what is it about having children that causes women to become inconsiderate monsters?

The BBQ Pit
181

You cannot abuse leeway. You are given leeway and you use it. There is no abuse here. If the parents go beyond the leeway given, then one assumes they would eventualy face repercussions. As it is, the parents are maximizing one of their job benefits, the ability to miss hours of work. Would you be pissed at them for maximizing the benefit of their retirement program? Sure, one is officially stated, and one is informal, but the accepted “miss hours of work program” it is no less a benefit for being informal. The boss is 100% the problem, not the parents.

(And I fully stand behind your desire that all are treated fairly. And I agree that the world should not bend for me to raise my kids as it is my choice to have and my choice to go to work while I am raising kids.)

182

It isn’t 100% of the blame of the boss for allowing it. But it sure isn’t 100% of the blame of the parents taking advantage of it, either. I agree that policies should be enforced evenly. If they aren’t, then it is 100% the supervisor’s fault for not enforcing policy the same accross the board.

183

Good point. So it is going to be difficult to insist on fairness grounds that they change that sympathy. Much more effective to appeal to their bottom line - don’t abuse the productive workers, or they will go elsewhere.

184

Dammit. See? See what posting and talking on the phone gets you?

Anyway. What I was about to say was, that maybe the communication disconnect you and I are having, Binarydrone, is that the boss is 100% responsible for enforcing policy across the board, and if he doesn’t, then the bigger problem lies with him. HE is responsible for making sure these little problems don’t turn into big problems. The workers themselves are responsible for their time, and if they screw up, they should be ready to get called on it.

185

I’ve got a boss who allows people to bring their dogs to work, even if their dogs aren’t well housetrained. That means that occasionally our office smells like dog poop. It’s really, really stinky.

I shrug and get over it. I also have the choice of bringing my dog in; if I don’t have a dog, that’s my problem, not theirs. The boss gets to set the rules for the workplace within certain guidelines, and I get to choose which boss to work for.

I suspect that catsix doesn’t really understand why she’s been passed over for promotions; it’s pretty interesting to me that she says she’s lost promotions and raises because of “not kissing parent-ass on a daily basis.” I suspect strongly that that’s not what her evals say, nor what her boss would say if he was asked.

Daniel

186

Well, I don’t really have an interpersonal relationship with her but don’t really see any reason (based on what I have seen in my working life) to doubt that this is true. As far as I can tell, it is very common for people that “stand up to” bosses that are trying to get them to do more than their share to get labeled “not team player” and for that to impact their careers. Is this really surprising?

187

It is obvious that what started out as a bitchfest disguised as a poll has turned into a non-disguised bitchfest.
Moving thread from IMHO to The BBQ Pit.

188

A few years back I was ‘suffering’ from this problem – as the only childless woman in a department of five, it was simply assumed that I would pick up the slack and work extra hours whenever needed. I grumbled and whined to anyone who would listen, which of course didn’t solve anything.

I stumbled onto a solution by accident. The company I worked for had a benefit where if you took courses that would make you a more valuable/productive employee, they would reimburse you for tuition & books, so long as you got at least a B. Well, there were skills I regretted not having, and I found a course at a relatively closeby college that met M T W evenings that looked almost perfect – except that I couldn’t quite make it to the course if I left at 5p.m., at least not reliably.

So I went to personnel and talked to them about it, and they agreed that the course would benefit the company (eventually) and so they wrote up a special work agreement for me that I would come into work 15 minutes earlier each day and thus I could leave work 15 minutes earlier. After this was hashed out, my supervisor was brought in, and was agreeable. (Even complimented me for my ambition.)

I made sure I told everyone else in the department how excited I was at taking the course, how hard I expect it to be to go back to school, that I was nervous about keeping up with ‘real’ college students, on and on. And from then on, I simply wound up my work and left the building at 4:45. (With all my work done, of course.) I had a ‘commitment’ that the company agreed was valuable, and so I was good to go.

It was astonishing how little friction there was over it. A lot of that was because they would normally only realize that there was still work that needed doing at 5pm – and I was already long gone. :cool:

A couple of times at the beginning of the new regime one of the other workers would try to guilt me over leaving instead of covering for “X, who really needs to go to her son’s recital”, but really, what could they say? In essence I was already committed to ‘working’ extra hours to improve my value to the company (just at a different location), and I had it in writing that the company felt this was a Good Thing.

So what happened when Mother A left early to attend to some child needs? Why, Mothers B and C and D had to fight it out between them who would stay to finish. Or else the supervisor had to step in and finish…

The end result was that the mothers as a group started not taking as many extra hours off. Because the ‘culture’ changed. When there was an automatic fill-in (me) the mothers would smile benignly when this one or that one wanted to leave for some non-urgent matter. Why not? It didn’t hurt them. But now they knew that if SHE left early, one or more of the rest of them would have to stay late, causing all sorts of problems of timing…

Anyway… the point is, I found an excuse for leaving work at my appointed time that was considered equally valid to excuses of caring for a child. If you’re being dumped on unfairly, maybe you can do the same. Is there a course you can take? How about volunteering to work at some socially valued activity that just happens to require that you be there promptly at (whatever) time. Helping at a food banks? Working on a Hot line? Volunteering at a Library? Driving for Meals on Wheels? Providing assistance to Elderly or blind people? Cleaning cages at a animal shelter? Your duty stretches don’t have to be long, they just have to begin at the right hour.

Yes, you’ll still be using up at least a few hours you might prefer to spend socializing with your friends, but at least you will no longer feel you are being taking advantage of at work, and you’ll probably garner gold stars and approval for being a good citizen instead of being treated as a cold-hearted slacker.

189

That’ll be twenty bucks, please. :smiley:

190

Because it makes you a dick? Seriously, if you know your behavior is directly screwing another employee, and you continue to do it anyway just because you can get away with it, you’re an asshole. If the company springs for pizza for lunch, but doesn’t enforce how much food each person is allowed, are you going to pile up your plate with as much as you can carry, when you know that means someone else isn’t going to get any? I agree, you don’t owe the company any more than what was agreed to when you were hired. But you still owe your coworkers basic respect as human beings. Finding an exploit in company policy doesn’t give you a pass on that.

191

Y’know, the OP was guilty of confirmation bias, and it seems to me that about half the posters (on both sides of the issue) have merrily continued down the same path.

I have no reason to doubt those posters who have been “penalized” for being single. I’ve seen it happen. However, I have also seen it go a lot of different ways. I was at one client for a great many years. When I first worked there, the staff was roughly evenly split between the marrieds-with-children and the unmarried and/or childless. Over the years, most of the staff married and had kids. In the early days, however, it was not the people with kids who bugged out, but the singles with hot dates who could never be found after 4:45. The people with kids were (at that time) more responsible appearing, putting in whatever time was needed to get the job done.

I never really saw a lot of hostility directed toward the people with kids taking time off. There was a certain expectation that they would have to make up the time, somehow, and they met the expectation. There is no question that one or two abused the privilege–just as one or two of the singles abused the rules. In that shop, in fact, the greatest abuse was not the occasional parent running out to handle a kid issue, but three of the singles. Two were women who spent hours each day on the phone handling “personal” business (one was in a sodality and the other was just odd and they each spent far more time on the phone than they did working) and the third was a guy who simply did not think that he needed to participate, coming in late, leaving early, bullshitting and bothering other workers, endlessly.

I was there as both childless and as a parent. I never got any more grief as a single than I did as a parent.

I am sure that several of the anecdotes related above are actual demonstrations of favoritism toward parents that actually happened. However, as a general rule, I doubt that it is as lopsided as confirmation bias would lead one to believe.
(I also disagree that parents deserve more slack across the whole of a year than singles. Parents should be able to take off to see either their kids’ suffering or their kids’ triumphs in an ideal world, but no more so than singles (or parents) should be able to take time to handle their other issues in life.)

192

The quote was actually from Malthus in post #172. catsix, please be more careful in your quoting.

193

You **really **have no fucking idea what you are talking about, do you?

194

Mine are less than 13 months apart. That means I had an infant and a toddler. Yet I managed to participate in my bookclub reading one book a month. I showered every day. I worked full time after returning from maternity leave.

I actually have no idea what fessie is talking about - past about the first four to six weeks (which I admit was no shower zombie land) - and I think her kids are older than that. They actually do just fine in the pack and play or the baby bucket while you take a shower. It gets a little harder from about eighteen months to three or so again - when they can’t be trusted in the pack and play - but then you shower before they get up and read after they go to sleep.

195

I agree, my daughter is 8 months old and I have the odd moment off that I can use posting on the dope. However, if you read nyctea scandiaca’s first post you will see she said “from day one”. My bad I wasn’t clear enough.

196

Meaning the “you have no fucking idea…” should have been accompanied by nc’s first post, not by the one I actually quoted.

I swear I was this absentminded before having a child. :wink:

197

Gee, thanks. And we didn’t get you anything…

198

Yeah. Oops.

After a whole pile of quotes involving two people with ‘M’ names who are hammering away at me, I’d think a minor mistake like mixing up their names is, well, minor.

Unless you’re suggesting I did it on purpose?

199

I’m sure you’ll do the same [del]to[/del] for me someday real soon.

200

Why don’t you educate me then, oh wise one!

I guess I learned nothing in all my years of babysitting, working in a daycare center, and oh yeah, taking care of THREE YOUNG CHILDREN (my boyfriend’s kids) in my home on a regular basis!

All I know is that no child of mine is going to dictate what I watch on TV, or prevent me from taking a shower daily, or whatever else fessie was talking about. Sounds to me like she lets her kids run the household, and the father of the kids does squat.

Fact is, if they’re too young to learn, walk or talk, simply buckle them into their seat-carrier, put them in their bassinette or crib, (or have your husband take care of them) then take a shower. If they’re walking and talking, they’re old enough to be taught proper behavior (as in, no, you can’t be in the bathroom with mommy while she is going to the bathroom, or no, you can’t watch SpongeBob, mommy is watching her program).