So in this thread I’ve found an actual example of what I’ve ranted about in other threads, and which led to so many battles with other posters here.
A person who actually believes that parents have more of a right to time off than non-parents because the non-parents don’t have something ‘as important’ to do with that time off.
And now that I see people I previously have argued with stating they don’t think it’s fair for someone who chose to have a child to get more sick days in a year, or to be able to blow out of work for something relating to their kid, I’m thinkin we are understanding each other finally.
As for The Asbestos Mango, it is downright wrong for an employer to tell me that because I don’t have kids I should have no problem working late to cover for one who does, and it’s damn wrong of the employee to think they’re entitled to more time off than me because they have ‘better things to do’ outside of work than I do.
My weekends aren’t important because I don’t have kids? Fuck you.
So let’s say that I run a grocery store with 20 cashiers that’s open from 7 a.m. to midnight.
[ul][li]Mindy says that she’s available from 3 p.m. to midnight Monday through Friday but not on weekends because she would have no time with her family otherwise, plus she has no weekend childcare when her husband does Reserve duty once a month and it’s simply easier for her to schedule her consistently know that she won’t be working any weekends.[/li][li]Saul says that he’s available 7 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. Sunday through Thursday but needs Friday and Saturday off for religious reasons.[/li][li]Kerry will work 8 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. but needs to be out the door right at 2:30 so that she can pick up her kids at school. She’s flexible about weekends, but would rather work weekend evenings so that she can reserve the days for her family.[/li][li]Jack is a college student who only wants to work between noon and five p.m. because of morning classes and evening study, but he’s willing to work any day of the week.[/li][li]Adam’s kids are at a day care center that closes promptly at 6 p.m. each evening. He cannot work past 5:30 on weekdays.[/li][li]Chris is willing to work just about any time but wants to be home by 10 p.m. on Tuesdays for The Amazing Race adn on Thursdays for ER, and wants Saturday nights off because that’s the night she goes out with her girlfriends.[/li][li]Nate is an amateur bodybuilder and spends 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. in the gym every single night of the week.[/ul][/li]
It’s 2 p.m. on a Thursday afternoon and a cashier who was supposed to work 4 p.m. to closing Thursday, Friday and Saturday evenings can’t work because she’s been stricken with appendicities. Who do you ask – seniority not at issue – to cover the shifts?
But I do have children. Who will work to cut my social security check (assuming I get one). Who I spend a great deal of time raising. I don’t need to spend my time raising someone elses in the form of covering the bad shifts at work. I work evenings and weekends on occation (not often, I have a desk job, but occationally I need to be at work at 7pm or 4 am or all day Sunday). My husband or my mother or my friends watch my kids when this happens. Occationally I travel, and my husband or my mother has the kids for the week.
I’ve given up a LOT of TV in the past six years because Buffy isn’t great for young kids. I don’t see why I should have to give it up for someone else’s kid. (I actually doubt I’ll watch much TV in the future, but still, Saturday night with a good book or my husband is still very attractive).
We don’t need to raise kids in the BEST possible environment - for one thing, there is no one BEST environment. For another, doing so is expensive. We have a responsibility to raise them in a good enough environment. If you want best, then its up to you to make the sacrifices for your kids.
Now, I think society has a bigger societal, not individual, responsibility toward children than we are currently undertaking. I’d love to see better subsidies for daycare. 24 hour dropoff centers for Moms who have odd schedules and no family or friends to rely on. A welfare system that doesn’t cut you off after five years (when your children still need care). Medical care. Better education. But its a responsibility that needs to be equally shared - not one that I get stuck with because I have the bad luck to work with women who have babies at home.
You know Catsix, I was thinking about that same conversation.
I think its unreasonable to assume an employees personal life won’t interfere with their job - and when their personal life includes children - well, guess where the interference is going to come from. (When they are single, it might come from relationship ups and downs or travel or “I don’t have a spouse to take the dog to the vet.”) But its equally unreasonable to assume that my kids trump your finals (or whatever else is important in your life).
The issue here is that children need care. The care of a child trumps recreational activties. Period.
It’s not whose weekends are or aren’t important. Care of chidren is not a recreational activity that a person does in their “free time”. It is a serious responisbility, and in case you didn’t know it, it is the children of now who will, ten or twenty years from now will be providing the products and services that we will be using. It is in all of our interest to make sure that these children are well cared for and healty when young. It’s not an issue of who has “better things to do”. It is an issue of helpless human beings needing to be cared for.
And this is not my problem. I don’t give a damn if the only thing I had to do on Saturday night is watch my grass grow, it’s not fair to me to get nothing but the shit shifts at work because someone else chose to have children.
They do not have any more valid a claim to their Saturday night than I do.
For their parents. Not for me, a totally unrelated person, who has absolutely no obligation whatsoever to make sure someone watches another person’s kid.
One voluntarily undertaken by that kid’s parents, you fucking moron, not by me. It is not my duty to give up my weekends so that someone else can spend them with their children, and it’s unfair and discriminatory for anyone to expect me to.
And that care is up to the people who chose to have them. Your decision to have a child does not mean that I give up the things I want to do with my life so you can be home with Duddums.
You selfish fucking prick. At least you are a perfect example to all those I argued with in other threads that there were parents who expected those without children to give up their weekends and their evenings to someone else’s kids. At least now they see that I wasn’t lying that there are shitbags like you in existance who think that your desire to be with Duddums on Saturday should mean I get (or some other childless person) gets forced into working all the worst shifts or working overtime.
I need to mow the lawn Thursday night. My husband won’t be home from work yet and I’d like my kids watched. You’ll be willing to give up your recreational activities so I can mow, right? Of course, I won’t compensate you, as it is your responsibility to watch my kids while I work - or perhaps you’d rather mow the lawn while I push them on the swings - you could work while I watch my kids.
Also, we are currently paying a lot for childcare, we need you at the house every day at 8:00am and you’ll be here until 4:30. Of course, if I need to work late, you won’t mind staying.
Well, I think it is unreasonable, and discriminatory, and being a flat out cunt to ask someone to just take their days off during the middle of the week rather than on a weekend because ‘they don’t have kids’.
What I do with my off time is not the business of my employer, and should not be used as the basis for determining when I can have my time off.
As a manager, you would call around and ask. And you cannot take seniority out of the picture. Particularly in a blue collar job like this, it’s one of the few “rights” that such employees enjoy.
And if Saul, the TV watcher has the highest seniority, you better believe he’d have his union rep on your ass in a heartbeat if you tried to give him crap and “make” him work. When I worked this type of job, what happened was that the person who was most easily “begged” into it, usually ended up doing it, WITH the understanding schedule “perks” would be offered for doing this favor.
You know, there’s a lot of talking back and forth (and some quite runaway fury) at the hypothetical situation of a nonparent being somehow “forced” to work for a parent. IANAL, but I have serious doubts as to whether an employer could really do this. And I believe that for the most part, people working together tend to work these things out themselves (that is, if allowed to do so, and exluding situations such as the one mango described at Walmart.
I strongly believe that a parent should NOT be penalized or discrininated against for being a parent, but by the same token, neither should they have special treatment above that of other workers.
Yes, it does. It trumps THAT PARENT’S recreational activities, not some stranger’s who just happens to work at the same hellhole as the parent.
Yes, it is a responsibility and not a recreational activity. However, it is their PARENT’S responsiblity. YOU chose to bring those children into the world. You don’t have a right to impose what goes along with being a parent on an unwilling participant. Ask yes, as any worker with any problem would. Demand or make mandatory? Hell no.
Good grief mango are you a mom, or the biologist in charge of preventing the extinction of the sea otter? Children are not “helpless” if not everyone in the world rushes in to protect, raise, cherish and coddle the poor widdle angels. Heavens to Betsy, thank goodness it’s the opposite (especially with my “I think I’ll just bash myself into hard objects and fall down just too look cool” son). Caring for them is their paren’ts job, NOT any old stranger the parent deems also responsible to ensure our future. Anyway, non-parents assist in the raising of children who aren’t theirs in a number of ways. School taxes, volunteering, charities, and through their professions (nurses, teachers etc). So it’s not as if non parents are NOT helping. They just aren’t always doing it the way YOU think that they should.
Also, it’s not as if non parent employees not being willing to give up their weekends so that parents can do as they want is going to suddenly plunge the world into a crisis of not having the next generation to support us in our dottage or something. There are plenty of other ways in which parents and children are assisted by the government, by non parents, by “the village” so to speak, so that our “future” is ensured and so on. Non parent employees not being willing to give up their time isn’t going to damage this.
Ahhh, and so you’ve allowed the emotional stress of that to allow you to equate raising children to preventing thier extinction by way of uncooperative coworkers. I see.
Interesting that you’ve picked that out of all that others have said to you here. You know? Several of us are also moms. Working moms. With full time jobs. I managed to raise one girl so far to adulthood, and one boy to about halfway there, without feeling that “all is lost” for our future of my children and/or "our (society’s) children, if all of my coworkers don’t put their lives on hold in order to “contribute to society” by way of helping, helpless little me, and my helpless little kids by giving up their shifts and allowing me special treatment.
Furthermore, I was pretty damn resourceful and strong. Pretty much able to handle it without falling apart like a hothouse orchid without this “duty to me by society for the future of “our” children”.
Were there times when I needed to trade shifts when I was a mom, BECAUSE of being a mom? Yes, but then I traded right BACK when some of the guys wanted to fly to Seattle to see the Seahawks. It boggles the mind that you’ve decided that what is important to YOU, therefore MUST be of the same importance to everyone else.
You’re having a big ole hissy fit about how non parents “owe it to society for our future” and you don’t have kids?
No wonder you have no grasp on reality. Hmmm, perhaps those of us that actually HAVE been through this, and DO have kids might just possibly know something of the reality of it, rather than mangofantasyland?