In which Dinsdale reveals himself as a sexist bastard

[Muffin]

@Dinsdale

I don’t expect anyone else to have to do my work for me - and that’s all I want/expect of my co-workers. That they do their own work. I guess I’m a total jerk, because I don’t really give a damn about my co-workers beyond the fact that they do their work and don’t make it harder for me to do mine. Or maybe I should clarify, only if they do their work and don’t make my work harder, then I’ll decide whether or not I give a fuck about them and their blessed life events.

I hear what you are saying. At a pervious employer, I came on board shortly before a lawyer who practices the same type of law as me went on disability leave. That left me taking over her work load. Once her sick leave benefits ran out, she went on pregnancy and parental leave, again with me taking up the slack. Since I was paid based on collected billings, it sucked having to do clean up work.

But here’s the thing. I wasn’t happy with the situation, so I up and started my own outfit. Life is now good again.

Look, it is the business’ business to decide who is assigned which tasks. If it does not provide adequate resources by hiring on someone in the interim, or by at least compensating you for your having to go above and beyond, then perhaps its time to think about moving on to where you will get a better deal.

[Flea]

@Aspidistra

If there was no such thing as maternity leave, your pregnant co-worker would simply be resigning her job - and someone would still have to do the work she was otherwise slated for.

If your colleague (of either sex) decided to simply resign their job, someone would still have to do the work they’re slated for.

So what exactly does pregnancy have to do with it?

Now if you’re going to pit your co-worker for being disorganized and leaving you with all the crap work to do because she knows she’s going to be gone in a week, have at it. If you want to pit her for generally being a slack-arse, fine by me - I don’t know, I’ve never met her. Just leave her pregnancy out of it.

Seconded. What makes you an ass isn’t that you’re pissed at your slack boss for his lack of organization, your co-worker for her laziness and lack of foresight and yourself for your inability to speak up about either, but that you take the tack of blaming the one thing that is irrelevant to the situation: the pregnancy.

I manage an office where people (men as well as women) schedule elective surgeries all the time, and leave me short-staffed for weeks. I’ve also had employees lose parents, siblings, and go through illnesses that require extensive treatment and lots of time off. You may think highly of yourself for hauling ass back to the office, but it’s not as if those benefits aren’t there for you if you need them: You can take just as much time off for a personal illness or death in the family as anyone else in your company. The policy is the same. Now, if you’re upset because not having a uterus excludes you from maternity leave in particular, well, take it up with Alla/God/Bob/Whomever.

[wonky]

@Dinsdale

I don’t recall anyone “picking up the slack” for me at work, and would be very surprised to hear it had happened.

But someone had to pick up the slack for your wife. And then she quit because she would have been dicked over. But you’re bitching about the women instead of the workplaces. That seems odd.

[burundi]

Thanks for the clarification, Dinsdale. I understand your frustration with this particular situation, but as someone who’s benefited from the system three times, it seems a little churlish for you to complain about maternity leave in general.

[Dinsdale]

@jsgoddess

But someone had to pick up the slack for your wife. And then she quit because she would have been dicked over.

I readily acknowledge that someone picked up the slack for my wife when she took maternity leave - and I can well imagine her non-childbearing co-workers might have been pissed about it. In fact, as I said, one guy got a promotion before her. She thought it was entirely inappropriate, and that she was being penalized for having taken maternity leaves. That was one of the rare instances where I had the sense to keep my thoughts to myself.

My comment about her company dicking her over had to do with the fact that she knew she was going to quit, but she chose to present herself as willing to return to work after her 3d maternity leave - because the fear was that if she admitted she wasn’t coming back they would do various things to either reduce her benefits or otherwise just make things difficult. It sucks that the way companies administer policies essentially requires that workers be dishonest in situations such as this.

But I consider myself a realist, and I have no problem with any individual doing whatever they can do to get the best deal they can get from their employer. And I readily acknowledge that folks taking extended maternity and other family-friendly leave are merely taking advantage of what the system provides them. Nothing wrong with that.

And yeah, you aren’t saying anything new to me by suggesting management in my shop is incompetent. Hell, this is the least of it.

And I’m not going anywhere. I’ve got a good gig going. And I regularly have to pick up the slack for folks who are just lazy and incompetent, whether or not they happen to be popping out babies.

[Solfy]

@Dinsdale

And the fact that a pregnancy is an elective planned event differentiates it from an illness/injury in my mind.

Ask any subfertile or “oops” mother if pregnancy is an elective planned event. And while the due date gives you a target to work towards, life intervenes not infrequently with other plans.

BTW - the woman in question is still in the office today. So she could have done her own fucking work instead of pawning this piece of shit off on me!

Okay now THAT would tick me off. If you’re at work, do you own work!

[Zoe]

Dinsdale: After the third (in about 3 1/2 years) we decided we wanted one of us to stay home, and decided she would be the better stay-homer, despite the fact that she made more than me at the time. I’d end up drunk and addicted to soap operas while the kids ran around the neighborhood nekkid…

Well, that’s what you would claim or actually do anyway to get out of having to stay home, right? That’s blackmail and it took money out of your household budget. That’s where the really hard work is – raising a child and keeping a household going. And you are pitting the women in the office for not doing their share of work?

I don’t expect anyone else to have to do my work for me
I guess I’m a total jerk, because I don’t really give a damn about my co-workers beyond the fact that they do their work and don’t make it harder for me to do mine.

Yes, you are a jerk. You don’t seem to give a damn about anybody – coworkers, wife, kids. If what you say about yourself is true, I have trouble understanding why anyone puts up with you. You…you…product of a woman’s uterus! Eew!

Someday one of those babies that your wife has will be yours and you may have a more human reaction.

[Velma]

I agree that the issue here is whether you want to work for this company, or not. They have stated policies about leave, and people are going to come work for them with the intention of using them as stated. If I interview with a company and they promise family friendly policies, and paid maternity leave, then I expect to be able to use them without getting crap about it. Otherwise I would have gone to work somewhere else. Similarly, I understand that if I don’t take use of these policies, other employees are free to do so, and if I have a problem with my workload, I take it up with my manager, not my co-workers.

Women of childbearing age who wish to work and raise children often take jobs that are compromises for them. I specifically work at my company because it gives me flexible hours and lets me job share so that I can work part time and be home with my child. I compromise because it is not the highest paying job in my field and there is not much room for advancement for me here. It is true that I chose to do it this way, but the truth is someone is going to suffer no matter what. Either I burn myself out trying to work full time and raise kids, or the kids suffer from lack of involvement, or my career suffers because of my lack of involvement.

People, especially women, who chose to have kids don’t do so because of all the great perks they will get in terms of aid or paid leave or available benefits or whatever. I am planning my maternity leave now, it will start in December. It is not going to be a vacation, yet many of my co-workers ask me when my vacation starts. I do have to use up all my paid leave on my maternity leave though, so there will be no actual vacations for me in the near future. That is a choice I make when I become a parent. But it is not a “happy fun time” leave of absence. Not to say I don’t enjoy bonding with my newborn baby, but it is exhausting and a lot of work.

There are many perks to having children, and there are many perks to not having children. It is essentially silly and pointless for either group to go around wishing we all could have it both ways. I don’t get luxurious vacations, I can’t leave at a moment’s notice on a weekend trip, all our extra money goes to college savings and baby items, etc. I gave that up when I chose to have kids, just as people who don’t have babies ‘give up’ maternity leave. I am sure those without kids end up financially ahead even without the paid leave!

Believe me, if I could choose a way to have a baby that would not leave my body exhausted and recovering, if I could figure out an easy way to breastfeed a child every 2 hours around the clock and still be capable of working, I would do it. Saying it is all a choice is short sighted. Yes, I choose to have children, but there is only one way to have them (aside from adoption - but many companies allow leave for this too) and society as a whole needs to deal with the fact that women will have babies. As others have pointed out, the alternative that women of childbearing years just stop working is neither fair nor possible, and I believe, would be a true detriment to working society as well. Women of my age are some of the most educated women the workforce has ever seen, and childbearing years are limited. To say we must choose an all or nothing approach to having babies is a waste, IMO.

That said, anyone who knows when they will be taking a leave from work for any reason should do everything they can to get their work done before they go, and I do that. If, however, I talk to my boss about a project that is pending and he says “don’t worry about it, we’ll take care of it” then I will do that. If someone gets stuck doing it that didn’t want it, they have an issue with the boss, not with me. My terms of employment and my job reviews are taken up with my boss, not my co-workers (although for the most part, I do get along with my co-workers very well.) If someone tries to shove work off on me that is not part of my job, I refuse it and tell them to take it up with my boss.