Yeah, at work we have a lunch break “level” - there’s lunch, long lunch, super long lunch, and the Super Lunch.
You can’t get away with a Super Lunch very often.
It depends if that was the whole story or not.
When I worked in a call center, I had to fire a lot of people. Far and away the #1 reason was attendance. 2 2 hour lunches … well if it was happening every month, and it was a lackluster employee… even then it was a stretch to fire them (unless it was just the reason to get rid of someone bad).
There are a lot of people out there with a sense of entitlement. When they have kids, they expect the world to revolve around them. They expected that time out of the office for kid-related stuff should not count - so that if a single person was given slack for being late or missing out, they should get the same slack for themselves, plus everything kid-related was a get out of jail free card on top of that.
I had many employees who would be gone 50% or greater of the time and expect we would accommodate it - in their first month of employment, as a temp - because of family needs. Not special needs, but just “my kid had a runny nose” type stuff.
For a time-sensitive job like a call center, it was just impractical to keep such people around very long.
There were lots of good employees who were given slack during rough times and emergencies. But there are those people who have “emergencies” three times a week, and what’s more are defensive and angry if held accountable. Those are the people to be watchful for.
Back in '89-'90, I was working for NWNL, which has long since been absorbed into another company, which has been absorbed into ING.
They decided to be more “Family Friendly”. (Maybe it was just my division, or the IT department.)
What this ended up meaning, in rather short order, was that if you had children, you could pretty much work 30 hours a week and blow out of there at the drop of a hat, claiming something, ANYTHING, related to your children. And that would be perfectly OK. You’d also get paid more than single people, because you were supporting a family.
The flip side was that they then punished us single people by expecting that we would pick up the slack by working extra hours. That if there was a choice over who got the extra work or who had to come in on the weekends, it would go to a single person first.
For less pay. Yeah, right.
Wasn’t more than a few months before there was a bit of a revolt in the ranks. Management actually needed people to explain things to them in order for them to grasp that this whole thing was extremely unfair and was going to result in a wholesale exodus of single people.
Every now and again, other companies I’ve worked for have bounced around the idea. More often, it’s been individual managers who get this bug up their ass, and end up paying for it.
Then again, my last IT manager pretty much had the idea that he owned us, 24 hours a day. Absolutely no people skills or comprehension of why people got angry with his demands and expectations. You could see it in his eyes and hear it in his voice. The idea that you didn’t want to cancel your family or vacation plans to work the weekend (every weekend was met with stunning blank looks and confusion, then he’d move on, assuming that you were going to do it anyway, just because he’d decided it was necessary.
Where do you work where you think 2 hour lunches are acceptible?
The OP was talking about someone who took two such lunches in a month because of childcare issues. I am not talking about doing this every day!!
Where I work, people do NOT normally take 2-hour lunches. Most people take a half-hour to an hour. Many of us don’t take any lunch. But management is extremely flexible about our work hours, and if we need a 2-hour break for some reason, that’s OK.
In return, they get loyalty and job satisfaction from their employees. People are happier and they stay with the company longer.
That’s how all workplaces should be (with the exceptions noted above where there are logistical reasons for keeping to a strict schedule).
Going back to the OP. The prospective hire seems to be being open and honest about this. Maybe some extra inquiry - subject to legality - about the absences is in order. Maybe the organisation can actually help! Then there’s always the probationary period.
A lot of businesses are moving away from sick leave/vacation days and going to PTO (paid time off). That’s what my employer does - we get 27 PTO days per year, can choose to use them on whatever we want. In practice it’s frowned upon to take more than about 5 of those days off consecutively, but I think it’s great for parents and single folk, healthy or chronically ill (IMO of course).
Of course, I still hear parents bitching that they never have any vacation days because they use it all up taking care of their kids :smack:
I work for a University where we get 20 days of Vacation, 20 days of Sick Time, and 2 floating holidays per year. Forty two days. Accumulated on a per paycheck basis.
And yet, I had two co-workers who were not been paid for days they’d taken off this spring because they’d used it all up. One must be rapidly running out of family members (either that or she’s lying), because she just took her third or fourth “Funeral Leave” in the seven months I’ve been there.
Theres not many businesses that will stay in business for very long if they happily dish out time off on demand for every employee who cites a real or imaginary crisis.
Family DOES come first if the problem is genuine but all too often the employee is goldbricking and using their kids as the alibi in a cynical tactic to forestall criticism or skepticism,if the employer displays either he is a heartless,inhuman fascist bastard who is obviously a child hater and most likely child beater .
I have seen quite often in a previous life things such as the mother who has had to stay at home" looking after a desperately ill child" out shoe shopping, two mothers who regulary had to leave early to attend parents evenings at the local school being asked by my ex who was a teacher at that school why they never attended parents evenings,a daughter who was confined to bed with a serious chest infection playing soccer in a local park ,who when asked was completely unaware that she was supposed supposed to be ill and many,many more.
The memories of those who are regular absentees often remind me of overweight people whos weight keeps rising even though theyve only had a couple of well balanced meals during the day,oh except for a candy bar at nine ,oh and I made myself a couple of sandwiches midmorning and had a donut just before lunch and a quick burger midafternoon…
Their righteous indignation at being censured for only being absent a couple of times in a month is often a case of self serving amnesia that the poor sods who had to cover for them each and every time they failed to turn up or disappeared with little or no notice usually can dispel very easily but of course they must be child haters also.
If the "crisis’s become a regular event then you should consider different employment options as you are not helping the people who pay your wages and you are not doing justice to your childrens care and well being.
Think of part time work or flexi time jobs,its no good taking out several hours during the day and saying that youll make up the time in the evening if you work in a shop that will be closed at that time ,neither will leaving a firm understaffed at peak hours and then standing around twiddling your thumbs later on when the regular shift is more then adequate to handle the dormant periods demands.
Sadly unforseen tragedies can strike at anyone,deaths,divorces etc. but all too often the "serial skivers"are people who smugly think that theyve done their bit by procreating and then expect the rest of the world to work round them and make up for their deficiencies in planning ,self discipline and forward thinking generally.
Being an adult and a parent means that YOU are responsible for your actions and that YOU are responsible for your children ,not the rest of the world.