I guess the fact that I never asked you for a job is irrelevant.
That I am.
The attitude that I am not an indentured servant who can be pressed into service at any hour of day or night because the master has called? So sorry that you find it disagreeable.
So you aren’t in a position to hire anyone, then? I guess that makes your ‘I will never hire you!’ threat all the more empty, doesn’t it?
So you’re annoyed by people who, at the end of the day, say something like ‘Well, I have plans, so I’ll pick this up in the morning’?
I never give a reason beyond ‘I have plans’ when asked why I’m leaving. Also, I don’t accept arbitrary and unreasonable deadlines set by other people for the completion of my work. I don’t have to. Since I set my own deadlines, I don’t ever miss them. If I say it will be done by Tuesday, it’s done by Tuesday, because that is what I agreed to. Deadlines set by others who have not in any way consulted me are considered to be suggestions, not requirements, and I have no problem telling someone that I will not kill myself working all day and night to meet such a deadline. And then I request to be moved from their project to someone else’s. I’m in high enough demand that I can do that.
Not really, considering that I am not looking to you for employment that you are not authorized to offer. Where I do work, project managers don’t do the performance reviews. They get to make comments which will either be included in the review, or not, at the descretion of my actual manager, and not all of them will be asked for their comments (who I ask to comment at review time is up to me). If you tried to raise a stink about me being unwilling to work evenings and weekends to meet deadlines I never agreed to, I’m quite sure that my boss would laugh heartily at you.
And that’s what unscheduled time off is for. It’s when you say ‘I need to take the rest of today off, and I will finish my work tomorrow’ not ‘Hey, you don’t have kids… how bout you stay late and finish this cause I’ve got to pick up Junior?’
To my mind, Xmas is the kiddie holiday, and New Years is the adult version. If I had my way, I’d give those with kids Xmas off, and those without New Years’.
Presents and Santa Claus is more for the kids, and staying up late and drinking is more for the adults.
It may be a ‘kiddie’ holiday to some. But that’s a decision you’re making based on your own estimation of the value of my free time. What if I was devoutly religious and normally spent Christmas in Church with my family? What if my wife and I wanted to spend our first Christmas together at home alone. Not having kids doesn’t devalue my holiday experience.
The point I’m making is this: employers shouldn’t automatically assume things about their workers schedules and the value of each person’s free time. Any time preferential treatment is given to a person because they have a child, you’re infringing on everyone else in the company who doesn’t. This is especially true in any position where the offloaded work has to be picked up and completed by someone else.
If you came and said “my dad had a stroke, I’ll have to take him to doctor visits”, I’d expect the same level of consideration extended - and yes, given a choice, taking stroke-dad to the doctor trumps someone wanting to attend a singles’ mixer - it’s not a judgment on free time, but of the relative importance of, and inflexibilty of, life events, and making reasonable accomodation for them.
So, you would not be willing to make a reasonable trade-off? Xmas for New Years’?
Actually, way I see it, extending “preferential treatment” for children is quite legitimate – after all, it is a reasonable “automatic assumption” that every living human has been a child and has received such bounty themselves in the past.
Thoughts: Children are more resilient than we give them credit for. If you clearly don’t care about your kids and never show up to anything, never take them anywhere, etc. that’s a problem. Occassionally having to miss a school event or game because you have work commitments is not the end of the world for your kid if you are otherwise a participatory, loving parent who’s children know they can count on you.
When you have children you are making a commitment, and when you choose a profession or a particular employer, you are agreeing to the nature and terms of that job. No one makes you have kids and no one makes you work at a particular firm or in a particular profession. Accept the limitations and benefits of both.
In addition to being in a society that values children - as it should - there is also a social contract between adults. It’s a matter of degree and a matter of taking advantage. As adults we should be able to negotiate together and come to a workable compromise. It does not matter if you have children or do not, are a single parent or in a relationship, full-custody or only visitation. Adults have the responsibility to act like adults and realize that few of us ever get exactly what we want everytime. We expect children to understand this - if we’re good parents! - why does it go by the wayside when we grow up?
Any employer who encourages, abets, or allows childless employees to be taken advantage of consistently by employees with children is a shit employer.
Children may be understanding about missing events, but government social services are generally not understanding about parents leaving young children alone, not picking them up at daycare on time, etc.
The point being that a young child’s life is full of time-inflexible events.
I disagree with the attitude of “no-one made you have children”. The obvious retort is that no-one made you be born. You took advantage of the wonderfully bountiful attitude of society towards kids (heh) when you were an infant; now you want to change the rules when you aren’t? Now, that is unfair.
I totally agree that one should not presume on preferential treatment for a baseball game or the like. But what about making perfectly reasonable trades - like Xmas for New Years?
Would I be willing to trade holidays? If I was asked, I would consider it. Decent chance that I would say yes, or at least work out some deal. If I’m told that my employer has made the decision for me, I’m going to be upset. By doing so, he’s placed the value of a coworkers time as higher than the value of mine.
As for the second situation, where there is a medical illness. I think both people have the same value on time. If my dad is ill, I’ll take sick time and vacation time to take care of him. That is, time given to me by my employer for exactly such situations. I would expect a parent to use the same sort of time for children with illnesses.
I don’t expect my employer to tell me that I have to work 15 extra hours this week because Bob’s kid caught the sniffles. The employer has to factor in the usage of sick time when they create project schedules or work rotations. Failure to plan accordingly for situations like that shouldn’t mean the remaining employees automatically have to give up free time. That’s a failure of management, not of the workers.
Actually, everyone around them does not feel this way. Many people feel that employees ought to arrange child care in a way that does not interfere with their work responsibilities, and they certainly don’t think they should impose their needs on others. Moreover, if they think they have a right to impose on their co-workers they may soon find themselves out on their ass.
Unfortunately, society doesn’t understand that I’m not going to a singles’ mixer, I’m delivering food for my local food bank. Or I’m volunteering for my local election. And while a desperate child may take precedence over those things, a responsible parent would not put all of us in a position where we had to decide between one or the other. They would take their own PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY seriously so that society didn’t suffer for their lack of foresight, or inability to realize that they can’t “have it all”.
That is untrue. Those of us who grew up with a full-time caregiver in the home did not participate in situations where the working adult had to impose on co-workers. The adults planned a situation where the children could be cared for properly…that is raised…BY THE PARENTS.
Of course some people don’t have two adults in the home. That means that they need to take extra care to ensure that their children are seen to. And that’s a bitch, but as LHOD says, “Suck it up, Gertrude.”. That does not mean that individually their coworkers need to raise their children for them. It means they need to enlist the help of a grandparent, or pay some more of their salary for dependable backup childcare, or arrange a backup/swap system with another parent in a similar situation. In short, they need to plan ahead to take care of their PERSONAL problems, so that they do not become a burden on society.
Most parents don’t inconvenience others. I’ve worked with hundreds of parents. Only one or two display the arrogance that their children are the DIRECT responsibility of the rest of us.
The norm of society is that you take care of your own shit. In extreme circumstances we all need to pull together, but Little Timmy’s ear infection is not an extreme circumstance. And if we have to cover for your daily fucking mini-drama-emergencies, you had better be appreciative, find a way to pay us back, sure as hell not give us the attitude that it is our responsibility because your precious little germ factory needs you.
The fact that you are incapable of recognizing I wasn’t talking about an existing job offer again weighs rather heavily on your hypothetical employability.
I have no doubt. Fortunately it seems to be a position that requires little to no human interaction.
Yes, that is exactly what I said. The fact I don’t want someone I am working with counting down the seconds to bolt out of the door at 5 pm means I expect them to be “pressed into service at any hour of the day or night.”
Well try reading what else I said - the part you quoted later… “but I do have some choices as to with whom I work.” In other words, if a particular paralegal is asssigned to the matter on which I am working, I can go to the supervisor and say “I can’t work with that person.” It hasn’t had to happen. But then again no one has ever exhibited the attitude you are putting out there.
Yes I am. Because tomorrow doesn’t help me if I have a midnight deadline with a federal judge. And nice little bit of goal post shifting there. I made clear that if the person had a good reason to leave, I had no problem with that. I was complaining about your clockwatching, “I am contracted for 40 hours, and I won’t go a moment over that” attitude.
I am glad that works for you, and that I don’t have to work with you. I am glad you are in high enough demand. But I work in a field where I don’t set my own deadlines, and the point, which I think you probably new, was not that I was looking for a cantankerous, antisocial ass to fill a particular position, but instead that you would be utterly unable with that attitude to work in this field. You probably don’t want to work in this field either, as I am sure you are about to tell me, but that doesn’t alter the argument. It also makes me utterly relieved that I don’t have to run into you in my office ever.
Again, if you really thought I talking about a specific job offer, you have the comprehension capabilities of a mentally subnormal chipmunk. You are clearly in a position that suits your personality, though I have little doubt that in any field such an attitude is a detriment to progress. And note again, I never once talked about working nights and evenings - while that is required in my job, I didn’t talk about it. The person who is scheduled to leave at 5, but won’t stay until 5.10 to finish up some assignment is of no use to me whatsoever. Just as in the same way if the person comes to me at 4.30 on Friday, and hands in the finished work, and asks me if I have anything else for him to do or can he bail early, I would be a total ass for handing him stuff that he could just as easily do on Monday, and requiring he stayed the extra 30 minutes that he had contracted to provide.
You seem to want to work in a situation where everyone is an asshole to one another. I don’t know if that is because you are incapable of pleasant interaction, but some of us like a workplace with give or take between the employees.
**Malthus: ** I never even alluded to the things you have retorted with. We’re talking about parents needing time off to do unusual things with their children, are we not? I’m not talking day care. I’m talking birthday parties, games, etc. No reasonable childless employee is going to not understand the needs of parenting. Still, the responsibility for dealing with the realities of choices we make rests on us all, no matter what choices we make.
Read again the part about accepting limitations and benefits. I’m not changing any rules. When I was a child, no one - particularly dads - took time off for kids events during the work day. My mother’s employer - a law firm, natch - did NOT care about the fact she was a defacto single mother raising six children. It was her responsibility to find us carpools, but she never drove ever because of her work schedule. She relied on other parents who could drive her kids to school. I’m only 40, but I clearly recall the transition in my working life from work comes first to work/life balance. So don’t talk to me about changing rules and what advantage I took of anything. Because in the 70’s and 80’s in my town and with my parents the environment we have today did not exist.
I’m not being a hardass, no matter how much you may want to interpret my post that way. I’m saying we all have to make compromises, choices, and manage schedules and commitments. That’s just reality. But no one is responsible - responsible, that’s the key word - for easing your balance for you. Your not responsible for making my life easier, and I’m not responsible for yours. But since we’re grown ups and assumedly at least the minimum of polite and respectful as we should be, we should be able to work out a solution with some modicum of equity.
villa, it seems to me that you and catsix are sort of talking past one one another, and that you’re extrapolating from the requirements of the law profession in order to draw conclusions about the way other businesses work.
I acknowledged early in the thread that lawyers and their employees are often meant to work long and unusual hours, and that this seems to be a well-known and accepted part of working in the profession. I’m not sure whether lawyers, law clerks, law secretaries etc., have employment contracts, but if they do, it also wouldn’t surprise me if those contracts made no mention of limits on hours.
But the fact is that many industries don’t have the sort of time-sensitive labor requirements that the legal profession has. For workers like catsix, there is no federal judge with a midnight deadline waiting on their work, so leaving things until the morning is a perfectly reasonable option.
Also, as a lawyer, you are surely aware of what can be spelled out in contracts, and what sort of obligations contracts place on both parties. If catsix has a contract that stipulates 40 hours a week, and she and the employer both agree to that contract, why does it somehow reflect poorly on her if she wants to abide by the terms of the contract? I mean, presumably if she habitually arrived at work a bit late or left a bit early, her employer would get annoyed that she was violating her work agreement, so why should she be expected to give more than was agreed at the time of her hiring?
Your allegations of clock-watching were clearly intended to suggest that this made catsix a poor employee, and it seems clear to me that you were implying that her habit of watching the clock probably also meant that she wasn’t a very good worker. But isn’t it possible that she’s a very good worker for the 40 hours per week that she is contracted to work, and that she simply isn’t interested in being steamrolled into doing more than she is being paid for?
I know that the labor market is tight, and that jobs aren’t easy to come by, but when employers hire someone to work a specific number of hours per week, that should not be license to simply keep employees at work for as long as the employer feels like. If, as an employer, you wnt someone to be available to work 70 hours a week, or to stay behind 4 nights a week, then at least have the guts to spell that out in the work agreement, rather than agreeing to 40 hours and then hoping the employee will understand that 40 really means 70.
Agree with all of the above. It’s like neither villa nor catsix can conceive of any situation other than theirs. (I only notice because it’s one of those little things that MAKE ME INSANE! ;))
I’ve worked in law office, and I understand what that means. Anyone who signs up to work in a law office SHOULD understand what that means.
It’s why I’ll never work in a law office again.
But most industries simply don’t have those kind of deadlines. Now, I’m an excellent employee, but I’m also a salaried employee. I don’t get paid for more than forty hours a week. So I don’t *have *to justify leaving at 5:00. You’d better be able to justify asking me to stay.
It is absolutely possible that someone is a good employee for 40 hours, mhendo. And there are without a doubt some jobs where emergencies never occur. However, someone who expresses a willingness to walk out the door at 5 pm regardless of the work situation is not someone I am wanting to work with in any job I have held, not just the legal profession.
I said she may well be good at her job, and she says that is the case, so I have no reason to doubt it. I am certain I don’t want to find out if it is true or not, because I don’t want to work with someone with that kind of attitude.
A lot of the difference goes back to things I have been saying throughout this - it isn’t so much the attitude towards management I am talking about, but the attitude towards one’s coworkers. And if that means working 10 minutes longer here, and skipping out 20 minutes early there, and fielding a phone call from home later in the week, then to me, that makes for a much better workplace all round than a bunker mentality that suggests that a person has an impenetrable wall between work time, which is 9 to 5, Monday to Friday, or whatever hours are set.
Take Thanksgiving, for example. We were closed the day after. My boss emails me needing something done - not a problem for me, as I had already said I would be happy to cover, as the other associate was travelling to her family in the Carolinas. But it required access to database to which I had not expected to be required to log on, so my password and user ID were in the office. The adminstrator also had that information, and from past experience I knew he had it on his Blackberry. So I emailed him to send me my log on details. He could have determined he was on vacation, and not spent the 2 minutes it took for forward me my details. I would then have had to get dressed, drive to the office, park, retrieve the information, and either work from the office or drive home with it. But he didn’t. He worked when he did not have to, for a couple of minutes, and as such my life was made easier, my boss got the information he needed faster, and the client was better served. I think not responding to that email would have been kind of a dickish move.
I totally understand it, and it is a mentality that pisses me off in all other jobs I have had.
When I was a bartender, I started at 6. If the Miller Lite kicked the first pint I was pulling at 6.01, and Marie from the day shift was getting ready to walk out the door, I would hope she would cover for me for the 2 minutes it would take me to change the barrell. In the same way that if I was there at 5.45, and she asked if she could run out the door to get ready for a date, I would have no issues starting 15 minutes early.
If she consistently asked me to start at 5.45 I would be annoyed, just as she would be annoyed were I consistently walking in at 6.15. But a little bit of give and take between employees is a thing that makes work a lot more tolerable.
The attitude I am criticizing is the “I finish at 5 and I am leaving at 5 and I don’t give a fuck who is negatively impacted by that.” I see that attitude in someone, I do not want to work with them. I don’t think that is such a radical attitude to have, and I don’t think it is applicable only to the legal profession.
On the other hand, my secretary leaves at 4.30 every day, as contracted, because that is when her bus runs. I would not dream of asking her to stay beyond that unless there was a stupendously important reason, which there almost could never be, as there are other people who can do what she could do.
You’re not too good with anything but the absolute literal are you?
Sometimes people say things in a very straight-faced manner in order to taket he piss out of you. You actually thought that I was referring to a real job offer and not that I was being sarcastic?
Well, I suppose that would be because you gripped on that 40 hours like it’s a down to the second measurement of the exact amount of time that I spend working in a week, which given the stick that seems to be firmly implanted in your ass is no surprise. Do you think I also spend exactly 2 hours every day doing the shit, shave and shower? Or that I sleep for exactly 7 hours per night, and not a minute more or less?
I didn’t think so. There are weeks I work more than 40, and weeks I work less. For the purposes of illustrating how much ‘free time’ someone with a full time job generally has, 40 is a reasonable number to put for ‘hours of work’. Please, try to keep up.
No, I think that if I had wanted to be a lawyer I’d have gone to law school and taken the bar exam. There I go again, yanking your chain. I bet you took that as an indication that you were right in your prediction and that I’m an idiot. I have to learn not to joke with lawyers.
I think my lawyer is probably also glad to know that I won’t be firing him for a humorless, superliteral turd.
And yet I have found that my progress up the ladder has not in any way been impeded. Why, it’s almost like not being a door mat is considered a good thing!
I don’t have to ask to leave early, and I don’t have specific hours of work either. When I’m at my own office (which is now in my house), I tend to take a nice chunk of time at mid-day for a long break because that’s what I like doing. If I’m on-site with a company that I’m doing work for, I generally arrive there mid-day on Monday, start work really early on Tuesday through Thursday, and go home Thursday afternoon. Friday tends to be pretty light as far as working goes. I never really have to ask anyone to leave early, and I’m not too closely supervised as far as deliverables. They go to QA and that’s that.
My work is all contract, although it’s not usually spelled out as 40 hours per week. It’s done by the project, and I’m pretty heavily involved in how many hours are allotted. The thing is, it’s up to me to avoid the kind of scope creep and other shit that would push me over hours. If i refuse to work 50 hours this week it’s because I know that means I will run out of hours that the customer will pay for before the deadline.
Not only that, but I can actually catch shit for working more hours than I (read: my company) get paid for, particularly if those extra hours are the result of someone else’s failure to do their own job, or scope creep.
The only exception to this is if I’ve given a good estimate, I’m expected to live with it. If I say something will be delivered on Dec 23, and I fuck off for the whole first week of December doing nothing, no one will cut me any breaks or cry for me if I have to work 60 straight hours to make the deadline. People with poor time management do not do well in my job.
That’s all I’m saying. I don’t have to justify using my off-time as I see fit. I need to be given a reason to give it up. Not that there never is one, just that I’m the judge of whether or not it’s a good reason.
You are right catsix. I was being totally humorless in the face of your tongue in cheek jolity. I wasn’t responding to you in the tone you were using for any purpose at all, it was because I have a stick up my ass.
It also isn’t the case that you shift goalposts at all. You really aren’t now talking about a flexible schedule whereas before you obviously weren’t creating the impression you saw these things as writ in stone.
Just like all along I was expecting people to work until 3 am every day and not visit their dying mothers’ bedsides. I never suggested that the attitude that bugged me was a refusal to stay a little late to finish an assignment that was important for a bigger project that had a deadline. After all, that would be pretty reasonable on my part, and as a humorless, stick up the ass person I cannot be reasonable.
The attitude you put forward, and have put forward throughout this thread, is of a person who would be hellish to work with. I never suggested you become a lawyer - after all we have a bad enough reputation as it is. I suggested you could not work in this industry. Strangely enough this industry hires many people who aren’t lawyers. Some of them even like it. Others, such as DianaG didn’t. But I have never worked in an industry where I would have wanted to be along side someone with your attitude towards coworkers.
If they feel that way, there isn’t really a problem for you people to argue about, is there?
Last I checked, people in this thread were saying (to paraphrase) ‘I hate the fact that the business world makes this assumption that people with kids should get the breaks’. No-one so far has posted ‘I assumed that people with kids should get the breaks, now I’m out on my ass’.
What, can’t have “it all” - as in a job and a kid? Then, unless you can think of some other way to reproduce, you soon won’t have any “society” at all.
You may well be a saint in your personal life - I’ll not dispute it - but there is a very good reason society judges children of higher value: no children, no society.
So, your solution to this overwhelming “problem” of having to accomodate parents at work is - to go back to a form of society in which one parent (presumably mom, as it was generally the case in the '70s) should have no job and stay at home?
That’s one hell of a turning back of the clock, with all sorts of unitended negative consequences.
Actually, the weight of society is here against you - it is those who think as you do who are being forced to “suck it up”. To the minor extent of having parents take the benefit of the doubt.
You are arguing that others should have to “suck it up”, but fortunately out in the real world, such is not the case.
Fortunately, most of society accepts that making a reasonable accomodation for parents is not a “burden”.
Certainly, only a small minority actually abuse the reasonable accomodation regularly offered. Those aren’t whom we are arguing about - everyone would agree that abusing such accomodation is an abuse.
Sorry, in this you are quite wrong. Little Timmy’s ear infection is an “extreme circumstance”, since left untreated an ear infection can lead to permanent deafness.
Fortunately, your opinion on the matter is the minority (aside from the Dope), for which I’m quite glad, though I do not myself benefit - in my occupation, there is no-one to “cover” for me.
Though I would say that if I was in a position to cover for someone who needed a doctor’s appointment to avoid permanent deafness, I would cover for them – without asking that they grovel for the privilege.
I got no argument about birthday parties and games. I do have an argument about “Little Timmay’s ear infection”: see InLucemEdita above. What do you think of his/her argument?
In the 70s I was too busy walking uphill both ways to school through the snow to notice.
Seriously, though, society has changed - from one in which very often only one parent worked, to one in which BOTH parents are expected to work. That was why “dads did not take time off” - the de facto position was that dads had moms at home to do that stuff.
Without either at home, raising kids is simply impossible without a certain degree of accomodation.
