A boss that’s easily distracted

My boss is a man that thinks big. He’s very imaginative and energetic with childlike ideas that shows up in various ways. For example, the education/entertainment school he owns consist of eight buildings shaped like characters from Alice in Wonderland.

He comes to me last week excited as a kid on Christmas morning. He said in very broken English, that he knows of three floors in a building that he wants to turn into some kind of kid’s center. He said he imagines about 10 very small rooms hanging from the ceiling or standing on stilts. He wanted a variety of transitions such as slides that would take the kids in and out of the rooms. Inside the rooms he wanted a puzzle room, game room, magic room etc. He didn’t really know what he wanted in the rooms, but there would be no teacher or assistant inside.

He thinks I’m a very creative person with good ideas and that I know how to create computer illustrations. I was pleased he wanted my ideas but he wanted me to create a computer rendering of the entire “thing” and we could talk about it Monday. This was Friday. I suggested that some hand drawn ideas would be better as such an early stage and he agreed.

That weekend I came up with four pages of ideas on the content for the rooms, transitions from room to room, as well as a system for the entire thing to work without any teachers or supervisors in the rooms like he wanted. It involved lots of touchscreens and video electronics, but still very doable.

That Monday with my creative juices fully depleted, I asked him if he wanted to look over the drawings. At first he seemed confused and didn’t know what I was talking about. After greatly simplifying my English he finally remembered. We sat down, but he had obviously lost all interest in the idea. Now he was like a kid 3 days after Christmas, his mind had wondered to a new toy.

It’s interesting to me when I see very childlike characteristics in adults. They’re certainly not all bad. I have many childlike characteristics myself, and they’re some of what I like most about myself.

Tags: boss, children, korea, playground