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My first job out of college was your typical Dunder-Mifflin meets Initech meets TelAmeriCorp nightmare. I would have rather had a frolicking threesome with the two oldest Golden Girls than enter that office every morning. When I started having serious thoughts about creating a clothing line for gerbils and taking my chances on Shark Tank, I knew I had to get the hell out of there. The obvious choice for my new career was my dad’s company. It could very well be mine someday, so I might as well learn the business, right? A little Kennedy-style nepotism never hurt anybody. Working for my dad turned out to be a double edged sword, though.
Pros
Job security: Obviously he’s not going to fire the little shit to whom he taught everything he knows…unless you do something that requires you him to dismiss you from the family.
No drug testing: He doesn’t need to know about the nightly Xanax anyway.
Moving up the ladder faster: He sure as hell isn’t going to have some 35-year-old alcoholic low-level manager telling his son what to do. He’ll give you some bullshit title like “Operations Manager.”
The blind eye: Throughout high school, he picked you up from block parties and neighbors’ front lawns piss-ass drunk, so he can tell when you’ve got a buzz on from a mile away. He’ll let it slide…for now.
Free meals: Every family meal can be expensed. It is a family business after all. I mean, we did discuss business.
Cons
Low hourly wage: That’s right. Since he worked 80 hour weeks to build this business, he expects you to as well. That means that in order to be able to afford that once-a-month Chipotle burrito, you’re working nights and weekends, usually just staring at Powerpoint.
Lapses in professionalism: Your parents will always see you as the little pain in the ass that stole their youth and crapped all over the changing table. This means your dad is totally fine laying into you in the middle of the office in front of everybody. What are you going to do, sue him?
Weekly lectures: “How many new accounts did you call on?” “Did you post your call report on Salesforce?” “Why are you tired? When I started this company I worked day and night.” It doesn’t matter how productive you’ve been, or how hard you work – you’re always doing something wrong.
Mom is a boss, too: She may not have an official title. She may not know your products. She may not even know your job title. All that matters is that she uses your dad’s authority to get you to do shit that you haven’t done since you lived at home. What does helping with the laundry have to do with work, exactly?
Earning the ire of others: Whether or not you’re qualified for your job, people always accuse you of benefiting solely from nepotism when they know you work for your dad. You know, because that diploma is little more than a fancy piece of paper.
Respond
@5OClockShadow_
And think of the money you’ll save by carpooling!
Then there is that whole office party thing, any date you bring meets your parents. So you can only bring someone you are serious about to dinner. Then when you don’t bring a date you are faced with the old, “what’s wrong with you, why are you single?”
Replace dinner with office party in the 2nd sentence.
This was spot on. The cons outweigh the pros, IMO.
I work for my mother, who is a BSD. It’s way worse. She can smell lazyness on my breath. The clicks through WSJ.com can be seen from a mile away. The worst part is that our clients know me as the one that shit the plane on the way to paris.