Apparently you’re a cocksucker. And you suck Plenty.
Oh, there’s a system is there? Apparently…right?
No it’s not fucking apparent. The only thing that is apparent is that some people are inconsiderate assholes who impose their personal choices on others and hide behind an imagined societal mandate when called on it.
So, you believe that most people want childless workers to cover for parents at work, to work extra hours, and in “plenty” of other ways sacrifice individually - without compensation - as our contribution to society in general via our individual coworkers? Is that right?
That’s horseshit. Most people want to pull their own weight and not impose on others. Most people who find themselves in the position where they have to impose on their coworkers are mortified at the thought and do everything they can to minimize the frequency with which it happens. Most people want to repay any kindness - yes, kindness…not society-mandated service - provided to them by their coworkers. Only a very few people – generally termed self-absorbed assholes – would want what you believe is “the system”.
Yeah, we’re all so fucking stupid – APPARENTLY – that we need you to teach us our societal responsibilities. Since I’ve never heard of the PLENTY of rules that I’m supposed to follow in raising other people’s kids, why don’t you share a few? You fuck.
Would this be the same society that sees paedophiles lurking round every corner? Or the same society which takes a fit of the screaming abdabs if a single man with no children is ever found within ten feet of a child in a public space, because he MUST be have an ulterior and perverted motive?
In that sort of a society, people with no kids have already done their bit by paying their taxes all their working lives. Because, lets face it, no one trusts them to have anything at all to do with the actual children that they’re expected to cover shifts for.
Daniel, You keep saying that about society. So… since you’re so convinced of this notion that adults in this society are responsible (‘and that that is the way it is’), I’m calling for a cite, a law, or anything that backs that claim up. Please hurry, need answer fast. Because so far, you’re the only one advocating this claim. Did society have a press conference on this issue? You seem to have some inside information that we all seem to lack on child responsilbity in relation to all other unrelated adults.
And the taxes thing, I don’t have an issue with that. All I said was that I pay more than my fair share which allows parents child deductions. So if anything, I am doing my part already (forcibly, but is fine on the whole I suppose). But I do take issue with you telling me that society has deemed it necessary for single/childless people to fill in days for parents with children/family issues. You may have not said that directly, but your “society” tripe indicates it very much so.
I don’t know the views of catsix on children directly, but please don’t make the assumption that I, or anyone else hates or dislikes children because we openly stated that we’re not responsible for others kids, or that we’re unhappy when it’s assumed that we should fill in for parents with “needs”.
LHOD: Dude, I get it-your bun is not yet out of the oven and you’re speaking as an oh-so-concerned childless who has been selflessly picking up the slack for parents, willingly, for years. The fact is that almost every organization has a shmuck such as yourself, a pony-tailed bleeding heart who believes in the greater good blahblahblah. The fact is that you likely have neither the ambition nor the brains to take your talent somewhere you aren’t being taken advantage of, so you’ve chosen to stay, pacified your ego with all this muckitymuck about society and you’re now chomping at the bit to take advantage of another shmuck and lecturing us all about how it’s our societally obligated duty to do your work. Because you’ve joined the leech club.
As I said-in most organizations the tradeoff to putting in less time & productivity is that you don’t get promoted as fast and you don’t get as much money. With my organization the tradeoff is that my single co-worker and I handle the plummier program areas that make us more marketable in the private sector. This is largely because we’re expected to be available every Christmas, Thanksgiving and “family oriented” holiday to pick up the slack. We’re also more available to be able to handle the crises that pop up in our areas so our chief counsel staffs us on the big goldman sachs bond transactions. The new parents get stiffed with shitty projects. End of story.
This doesn’t mean that I don’t occasionally feel like bitching about how I have to choose between Thanksgiving & Christmas each year because believe it or not, being single does not necessarily mean being orphaned. I have a family too. But know that at least the fact that I got promoted faster helps keep the irritation down. You really needn’t lecture me about finding another job-for every Christmas I am disappointed about not getting to see my parents but having to sit around and work, I have the pleasure of seeing other people get jealous about the fact that I get to work on better deals.
There really is no world, LHOD, where parents are going to get to do less work because they’re “raising the future” etc. without some sort of consequence or where I pick up after people like you without some form of incentive. See Campion’s post above about how she treats the slackers. Having kids is an essentially selfish act-you’re really not doing me any favours. When I work harder than my co-workers I am doing THEM a favour which is why they keep their mouth shut about the manner in which I (and the other singleton) are being incentivised to put up with it.
I have no idea what you do but it really does seem like you’re the type of passive aggressive guy who has been “sucking it up” for years and is now eager to buy into the entitlement.
Other people’s posts are my cite, coupled with some basic stuff:
People exist in a society.
Societies display how they work by working that way.
If people are being told that their time off plays second fiddle to the time off of someone who uses it to raise a kid–and people in this thread seem to be saying that–then, coupled with points 1 and 2, Bob’s your uncle.
Well I am just back from a very pleasant weekend with my son, that only included one email from my boss resulting in a 5 minute phone call, and a 20 minute phone call to a more junior associate who was doing some research he needed help on…
I knew what to expect when I joined a big law firm. I actually love my job, and think I am pretty good at it. I knew there would be weekends and evenings involved, and I knew there would be canceled dates and outings. My complaint isn’t against my boss at all. In fact, today he was incredibly apologetic when he emailed, and flipped out when I suggested I dropped into the office to solve the situation. It was against co-workers more, and their unwillingness to fairly bear the load. And yes, a lot of it is my own fault, that I should be more assertive in that situation…
I didn’t expect the whole sidetrack into the childless having it worse. I thought the off topic posts would be regarding people whining about child support. But I do understand the view of people who don’t have children. And I do provide cover for those people (and those with kids) because I am (a) British and (b) alone on most holidays, so I don’t mind being on call over Thanksgiving, for example. Admittedly, that is a great one because the boss is off too, so there is rarely anything to actually do, and you get all the brownie points from volunteering.
But a non-custodial father gets pretty much the same short end as the childless in this situation I am describing.
Except I haven’t said that it’s acceptable. I’ve said it’s the way it is. I’ve made that clear over and over and over again.
It so happens that I have no problem with it, because as others have pointed out, some jobs give preferential treatment toward the people willing to work longer hours, and that’s fine, too. I think folks need to find the job that suits them best. For folks who get all pissy about bosses who prioritize time-off for folks who will spend that time caring for children, another employer is superior.
And yes, the fact that someone experiences something does mean that’s how it works.
Your analogy to racism is terribly flawed, but I’m not going to bother explaining the flaw to you unless you’ll explain in your own words first why racism in an employer-employee relationship isn’t a copacetic byproduct of a free market.
Edit: y’know, actually, I probably don’t belong in the pit. I’m gonna bow out.
You may not recall having joined such a society - but you did nonetheless, by being born.
Many people in this thread are lamenting single, childless folk “getting the short end of the stick”. That is society’s norms speaking.
This thread hijack exists because of that. People are lamenting this fact. One can argue that it is “unfair”, but one cannot reasonably argue that the norm does not exist - otherwise, what are all these people complaining about?
To my mind it is not unfair, as you (and indeed everyone who was born and not hatched out of some adult’s forehead fully formed like Athena) was a beneficiary of society’s child-favouring norms at one point. If you don’t like it, go back in time and repay everyone put out by your parents, taking you to the doctor with childhood diseases and the like.
It is my impression from the posts here and from my own experience, that people are complaining when the norm of fair treatment is violated. Many people experience the unfairness but only infrequently or for short periods of time. It is because it is far from the norm that causes the complaints.
More specifically, this doesn’t happen every weekend, or even every month. For some it may happen a few times a year. For others, like me, it only happened enough to notice at one job several years ago. And yeah, I bitched about it at the time. And I bitched because I was accustomed to a fair workplace. Then all of a sudden one person repeatedly wanted special treatment due to her child’s needs, and acted like it was her right to have that special treatment at no personal cost to herself, and at the cost of others.
Fairness is the norm.
Special treatment and unfair workloads are the exception and are unpleasant enough to generate pit threads and posts.
Disclaimer: the above is a joke. It’s pretty hilarious, but if you happen to disagree with that assessment, I’ll just fall back on the old “reasonable people can disagree” excuse. In any event, I want it understood that I do not believe Mahna Mahna’s best friend should have rescheduled the wedding, or that it reflects poorly on the quality of the friendship that this was not done.
I disagree with your characterization. What people here are bitching about is the fact that they perceive their treatment as unfair, but everyone around them in the business world accepts as “normal” that people with childcare responsibilities on occasion get preferential treatment.
Examples:
and
To my mind it is a no-brainer - society certainly prefers child-care responsibilities over a singles’ mixer or whatever. I also think that this isn’t unfair. The reason: every single person in the world was, once, a child him or herself, and a recipient of that “unfairness”.
And the fact is that, unlike adults, young children must be minded at all times; they cannot take themselves to the doctor or the like. It very often is not a matter of “choice” at all; and every person’s parents did the same for them. You cannot go back in time and repay all of those ‘inconvenienced’ by your parents taking time out of their busy schedules to cater to your childhood needs; all you can do is show a reasonable degree of accomodation to the norms of society, which very obviously judge it “fair” that such accomodation be made in the present.
That being said, I do not think that childcare responsibilities should always and without fail trump. It depends on circumstances. Certainly there will be responsibilities the child-free have that should trump - like taking care of one’s parents when infirm, for example. But as a general rule, it is not “unfair” that childcare responsibilities are generally judged to be of greater weight and worth - they are.
I think it’s exactly the opposite. I have to work a certain number of hours as agreed to when my employer and I settled upon the terms of my employment. I owe them this number of hours per week, let’s call it 40.
Since there are 168 hours in a week, that means the remaining 128 hours are mine to do with as I will. Some of those hours are spent sleeping, let’s say 49 hours. That leaves me with 79 hours in the week that are not spent asleep or at work. I would estimate that meals account for 3 hours per day between cooking, eating and cleaning up. That’s 21 hours, with 68 hours remaining. Since ‘the three S’s’ take up approximately 2 hours per day, I am now at 54 hours per week (including the weekend) that are not otherwise occupied already. This is the time in which I have to clean the house, do the laundry, wash the car, visit the family, enjoy a movie, or whatever it is I choose to do with my time.
It is not ‘time that is available for me to fill in’ when someone with a kid has to leave early and decides to hand me their work. That time is mine, and if anyone wants me to give it up, they better have a damn good reason, not just claiming that my free time activities are less important than theirs. What I mean by this is that I have absolutely no need to justify, or get into a contest regarding the value of, the things that I do with the 54 hours per week that belong to me. There is no ‘trump’ because it truly does not matter what I do with my time. It’s no one’s business what I do with that time. I could spend it staring at a blank wall if I wanted. I’m still not giving it up.
I think they (and much of society) believe that it is a damn good reason for them to leave work early to tend to the kid and that yes, for the benefit of society as a whole, raising the next generation is more important than your free time activities (as a general rule).
Look, I offered you an alternative to “parents who always want to take weekends” and “parents who have to leave early”. I said that if they were allowed to bring their kids (provided they are quiet and well-behaved), then that would free up your time, allowing you to neither have to take over time nor come on the weekends.
And you reply with a blanket “kids are not allowed at the workplace”. Then how can that do anything but be bad for you too? Day cares are not open after certain hours nor on weekends, and kids need some adult supervision (even though they can entertain by themselves for hours without disturbing peace).
You’re setting up a catch-22 there. The parent is condemned for either leaving early or refusing weekends, but if they’d agree to it as long as they can bring their offspring, you’ll be condemning them too!
For 4 years, I worked every single Christmas eve and Christmas day. It was a 24x7 rotating shift, and without fail, my boss scheduled me to work it. The third time, I asked him why and he told me that the other people all had little kids.
Now, I like my co-workers and I want them to have time with their kids. The holidays are a special time. But I shouldn’t be punished because of it. I have every right to stay home with the wife and sip egg nog. Or get on a plane and visit my parents.
But I lose that right because my wife and I have thus far decided not to procreate. No, that’s bullcrap. When the 4th time showed up on the schedule, I put out my resume. I quit 2 weeks after Christmas. I might not have saved that Christmas, but at least I had a better shot at the following one.
It’s not up to you to decide the value of my time, and whether or not it’s less valuable than yours. I don’t even have to provide a list of things that I do with my time so that you can judge the importance. It is not incumbent upon me to cancel my plans or to give up my free time because you need something. If I do so it will be at my discretion, and there will be repayment terms attached.
If you want your kid in the office after hours or on a weekend when no one else is there being disturbed by them, fine. Just keep them the hell away from my desk because there are many things on and in it that don’t need to be pawed through.
Children do not belong in the office during business hours, particularly if the reason they can’t be in day care is that they are sick. You want them with you after hours or on the weekend, fine. Just make sure they stay confined to your work area and aren’t off playing with the interesting things they found on someone else’s desk.
A very good point. There’s ‘Junior is sick and I can’t find a sitter,’ and then there’s ‘I’ve planned to take Junior to the zoo this weekend.’ The first one there’s no helping, the second one is much less important. Yes, time with your family is important, but ALL of us have families. I don’t have kids–my household includes my husband and me. But my time with him is no less important than someone else’s time with their kids. And if someone wanted me to give up plans with my parents or in-laws (His family is a couple hours away, mine’s in another country) there had better be a damned good reason or there will be hell to pay.
There is no way in a million years I would hire you. You might be very good at what you do, but this attitude alone would make you utterly unemployable to me. I don’t make hiring decisions regarding my support staff, but I do have some choices as to with whom I work. Someone who is counting the minutes does me no good at all.
It doesn’t always go in the way of working more than you “agreed to” hours either. If there is nothing to do on a Friday afternoon and the person I am working with wants to beat the traffic - good luck to him or her. But the first time someone walks out the door when their “agreed to hours” for whatever time period are finished, leaving a task unfinished, without a good reason, I won’t be putting any more work their way, and it will be reflected in their review. So yes, I would be deciding the value of your time, I guess.
So, when the parent comes to you and says little Johnny is sick so I won’t be able to finish my work on time, that will be reflected in the review as well, correct? If they’re not getting the job done, they’re not getting it done. If they force others to finish the work for them, it should reflect poorly.
But parents with kids seem to get a free pass. And others, like yourself, hold the rest of us up to a different standard. Interestingly enough, it’s employers with that attitude that I’m more likely to become a ‘40 and done’ type of guy. They clearly don’t respect me or my time, but expect me to respect them. It’s a two way street.
My time with my wife is every bit as precious to me as someone else’s time with their kid. If I wasn’t married, that still doesn’t mean that a someone having a kid or wife gets to trump my free time. It’s my life, not yours. I don’t expect any employer to tell me that anyone’s free time is more valuable than mine. Because it’s NOT. Free time is of equal value to everyone.
I’m a fairly well meaning guy. If my co-worker asked me to cover for them from time to time so they could see their kid, I’d be willing to do it usually. I’d expect some similar favors in return if I needed. But for an employer to demand it on the basis of their valuation of my free time? Nope. I have a real issue with that.