Do you treat hourly employees like kindergartners?

A communicator theorizes as to why she approaches some employees like children

A few years ago, a co-worker of mine inadvertently said something that horrified me.

We were planning an event together, and she was explaining how they had organized a similar event in the past. “So, we had all of them [the hourly employees] over here, and the grown-ups were over here.”

Immediately, she knew that she had misspoken. “Not grown-ups,” she said, her hand over her mouth in embarrassment. “I mean the management team.”

Immediately, my mind swirled with images of Thanksgiving dinner: a dining room table packed with members of our management team and a miniature playroom table surrounded by hourly employees balancing plates on their knees.

That one little Freudian slip has stuck with me ever since. I too have made the mistake of thinking of my audiences in a similarly condescending way, albeit less overtly.