Names changed but the basic facts of the story are as they happened. Mary, Sue, Mark, Antonio, Marla and Jessica all work at a store. The store always closes by eight. When employees work the closing shift, they know they may sometimes get off right in time and other times depending on different factors they may not get out the door until after 9. Now to the jist of the story. Whenever Mary is scheduled for the closing shift, she frequently demands to the manager that she cant stay a minute past eight, although as stated above, its known that when you work closing, you will oftentimes have to stay for a while, sometimes past 9. Sometimes the manager will decide that its ok for her to send someone home early. She tends to ask “who would like to go home a bit early?” and Mary always insists that she should get to go early “because she has kids”. The manager is frequently swayed by this line, and even if other employees also want to go early, or have other valid reasons such as needing to study for a test, etc it seems that Mary having kids trumps everyone elses rights to have a turn to get off early. I think on the days the manager wants to send someone home early, she should be neutral and rotate thru so that everyone gets to occasionally get off early instead of only Mary becuase she has kids. Well she may have kids, but other people have important things also in their lives.
I don’t see why she should get special treatment.
Should employees with kids get special treatment? No
Do employees with kids get special treatment? Yes
Problem bolded. The issue is the manager, not Mary. It’d be equally unfair if she went for the “I have to study” line every time, or someone else’s justification. Mary’s just taking advantage of a soft touch. The other employees should discuss the imbalance with the manager without criticizing Mary or her childcare tactics, and escalate if the boss doesn’t improve going forward.
I think the rotation is a great idea and it should be brought up in a neutral way.
Perhaps Mary could request that she no longer have the closing shift, as so not to inconvenience others?
I don’t think kids should equal special treatment, even thought it frequently does.
I do think it’s a good idea when companies can help their employees to find a suitable working schedule to help with work/life balance, such as flexi-time, if it can be accommodated without inconvenience to the company or unequal treatment amongst the staff.
However, you don’t have this luxury in retail. Mary needs to find an office job.
It depends on whether or not Mary is a really good employee. Really good people are likely to leave if a job doesn’t accommodate their family–family gets the priority, and really good people usually have the option to go somewhere else.
On the other hand, if the favoritism towards her is causing other good people to look elsewhere, that’s a mistake and they should try to find a way to make sure those people also feel like they are getting what they want.
Looks to me like the manager needs to “manage” better. People with kids should not get special treatment simply because they have kids. Presumably she has made arrangements for childcare because of the shift she’s working, in which case she should make sure those arrangements can accommodate her possibly not finishing work until 9pm. Pissing off your colleagues isn’t worth it.
I’m not adverse to parents being given some slack. Juggling work and kids is hard.
That said, it seems to me that Mary is not able to fulfill the requirements of the job. The job requires employees to work shifts, the late shift having an undefined finish time of between 8 and 9pm. Employees should therefore be prepared to work until 9pm, and if they finish earlier, that’s a bonus that they get to go home early (although I assume they only get paid for the time worked?).
If Mary wasn’t willing to work a minute past 9pm, I’d be ok with that. But 8pm when working until 9pm is sometimes required? Nope.
If staying after 8:00 is considered going “above and beyond”, then there should be extra compensation for those who stay.
It is not fair that Mary always gets to leave early. She shouldn’t be assigned the closing shift if it’s always gotta be that way.
But wouldn’t not assigning her the closing shift ALSO be favoritism? Let’s say Mary has said “I really, really, really don’t want to work the closing shift. My kids need their mom and I hate to spend my morning alone, and then miss them after school. If you really need to me to work the closing shift, I will, but understand that I will have to leave by eight: I must get home by bedtime so that I at least get to tuck them in”.
If I was a retail manager, and I had a long-term, full-time stable employee with a request like that, I’d honor it and let the ever-rotating crop of part-timers be the ones that stayed late: they are likely going to leave in a few months anyway, and be replaced with others. Who cares if they hate it? This job is a passing phase for them, whatever I do. But if I play my cards right, Mary will keep chugging along as a reliable employee for years. That’s worth a lot in an industry where employee theft and flakiness are rampant.
Why don’t Sue, Mark, Antonio, Marla and Jessica just have some kids?
Frankly, I feel that if a job regularly expects you to be available until nine, then your working hours should be until nine and you should get paid until nine whether or not it’s required. It’s not fair to reap the advantages of employees being “on call” without giving them the advantages of being “on call.” It’s not fair to shift your company’s inconsistency and inability to plan onto your employees.
Barring that, I do think that it’s reasonable to give extra consideration to account for people’s personal circumstances. We all live in a society, and we will all have times when need something or another. Raising a family is tough, and it’s not exactly the sort of thing you can take back if you find out it’s tough to balance with work. While it would be nice for me to have more time to hang out with my friends or canoodle with the SO, I really don’t mind taking a bit of a hit so that somebody can do a good job raising the next generation. Those little snots are going to be pay my social security, after all.
It may not be fair, but it may be what the employees prefer. I spent years in jobs with undefined ending times- from fast-food to professional jobs where the doors locked at 8 and we left when all the clients were seen. In every case, we preferred to go home as soon as possible- and in every case, if we were paid till 9, there wouldn’t be any leaving at 8 because that night’s work was done. There’s always something that can be done for that extra hour.
Right. The most natural interpretation to me is that Mary gets special treatment because she’s a more valued employee–nothing to do with her having kids, per se.
I call bullshit on this one! We have a couple employees at work that ALWAYS seem to have some drama going on that requires them to leave early. Management is on to them now, and they usually don’t get away with it.If Mary can’t make arrangements for childcare, she needs to find another job where she is done earlier. This is completely unfair to the other workers, and sounds like she is playing the “kid card” just to leave early.
A case could be made that by consistently sending the mother home before anyone else, the manager is discriminating against the other employees on the basis of familial status, which is illegal. Not saying absolutely yes, but if I were the store owner, I’d be nervous enough about the possibility of a court case that I’d tell the manager to be more impartial going forward.
highrollinwooded,
yes, the kid card.
For several reasons. There are a couple employees who have been there longer than her, also she is not even a really good employee, she calls in or misses more than alot of others, and when she is there, she only does half the work. One of the tasks of this job includes going throughthe store, finding clothing that is not on the correct rack and putting them onthe rack, also taking new clothing and putting it on racks, called building a rack, and cleaning type duties. and for these type of. duties that most employees dont look forward tk, she will not do her part, letting others do her share. One particularly unfair incident occured recently when the manager told Antonio he could go home by seven, and he started to get his stuff to leave, whenMary told the boss that SHE should be the one to go early, and suddenly, even though the manager had already told antonio he could go, decided to retract the offer, allowing mary to go early instead. Antonio had to stay and do extra racks that Mary had not done. When Antonio pointed out to themanager he had already been told he could go at seven, the manager just shrugged it off.
On a sidenote, Mary doesnt really always go home to her kids anyways. Another employee said shes seen her a few times after ten, once at one of those 24 hour drugstores, browsing around, not with any kids in tow, and twice at a pub, obviously without kids in tow. So her claim that she needs to hurry to be home for the kids seems more like just the card she uses to get off to go hang out or do whatever.
Sometimes, she will say shes tired, and cant do the racks, and insists on just doing the cash register, and for some very odd reason that nobody can figure out the manager will often cave to her wining, , while other employees have to do the hard work of pushing racks around.
I was about to reply, before I saw Tollhouse’s latest response, clarifying that Mary’s an ass who deserves no sympathy or special treatment.
What I would have said, based only on the OP, is that I might indeed be inclined to give someone with kids dibs on going home early—not for her sake, but for her kids’ sake. Maybe they have limited time with her; maybe her going home early would make the difference between them seeing her before they went to sleep or not. If I were her coworker, and if she were a generally decent worker and decent human being, and she explained her situation to me, I might be glad to work late so that she could get home earlier.
I hope the people who stay late are getting paid for their extra time.