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.

As a clinical NHS worker I have no experience of WFH. However, you say ‘many people are sitting at home doing pretty much nothing’. How do they get away with it? Surely if productivity/profits are down management won’t be happy? In my line of work it’s very obvious if the work doesn’t get done. I get that lots of jobs are very different from mine but surely there is some measure of ‘output’ (for want of a better term )?

May be a bit of age divide on here. There is no point in working your arse off these days. The mirage of capitalism is dead and in bits on the ground .

This too. The social contract capitalism used to trade on has kinda been found wanting. The promise was work hard & be rewarded except most people didn't get to share in the wealth they work to create... so they quiet quit.

Probably better than the slackers.

Pride in yourself. Pride in how your work colleagues perceive you and what you bring to the team and the workplace. Pride in the difference you make if your job is a vocational one. I couldn’t give a shiny shit about my employer but I REALLY care about my fellow employees and those that are in my care and because of that I want to bring myself 100% to the job and be productive and reliable.

Could you plan your communication so that you speak to colleagues as needed when they are available? There are many hours before 3pm. What if they were in meetings between 3-5 (assuming a normal working day)?

The ageism is reprehensible.

It's a divide between people of integrity and people who take the piss.

Don't like the work requirements, don't take the job. Taking the job and then slacking is not admirable.

Another bizarre comment.

And that’s fine if there is flexibility for everyone. My current employer is actually really good, but I have worked for too many places where there is flexibility for parents but not for anyone else.

Since you are citing American companies, google a bit more. There are various studies out there about how "unlimited PTO" is failing and that fewer jobs offer it nowadays. And even with it, according to Pew, most Americans don't utilize all of their annual leave. https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/08/10/more-than-4-in-10-u-s-workers-dont-take-all-their-paid-time-off/

The problem discussed in this thread is not people taking official leave, paid or not, it's people cutting their work day short on both ends to attend to personal matters. At the expense of being available to their colleagues during stated business hours.

They are expected to be available, or be in a legit work meeting, during stated business hours. I'm not going to keep everyone's school run schedule/issues in mind when requesting information from colleagues and employees. How ridiculous.

"I don't agree that @Lebkuched needs to work on their understanding of mental health, the employee needs to be more resilient."

Well the problem with this is that resilience is built not inherent and not everyone is starting at an equal starting point as everyone will have had different life experiences past and ongoing that affects their ability to be resilient or to build resilience. So your suggestion, as from your previous posts shows that you have a lack of understanding in this area.

What is "ridiculous" or "silly" to you may not be to someone else and your way is only one way for the world to turn.

You don't say how old your children are but parents now are absolutely hammered by childcare prices and wages have not increased comparatively, not to mention the overall COL crisis they are operating in. My child is 8 years younger than my siblings youngest and there's hundreds of pounds difference in the cost of childcare in the same area now than then. So parents are struggling and are being pushed into situations where they are juggling work and childcare etc as they can't afford to pay more. All of which affects resilience. If you want a resolution to that then you look to your government and campaign for better living conditions, better resources within communities and more help with housing and childcare equitably across the whole of the UK. You don't blame the little person. As a manager I have no issue dealing with performance issues but I do strive to support my team. As a result our outcomes are high and turnover is low which benefits the company. Your attitude speaks to a toxic culture where people cannot be open and are being judged in a blame culture. Again, affecting morale and resilience and overall mental wellbeing.

I would hardly say that’s an extreme. If your performance is poor then you should have your probation extended. Where I work has been reluctant to get rid of poor performers from what I can see and it’s irritating. My previous company was better at this - just paid people off and they’d be gone that day.

Edited to add that not all parents take the piss at work! Flexibility is helpful and can work for both the company and employees.

What a load of nonsense. I am
gping to guess you work for the public sector.

Speaks someone who sounds very good at complaining but less good at identifying workable solutions. That is ridiculous.

God reading this I am delighted I work for a flexiable company. and have a very nice understanding boss who knows that being chained to your desk is not a good way of working. in my company we have flexi start with set core hours we can also build up liue time ti finish early or start late if required. today at 3pm there was a mass exidos of staff as they had started early so could finish early. majority were not going for school runs but actually trying to beat the traffic I myself was not far behind them. I did more hours at home after driving nearly 2 hours to get home.
was your query really a life or death matter at 3pm ? could it have waited till morning ? did it need a call or could an email be sufficient or a teams message
there has been lots of complaints in my company about the amount of meetings people have hr sending mails out to prioritse breaks etc and blocking time out are you like someone who wanted a face to face meeting today with me ? couldn't be teams no schedule an hour and I had to walk 15 mins to next building for me to answer her queries with one word answers in 10 mins. what was a meeting could have been easily dealt with in a mail or query on teams message 😡 alot of my meeting are early in morning as we deal with the rest of Europe and further alot. some times have calls with USA
I do block my time out especially Friday afternoon as I have got older am less tolerant of crap on work. I will question certain things why you need a meeting etc and decline if need be have said I can read the notes after etc my boss is Awre of this and he does similar. my progress etc not affected at all

And would replace them within the week.

Trouble is the worker bees in my experience are the ones that live well into old age. Usually with happy, interesting lives.

The slackers all have problems both mental and physical and little is positive in their world.

Some of the comments on this thread are ridiculous, and have made me realise why everything is so shit now - it’s because attitudes to work are shit. If you have signed a contract saying you will work 9-5 and get paid £x, then you should be working 9-5.

If you think you don’t need to work all your contracted hours because you can get your work done in less time, then by all means negotiate a shorter working week - but don’t be surprised when your employer reduces your salary accordingly.

There are regular posts on here from people complaining that their cleaner is paid for 3 hours but leaves after 2h30, and AIBU to expect them to stay for the full 3 hours even though they’ve cleaned the whole house in 2h30, after all they could be doing extra work like steam cleaning my sofa upholstery etc. But yet, a large number of people on this thread are advocating for behaving exactly as the cleaner is doing and see nothing wrong with it! (until it’s their cleaner not working all the hours they are paid for, of course, because that’s apparently different).

If you booked a facial that was billed as lasting one hour, but the therapist finished in 40 mins, would you be happy with that, even if they had performed all the advertised steps in the facial? Or would you feel aggrieved that you hadn’t got what you had paid for? (Hint: it’s probably how your employer feels!)

And to all those PPs saying that it’s only right that people prioritise their family life over work (what? In the middle of the working day? The clue is in the name!) then I can only assume that if you turned up for a hospital appointment only to find the consultant had just “popped out” to do the school run and would be back at an unspecified time, bringing their child with them to sit in the corner watching an iPad “because they are old enough now, it’s fine, they can amuse themselves while I work”) you’d be totally fine with that.

That's why I maintain it's better to operate a defined 'personal time' policy. Your colleagues/clients need to know when you're off, cover needs to be organised.

I'm a bit baffled by the high number of replies saying you need to be at your station every minute that you're paid. I thought presenteeism died 20 years ago. Some jobs do need you in situ when expected, but most don't - presenteeism's little more than an invitation to work more slowly.

I got paid by results: nobody gave a shit if I spent the afternoon in the pub, as long as I kept bringing in the business. My last boss decided we all had to be seen (by him) at our desks, logging exact times taken for out-of-office meetings. Revenues fell in a matter of weeks: we were just stretching out the desk work to make him happy.

Get real. Stop enabling these work shy snowflakes

But who is paying for this? The people who do not have children or those whose children have grown up. It isn’t right to expect your colleagues to cover for you because you have chosen to work while you have parental responsibilities.

What's your logic here? If you are smart enough to be efficient, you should be punished with more work for the same pay? You're suggesting we should pad out the work by looking busy rather than being productive. If your employer pays you £50k for a project to be managed, and you manage it perfectly in 30 hours a week, why is that worth less than someone managing it (perhaps poorly) in 40 hours?

Maybe being on this earth is not meant to be working in office for most of your day, having meetings and trying to be all things to everyone. The world is just a big corporation really isn’t it!

Although it's not across the board - I had a hideously toxic, high-pressure, micromanage-y fully remote job last year - I agree that a lot of people seem to regard remote work as a vague responsibility to be contactable between certain hours, rather than an obligation to actually get work done. Some people are definitely given to shirking.

Then again, I really do think that the cost of living has become so preposterous that I can see why people don't pay for wraparound childcare or jump at the opportunity to commute to the office every day. I dislike remote working but were I to commute into London every day for work (which theoretically would make sense, as I am ideally positioned on a fantastic rail route) it would cost me £700 a month just to get to and from work!! I can completely understand how someone who was hired in, say, 2022 and told that they were expected in the office once a week might freak out when told to return full-time. And I say this as someone who has a grim, back-breaking healthcare job which barely pays at all...

What's this fucking nonsense. no-one should be prioritising all that stuff during the eight or whatever hours they're paid to be working. "Give your head a wobble" FFS. Grow up.