The Kids Are At Work

November 2, 2011

Written by Shannon Gallagher | No Comments

Today, we had two new additions to the rtraction team for Take Our Kids to Work Day: Jenysee from Saunders S.S. and Haley from Central (LCSS). We sat down and I interviewed them about their day at the office. This is what they had to say:

Jenysee arrived to the office at the crack of dawn (7:30 a.m.) and set to work immediately… math homework, that is. Once the rest of the office piled in (around 9 a.m.), she met Haley and they began their first day of work at rtraction.

With no time to waste, they headed out with Elvin to do some technical support work at North Park Community Church, which they dubbed the “massive” church. They weren’t kidding either. Haley took some pictures and it is quite possibly the biggest church I’ve seen.

Haley and Jenysee took a tour of the church, Elvin taught them all about the wiring, and how the computers were all connected to one server. They also learned about the backup drive, and how it’s important to always have a backup in case of a disaster.

Thankfully, the girls had to return to the office before they were put to more work – the cleaning staff at the church nearly had them polishing book shelves!

When they got back, they enjoyed some delicious pizza (but they didn’t save me any). They each spent their lunch hours with their parents. Jenysee got to go shopping with Elvin, and Haley got to input invoices with Kate — (she thanks Kate for this enriching experience).

After lunch, it was back to work (or continuing to work in Haley’s case). The young ladies met with Denise and learned all about graphic design. They got to see her work her Photoshop skills, making foreheads less shiny, fading background images, adding mustaches (ok, not the last one):

Surprisingly, they weren’t scared off and both agreed that the designer’s jobs are the coolest.

They both agreed to a one-hour contract position. After a gruelling hour they quit, and continued their search for the perfect job.

Moving on to the developer’s end of the office they sat down with Gavin.
They were confused, as I would be, too– There were a lot of colours and things appeared on screens like magic. Gavin figured Greg could make their job seem like more fun so they sat down with him for a little bit. Jenysee and Haley thought it was pretty interesting how the designer’s can make a design by dragging stuff around but the developer’s make that same design by “attaching links and making codes” for every little thing. They agreed that it would be cool to learn how to do it because “you would feel so smart.”

Finally, it was on to me! We wrote this blog post, took some pictures, and chatted about party planning and their day.

Overall the ladies said their day went better than expected – but then again, they thought they would be making us coffee all day.  Their favourite part was learning about design work since they both enjoy drawing (drawing credit: Jenysee):

As for how they thought rtraction compared to most offices, they said that rtraction seems less like a stereotypical office and more like a group of friends talking and working together. Jenysee put it best when she asked me, “No one here really wears shoes, do they?” I remember that being my first impression as well.

Jenysee and Haley, consider yourselves part of the rtraction team. I hear we’re hiring anyways.