing-mothers who screamed at me (the under-paid-powerless-person-behind-the-desk) usually cursing at me over price differences of five or six dollars. After thinking if parents matter or not for a whole class period, and then going to work with such a lovely group of dipper-bag-carrying-people I wanted to stand up on my desk and scream, “Stop yelling at me! Don’t you know your child is watching you?” It is a good think I have self control because I don’t think that my fake wooden desk would have been able to hold me up if I stood on it. The truth was though that their children were watching them, and more than that their children were mirroring them.
Children come to the water park front office to pound on the fish tank, put their buggers on the wall, and kiss the windows while their parents try to sort out purchases and rentals. To the children there the office is a torture chamber between them and a water park. To their parents the office is a torture chamber between savings and poor credit. Remember, I am just the under-paid-powerless-person-behind-the-desk. When I can not give a customer what they want they say, “I wanna speak to your manager. Who can I speak to? You go and get them,” I will translate for you, “you-powerless-little-idiot. Get me someone who can give me what I want, and I want it now,” The remarkable thing is I find parents who scream at me in this manner also scream at their children when they are not behaving how they want them to behave, “you powerless little idiot. Get me someone who can give me what I want, and I want it now,” Typically the child speaks the same way to their parent when their parent can not give them what they want. Now I know that I am acting biased. My translations are exaggerated, but are they really?
The truth of the matter is that sometime I feel like I am dealing with an overgrown child when I have to explain that prices change and the basic component of a company is that a company sales things to people who will buy them in order to make money. There can be a practical normal family purchasing a season pass in the desk next to me. All of that families children are putting on sunscreen, and tossing their towels in the air while the lady purchasing a season pass at my desk is screaming at me to get my manager and her children are screeching that they want to go inside the water park now. I would call temper tantrums like this… in Freud’s words a little to much id.
Every day I see parents come in to purchase season passes for their children. There is a theme, Parents who scream at me the under-paid-powerless-person-behind-the-desk are more likely scream at their children in the same way. It has caused me to reflect on more than one occasion about the influence parents have on their children. There have been sometimes when a costumer has screamed at me so much that I would not even be able to tell them what is up and what is down let alone what their id number is and their personal billing information. The power that such language has to diminish me to truly feel I am just a powerless-little-idiot, and the only way I could ever accomplish anything is if I got my manager is powerful. The effect of being screamed at you-powerless-little-idiot let me pick you up off the counter because the only way you will ever be able to get down is if one of your superiors helps you; you-powerless-little-idiot don’t put the sunscreen on your nose like that, let me rub it in for you because the only way you will ever be able to do anything is if one of your superiors helps you; you-powerless-little-idiot don’t roll the towel up like that, let me do it for you because you can’t figure anything out unless someone superior does it for you. If just a few minutes of me being screamed at across a counter that I am a powerless-little-idiot from a complete stranger is enough for me to check how much I am worth I can only imagine how often those children are reflect on their own self worth.