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

The BBQ Pit
141

Well, off the top of my head because they are the ones shafting me. I mean, this may be an obvious point but if they would sort of show up on time regularly and not go home early this would not be a issue.

Now this is not to say that the employers that I have had over the years are blameless in this matter, but at the end of the day the behavior that started the problem didn’t originate with them.

Not really sure what to tell you about the promotion thing. This hasn’t been something that I have really seen, but I am sure it probably exists. I know that in my darkest of hearts that if I were the boss I would be more inclined to want to promote the person that has regular and predictable attendence.

142

I won’t despute this, I have simply never seen it. I am sure that it is just my bad luck, or some weird demographic thing.

143

No, they aren’t. If your employer is letting them do it, then no, they are not shafting you. They are taking advantage of something that your employer endorses.

Oh, but yes it does. It begins and ends with them. If they enforced a strict “Here at 9 am, out at 5:30 no exceptions” policy, it wouldn’t be happening. Period.

There ya go. You’re automatically assuming I don’t show up. I do. Consistently, even. And my work is consistent and quality as well. I just don’t do overtime. The person who had no problem doing overtime and spending hours and hours devoting her life to work got the promotion.

144

To be fair, while that works for soccer games or other planned events, I’m really not about to tell someone who needs to leave right now because the babysitter thinks her child needs to go to the doctor that I won’t fill in for her. I’m not exactly heartless, you know.

The problem is that it doesn’t go both ways. I often have people (parents included) who fill in for me when I need to be out of the office. However, as often as not, I do hear “sorry, I don’t have time” from the same people I’ve filled in for when they’ve had a family emergency.

I really don’t mind filling in for someone with a true family emergency. All I’d like is that the favor be returned. If I cover for you, you should cover for me without requiring that my emergency be as dire as the one you had. (Realistically, there are very few emergencies I can have that compare with “my child needs to go to the doctor NOW.”)

Hell, if you’re time is so precious that you can’t fill in for me because it may make you a few minutes late (you have kids to pick up from day care, etc.), at least offer to take me to lunch or in some way acknowlege that I’ve done you a favor.

Some parents do return the favor. I’m not going to generalize here. However, I would have to be totally dense to not notice that there are many parents who, short of me having something like massive chest pains or uncontrolled bleeding, will never return the favor.

145

To clarify, I am not assuming anything at all about you. I am speaking to the things that I have seen in my working life. That is a tough one, though. In a case where your work and the person that got the promotion is of equal quality, I guess that I can see the massive overtime and willingness to devote one’s life to the job being the tie breaker (the later being obviously more valuable to the company). If your work is better, on the other hand, you should get the promotion.

146

Well, hang on a minute, when you say that they don’t return the favour for you, do you actually have a true family emergency? You say you can say “sorry don’t have time” when asked to fill in for someone who’s off to see little Billy Ray play lawn bowls, but you, understandably, feel compelled to help them out when little Billy Ray gets rushed to the hospital with the jack lodged in his throat. So, in return for that, do you expect the parents to fill in for you when you have something on that isn’t an emergency, cause that’s what it sounds like.

147

In all fairness, I sound more bitter about this than I should. That nurse did really good work, and I don’t begrudge her the promotion. I had seniority, I just wouldn’t work the hours he wanted. The money would’ve been nice, though…

And that’s not right, I agree. If someone does you a solid, you return the favor.

148

Geez, go to work for a day and miss a lot!
It seems that you have a different work ethic than I do. In my world, I go to work to earn a living. The only thing that makes me take my job responsibilities seriously is when the boss says “Stop doing that.” Other than that, I work to maximize my own personal time to the extent my job allows. I have no job responsibilities other than what my boss says I do. I see no need to give something extra unless I am being compensated for it. That’s capitalism!

If you get sick of filling in for your co-workers, then just don’t do it! Just go home when it is time to go home. If the boss says, can you do their report for them, you say “No, I can’t fit that in without letting X slide on my schedule.” If he dings you in a review for not doing your co-workers work, then threaten to sue! Seems to work for the family co-workers.

149

Not much to add except that I have flown with babies, and the FAA requires them in a carseat, so they do indeed have their own ticket. No more 6 hr flights with Jr on my lap (thank God).
I find this discussion fascinating–I have not found any pattern dependent upon procreating for entitlement etc. I work in an industry that is 93% female–and female of child bearing years (no, not prostitution, nursing)–and there is NO slack cut for kids, period. You punch in at 0700 and you don’t punch out until your relief shows up. No concerts, no “open campus” so that you can leave for lunch and peek in at Jr’s recital or whatever. 12 hours of on the floor, full attention. You are either fully present at work in acute care or you are absent entirely–I will call in for a 12 before I will try to muddle through-it’s not worth it to me in terms of anxiety or prudence. So, am I less productive than others? Maybe–I may have more abscences but when I am there, I am fully there. That may be unique to the industry, though-many office jobs have more flexibility than bedside nursing.

In fact, this whole kid thing is one of my complaints about the field–hell, if nurses couldn’t figure out how to make this kid/work thing work–who can? There is a lot of shift switching etc that goes on, but it is catch as catch can–just as a non-mom would have. Seems fair–even if it is at the level of sucky.
As to the rudeness of people–IMO that’s only gonna get worse. It seems to me (and this may be confirmation bias on my part) that the world is much ruder than it was even 10 years ago. Kids ARE more out of control in public. I have taken to complimenting the parents when I hear a “please” or “thank you” out of any kid’s mouth. Quiet, well behaved kids are beacons to me–they tend to stand out amongst the savages. I include the parents in that group–afterall, where does Jr learn it from?

I blame the parents for that, but I am veering OT. Sorry.

150

I think this is where the problem lies. Could it be that these parents who duck out of work are not bad people because they are parents, but perhaps are inconsiderate because they aren’t following the golden rule?

There’s a give-and-take mentality at my workplace (an elementary school). Most all of us are parents, but in varying stages from new mothers to new grandmothers. We all cover for each other. I cover for my teammate when she leaves early to go visit her handicapped son in long-term care. I’ve covered for another fellow teacher who had to skip the classes she had scheduled with me because of another project that got dumped on her. I’ve taught a double class before on days when a coworker who was a new mom had used up all her sick days, so they wouldn’t have to call a substitute and dock her pay. I’ve stayed late to work on grants when others had to leave to pick up kids because my husband picked up ours. This was done without the expectation of being paid back, and because we were all in this together.

Then, about three weeks ago, when my husband called in the middle of the day to tell me my youngest child was being taken to the hospital via ambulance*, I didn’t even have to ask. My principal said, “Go. We’ll handle everything here.” And they did. For two weeks. They covered my class that day, found subs, made lesson plans for the subs, ran off the work, and even administered the benchmark tests. They called to check on my son, sent flowers and goodies to the hospital, and called me the day before I went back to bring me up to speed on everything. Which is exactly what I would have done (and will if it’s ever required) for any one of the other people I work with…whether it was their child, parent, or spouse.

It seems I’ve veered OT, too. Sorry.

*Maddy’s right - there are few emergencies on a par with “My child is really sick and must go to the doctor/hospital”, but, for childless people, they still have parents, spouses, and siblings who could be in an accident or very ill, suddenly. I also would have dropped everything and left if it were my mother or husband. Just as I expect anyone would.

151

FaerieBeth --it sounds to me like you work in a great place!

Upon the RARE occasions that something like this has happened–a nurse once got a call that her son had been kicked in the head at school, and she lit outta there–we do pull together, as any workplace should.

It’s the non-emergencies that wear everyone down. Frankly, we could have a whole 'nother thread about the smokers who leave the floor and get 3, 4, 5 breaks while we non-smokers cover for them…

Not trying to hijack, just trying to illustrate your point–the golden rule works everywhere. You (generic) may not like my cutting out early to do X for my kid, but I should be there for when you need to go do Y for your SO or mom or whomever.

and if it doesn’t seem to happen fairly–speak up-to the co-worker.

152

Response: Boss labels me not a team player. This is remembered when my annual evaluation is done by said boss. Boss begins to hold a grudge against the ‘not a team player’ who refused to stay late so someone else could leave early to get their kids off the bus or out of day care or whatnot. The raise that I was promised becomes delayed due to having a not-stellar evaluation because I didn’t cover for the inconsiderate jackass who comes in 30 minutes late and leaves 30 minutes early due to their kids.

They’re taking advantage of the situation and doing things that they know full well are unfair to their coworkers. They are the ones doing the shafting.

No matter what their reason for poor attendance, I nix anyone who I do supervise from the promotion list if they have poor attendance or a habit of coming late or leaving early.

So if your scheduled work hours are 8:00 to 4:30, you have no problem showing up at 8:30 and leaving at 4:00?

Because that’s the situation I’m talking about here.

What about when your boss says that working hours are from 8:00 am to 4:30 pm? Do you consistently show up at 8:30 and leave at 4:00?

Do you?

Because I don’t think you get the point that I’m not talking about the hours after we’re scheduled to leave and before we’re scheduled to show up. I’m talking about them coming in late consistently and leaving early consistently. By ‘consistently’ read ‘3 out of 5 days a week’.

153

Your boss tells you what your responsibilities are based upon his/her actions. If an employee has posted work hours from 8:00 to 4:30 but is consistently allowed to come in at 8:30 and leave at 4:00, then your boss is telling them that this is acceptable behavior. Given that the boss allows this, why would one not take advantage of it? To do more work than is actually demanded of you by your boss is giving your sweat free to the company.

Has your boss held a grudge for you not taking over other people’s work? Has it affected your raises? Or is this speculation? If it has, then your boss is a prick. And what do you have to say that he/she wouldn’t have found some other imagined deficiency to ding you for? This is not an “inconsiderate mom” issue.

154

I’m not sure why what I said sounds so unreasonable to you. Let me try to explain it again. Maybe I did it poorly last time.

There are some people who will usually fill in for you when you have to be out of the office without judging your reason for doing so. One day, they may ask you to handle something for them so they can leave early to attend Billy Ray’s lawn dart tournament. Some time later, you ask them to fill in for you so that you can take a dog to the vet for a non life threatening reason. It all evens out.

There are other people who do judge why you need the time off and won’t fill in unless you have a really compelling reason for needing to be away. Maybe they’d fill in for you if your dog was dying (though some won’t), but never because your dog has an acute skin infection and that’s the only time you could get an appointment.

Over time you learn who is in which group. And, yeah, I do treat people differently depending on whether they’ll cover for me in similar situations. I’ll fill in for someone in a non emergency situation if I know they’ll do so for me. But if they’re the type for whom it’s got to be life or death before they lift a finger to help out, I treat them the same way.

The thing is, as someone who isn’t married and has no children, I’m probably not going to have as many emergencies as someone with a spouse and kids. There are just fewer people to get into trouble! So I end up filling in if Billy Ray gets a jack in his throat, but it’s very unlikely I’m going to swallow a jack myself in the middle of the work day and be rushed to the hospital.

It is frustrating that there are people I’ve covered for many times, and I know they will never cover for me because I’m not likely to have what they consider a “true emergency.” Yeah, just once I’d like them to consider that I was there when they had to leave the office so maybe this once they’ll cover for me even though they consider my reason for being out to be trivial or frivolous or whatever.

I don’t think there’s any correlation between whether someone is a parent or not and whether they’re in the first group or the second (I don’t know that there’s not, but I haven’t found there to be one). However, the childless people in the second group aren’t any more likely to have dire emergencies than I am, so it doesn’t end up being so one sided with them.

155

You’ve just encountered these people at the wrong stage of their lives- the one where they have children. I supervise 16 people, and my coworker supervises another 15. We have eight people who consistently show up late, leave early, can’t be found in the middle of the day, and have “emergencies” requiring others to cover for them on no notice. They don’t call in sick because their kid is sick. They call and say they won’t be in because they’re having new cabinets installed. Or they overslept by two hours three times a week. Only one of the eight has an actual kid- she was like that before she had a kid, and will no doubt be the same way once the kid is grown. The rest are either childless or their offspring are adults. There are another eight who can be counted on to help out in whatever way is necessary- seven of them not only have kids, but young kids. People don’t become inconsiderate just because they have kids- but plenty of already inconsiderate people end up having kids.

156

There’s too many specific points that I’d like to reply to for me to quote them all so I’ll just settle for making a couple of retorts to general themes expressed.

If you’re getting taken advantage of it’s the companies fault, you should quit.
This is silly. There are without a doubt many bad workplaces out there, a few detailed here. You should leave those for certain. To imply that these jobs where parents are unable to work late ever (meaning single people have to) and where parents’ frequent “emergencies” get a a excused absense (where my single, non-emergency lifesytle never gets a excused absense) are totally worthless is dumb. Often these jobs, on the whole, are very good jobs. They can pay well, be enjoyable, be gratifying and overall pleasant workplaces. However, that doesn’t man that these inequities should go totally unnoticed and uncommented on. To suggest that we should quit them instead of bitching is an irrational solution.

In addition, these problems cited are systemic ones, ones which pervade our culture of “family values”. I have no real presumption that by leaving my job to avoid this inequity would lead me to another job which was more fair. Those offices are very very rare in my experience. My theory as to the reason for this is simple. Most bosses and executives are parents. They typically are older married folks and they usually have these “emergencies” and kid-related compromises themselves. To not allow subordinates to take excused leave would make them hypocrites.

Companies should have draconian rules stipulating when all employees should come and go.
I don’t necessarily agree with this. I’d prefer it to the prejudiced world I’ve worked in, more simply I feel everyone should be treated equally. A better solution would be that everyone is allowed the same flexible schedule, without need of justifying their leaving with a verifiable “emergency”, in workplaces where it’s practical.

The problem presents when my coworker asks my boss permission to leave early in order to get home in time for their kids soccer game. That’s perfectly fine if that’s how the company chooses to operate. However, it then should not deny me that same courtesy when I ask to leave early to pick up my car from my mechanic, or to get on the highway early before a long weekend. If the frequency of this leinience is equal, the reason should not matter. In this current world employers always make value judgements on the reasons. Parents have numerous politically correct reasons for getting additional time away, single people do not. That should change.

Just treat everyone the same. Strict policies about work hours, or leinient ones. Either way, just stop telling me “no” because you think my reason is less important.

Just complain to the boss/HR about the problem.
Sure, you can do this in extreme cases. Do you really think that it’ll get you anything but negative feedback when you’re complaining about 30 minutes of inequity a week? I’m not pretending that this is a catastrophic problem. It’s annoying. Just becase it’s not something to make a federal case over doesn’t mean it’s not a valid complaint. Were you seriously to critique a fellow worker for leaving to take a chonically sick kid to the doctor you’d definiately be viewed as a “problem” within the office. To say no to a parent asking you to cover for them would make you radioactive in the world of office politics. They exist, to pretend they don’t is a lie.

The extra suggestion of “suing” over this inequity is flat out stupid. Do you seriously think this is a valid solution? No court would hear it.

Like mentioned before, bosses and higher-ups tend to relate to the married parents more than the single younger people by the simple fact that they are typically like them. Because of that, a complaint to them about a parent being a inconsiderate coworker is likely to simply generate more empathy for the parent than for you.

There’s probably a lot more points to make, but that’s all I have for now. Don’t deny the problem exists, it does. You may argue about it’s prevalence, but calling it fictional is fucking ignorant. No one here is claiming that it’s a life or death matter. No one’s comparing it to racism or harrassment, but we have a valid complaint, even if you think it’s a minor annoyance.
Here’s a hypothetical to chew on.

Your boss is a single, 40-something male. He loves baseball, goes to happy hour on fridays and refuses to work late on weeknights because of his active dating life. He gives the 25-year old males in your office permission to leave at 3:00 to head to a early baseball game once a month. He doesn’t expect those single females to work late on a wednesday because they have a hot date to get to. The 40-something married folks are the ones he asks to stay late to help out first, because in his mind their lives are boring and they won’t miss that extra couple hours. Sure, they could say no when he asks, but I’m guessing he’ll remember it. The 20-something single males might ask the married folks to cover for them on a friday evening to hit happy hour. Those married folks with kids go to the boss to complain. Do you expect him to reprimand that single guy when he knows damn well that he was coincidentally at the same bar that night?

All of this would suck. It’d piss you off. You’d want to get some equity. But, you love your job and the people you work with are pleasant considerate workers 90% of the time, you’re well paid have a pretty favorable commute. True, you get hosed for maybe 30 extra minutes of work a week so the young folks can party it up. The boss parties himself so it’s not likely things will change.

Do you really expect me to tell you to fucking quit? Do you really expect me to tell you to suck it up because those people are the ones spending money to keep your neighborhood economy strong? Do you think you’d be “frivolously whining” by complaining and calling people on that behavior?

I’m not sure what you were doing in your 20’s, I’m not sure if you got married young or right after college. I don;t know if you honestly can relate, but guess what, this is what it feels like for us. We don’t think you attending little Johnny’s soccer game is any more important or valid an excuse than my going on an early date with a new girlfriend or my hard-to-come-by Cubs tickets.

This hypothetical certainly comes across to you as frivolous. That’s the sense of entitlement that pisses us off. That your childrearing is inherently more important that the things that make me happy.

157

If I was complaining to you about this behaviour, I’d expect you to tell me to either quit, complain to management, or shutup about it (sound familiar?) It’s pretty simple.

If you don’t like something, you either do something about it, or if you are not prepared to, then you should forget it, and continue with life. If you complain about it but won’t take some action to fix it, then you are frivolously whining.

Nothing worse than a complainer who isn’t prepared to stand up for themselves.

Jesus people, you never get what you want if other people don’t know you want it. That goes right through from asking someone to move aside if they’re blocking your way, to talking to management if you feel that certain people are taking advantage of you at work. Not to mention that if you feel you are being taken advantage of, then the person most likely to be able to fix it is you, just say “no”, it works for alcohol!

158

The discussion has moved into a different arena by now, but it took me a while to read the entire thread, and I’m still curious. When nyctea challenged this post, some other posters defended it in terms of children whose ages are measured in months. Which I can understand, but if the kids are walking, then I’m more inclined towards nyc’s stance.

fessie, I’m not trying to pick an argument, but I am curious. Are you a single parent, how old are your kids, and what do they do that prevents you from having an uninterrupted phone convo and all the rest of it?

159

I agree completely. You are getting hosed. But it is not the parent’s fault, as they are doing what the boss allows.

Just as no court would seriously hear a case of a parent suing for not being able to consistently leave early. But a boss in this thread seemed to fear it.

Yes, it does exist. It exists in your mind. It is a problem you have with how you feel about how your management treats you vs the parents. It sucks that your boss is so crappy.

But you say the job is good OTHERWISE and so quitting is not really an option. Well, no job is perfect. Some are a short commute with a bad boss, some are good pay with crappy work conditions. Parental preference is a fact of life at your job. It’s just a part of the job, and there is nothing you can do about it. It’s quite possible that if this system of preferences were stopped, all the parents would quit and the boss is not willing to do that. BUT… it is not the parent’s fault. The boss allows it, so it is official company policy. Don’t rag on parents for doing something they are allowed to do.

160

Really well-written post there, Omni! I’m with you.

That said, I think this workplace debate has been spinning in circles for a while now. Can we get back to the stroller-on-the-walkway discussion, and grievances like that? They were more fun to read!