The Evolution

When I was brand new in my job, in my very first summer, I was asked to be a part of a photo shoot. To be clear, I am not usually asked to participate in such things. I do weird things with my face and I have a propensity for T-rex arms at the wrong moment. But, my new employers didn't know that, and now fifteen years later, I much better understand that younger people look better in photos.

It was a photo shoot for assisting in times of crisis. They took a bunch of photos of me helping actors who were in various states of distress. They took one photo of me actively listening to a woman undergoing a difficult moment. I was kneeling before her, clearly earnestly listening, while she hung her head in in the universal motion that indicated "I'm crying and I don't want to be". I was in the grass, and she was on a park bench. You can't see my face, but you can see I'm a young person. The weirdest part of the photo actually is that the "crying" woman was wearing a sort of buisness suit with incredibly out of place heals in what was obviously an outdoor setting.

Well that photo has NEVER gone away. It pops up ALL the time in various on-line trainings for my agency, on different department's home pages, and at in-person meetings. It just never dies. And I know when it's having a resurgence because a new training will get pushed out, or a conference will be happening and I will suddenly get a host of texts from people I haven't talked to in ages sending me photos of the photo from whatever training they are in.

My friends dubbed it "The Kneeler" and if you google a very certain phrase, it's the first Google image that pops up.

This has become something that I expect, and for about a decade it was just sort of funny. Then, one day, there was a big conference happening. People from all over were at the thing, although I was not there. The conference was happening on the East Coast. I was on the West Coast, and suddenly my phone exploded.

You okay?

I don't think they mean it about you.

I mean, they could have worded the slide better.

They probably don't know you actually still work for the agency.

And I saw that at a national conference for high ranking leaders, a slide had been shown to two hundred of my closest friends, enemies, and everything in between. The slide had the photo on it. The Kneeler. And it was titled:

How To Work With Emotionally Immature Employees

So I went from assisting people in times of crisis to representing emotionally immature employees across the agency. It would be easy to take it personally. But when I look at the photo, the first thing that everyone says is, "You're such a baby!"

Which makes me wonder if I look really old now. It also makes me wonder, if I represent all emotionally immature employees, can I lean into the role? Would it be so bad to have a designated snack time at work? What about recess?

Am I the prophet who will bring nap time into the adult sphere?

I have never felt more motivated in all my career.

#naptimeforgrownups