The working world has become ridiculous

[Rothschild]

Recently a manager at my company attended an online meeting in tears because of a minor issue regarding her child's school. She excused herself from the meeting and took a mental health day.

I can barely get hold of anyone at 3pm in my (large) organisation because everyone is doing school pick up. I don't believe they're getting much work done once they've picked up because they become hard to contact, don't respond to messages and won't attend meetings, despite it being their normal working hours.

It's ridiculous. When our children were small we paid for wrap around childcare or for someone to collect. We were available to work between 3 and 4pm and afterwards.

I'm not talking about anyone who has negotiated flexibility or finishes at 3pm, I'm talking about others who are, frankly, taking the piss.

And if I had taken a mental health day every time I'd had some difficulty in my life I'd have hardly worked.

I can believe that. I've tried to call charities about paying fundraising in (I work in a school) and on a few occasions there just seems to be no-one at the other end of the phone. On other occasions when they do pick up it's very clear they are at home because they sound completely disinterested and there is background noise.

On the subject of mental health and stress, I actually think WFH isn't good for a lot of people's mental health, even though they think it is. Getting out of the house, seeing other colleagues and client in person is often really beneficial. Most of us are not solitary creatures, we need proper human company, a regular routine, fresh air. If people are holed up on their own in the house all day only seeing people on a screen then it's no wonder they get stressed if they need to do anything different.

Agree Op. I ended up having 7 years as a SAHM and when I returned PT I still had to pay for after school care for the youngest.

Very few WFH jobs then, and I wouldn't have been able to get away with what many do now.

Or some are forced to only employ people on zero hour contracts
or
insist employees work as self employed

We have done the later in the past after being hit by an employee who took a week off every month.
We simply could not afford to pay her in the end and employed her replacement as self employed.

I'm not even remotely surprised, Panicmode1 and the "too keen" remark was probably based in worry that you might be highlighting the overall lack of keenness

There's a reason why some highly professional employers regard past public service experience as an absolute bar to being appointed, and this is one of them

I often pick my children up and continue working with them in the house. Frankly I am too busy doing my work to notice what everybody else is doing or not doing at work. If you have time to be monitoring other people’s workload and you aren’t their manager then you’re not busy enough to be complaining.

Wraparound childcare is incredibly expensive and also hard to access. For many people the cost of this would make it completely pointless to even go to work and then everyone gets accused of scrounging on benefits if they don’t work or work part time.

I guess it depends on what sort of country we want to live in.
We are competing with countries like Norway, Singapore, Korea, you name it.
Up to the younger generation. That I am afraid is the bottom line.
I am not in favour of no special leave or compassion. But there should be a limit on what an employer is expected to tolerate.
And an expectation on those working to do so. Or you will end up in a god forsaken country that cannot compete or survive very well.

Can you provide your reference?

Did you consider offering more money and better conditions to a new candidate?

Where i work, monthly proof of childcare is needed in order to maintain wfh privileges. There have been people recalled to the office because they were trying to dispense with childcare and work at the same time.

My manager has three young kids and I don't think she works 10 hours out of the week; we have an indulgent director so she gets away with it for now. Her husband is SAHP but she likes to volunteer at the school, take the toddler to activities, etc. I really don't care except that it's difficult to get responses from her and they are always bare-bones because she's in her car or at an event or whatnot.

My manager is gone for the school pickup every day. They also send any all day meetings my way as ‘they need to be back for school pick up’. Another person in my area doesn’t work Wednesdays and decided I should take on a whole new area of work that they cover because the meetings were always on Wednesdays. Er…no. Flexibility is great but you do need to assess the impact on others who pick up the slack.

They were paid more as they were self employed
Conditions in our office are excellent
Can’t imagine what more people would want. Maybe free lunch every day? We only pay for lunch on a Friday so….

“Managers can’t do anything”
”we’ll get sued”

Shit managers. End of. Performance management people properly and all this goes away without whiny hysterical boomer “these days” vibes.

Childminders and nannies are everywhere

That's your workplace. Mine is the opposite. Fired someone recently because she kept taking time off for mental health/bereavement.

I wasn't promoted because I took maternity leave and was told I missed out on 8 months of work so I need another year before promotion.

No one dares to leave before 5pm.

I was sick as fuck my entire pregnancy and didn't dare take a single sick day. Didn't even tell them about the various dr appointments, I put meetings in my calendar and hid how sick I was. I would then go to said dr appointment stressed as fuck in case someone tried to get hold of me and find out.

My husband has just inherited a new team following the retirement of the previous manager. It quickly became apparent that some members of the team (sorry to say the worst offenders were working mothers WFH) were taking the piss and these are senior people) namely as the OP says unavailable between 3&4. He checked the policies and if you have children they must be in childcare during working hours. He’s now had to have quite uncomfortable conversations stating what’s expected of them and failure to improve will ultimately result in them being performance managed.It’s a global organisation therefore some meetings need to be held at a time to match local time. He’s now had other team members say to him it’s about time it was dealt with as they were fed up picking up the slack or not getting the info they needed etc.

Posts like this show OP that YANBU.

So many excuses for what is pathetic, wimpish behaviour.

"It was the tip of a massive iceberg and probably a mental breakdown". Unless YOU @GoodBrew are the person the poster is talking about, you can't possibly know.
Why automatically ascribe things to mental health? The person said that is was because of the dog, so why do you think it wasn't?
Because it it too pathetic to be? Maybe - but maybe it is true.
If so, it is embarrassing how weak some people are, and how others enable this.

I haven't read the whole thread so this point may have already been made but, aside from the annoyance one feels when one perceives somebody to be taking the piss, isn't it a good thing that we allow for greater flexibility now? Is the work still getting done? Is the company still profitable?

More flexible working hours, more annual leave, private healthcare, pay for travel, help with childcare costs

Crikey I thought my work was pretty flexible until I read the OP. I’m pretty flexible with my direct reports, I’ve had plenty of line managers in my career who have made sure things weren’t easy for me and I promised myself that if I became a line manager I wouldn’t behave like that. I treat my direct reports like adults, with lives outside their work, and in return I get good results.

The OP is saying those hours are part of their working day and to be accessible, which isn't happening. I agree with OP it's unfair and unprofessional for the others who are working and need to be in contact with parents doing school runs and looking after their kids. If not office based, especially wfh, no other profession would allow this. You're simply not doing your job in not doing your job?

Management is weird because you get into it by being good at literally anything else, and then you stop doing that thing. So you have a guy who's a welder, he's excellent at welding, he becomes the best in the firm, and the only way he can advance his career and salary is to be promoted to managing a team of welders. So now he's tied up at least some of the time in handling people rather than welding. Possibly he stops welding completely. All because he was the best welder.

It's one reason why there are so many shit managers.

Part of the problem is that employer's cannot give a negative review, so nowadays tend to just provide brief, factual reviews confirming job titles and work dates

If by "review" you mean reference, @CoolShoeshine, I don't know why this common idea keeps being repeated when it simply isn't true

There's absolutely nothing to prevent an employer giving an honest reference providing it is honest and doesn't defame anyone, and the fact some employers prefer to stick with work titles and dates to save themselves the hassle of complaints doesn't change that

We have to be around when
-building sites are open
-When clients want us
-When subcontractors and engineers have questions

Or we won’t win contracts and will go bust
Then no one has a job
That's our industry
Not all industries can be flexible

Everything we provide is as standard for the industry. With the addition of no project work Friday afternoons when we get together to discuss projects, have cpd lectures, meet clients, wine tasting etc.

We can’t afford any more and we couldn’t afford the lady working only 3/4 of her hours

That has nothing to do with paying for travel to work.

I’m in my late 50s myself and many of my friends are proud of the fact we have so few sick days in our many years of work
Ill health aside how often do people really need days off?