I’m just back from an energizing, exciting, and exhausting retreat with my business partners. Sound glamorous? Not exactly. Picture the four top Mabel Mommas locked in a hotel conference room together, hanging out for 16 hours a day, putting heads and hearts together and discussing everything Mabel.
One of the topics we always discuss is our corporate culture. Like many of you, we have the daily battle of striking the work/life balance. Heck, we’ve got 11 kids between us, some kind of balance is a necessity. Because this is a priority, we have created a workplace that provides some flexibility. We have a handful of Mabel Momma employees whose work hours are based around school hours – they rock up to the Mabel digs after school drop-off, and say ‘adios’ just before school pick up. It’s not unusual to walk into the production area and see a kid hanging out, face buried in a Harry Potter book as Momma finishes sending off that last package of the day.
One thing that became abundantly clear on our retreat is that our husbands (fondly referred to as ‘the Mabel Widowers’) may have TOO clear an understanding of our corporate culture.
Get this: one of my business partners calls the office yesterday to check in. To her shock and disbelief, she discovers that her nine-year-old son is at the office. Why? How? She asked those same questions!
It goes like this:
- son complained of a tummy ache at school.
- School knows mom is away, so calls husband at work.
- Husband picks son up from school and needing to return to work, tries to problem solve his dilemma.
- Husband shocks himself with his brilliant solution.
- Husband drops sick son to Mabel’s Labels office where one of his wife’s senior employees can take care of him.
Yes, you read that correctly. Sick son is at Mom’s office (while Mom is out of town at retreat) and senior employee takes care of sick son.
It gets weirder: neither husband nor senior employee found this to be a strange solution.
Safe to say, our corporate culture message is coming across loud and clear!
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