If you think people with kids don’t abuse the hell out of taking advantage of that in offices, you haven’t worked in many offices.
He’s probably sleeping with her.
You brought babies into your office for six years? That is seriously fucked up. Well, I guess if every single person who worked there was consulted, and they were all enthusiastically on board with it, it wouldn’t be. Otherwise, holy shit, that’s some serious imposition on the rest of the employees.
Poor rationalization. Not giving parents special treatment at work doesn’t equal the downfall of society as a whole.
As a surprise to absolutely no one, no, I don’t think employees with kids should get special treatment. The occasional break is one thing; both employees and employers have to make sure that it doesn’t turn into some employees getting all kinds of slack while other employees take up the slack for them.
FWIW, there are obviously limits on all things, and there does come a point where things become unprofessional.
But if you have two employees asking to leave early and only one can go, I think the one whose kid has a fever gets precedence over the one who wants to practice for the ski-ball tournament.
In any case, playing the tit-for-tat game with coworkers is good for nothing but getting yourself worked up. It’s best to focus on your job, what you need, and how your supervisor can support that. You have no idea what arrangements your coworkers may or may not have worked out when they were in their own hiring process, and it’s not particularly useful to speculate.
When the CEO insists on it, do you argue? Beg him to let you spend $$ on daycare and miss your baby? He makes decisions as he sees fit, whether every single person he employs agrees or not. Golden Rule and all…
HE built out an office as nursery, HE insisted the baby stay, HE dragged my kid around the office, introduced him to GWB and any other friends who stopped by, and treated him like his own grandkid. Same for my daughter. And since I owned my own travel agency, they often came to work with daddy instead. We didn’t impose on anyone for anything.
As you are unaware of the entirety of the situation even now, I would suggest your position on the topic is uninformed, and therefore without merit.
Go tell Marissa Mayer she’s doing it wrong. Let us know how that goes.
When I was manager I had a few employees with kids who needed some accomodation. Two of them job shared, so it wasn’t too bad, they would swap out days and usually made it work. One of them was a 50% FTE employee. The usual rotation would be a week of working “early shift” 11am -7pm and then 7am-3 and the next week doing noon-8 and 8-4. Since “Karen” only worked half time it would basically amount to her working 7-3s one week out of 4. That one hour of child care in the morning is basically impossible to arrange childcare. She was ok most of the year, or if her husband was home (he worked out of town) but from December to March her mother was away and she had no child care for 7 year old and a 6 year old for an hour in the mornings.
Did I accommodate her? Yes. She was a darn good employee who picked up extra when she could, would phone in well in advance, and would flex to the area I needed her most.
Did people like it? No, but my department was always strapped for staff. For me it worked, for the departments, it worked. I also knew who used every hour they were alotted for sick time, appointment time, (one woman kept track of how many hours of “discretionary leave” she still had… !) and it wasn’t Karen.
Of course I’m a mom, and I occasionally need a day here or there. But mainly I tried to make it work and make my employees happy.
…".But if you have two employees asking to leave early and only one can go, ****I think the one whose kid has a fever gets precedence over the one who wants to practice for the ski-ball tournament…" **** (from post above by even sven
Yes…but who said anything about a fever? or for that matter, a ski ball tournament? as i said, this is ongoing, everytime that she expectsand demands preferential treatment every time, not a thing to do with a fever, as sympathy provoking as that example is
It seems more like you have a problem with a particular employee using her kids as an excuse to get special treatment. Not someone with kids (or other dependents) who might need a more flexible schedule.
I also don’t think kids should = special treatment.
However, it did mean that I got to work every Xmas and make extra money in penal payments, as staff with kids wanted Xmas off to be with them, so not all bad.
In the OP’s case, if she wants a job with that company, she should do whatever is required, and not penalise other people because she CHOSE to have kids.
Anyone posting on here thinking that the boss is ok in consistently sending this ass kisser home before others clearly has not witnessed this kind of BS firsthand. The boss is wrong for caving in to her, and Mary is a lazy ass who pulls the “kid card”. Im willing to be if she did NOT have a child, it would be another excuse. I’m also willing to bet Mary whines about how broke she is. People like this are scum to a workplace with otherwise hardworking people, and someway, somehow, this needs to end. I personally would clue the boss in as to her shopping and boozing trips. I don’t like being a nark, but sometimes it is necessary, if nothing else, for the morale of the workplace!
I don’t think Cat Whisperer was saying you were wrong to bring your child to the office, ducati. I think the point **Cat **was making is that many employees wouldn’t want to work in an office containing a creche. So the point was more that your CEO was a bit of a knob to insist on you bringing the child into work, unless every single employees in the office also wanted you to do so.
You are failing to understand the point made by even sven and me earlier. There is exactly one person in the world who cares whether this is some dastardly injustice being visited upon you or not. And that person is not your manager.
If you think you are being treated unfairly, you have three options — none of which include “making a big to-do about it on the internet” — (1) begrudingly accept it, (2) negotiate your own deal with your employer, or (3) find another job.
Learning how to focus on your own requirements and getting those met, rather than perfecting the art of wasting everybody’s time by indulging in ineffectual online whining, is a vital life skill.
Thats a really unusual take on iit kimmy gibler, If presenting a scenario and asking for opinions on it (aka imho, the name of this forum) then the same would apply to countless threads here and imho wouldnt have many posts left…if you dont want to give advice then dont give it,but thats one of the main purposes of this imho. If your idea is that if a workplace in some way discriminates, you shpuld either love it or leave, I think many would disagree with that. The mature thing to do is try and advice and try to decide how to handle it. It sounds like from your odd take on it, this situation is familiar perhaps to you…get
The problem is not with Mary nor the manager. The system is the problem. If they need people to stay late…schedule them late. These bs management techniques show disdain for the employees and put everybody in awkward positions.
To the OP: if you don’t want to stay late… don’t. Stick up for yourself and your coworkers (in a closed meeting with your boss.) Leave Mary out of this. It actually has nothing to do with her. If you are trying to climb the ranks in the company, put in the extra OT and roll up your sleeves.
If you obsess over fellow employees, you will always be miserable.
Tomcar, thanks for the input…im considering talking to a couple coworkers and maybe requesting the manager allow others the opportunity to leave early on those days it closes at eight…rather than only that one employee. Its not actually a situation where we are asked to stay late. Rather they are always closing at that set time but sometimes,the manager de,ides to close an hour early. Its not that everyone always wants to go early, but on those days they do close early there are many times other workers would like the opportunity to go early, for various reasons and somehow there have.been times the manager already told a worker they could go early if they wanted and mary will butt in and demand she should go instead. Its unbelievably unfair and other.workers complain esp after they were ready to go and the manager changed her mind and retracted her offer, in order to let mary go
ducati: I have to agree with Cat Whisperer although not to the degree that it’s “fucked up.” YCMV (your culture may vary) but I see it as an imposition on the other employees. I doubt that your wife worked as distraction-free as she would have without him in the office. And you haven’t laid out the details on how involved the CEO got in the raising of your child, but I believe there’s a lot of important teaching and socialization that goes on in a daycare or preschool, that wouldn’t go on if your child was left in a special room with toys while the adults did their business.
Now God knows the number one rule of parents is not to tell them they did something wrong, so first, I’m not saying you did a bad job or something I wouldn’t do given the circumstances (of “loving parent not wanting to be away from their child”), and second, I’ll brace myself.
One more thing - many people are in fact pissed at Marissa Meyer about building herself an onsite daycare while eliminating telecommuting for employees. You could’ve chosen a better example.
Tollhouse earlier you mentioned that Mary was known to go out to pubs/restaurants instead of seeing the kids. I invite you to take a moment to consider what are actually known as the facts, because from the sound of things, this could have been what happened:
Mary gets off early many days because she plays the kid card.
Everybody else dislikes Mary.
One day, some circumstance happens and Mary goes to a pub after getting off early, and Coworker Z sees her there.
Z immediately complains to her fellow coworkers the next day about seeing Mary at the pub.
People love rationales to build up their existing notions, so the next thing you know, it’s a fact around the store that Mary gets off early to neglect her kids and go drinking nightly.
This is the kind of thing that I would be careful about not letting my mind get carried away with itself.
But more importantly, Tollhouse, if I were you I’d look for a new job. It doesn’t sound like you have much leverage to fix things, and there’s either two possibilities about your manager:
He is ineffective at managing and gets steamrollered by pushy employees like Mary. Things will head south and working for him will grow more awful.
He is extremely effective at managing and can squeeze the last ounces of useful work out of all his employees, be they shirking or not. He isn’t cultivating or respecting your effort and is playing you and your childfree coworkers like fiddles.
Sorry it’s that way, but it’s rare that a bad job only has one thing wrong with it. It sounds like you’re likely to enjoy your eventual new job much better. (Just don’t quit until you find that new job! )
You’re right, actually: Fantasy Left Hand of Dorkness sure screwed up when he talked about the downfall of society as a whole. That part of his post where he mentioned flaming comets falling from the heavens? That was pretty silly, too. What was FLHOD thinking?
Real World Left Hand Of Dorkness had a better point, IMO; rather than talking about the downfall of society as a whole, RWLHOD just talked about the slight enshittification of society when a parent is unable to spend sufficient time raising their kids.
That is indeed what I was trying to say; some people love kids and would love to work in an office with a baby in it every day, but some people (including me) don’t - if I worked somewhere where the CEO insisted someone bring their baby to work every day, I would quit, plain and simple. I just don’t see that as a choice that a CEO should be making for everyone.
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