AIBU to think parents should not “work from home” on Sports Day

Myself and DH WFH sports day because it was 2h long and 5 min walk from school so we did an hour each.

What a drip feed. I wfh on my dc sports day. I was away from my (home) office for 90 minutes, all of which I made up later in the day, despite answering several emails between races. That is NOT the same as deciding not to work at all and don't it on your manager as a done deal at the last minute. This is not a wfh issue, it's a staff management issue

It’s tough being a working parent. Give them a break

That’s not what I said.

In my case a lot of what I do is monitoring emails and teams and picking up on stuff. So I do that by taking my work phone and checking regularly. If something does come up I phone the person concerned to give a view, arrange to talk later or drop them a quick email from my work phone.

I do have my own projects but I can easily do more on Thursday or come in early on Monday if I want to have a slow Friday, and my clients are perfectly happy. If I have a Friday deadline I factor this in and do the work early so it’s with the client on Thursday.

My kids’ sports days are normally only a few hours, but if the job is getting done on the day AND I’m doing extra either side, what actually is the issue?

So it sounds like this particular individual is bad at planning etc which can be addressed. Maybe we don't need to tar all parents with the same brush

Check your work policies and follow them to the letter.
In the meantime, you state that this is not acceptable and they either have to be in the office or book the day as leave.
Disciplinary action longer term - perhaps stop them WFH, as it sounds like they are unreliable.

I hate threads like these. Are we humans with lives or just little worker bees slaving away to capitalism? Unless they're massively inconveniencing their coworkers I don't see why anyone should begrudge them living their lives. It's one day.

By allowing them to not work all day but pretend to? Come on, this is what AL is for.

Classic drip feeder 😉

Assume you’re telling them that no they won’t be. They will either take AL or be working.

I take the point but ime, the people who I was referring to don't work their contracted hours. In some cases, they have cancelled childcare altogether!

Where are you that it is all day?

I know when I lived in the States it was all day , parents weren’t expected to be there, and it was against other schools.

I’m in Oxfordshire and ours are usually 90 minutes and my children go to different schools. Saying that though, they’ve been rescheduled and then cancelled due to the weather.

Shouldn’t be allowed no. WFH and take sports day as early or late lunch break yes, but not just pretending to work.

OP, just in case you’re not aware, there’s not a character limit restriction on Mumsnet and you can add all of the relevant information in the initial post. You can also reply in more than robotic single sentences.

Going against the grain but I’m with you OP!

If they can’t attend meetings that they’re contracted to attend then they should have put in an annual leave day.

Work from home means work from home. Not take your work laptop to a school field for the day and respond to a few emails whilst your attention is elsewhere.

Surely you've told them to bookmark days leave, as their manager?

I think a bit of give and take is a good thing, flexibility helps everyone.

I worked from home on sports day. I logged on early, took 2 hours to attend sports day in the morning, worked over lunch, took 2 hours in the afternoon and then worked later. So I worked my 8 hours over 12 hours.

What's the issue?

Well do they need to be on calls? You’ve not said but I am fully expecting the next drip feed to be that they are a paediatric surgeon or something…

Personally I think that if companies can do something to make their employees’ lives more easy, they should. But obviously if it actually causes problems with the business itself than that’s not on. But at my work it would be more than possible for me to do a good job on a Friday AND watch sports day. So it’s a win win.

If a parent is going to watch sports day I presume it’s for primary school children - how many primary schools have athletics stands?!

I think sensible people that work from home for children’s activities choose to because they can pop out and get back in, and actually work from home.

But most of my friends with flexible jobs take half a day if their role needs them to be in house.

and I also sadly know alot of other people who are just slacking. They usually don’t care much about their jobs and they brag about how they’ve done no work, look like they are online and are happy about it.

None of my business but annoying for who they work with.

Totally depends on the role and responsibilities.

Both my husband and I could, and would, openly say we are attending X event but would take our laptops in case needed, or pop on and off across the day.

We wouldn’t be deceiving anyone though, it would be done openly.

Why do you care? They are trying their hardest to juggle as working parent. Not everyone has oodles of AL if you have the basic entitlement you can’t even cover half the school holidays. Why does it matter as long as they aren’t having full confidential teams meetings from the stand why does it matter that a parent is trying to hold down a job while showing up for sports day??

I don’t see how you can fully be in attendance for a sports day and fully working at the same time. Unless you are a teacher and this is your schools sports day.

Many jobs ( there will be some) don’t have set pieces of work that must be completed by close of play each day. Many have roll over work and tasks that get completed over a period of time.

I disagree, there will be many who work just as hard from home. Then there will be those who do the minimum in an office. Not everyone is the same.

If managers were capable of managing, which many are not, then the difference between workers and slackers would result in different treatment.