And weed, but that is of course an awful drug just as bad as cocaine, meth, pills, etc. because it is illegal just like them (though nobody has ever overdosed on it, ever). At least that seems to be some of the logic used by those who have never touched it. How about we don't show up to work stoned to begin with and avoid the issue altogether, mmmkay? Youth sports... now there's a fountain of insanity. "Ride him into the big leagues," I wonder how many parents are thinking that right now as they are filling out the Youth Baseball signup forms.
Fuck that, don't impede on my civil liberties bro, its a plant not a drug alright? If I show up high its my own business alright brah, why don't you mind yours and leave me alone.
I work in healthcare and never took it as a huge violation of my personal rights to have the possibility of random drug screening. As was mentioned, it's not a witch hunt, it's not too much to expect that your employees not violate laws. As much as I feel that marihuana is certainly not more harmful than alcohol, it doesn't change the fact that it is illegal. Hollywood is sick and perverse. Jamie Lynn Spears baby daddy is rumored to be the executive producer of her show on Nickelodian (Dan Schneider). He also produced Amanda Bynes show. Of course this is all speculation and gossip, but I believe it is just filled with sick fucks. An update on my co-worker dilemma, my manager asked me not to say anything to her but to help document a case for termination. Not sure how I feel about that.
I'll say this. The ones who are playing city leagues - not so much. Many of them are just living vicariously through their kids, but they'll never invest the time/money the parents I'm talking about do. MiniMe was selected (randomly, he never tried out ... we were at baseball practice, and the coach for the tourney team was there turning on the field lights and saw MiniMe playing and asked us to bring him out to their practice the next night) to play on a travel tourney team in the area. It's a 2000 dollar investment. Now, most of that is done through fundraising...and that's a LOT of fundraising...but more than some of it comes out of our pockets. The good news is that the high school coaches work with these boys as well, and they also get exposed to a few other professionals. The bad news is - it can be hard to balance. I have to take a proactive stance in making sure he isn't put through the grind. Some of the other parents? They are insane. There was a kid last sunday who pitched in both games we played. He probably threw 110 pitches total. WAY too much. But his mom and dad told him to suck it up. Nuts, man.
The sad thing is that it backfires so many more times than not. Let's say a kid has the talent, the drive, and the sheer dumb fuck luck to be fairly resistant to injury, that is a set of skills, personality, and circumstance to be damn near miraculous. But you stupid ass parent, have turned what should be a fun game for a nine year old to enjoy into a job. The kid is going to burn out. It happens all the time. So often the best kid or two on youth leagues hate the sport they play, because it stopped being fun for them a long time ago. Sure a parent can push a kid against their will all the way to the college, even rarely the pro level, but you have a miserable socially fucked individual who probably doesn't remember the last time they liked their life. I saw preteen burnouts all the time in wrestling. 10 year old children would literally be capable of moves that baffled me, but for some reason mom would have them on the mat with fevers, during classes that "he can miss once or twice," or when any parent with any sort of care would be letting the damn kid enjoy his child hood. I have literally seen a kid break down and cry in thanks when my coach told his mother in no uncertain terms that he was not allowed in his room for at least a week. This kid was not quite eleven years old, his season was well over, and he was practicing with a really bad flu, and a sprained ankle. Yet his bitch of a mother was still making him go to practice and riding the shit out of him if he wasn't doing as well in practice against high school kids as she thought he should be. I hated that woman, and damn near cheered as my coach told her she was basically a bad parent and needed to go home to just take care of her kid.
To a lesser (yet similar) extent, when I was teaching piano lessons, I had one student who HATED to play. Hated it. He was 8 and expressed his dislike for piano every time I saw him. He didn't practice, he didn't perform well - he didn't enjoy it and he didn't care. After a month of this, I talked to his mom and suggested she pull him out of lessons. In her words, "I wanted to play piano my entire life and never got the chance. My son has a chance, so he'll learn. I'll pull him out of lessons when he proves to me that he has no talent." I quit on the spot. I felt so bad for that kid, being put through something he hated because his mother had a goal in mind for him, no matter how miserable she was making him.
So now you're a spy/snitch? Seems to me your manager is handling the situation indirectly, which is fine but not when asking others to help with documentation for eventual termination. Asking other employees to alert you when they see something and then YOU, being the management involved, address it is one thing though. I guess it's a personal call. I mean if I saw one of my co-workers/employees blatantly doing wrong things, things that have a direct impact on how I run the office and/or how it would reflect on MY boss I'd address the issue and give a warning. I have always managed with the "three strikes you're out" rule. It grabs their attention and weeds out the ones that really don't give a shit about their job or job performance, let alone the clients we do it all for.
The wrestling moms, oh the wrestling moms. If you've been to one match you know what I'm talking about. That woman in the corner of the gym shrieking so fucking loud it manages to drown out the refs' whistles. Baggy sweatshirt covered in photo buttons of the kid in his singlet like plate armor. "SPRAWL TANNER SPRAWLLL!!" Then once their kid SOMEHOW gets put on their back, you'd think the Evil Witch of the West was holding a megaphone as she melted. I would shoot myself before having to endure a ride home with one of them. I always felt bad when I would ref the youth tournaments and you'd have one 10 year old kid decked out in matching shoes, singlet, and headgear, ready to bust out some leg ride or takedown I've never heard of, up against one who just rolled out of bed and was wearing a T-shirt and old sneakers (which was me back in the day). Someone is going to get wiped across the mat, and the other will get lectured for the Nth time about how they need to get their hips in, in! on matside as soon as the match is over.
That's the whole bullshit of stage parenting, right there in a nutshell: stupid parents using their kid as a vessel to fill their own life-voids. They refuse to accept the fact you have to also be gifted to reach the top level and instead will push the kid- and themselves- over the edge. These are the assholes none of the sensible parents want to stand near at games because they are all insufferable, abusive assholes.
It's more complex than I've let on. I'm at work so can't really explain now. I work at a clinic so it is direct violations of policies and precedures that are implemented for patient safety. But I agree, it wasn't really my intent.
Yeah my parents were the exact opposite of overbearing sports parents. I joined wrestling in 8th grade because my friends pressured me into it. I fucking hated the conditioning and I sucked at wrestling. My mom showed up at one match to cheer me on, my dad just kind of shook his head when he heard what the sport entailed. Stuck it out 8th grade and even joined a spring league but really started avoiding it. I quit my first day of freshman year. I saw parents that pushed their kids way too hard and expected too much. I also kind of wish I'd have been pushed a little harder to stick with it and find the enjoyment of competition and sport. The conditioning was just too much shit for me.
You can add swimming to the insane parents list as well. They have kids at 10 going to the Olympics and overdoing it on practice. I've witnessed kids sobbing at meets while their parents ridicule them for their perceived mistakes. The funny thing is some of these parents never swam yet are an expert on how their kids should be doing it. I'm meet director for our summer meet and I had a parent approach me last year because some kids from another team were in too many events and that wasn't fair to her kid who was trying for cuts for Junior Olympics. And she was right. She didn't want me to pull them though, she wanted me to put her kid in an additional event as well. I refused and went to the coach, explained the situation and had them pull the kids from one event and refunded their money for it. I had over 600 kids at the meet. Do you know how she must have analyzed the meet program to determine that 3 kids were in too many events? Nuts.
My dad signed my brother and I up for youth wrestling when I was 9 years old and he was 11, but he asked us if we were interested first. The collective answer was "duh" because we knew he had wrestled and so did all of our uncles, so it was practically a family thing. He'd give me pointers on occasion but would never lecture; if I lost my parents knew that I didn't want to be bothered about it. Conditioning I loved, thanks to being a distance runner, but it was the weight cutting I'd do without. My parents did not like me doing that one bit. I think my mom watched every single one of my matches with her face covered, just cringing the whole time and peeking between her fingers. My parents were the exact opposite of "those parents" in the sense that sports were a priviledge for me. The rule was all of my grades had to be above a C before they'd let me practice. Sports and the sports culture was never in their lives as they grew up in super poor farm families, so it wasn't really in my life either.
Hockey parents can be right up there with the worst of them. Hockey is unique because the cost to participate in the lowest level is high, let alone in higher levels. The financial commitment makes parents want to get the most for their money so they'll push their kids incredibly hard. A typical yearly cycle for hockey starts with tryouts which begin in October. After the kid does or doesn't make a team, there's the regular season where they'll skate around 4 times a week . Some parents get their kids private lessons. Some kids do power skating, some take shot lessons. So now the financial commitment is ramped up. After the regular season is over there is spring hockey, and the end of the regular season often means more private lessons. After spring hockey its time for summer camps which can be very pricey. After the summer camps its time for tryouts again. I think the worst thing I've heard is that it takes 1,500 hours to become an expert at something, so some parents are trying to get their kids to that time hoping it'll somehow make them insanely good. What many parents fail to recognize is that coaching can't make up for a natural lack of talent. Coaching at best will make a kid a little better, but coaching alone won't get the kid to the next level if the talent simply isn't there. If a parent pushes their kid too hard, hockey can be a pretty awful sport. I knew a few kids who were talented that just got burned out on it. I'm a goalie coach and I know my prices are super low, but even then I charge 150 for an hour lesson. 100 of it goes towards the ice time, and well the other 50 is for me and my expertise. There are a lot of guys out there charging double what I do.
You should see soccer mom out here in the southwest, yes you know the ones who drive the suv with 2 soccer balls of the club soccer travel team her 2 kids #5 Taylor and #24 Brooklyn are on. She is usually a 30 something entitled over aggressive marketing major whose only redeeming quality is that you can bounce a quarter off her ass or professionally augmented breasts. There is never any change in facial expression because her face is so shot up with rat poison and her eyes are covered with her aviators, but not even the Xanax can keep her calm when the stupid Mexican whore who is probably here illegally slide tackles her young son Taylor and the brown skin team scores and the club of all entitled rich white kids make little frowny faces. She will immediately facebook a pic of the OMG #worstrefever. She will text all of her friends for the next 2 hours until her soon to be vapid whore daughter Brooklyn's game start at which time she will parade down the sidelines in her yoga shorts and wife beater with her squirt bottle full of chardonnay. She emails the coach on a daily basis to demand more playing time for her soon to be star children, while belittling the other kids on the team for not having the pedigree of her children. During fund raising season she can be found in front of Trader Joe's or Whole Foods in white daisy dukes and a low cut top demanding that people support her kids soccer club. If encountered in the wild she should be ignored. I do not like soccer moms.
That might be why I liked wrestling- I joined it in high school because it was one of few teams a small guy stood a chance, but my parents never pushed me at it ever. I did really well in it but it was strictly because I liked it personally, and like you my parents only came to one match. Now hockey was different. My dad drove me to every single 7 am practice without being late once (because of my love of the game) my parents came to every game and my mom HATED the other moms. She would only yell at me if I looked lazy on the ice, but she went off on other parents more than once for getting too serious or personal. She dumped an iced drink down the back of a drunk parent who wouldn't stop swearing at the kids. Contact sports make parents ravenous. No parent like seeing their kid get annihilated or take a cheap-shot, and mixed with every other parent produces a recipe for disaster.
My brother and I played hockey for several years when we were teenagers and we're pretty good at it too. Our coach was my step dad who used to play semi pro in Europe, so we were always being pushed to perform, but in a good way. We'd be on the ice before 5 am waiting on the rest of the team to show up for practice. It might have seemed a bit extreme at the time but we were all in. Most of the other kids our age were hesitant to make hard contact and would rather play the puck instead of check someone but we didn't give a fuck. We used to box each other bare fisted for fun, so laying someone out that had their head down was something that we got good at. Not to say we were lacking in other areas, we just had the most fun imposing our physicality on the other team and making them hesitate. Unfortunately, we were still teenagers and got distracted by other things and our interest in hockey faded. It's a damn shame too because I'm sure we could have gone somewhere with it had we kept going. Youth is wasted on the young.