I really like my job. The pay is great, the people are nice, and the job is, for the most part, pretty interesting. I’ve been there for 3 years and received a promotion during that time so they obviously think highly enough of me to give me more responsibility. All in all it is a pretty good place to be but I am running into a problem now that I’m pregnant. Despite being pretty awesome in every other way they are very, very, very strict when it comes to lateness, PTO, and other time off. Being more than 59 seconds late is enough to get you a verbal warning and more than 10 minutes late and you get a written warning put in your employment file. They even time your bathroom breaks and will speak to you if they feel you are taking too long in the bathroom. They also do not let you take PTO by the half hour or the hour but instead you must take at least half a day off if you need any time at all.
Since I’ve been hired there this hasn’t been an issue for me because I tend to be half an hour early every day and the PTO, while annoying, was easy enough to work around but since I got pregnant it has become a serious issue. I cannot use my lunch hour to go to the doctor because it is a 15 minute walk from my office to the doctor and a 15 minute walk back, so if my doctor is running even a few minutes behind I’m late coming back from lunch and get written up. If I take the morning or afternoon off I end up being in the doctor’s office for half an hour and then wishing they would let me come back to the office instead of making me hang out in a restaurant for 2 hours or go home early. This is only going to get worse as my pregnancy gets further along and I will have used up all of my PTO on doctor’s appointments and such before I give birth. They have allowed for 6 weeks of maternity leave (8 weeks if you have a c-section) during which you don’t receive any pay and then when you come back to work you go right back to the way things were before. I don’t have the ability to negotiate a schedule where I work from home part of the time or move my hours around so I only work a 4 day week because my job is very schedule oriented and if I can’t do the 9-5 that they hired me for then I am not meeting the requirements of my job. I can’t imagine that a 1 and a half or 2 month old baby is going to make it easy for me to meet their scheduling needs and will probably end up causing me to be late or take significant time off (which I won’t have available because I will have used it all up before giving birth) fairly regularly.
My husband has a wonderful job with amazing benefits. Technically if I quit my job tomorrow we could afford to live on his salary alone, though it would require some sacrifice on our part. I hate the thought of not being employed but it seems like my job is almost trying to force me to quit and stay home with the baby, especially when you consider just how expensive it is to put such a young baby in daycare and how little of my take home pay would actually be going towards non-childcare expenses. On the other hand though, even with decent life insurance in place if something happened to my husband that would cause serious financial problems for myself and the baby. It seems like my keeping my job would be the best insurance policy to guarantee that if something happened to my husband that we would not be financially fucked. I’ve been tossing around the idea of getting a part time weekend job or finding a job where I could work from home but given how difficult it is to find work right now for even the most qualified people I would hesitate to expect that a company will want to hire someone with a newborn even for part time work.
Given the specifics of the time off/lateness policies of my office would it even be worth it to try and go back after the baby is born or is that essentially asking them to fire me? How terrifying is it to only have 1 income? How difficult would it be to find a part time job in this economy? Is there another option available that I haven’t considered yet?
I feel your pain. Back in the day, 30+ years ago, I went right back to work after sinkid one was born. After a week or two the singuy and I were fighting over which of us would quit and stay home with the kid. I really liked my job and they let me leave work to nurse the kid whenever I wanted as long as I put in 8 hrs a day, but I quit anyway.
The singuy changed his job as well, he went from traveling 80% of the time and working 6-7 days a week to working 9-5 M-F. Talk about money getting tight, at the time our salaries (not counting OT, which I used to work a lot as well) were within $100/year.
We moved into a small house on the bus line so the singuy could bus to work. Money was tight, sometimes we didn’t even have $5 when the next paycheck came in. But dang we had fun. I sewed the kids clothes or bought them at the resale store. They got two new outfits a year, one from grandma at Christmas and one that the singuy bought them at Easter.
I can’t imagine the stress you will have with your job and the time-clock thing. If I was in your position I would quit. You can work part-time, or go back to school or just enjoy your child. In 2-3 years jump back into the job market.
Oh, and just to keep the record straight, I angsted like mad about my decision to quit work. Many sleepless nights. Heh, then went back to school and got a PhD, which I never would have done if I had not quit in the first place. You never know how things will turn out.
If you are, FMLA. Get one. Once you have the paperwork done, they can not penalize yo for being pregnant. If you do not have any vacation time accrued, you will have to take an income hit as you will have to take the hours off for appointments or missing work for baby stuff, my old job had I think 2 hour increments [even if you are missing for 1 hour 30 min, it counted as 2 hours of vacation time or nonpaid time off] Get together with your HR person and discuss what you need to do.
Assuming you’re an eligible employee, they can dock your pay but they can’t write you up or punish you (officially) for missing time for doctor’s appointments.
However, even so… Having a kid usually means missing a LOT of work for various things. Daycare centers are pretty quick to call you to pick your kid up with short notice at the slightest hint of illness (as they probably should, really).
Have you talked w/ co-workers with children to see how it’s been for them?
FMLA is an option, though to be fair I don’t know how much help it would actually be since I’m already getting 8 weeks for the c-section so adding 4 weeks to that is a limited amount of help.
The coworkers that have children all have spouses that stay home with their kids or family members that take care of their kids. While my mother-in-law would probably gladly volunteer to stay with the baby while I work I know her well enough to know that the moment she finds something more interesting to do she will ask us to find new childcare. She is retired but she just published a book and is looking on match.com for a boyfriend so I anticipate that the opportunity to do a book tour or go to Europe with a lover would make it so that being a free babysitter will seem a lot less fun.
We are expecting in October and my husband is going to quit his job to stay home with the baby. For me, the main motivator was seeing how having 2 full-time jobs affects the parents, not the child. I totally believe that children can do just fine in daycare, but near as I can tell it drives the parents insane: they are juggling chainsaws every minute of every day. It’s like they are constantly planning the invasion of Normandy. The time crunch and stress level seems unreal to me. For us, the best choice is a slower pace. I totally understand how it could be different for others.
We deal with the financial anxiety by planning. The minute we decided to try for a child–over two years ago now–we stopped spending my husband’s income. In the last two years, we spent it only to 1) get rid of debt or 2) pay for fertility treatments. Everything else, including additional savings, has come out of my income. This has had two huge advantages: one, we know we can live on my income, and 2) we have a Big Pile of Money to fall back on. You could try that for a month or two and see what life would be like on just the one income, and it might make you feel more confident.
I had a friend who had medical issues file for and get FLMA when her job was pressuring her. They totally backed off and could not even discuss any time off she took. She would just let them know the time she needed off for FMLA and submitted it, no questions asked, (&from my understanding) no questions were allowed to be asked.
From her experience it would cover your mid day Dr’s appointments no problem.
I don’t know if it was company specific or it is legally coded as such, but it put the ball entirely in her court.
I would suggest filing ASAP, filing does not mean you have to use it.
I used to babysit a three-year-old boy whose parents both had full-time jobs. He did not have any congenital mental disabilities, but at age 3, he had the language skills of a two-year-old and was not at all toilet trained. He would try to help me change his diapers. The source of the problem was that no individual spent enough time with him throughout the day to teach him the things he needed to know-- he just kept getting shuffled back and forth between Mom, Dad, and various babysitters.
This is just one experience, and I’m sure plenty of children get through similar situations without a problem. But there is no replacement for the time a parent can spend with a young child. Some parents don’t have the option of working part-time or staying at home, but if you do have that option, it is probably in your child’s best interest that you take it.
If you can quit your job and stay home with the baby, do so. You’ll never get those years back and he/she will be getting on a school bus before you know it.
FWIW - your employer sounds horrible! Timing BATHROOM breaks?!?!?!!?! WTF?!?!?!?!
I’m a guy, so my experience here is strictly observational, but I’ve observed a lot over the years. Take this for what it’s worth.
Your employer has made it clear they don’t like their employees to be distracted on the job. Having a kid is a HUGE distraction. Children get sick, daycare arrangements fall through, appointments with the pediatrician take longer than you expect, etc. If you get called down for being 60 seconds late, what’s going to happen when your daycare provider wants to talk to you for a couple of minutes about that bad case of diaper rash your baby’s coming down with?
Your co-workers all have some sort of arrangement that allows them to devote full attention to their jobs. Your employer will expect you to do so, as well. You can expect them to strictly adhere to their written policy and/or FMLA and not one inch more. They’re already requiring you to take your sick leave in half-day increments rather 15 minutes here and 2 hours there. It isn’t going to get any better.
Even if you manage to not get written up, and manage your time extremely carefully, you’re probably off the fast track for promotion at least until your kid starts school. You may even see your performance reviews slip in subjective areas like “shows initiative.”
Eventually one of four things will happen:
They’ll document enough minor infractions to fire you.
They won’t fire you, but you’ll be in the first round of layoffs.
You’ll keep your job, but be on the “mommy track” with the corresponding lack of salary and advancement – and you might actually be okay with this – or
You’ll get so frustrated you’ll quit and they won’t have to pay unemployment.
Not all employers are like this, but I’ll bet yours is.
I can only give you two pieces of advice. Document everything to make sure you’re covered in case the worst happens, and bank every bit of your paycheck except what you pay for daycare, so you can see what it’s like to live on one paycheck.
I’m afraid I don’t see that’s it’s possible for both parents of a child to work in a place that has strict attendance requirements. At least one parent must either stay at home or work somewhere where he or she has flexible hours to deal with the usual child emergencies: illnesses, doctor appointments, etc. FMLA helps, but is very limited.
IMO a place that doesn’t offer paid maternity leave (at least some! at least part of your salary!) does not WANT people to come back after the maternity leave is over. That, and the very strict leave/tardy policy, makes me think this job will not be a good fit.
Kids screw with your jobs; take time off now and enjoy the baby, but note that when you go back in the job market you will take a financial hit because of the gap, which will probably go on forever.
Oh, when the baby starts going to day care, you have about three weeks. Then for the next few months you will never get a full week of work in because the baby will have caught something from some other kid at day care. Eventually they’ve had everything, but it does take awhile, during which somebody’s going to miss work, as you can’t have a visibly sick kid at daycare.
When I talk about society’s ability to make being a working parent more or less workable, this is exactly the sort of thing I am talking about. Now the US is about to lose what is presumeably a productive and skilled worker for no good reason, and a household is going to go from having disposable income to just covering essentials. Our entire economy suffers from bad family policies.
What industry do you work in? What I would worry about is keeping up your ability to find future employment. Can you keep up your skills and keep the resume filled with part time or freelance work or even volunteering? You don’t want to end up in a situation where you would be unable to raise your children on your own if you needed to.
Depends on her job. If it’s anything production-oriented, timed breaks are the norm, even bathroom ones.
ETA: My current employer puts women like the OP on the “mommy track” – they keep their current jobs, but cut their hours to the point where it’d make more sense to stay home with the baby. This happened to one of my coworkers, btw.
Where are you? In the U.S. in addition to the FMLA and the ADA - which makes it pretty hard for a company to fire you over doctor’s appointments, some states have additional laws regarding allowing parents to have time to care for children.
You might want to see if you can reach someone (legal aid) to answer those sorts of questions. It may or may not be worth trying to work there with legal protection, but with legal protection you’d understand what your choices are a little better. And you might decide to stick it out and wait to get fired, feeling pretty good that there might be a settlement check in it for you.
It will be really hard to work without flexibility with a small child at home. Its hard to work without flexibility and mine are tweens who can stay home sick by themselves. It might not be worth the stress to maintain this job.
This is a big deal for us too, actually. I don’t want for us to have to schedule ourselves so tightly just to be able to function and I loathe the thought of leaving my child with strangers for 8-9 hours a day and giving up 75% of my check (after taxes) for the privilege. It just freaks me out completely to think that I’d be taking myself out of the workforce and potentially making it so it would be difficult to find work again in the future and take care of my baby on my own if I had to someday.
This is something I hadn’t considered, but it is a valid point. I think our child would be much more likely to flourish if I stayed home with them for a while.
They are actually really awesome about everything except time issues. When I told them I’d like to work my way up the ladder here they paid for me to take courses to improve my skill set and then gave me the promotion. They are constantly ordering lunch for everyone on the office dime or bringing in someone to give massages on your breaks or other things to thank their employees for all the hard work they put in. If it weren’t for their scheduling policy I’d sword fight a gorilla if they asked me to so that I could keep this job but as a parent my child has to come first so it may not be someplace that I can stay long term.
This is really my biggest concern. I don’t want for my husband to get hit by a bus in 3 years and find that I’m only able to get hired to wait tables or fold sweaters in retailville somewhere. I also don’t want to find that I’m several years behind where I had expected to be in the raise/promotion scale either.
I’m in health insurance, which from the potential work standpoint is an excellent place to be in this situation. Since the laws are all changing over in 2014 no one really has any idea what the industry will look like in 2-3 years so I would essentially be coming into a “new” industry with no less experience than most people already working there.
This sounds terrible, but if daycare is currently 75% of your after tax earnings, it doesn’t sound like you’d be able to take care of a baby with your job, either. This is what life insurance is for. Half a million in term life is not that expensive for a healthy young man, and would give you several years to reorient yourself if the worst happened. If you are worried about divorce–that’s a more complicated question and will take some soul searching on your part. But in the case of divorce there would be child support, and that would help offset some costs.
Just want to throw one more thing out there. Not everyone is cut out to be a stay at home parent, and it’s really hard to know whether or not you are until you’ve tried it. (I am not cut out to be a SAHM. I have often spent more than I earned on daycare. It was worth it.) My recommendation is to keep your options open. Plan to go back to work. It’s much easier to quit later if you decide that you do want to be at home than it is to find a job and suitable daycare arrangements on short notice if you have already given up your job and realize that wasn’t a good choice for you.
Divorce isn’t a concern for me at all. The 75% of my after tax check would only be until the baby got to be about 6 months old, at which point the costs go down for childcare. I do understand what you’re saying though. It might be smarter to quit and just make sure we have enough life insurance so I can focus on family and worry about employment in the event of a horrible catastrophe at a later time.
You never know how things will turn out.