If she takes two hour lunches twice a month, I’d say no problem. But if it’s that twice a month, and leaving early because of day care twice a month , AND coming in late periodically because of some other thing, AND not having the flexibility to cover for other peope when THEY have some crisis, then there would be a problem.
Another potential issue is whether she is the only one who does this, and whther others in the shop perceive she is getting away with behavior that they aren’t allowed.
I’d have to say you would need to look at a cumulative effect to see if it is problematic.
Family doesn’t always have to mean “parents vs. child-free”. I gave examples in my life that did deal specifically with children. I have a boss with no children(I have two total so not the same guy as the my first post here) that got married in the last year and is spending a lot more time on vacation, taking some long weekends and basically just enjoying some time with friends and his new wife. He is one of the most dependable people I have ever worked with. His time away to spend with family is just as important to us as his time here because it’s one of the things that makes him a happy, productive boss and coworker. If his attitude was different or if he didn’t really care, maybe the situation would be different.
I am willing to concede that not everyone has a happy-go-lucky attitude towards flexible time like the company I work for, and maybe I’ve painted too rosy a picture, but I did want to make the point that it doesn’t have to be rigid, ugly and military.
I think the more flexible a company can be, the happier and more productive the employees will be - which in turn benefits the company. However, being childless, I have seen it work so that employees with children ended up getting more leave time than employees without children, and that will cause resentment. I worked in a vet clinic where I was the only receptionist without children - and guess who never got to leave early? Who was always the one called in on her Saturday off? I am not saying parents shouldn’t be able to take care of their children, but childless employees should get as much leave time as employees with children. If it winds up that the childless employee is having to cover for parents leaving early on a frequent basis, some sort of acknowledgment or reward for performance “above and beyond” is in order, in my opinion.
In the square mile I wouldn’t tolerate, nor would I live, anything other than total devotion to the job. This attitude is tough, but very well rewarded and essentially props up the other eighty percent of the country, full as it is of dole hungry layabouts and (even worse) civil servants.
Owning a shop… meh, not bothered at all. So long as I’m kept informed, leave an hour early every day during the school holidays. I’ll cover for you or make the kids do it
Hey, he’ll probably have more kids, but this meeting might have had a once in a lifetime decision on the format use for report cover sheets. You have to have your priorities in life, you know.
As someone who is childless it does kind of irk me that there are some parents who can’t ever seem to get their family schedule organized and I have to make up for their irresponsibility. To be fair though, I feel the same way about single people who have constant issues with their vehicles or health or whatever. I think the problem becomes that people with children who leave early every day or move their schedules around get excused to some extent by fellow employees saying, “Oh, well she needed to go pick up her kid so that is okay.” Single people don’t get that same sympathy because society is so heavily family oriented and no matter what reason we have it will never be as important as someone else’s children. When so-and-so takes off to go see her daughter’s school play that is sweet, but when I take off to go see a Broadway show that is “selfish”.
Nah, most of our meetings weren’t nearly that important.
Time off is not only for kids. Last year my wife had serious eye problems, and I spend a lot of time driving her to the retina surgeons, not to mention dealing with other things. I worked a lot from home, and got some stuff done, but I know I wasn’t as efficient as I could have been. But I got support for doing this, and though I was pretty much a lifer before, I’m really one now.
I would make sure that the employees without children (I have no children, but I have a family - let’s get that clear right off the hop) were treated similarly to the employees with children (note that I didn’t say treated the same, but treated similarly). Having children makes you special to no one in society except those children, and deserving of no special treatment. If people with kids are allowed much more time off with pay, much more unpaid leave time, and allowed to work less for the same money than people without children, then you’ve set up conditions where some of your employees feel very much like second-class citizens. I would be very careful about levelling this playing field. Unless you don’t want to give consideration to how childless people feel, because we are just a minority after all.
“Irresponsible”?
The kid’s school play is a one-time only event (this year, at least). Parents have no say over when that kind of thing is scheduled.
Plays on Broadway are there for years.
If I’ve bought and paid for tickets, it may as well be a one-time only event for me.
Mostly I don’t gripe about parents taking off to take care of their kids; I figure whatever additional burden I have to shoulder because of that is a pittance compared to what a parent–especially a single parent–has to haul. But when I suffer repeated cancelled plans and vacations because other employees can’t carry their weight on a regular basis–regardless of their excuse–and it just becomes an expected thing that I’ll cover for them, I tend to get kind of ticked off about it. But then, in my current job, I’m so massively overloaded that if another task got dumped on me I wouldn’t really even notice or care.
To those who counter-criticise a childless person getting sick/being on personal leave: Parents do this too. A mother of two might use the sick time to take care of her kids or herself. The difference is the childless person has less outside obligations (discounting caring for relatives/spouse) and is more available to the company. I would think that would give them some leg up.
Shouldn’t a person who can devote more time to their job be entitled to more? Obviously some jobs aren’t based on how much time you spend at the office, but if a parent taking care of a sick kid can ‘compensate’ for the missed time, couldn’t a child-free worker do that and more?
I think it’s great when a workplace can allow that kind of leeway. To make it work, though, a few things need to be in place.
–The leeway needs to extend to everyone. If my colleague can leave early to go to his son’s ball game, I can leave early on the nights when I’m on the radio.
–The supervisor needs to be tuned in to who might be abusing the leeway, and ready to address it when it happens. Other employees probably aren’t going to bring it to the boss until it gets ridiculous.
–Everyone needs to understand what constitutes an “emergency”. Events that are scheduled (school plays, etc.) need to be arranged for at work as soon as they’re scheduled. Failure to plan your life in advance does not constitute an emergency, and that’s almost certainly what you’re dealing with when someone has a “family emergency” once or twice a week.
There’s a lot of leeway at my workplace, and it goes pretty well for the most part. The biggest problem is that when people do abuse it, it has to get pretty bad before anyone does anything about it.
Companies (or bosses) that won’t work with their employees end up with the employees that can’t get jobs anywhere else. Inflexibility is a self-destructive policy in the long run.
I was a stay-home mom for 6 years. I’m currently in my second job since rejoining the work force. At my interviews for both jobs, I stated outright that I have a son with a disability, there WILL be times I’ll miss work because I can’t get childcare, and if that would be a problem, “I don’t want to waste your time continuing this interview”. The first guy said “not a problem, we can always get someone to cover if you need us to”. The second, my current boss said “Almost everyone at this practice is a parent. We all get it. And since your situation is a little different, you’ll find a lot of sensitivity from your coworkers”.
Any employer who wants the job to come before the kids doesn’t deserve me.
Ultimately, I, like most people, don’t give a shit about my job. Sure I work hard at it and try and do it well, but to me it’s always just a job. I feel sorry for those people who seem like they have nothing else in their life and devote all their attention to work, always putting it first. Even worse, I feel sorry for those people who have to work for them. Even in my line of work, I feel there’s nothing more aggrivating than a manager who calls or emails you on a weekend afternoon as if you are sitting by the phone waiting for his or her call.
Look, I’m sorry your life is empty and you feel a need to fill it with your career. Don’t fill mine up as well.
My husbands job arranges his schedule around my job. The 3 nights a week that I work he is allowed to leave early (although he does come in early). He’s been there less than a year. I’ve been with my company for 3 years. I have 140 hours of PTO (Personal Time Off) that I haven’t used. I missed one day of work due to my pregnancy, although I did take FMLA. (That works out to almost a month and a half off, I’m part time)
I’ve asked to be able to come in 30 min later. Because you see, we have set schedules. There are no schedule variances whatsoever, unless you are dating the boss. Or play golf with the boss, or sell drugs to the boss. What is interesting, is that every single shift that I work, about 6 people wait 30 min to start. Sometimes as much as an hour. It doesn’t matter, we have to always be there on time. Heck, last night, I didn’t do anything for the first hour because we were over staffed.
They changed everyones schedule last Friday, taking effect the next day. They ask us to “bear with them.” but it isn’t like we can leave our kid at home alone while they “work it out.” We are fortunate to not have to have a babysitter. So pulling one out of our ass for “what if” is kind of, well, stupid.
If you have a job that is flexible, where people don’t need you to be there at a particular time, why not be flexible? Then again, I don’t understand someone being an ass for sport.
