Slip from reality: who remembers the first job during the holiday? | Israel today

There is no point in debating the power of the phrase "the great holiday".

Even decades after you stopped being a child, these words still touch the heart and remind forgotten.

Long after you have become a parent and have moved mercilessly from the spending, stocking, getting up late and running screaming age to the water line, to the ranks of the rice, loading and dragging, tiring, peeling, inflating, tearfully spreading its payments towards the horizon line - deep inside you are there.

Remembers everything, and compares everything, with a smile or a frown.

I remember a meeting with a friend who is a serious educator.

During the meeting he gave me a pedagogical look and told me that with him they don't say "the big vacation" but "the long vacation".

This is how we make it clear, he said, that there is nothing great about freedom!

I told him I thought it was a long idea.

For reasons of politeness I did not say "pathetic".

Many write about the great vacation of their early childhood.

On the chocolate and the bun, and shouting "To the spring, a little goat is coming" and "In the white sea, a group of blacks is harvesting".

What I rarely come across are reports from parents about the day their child goes out to work in freedom and earns the first shekels of his life, as well as the experiences he will never forget.

After all, we never forget our first jobs.

There is something exciting about the day one of your children starts their first job.

Where on earth did he scratch that serious face?

cute.

The inner bard that we all have in our hearts begins to formulate little prayers.

Yes-yes, now he will begin to understand what money is.

Appreciate.

This is of course complete nonsense.

A wonderful mechanism in the young man's soul succeeds in bringing him to a situation where he will indeed begin to understand and appreciate, but only the money he himself earned, and only the sweat of his brow.

There is also something insulting about this day.

Let's say the teenage girl found a job as a dog groomer.

Essential and respectable work by all accounts.

The previous day you promised to wake her up half an hour earlier.

After all, we all know, except for the fools who hired her services, that the lady sleeps like a mammoth.

If we, the parents, don't shake her out of bed, there is a greater chance that the dog will go to the bathroom by himself and grab a bag for himself, than that the honorable lady will get to him in time.

And then it happens.

Early in the morning, as you shuffle around in your ridiculous morning outfit—the boxers that Paul Simon never sang about, and the hideous shirt your wife affectionately calls "Mohammed Daf" after the number of assassination attempts she's survived—you find she's already ahead of you.

Dressed, fresh and her hair collected, she sits and leisurely drinks squeezed orange juice.

You never saw her during these hours, except on the days of the annual trip.

Suddenly you remember that you too got up for work like you didn't get up for anything else.

and a little before

Which brings us to the next point.

Let's assume it's not about taking out a dog, or to contrast - babysitting.

Let's say it's a job in a real place, with a boss and procedures and a paycheck.

There, dear parents, you must prepare yourselves for the fact that not only will the child wake up on time and put on a serious face.

There is a situation where in this case you will be forced to be exposed to the fact that, contrary to your previous impression, the child understands very well what is being said to him, and does not even argue.

It turns out that if the instruction from above does not come down from the parents, but from the responsible 18-year-old shift, then "closed shoes" will be closed shoes.

and "Long pants, no holes!"

They will comply by wearing long, complete pants.

And you will be good parents and not disgruntled and give yourself a little smile.

Obviously.

Obviously the boy obeyed.

And of course nice long pants and closed shoes.

And when was the last time you heard Ahmashit in front of an army shouting "But I said a thousand times!"? This is a sentence of parents only.

And there is the prayer.

Because when the children left home for their first jobs, I knew that they were currently acquiring experiences that would accompany and shape a large part of their professional lives.

We all occasionally see articles with big CEOs, who have a lot of employees and a desk full of executive toys and predictable pictures, and they always-always remember the day they ran errands on a bike, sold Sabers or unloaded a truck.

And I know they mostly remember the first time they found out they were cheated on.

I'm talking about a very Israeli thing, and it's the surprised, almost shocked, look that a person looks at the payslip.

This sometimes happens even after a respectable seniority, but twice as much against the first slips.

This colorful and closed puzzle.

The puzzle of logic that there is no way to decipher.

The bitter disappointment in the face of the eternal gap between what you thought would appear there - because we agreed, and they told me - and what is written.

And I urge my children to read the fine print.

Or at least the big ones.

And if not, at least don't take to heart the disappointment that will come.

and ask the boss.

and another question.

Because I truly believe that, as in other fields, here too most of the experts are people who were defined in their youth.

Most of the "stingers" have been stung at some point.

Most operators of the "successful" method are the victims of the method, who saw how others reaped success on their backs.

And according to the number of businesses that are scheming, stinging and using the successful method, it seems that here, in the land of patriarchy, there is a very good number of citizens who carry with them scars and traumas, which I do not wish on my children or yours.

And not only because I spare their gentle souls.

I hope and wish that they believe in work and love their job.

If they choose to engage in providing services - they will consider it a great privilege and even a mission, and in any case they will treat the client as someone we will meet later.

Someone worth cultivating a relationship of trust with rather than a "take the money and run" relationship.

Because here, I'm afraid, hides an old Israeli problem, which for too many of us started at some point in a temporary job that they went to, a long time ago, with some great freedom.

Do devices have an opinion?

Recently, electrical appliances began to make unpleasant comments.

I've already gotten used to the fact that if someone didn't have time to fasten their seat belt, the car scolds them.

It was a little weird the first few times.

With all due respect, there are responsible adults in this family, and we really don't need scolding beeps from a driving tin can from East Asia.

But we got used to it.

However, we recently got off a flight, and my wife's phone politely informed me that, according to information it had received, we had spent the last few hours sitting hunched over, and it might be time to get up from the chair and exercise.

What is?

We responded together.

And will the phones exist?

The fact that you are called "smart", and from time to time information is scraped from you, does not mean that you are in a position to make comments!

Come on, come on, a piece of upgraded Eschel Cup, we all know where you came from.

And what is the next step?

How close is the day when we open the refrigerator to take out butter or a bottle of beer, and the refrigerator itself will lay a cold hand on us and say: not for anything, my friend, but how about putting these products away and opening the vegetable drawer?

And what the hell is a "smart bin"?

For years we have been scared of the apocalyptic possibility that artificial intelligence will lead to a hostile robot takeover of the planet.

No one warned us that long before, and no less terrible, the devices would become nagging, bothersome and arrogant.

Now excuse me, the smart watch announced that I sat too much in front of the keyboard.

shishabat@israelhayom.co.il

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