If they had enough money for that, they’d just offer free or sliding-scale aftercare in the first place, instead of sending the kids on a pointless bus trip.
Either you are at work or you aren’t. Every employee is going to have unscheduled time off. They get sick, their mom dies, they get in a car accident, a blizzard shuts down the roads. I ran out of gas. I… I had a flat tire. I didn’t have enough money for cab fare. My tux didn’t come back from the cleaners. An old friend came in from out of town. Someone stole my car. There was an earthquake. A terrible flood. Locusts! IT WASN’T MY FAULT, I SWEAR TO GOD!
Making employees bring a note from a doctor is just stupid. Every employee should be able to call in with “I can’t come to work today” and it should be fine. Miss too much work, and it isn’t fine any more, and the boss is going to have to find someone else to do your job.
^^ This.
Why the hard-on for parents in particular? :dubious:
I work in what you might call the entertainment industry and I’m fortunate enough to be in a supervisory role. In my particular line there’s almost never a “drop dead” where one person missing a day for illness or childcare would be a true disaster, and as a parent (and person who gets sick) I tolerate unexpected days off with equanimity; there are a lot of dick bosses who don’t, so I don’t expect to be taken advantage of, because people expect worse treatment than I give. In theory we are paid by the day, but I will sign off on a 4-day week, as will many humane people in my business (though there are plenty of inhumane types).
As far as child care, my wife and I pay for it, and pay for it, and pay for it, and have backup grandparents, and we still get caught out. My wife or I usually can (or have to) cover when absolutely necessary. So I’m sympathetic/tolerant when the people who work for me get screwed. I can only remember one instance where someone who worked for me was repeatedly absent for child-care reasons (as she said). I suggested that she really needed to work out better backup plans, and that was that.
To make some long stories short, I had several occasions when I was the only person in the area that could pick up my very young (at the time) daughters and bosses told me I had to stay after hours because of something they didn’t plan well enough for.
I don’t appreciate those types of threats. It is basically asking me to risk my job versus abandon my child and potentially go to jail for it. I know which one I would and did pick. In one instance, I had to shoulder check a VP that was standing in my way. In another, I got called out of the blue on a Saturday afternoon (my day off) to look at something remotely. I said I would do it as soon as I got back in 15 minutes to drop my daughter off at a birthday party. My boss exploded at me and told me to ‘stop using your kids as an excuse!!!’.
Well, that is not going to play well now is it bitch? He had kids of his own and left at 3pm sharp every day to take care of them. We had a huge blowup over it the next Monday but nothing ever came of it. He got fired along with everyone up the chain to the VP that I shoulder checked a few months later. It was a caustic work environment that eventually made me deathly ill as well.
I am not doing that bullshit anymore and I don’t treat anyone under me like that either. We cross-train for a reason. People that are bad employees in general will be dealt with but it won’t be because they have any type of legitimate family need. That is just incompetent and bad management style.
Lemme guess! You got asked to work overtime because some breeder couldn’t find someone stupid enough to care for her spawn, ammirite??
My current team has two project managers and the one who works from home manages to be more efficient than the one who’s on location. We can tell his kid is home because she can be heard gurgling.
Maybe it’s a case of “when you want something to be done, give it to someone who’s busy”. His actions usually get done within minutes of finishing any call.
Add me to “not as a ‘normal’ situation, but on an occasional basis it can be”. “Oh gosh, I didn’t realize that I was starting work this week and would need someone to take care of the kid” and “my mom usually takes care of my kid while I’m at work, but she fell and broke her hip” are very differente situations; the first one is an airhead, the second one is in a damn big mess which isn’t their fault.
Course it’s acceptable. Life happens. Sometimes it does unforeseeable stuff.
If this is happening on a semi-regular basis, then it’s no longer unforeseeable: there’s a problem with your childcare arrangement, and you need to sort it out. But if it happens once in a blue moon, then it’s no different from any other emergency, and anyone who gives you shit about it is being a dick.
This was true with some of my former employers as well as with my current employer.
Back then I had quite a few coworkers who were more or less forced into quitting because they hadn’t been around long enough to accrue any PTO. A few of them had to constantly scramble to find sitters, mostly because their work schedule was always changing so they couldn’t make plans in advance with the sitter (i.e., “I work every Tuesday from 3-8” – maybe that was true one week but maybe you’re working 10-2 the next and the sitter isn’t available).
A few of my old managers would try to arrange the schedule so these coworkers could make advance plans for sitters. Most managers, though, towed the “I need you when it’s busy, if you can’t be here at that time you might as well give your notice because I don’t have another slot for you.”
One of my friends with young children works from home to avoid all this. She makes more at this particular job than she ever did at any out-of-the-house PT job she had. Plus her kids tend to be sick a lot, so there’s that.
There is no law in Georgia that sets th eminimum age a child can be left at home alone. The Ga Department of Family and Childrens Services does issue guidelines, as referenced in this news article:
The mother in the article was arrested for “child deprivation”. I can’t find any articles on how/if the case was resolved, but that charge wouldn’t relay solely on leaving the kids alone. There is not enough detail to determine whether other conditions in the home were contributing factors.
As to the OP, I voted that it would be a valid excuse on an occasional basis.
I was left alone for the first time when I was five, nearly six. My mother went to walk my brother home from some place, and was gone about 15 minutes. She let me watch the end of a cartoon (IIRC, The Flintstones) that I was watching. I was under strict instructions not to touch the stove, nor let anyone in, and to answer the phone (in case she called), but not tell anyone I was alone (my mother was ahead of her time).
But she would not have left me alone for an evening, or even for an hour, and I think she probably told the neighbor I was alone. If anything had happened to her, my father would have been home from work in about 45 minutes.
The was the first step in a gradual weaning off parental presence.
Rules like “Never leave a child under eight alone,” lead to children being helicoptered until they are 7 years and 364 days (because parents fear accusations), and then the children suddenly being left alone for a whole evening when they are eight, at which point they are giddy with new freedom, and more likely to do something stupid, than if they’d been eased into it.
It’s as valid as many other excuses but I don’t consider it the trump card some parents expect it to be. When I was in retail management, employees had personal days. They could use personal days as they needed. If they called out and had no personal time left, they’d get written up. This resulted in all types of fun drama. 'Yes I understand you had to stay home to watch your kid, you taking one day off isn’t the issue the issue is this is the 15th time you’ve called out, that’s not acceptable. You’ve used up your 14 days for the year.
It’s acceptable until you get into the crazy people. Starting out, I had a co-worker who called in saying she couldn’t find a sitter - her son was 15. When other parents would point out that he was old enough to not need a sitter by most standards (and the law in IL), she’d claim anyone that would leave their child home alone like that was a neglectful monster who should have their kids taken away from them. She quit to be a stay at home mom because yeah, it’s tough finding a sitter or daycare for someone that can drive.
I teach college evening classes so I get a number of “grownups”; business people and/or parents).
On the first day of class I write what they need on the board: the textbook, thumb drives (plural so the’ve got a backup)… and a Plan B.
Someone’ll ask about that and I say “Always have a Plan B in place for when your car won’t start, when you miss the bus, when your babysitter is sick, etc.”
I initially read this as “14 kids and up,” and it made a sort of sense.
sounds like a cover story for not trusting her kid.
Well I can kinda see that. Leaving a 14 year old alone in a house with alcohol, no supervision, and a big bed is just asking for trouble.
who knows, depending on the “babysitter” she might actually be unwittingly arranging trysts for him.
Happened with a friend of mine. His “babysitter” was about 3 years older than him. I don’t think they ever told his mother, and he eventually married her.
How times have changed! I didn’t HAVE a babysitter when I was twelve – I WAS a babysitter when I was twelve. (Okay, not for sessions that went late into the night, but I was considered responsible enough to oversee three children until their parents got home from work.)