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.

Touche 👏🏻

I think the more modern ‘slacker’ attitude has a lot to do with being acutely aware that there is zero loyalty from an employer to their employees. The days of jobs for life are long gone and the reliable, hard working employee has the same risk as the unreliable one of being made redundant.

YABU workplaces that support people with caring responsibilities are better workplaces.

But look at all the examples being given on here, parents going off radar at 3pm and ceasing to be contactable - flexible working means making that time up elsewhere, not just pissing off into radio silence 2 hours early! When do they work that time back? And is it beneficial to the company when people needed to get hold of these people in office hours.

This is true but demands of a parent of carer are seldom a couple of days a week for a few hours. They are often every day for several hours.

Most ‘Boomers’ are either retired or counting the days till. What makes you think it’s that generation?

I talk to my my mother and MIL and they had no idea they were halcyon days. They could drive around the whole of Europe on motorbikes - and they did. Frequent trips to the coast when there was hardly any other cars in the road - I’ve seen the cene film. Houses were affordable and had a decent garden sized garden. Could walk out of a job at midday and had another one to walk into by 3pm. Teen years they went to dances every Friday and then milkshakes straight after. Honestly a whole other world.

Most just don't want the parents in the team to piss off early and leave them picking up the slack time and again!

Generalisation there. Head of my organisation is on 300k and doesn't come in unless required. Quite a few on 100k plus and the same applies for them. Do they need to?

You know that would be bullying yes? And creating a toxic workplace for others.

🤣
Would also prove the point that that person is routinely not available at that time as they are childminding as a side hustle.

😂

Why are you picking up the slack? Why isnt the Owner of the company? Why have you taken in that role?

Of course people who aren't parents matter too, and a flexible hours/ location working culture benefits them too. It's not a privilege only afforded to parents , it's for everyone. One group of people it is particularly necessary for are those with caring responsibilities so that they are able to remain in employment.
It's a really good thing.

Good God, I know, it's actually embarrassing.

Do those people not think think we also have meetings earlier in the day? We don't save them up for 3pm onwards!

I work on the charity sector with excellent sick pay and great EAP - the short term sickness is insane.

They have introduced a policy that we all have the equipment to work anywhere. It is encouraged that if you wake up feeling bleugh mentally or physically just work from home in bed if needed, take a nap, have a bath, just put it on your calendar and teams your manager. If after all that you still feel you are unable to do any work then go sick but if you feel a bit better, do what you can and good enough is good enough.

We were discussing this yesterday and we definitely realise that our sector attracts a combination of people who have low resilience or are very high functioning and a lot of the time both, so burnout is common and has a catastrophic impact on those still working.

Ridiculous. Would-be parents can’t expect the world to revolve around them. Childcare expenses are well known and couples can plan and save for them in advance, BEFORE trying to conceive.

As the expression goes, “your lack of planning is not my emergency.”

We’ve found that it’s not “a good thing” because some people take the piss and do a fraction of the work they were hired for. So now we are back to management, not employees, setting the work hours. It’s much fairer. We don’t have people disappearing at 2:45 every day.

If you think that men who become fathers are held back in job opportunities they are unsuited for, I have a seafront property in Sheffield to sell you.

Think there was a definite shift after Covid.

My DH’s company has tried everything to get people back in the office from moving to hybrid 60/40 in office, to mentoring and 121’s to scaffold them back, to insisting it is 80/20 (in the hopes of achieving 60/40). Plenty of notice given to allow them to make child care and pet care arrangements.

This summer they gave up being kind as a good 25% were not even making it in one day a week. So they announced that office attendance would directly affect their annual bonuses - it’s a firm where most people are higher tax payers and the bonus is close to the same as base salary, so this is significant. They’ve been told that if they only achieve the 80/20 target 50% of the time, their bonus allotment will be reduced accordingly. Uproar.

And even more uproar when told that the division is being restructured and, yes, office attendance will be a consideration when choosing who to make redundant.

Ironically, there are still a handful of people who are not stepping up. I think that’s called quiet quitting, isnt it? And if they think they’ll get a generous ‘good leavers’ pay out, they will also be disappointed. Firms have had enough. If you want hybrid/WFT and have an office based contract, you need to look for another job.

This attitude of the working world owing you high salary and lower working hours because of a choice you made is why women of child bearing are or those with kids are held back when it comes to job opportunities.

No it's isn't, sweetheart. High childcare costs, no flexibility and a short-sighted patriarchal society is why.

FFS give your head a wobble @BatchCookBabe.

It's all very well people prioritising their families and mental health etc, but if they’re doing that during their working hours, when they are supposed to be working, they are getting money for free, and they are dumping their work on colleagues. Not fair on their colleagues who are actually working for their pay, and possibly doing extra work too.

Flexible working is a great thing for parents. I am late 40s and know so many women whose careers either stalled or even collapsed altogether once they had kids, myself included. Companies simply didn’t accommodate this 20plus years ago.

However, too many employees - not just parents - seem to abuse the system. You pay someone a salary to work, not to go to yoga in the middle of the day, walk their dogs or move house (as one of DHs team did when she was supposedly WFH). So I can understand why employers are getting more hardline about people showing up to the office.

I’ve also heard there is a big problem in banking and law with younger graduates just not wanting to put the hours in. It’s a good thing employees aren’t being worked into the ground, but equally you can’t expect a 60k-plus starting salary and expect to work 10-4 or whatever.

I don’t think it’s a black and white contrast between having a work life balance and being a worker drone and some of the comments are really childish and silly.
When I was a lone parent it would have helped to be able to wfh a couple of days a week, because I worked short days to be able to do school pick up 3 days a week (and was paid less for them). But I also had childcare and back up childcare organised in the form of family and friends. I moved near my family for that reason, so sacrifices were made, but it resulted in my kids having a close relationship with grandparents and I don’t regret it. Sometimes we shape our lives according to necessity.
Things have changed for the better in some ways for working parents but it’s gone way too far the other way. And where I work it’s often the men who are doing the school run and blocking out time (and not being present after).
Those posters who scoff about working so hard just to line the pockets of the “Man”, well
first of all, many many people taking the poss work for public sector organisations, so they are wasting YOUR money.. and secondly when business flourishes the economy grows, something we desperately need now.
I do think some other changes since my days of grafting round having young children have disincentivised people though.
I claimed tax credits when working and was able to save and become more secure, eventually earning too much to qualify. Now, with UC you can’t save ( tax credits was paid solely based on income UC is also based on assets) so poorer families have no motivation to move up.
Just generally the whole country seems to have no motivation to drag ourselves out of this pit we are in and I find it frustrating.

The thing is I work for a big multinational in a department that essentially runs a lot of our IT infrastructure and reporting projects. We have people in the same office in operational roles.

My team is international. There are people from it online working from around 1am - 11pm UK time. It really makes no difference if I work weird hours. I very, very commonly set meetings with the Asia team 5-7am before I sort my kids out for school and then take a break 7-9 where I sort out the kids, have my breakfast and do the odd house job then drive in if going to office. 9-3 I’m online or in office working for my core hours & I don’t tend to go to lunch. The perception of someone else may well be I’m swanning off at 3 and not being available after that but they may very well be totally oblivious that I already worked for 2 hours earlier in the morning, that I’ll likely check emails and respond to anything urgent while kids are at their after school activities up to 7ish or that I have a couple of weekly calls at 7/9pm to catch up with team members in the states.

Operations people in our office commonly complain about the project team being unavailable when doing school runs or blocking out part of the late morning to go for a run or being unavailable one afternoon a week to play golf or whatever else we are doing. On the other hand ask them as a one off to come and join a call well outside normal working hours and they feel that’s unreasonable (which it kind of is and is why our team get the extra flexibility). If your usual working hours are (for example) 8-5 and maybe you sometimes finish late at 6/7pm and you don’t see the colleagues that leave at 2:30/3 online it’s easy to assume they are not catching their hours up but if they are actually working early in the morning or later at night it’s just not visible to you. I’m sure some people just work less hours but even then I doubt anyone cares that much as long as they are sufficiently productive.

I’m kind of intrigued what it is that has to happen 3-5pm on a particular day that individuals have to do in order to “pick up the slack” for their colleagues. I know all jobs are different but in mine if I wasn’t there and didn’t do it at 3 then it will be waiting for me later that evening or the next morning. If someone based in the Uk needs it to be completed so they can do a follow on task then realistically how much can it possibly delay them if it’s done after office hours that night or picked up in the morning? If it’s really important and has to be done that day for whatever reason I kind of feel like you shouldn’t be leaving it until 3pm to mention it.

Quite a few small business owners I know are actively not taking on employees or apprentices any more. The paperwork is overwhelming, the NI has a rea impact, and the work ethic isn’t there. Everything is kept in-family now, or they trade services with another sole trader