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.

There have been a bunch of studies, but this LinkedIn post has a nice overview of a few of them:
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/reality-workplace-productivity-how-many-hours-we-productive-afzal-xo2yf

@onlymethen there's a balance to be found somewhere. Because managers like you are the reason I had to hide my pregnancy and hide my doctor appointments in pregnancy as admitting I was pregnant/ill would have gotten me fired. Employment laws have zero relevance in law firms.

This! I also hybrid work and work 10x harder at home. But I pick my kids up on a Friday because I work so hard.

I find it deeply suspicious that OP consistently needs to contact colleagues at 3pm on the dot…. What if they had work related engagement such as team meetings or picking up customer phone line etc? Seems like an excuse to whinge and cry because she had to pay where others can now save money - and still get job done.

So the shit managers are aged 70-80?

Sorry, 60-80.

Not the direction I was expecting from the title. I thought you were going to say work's becoming unmanageable because of the increasingly ridiculous demands and expectations on staff without any extra time or resources.

I'm a teacher.

Your GP wrote that for you. No GPs as a group.

Yes, I thought it an excellent example of ageism in action.

That's just being a bitch. People experience loss differently. When I had to kill my horse I cried so much I was incapable of making tears for 2-3 months. Had to use daily eye drops and it could have been a permanent condition. Killing something you love is extremely distressing. Unexpectedly losing something you love is the same.

It does slightly worry me if I go back into private practice, that having been in the public sector may preclude me from a return, but I have a good 15 years of commercial experience (before I became a SAHM/working PT in different arenas) so I hope it won't be a bar....but who knows.

I knew it would be different, but it really is something else.....

How do you know who has negotiated flexibility and who hasn't? I have no idea beyond my very immediate team.

Agree. I spent my 20s working years of unpaid overtime, expected to attend events at the drop of a hat, representing the firm, etc, for a poor salary but always with the carrot of a promotion, and poor treatment from bosses who treated us as the replaceable worker bees we were. I now work for a more respectful employer where it is frowned upon to work beyond your hours.
People are often expected to go above and beyond for work but when does it go the other way? Unless you work somewhere with great salary, great perks etc, I understand why people might decide to be just a little bit less present. I also think we're obsessed with clocking in when we should be judging people on outputs.

My work place is fine with people popping out to do the school run. They're trying really hard to even up the stats and promote more women. Part of their plan was not scheduling meetings around school pick up times. They also encourage people to take time out to attend assemblies, plays etc. Where performance is lacking, it's addressed with the individuals. They have a good staff retention rate and are very profitable.

I don't know why so many of you want to be desk slaves, rather than your company monitoring performance and tacking that where necessary.

Arrange your meetings for 2pm or earlier. If its clear they are not available after 3pm, why cause them more stress by consistently trying to do something that they cant. Have you any knowledge if the lack of external chiildcare in the country? Childminders leaving in droves. Would you prefer these people that you speak of didnt work at all and added to our benefit dependent nation? Maybe consider your colleagues circumstances. Im working at 6am to get my hours in because after 3pm is so hard for me. When i do work after 3pm its not on meetings/calls and that is fine. Just because i cant do meetings/calls after 3pm doesnt mean i dont do a good shift. My hours/reason for them is private and not for sharing. Stop tarring everyone with a brush. Id love to do regular hours with no children in the back ground. We dont always get what we want. This blip is short lived. Once the kids are in secondary my organisation wiill get more than my contracted output from me - as they did before. Think about that. Look at the appalling long term sickness statistics in this country (1 in 5 on long term sick). Maybe be more supportive to the needs/circumstances of others or you might find the sickness absence stats in your place goes up too - which is worse than your current moans.

For all those saying....in my day i did x,y,z... we are in different times. 10 years ago my kids went to nursery at 8am and i collected them at 6pm. That doesnt mean i expect everyone to send their kids away for 10 hours per day now. That was my choice, i wouldnt expect anyone to do that.

I did respond
’ we can’t afford any more’

If we offered all these extras we’d have to bid higher for contracts then wouldnt win them
Then we’d fold.

Your suggestions show a lack of experience running small businesses
( although ours isn’t small but margins minimal )

I really need to spend more time with the kind of snivellers who go running to the boss. Yes indeed 😂😂😂😂😂

To play devil’s advocate, someone turning up to a meeting in tears over a minor matter might indicate a larger mental health struggle. When you’re mentally unwell it’s harder to deal with setbacks that someone else might shrug off.

Unless the contract states they can leave for childcare etc reasons
They should be at work

I've got entire teams where I work uncontactable after 3.30pm. It's ridiculous. My role has urgent work come through continually from ministers or treasury and getting a response from a business unit that work can't be done until tomorrow because the relevant team all left at 3.30 doesn't cut it when the response is due at 10am the next day. It's a culture and it is extremely disruptive.

But if you want to work shorter days to look after your kids then you should get paid for working less hours. Why should people without kids have to stay until 5? It’s discrimination the other way. And I say this as someone with kids.

my workplace is a joke. Most people in my team do fuck all. Taking days off because their 18 year old kid has a cold, leaving work early to get an MOT done, working from home because their train costs money when our contract says we need to be in every day.

what I find galling is management complain about all this but won’t actually have a difficult conversation and tell someone to pull their finger out

I pick my child up from school 3 days a week and the vast majority of people in my work have no idea that there is a combination of negotiated flexibility and that I actually don't quite work full time hours.

Maybe people could cut down on endless meetings and stop trying to hold them when they know people tend to be taking the most advantage of flexible working 💁

Meeting culture is an absolute scourge in general.

A lot of employers try to get the most out of their employees whilst giving them as little back in terms of pay and conditions as possible. They only care about the short term bottom line. Why on earth would those employees not reciprocate in kind? Unless you’re one of the three people left in the country who still believes hard work is rewarded rather than just leading to more hard work.

I’d also like to know what job people do before I judge. Are they useless bullshit jobs like HR or marketing, or are they actually societally useful.

I imagine the cost of living crisis, has put a lot of families into very difficult situations, where they can't afford to not work x amount of hours, but also have children to look after. Perhaps they can't afford wrap around care. Not in every case, but it can't be that uncommon either. Obviously it's a situation where no-one wins; not the child, parent, employer or colleagues. Sign of the times though, unfortunately.

Very much not my experience but given I just took a work call while simultaneously bathing my 3yo and 5yo I guess I’m in the wrong workplace!

Trouble is that customer service levels and productivity is dropping like a stone. It's nigh on impossible to get things done in a timely manner anymore, nigh on impossible to get things done properly. Short term it was fine during the lockdowns, but it's blatantly obvious so many are taking the piss and service levels/standards are falling. In a business, it's up to the managers/shareholders to have a limit as to what they put up with. However, it's infesting the public sector, i.e. councils, NHS, etc., where there are no "shareholders" and the senior management are just allowing staff to get away with it because it's the lazy/easy option and they can blame "cuts" for crap service. Sooner or later it will have to be dealt with as we can't go on with such poor customer service and poor productivity.