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.

That would be a big fat NO, to my question, then.

I wasn't? Also, calm down.

It is quite clear that you were and I'll thank you also to stop telling me what I can and can't write about how I feel about what you are writing!

That’s not my experience at all in my place of work (I work in a local authority) Most of us have children, and most of us are still available and attending meetings and responding to calls/emails etc after school pick up is done. And our managers are very aware of who’s getting their work done and it’s self with if anything starts to slip. In return we get flexibility so we can work - and given that around 75% of our workforce are female, that’s a good thing.

I have an ND and I don't just find going to work tough. Your question is nothing to do with my statement. We do more damage to ourselves by describing our experience as tough. I love my job. It mentally exhausts me every day I work, I have a major meltdown when I get home. I do not find work "tough". I also never use my autism as an excuse, which some people have said on this thread, but I'm fed up with managers and colleagues who think I'm slacking when I'm actually working harder than most people there, with pretty much no reasonable adjustments.

I'm sorry you are disabled by your condition but can't you see that there are many NT people who have real difficulties at work which are the equal of SOME ND people, not you obviously? It's frankly graceless not to acknowledge that.

whatever shall we do?- well, not act bewildered when stats on the economy show low productivity, or complain about staff shortages/being kept on hold when going about your daily life, or your increased workload when you end up picking up the slack for colleagues swinging the lead

My company offers this as an incentive for working parents. You can go formal or you can have flexibility for school runs, don't accept meetings when you're with your kids.

I'm with a global company and so I have late meetings or early meetings and so that's the flex but even if I didn't my boss is very much a get your work done and we're fine with however you manage your time .i.e productivity rather than clock counting.

I recently had a baby and worked up until my 38th week, my manager wanted me to go from 32 weeks but I had projects to finish and didn't want to pass them over at the finish line and max out someone else so she said ok, you're on light duties and you'll have a nap in the middle of the day as your "work task".

I will be loyal and dedicated to this company and do middle of the night meetings should I need to as they are flexible with me and it works BOTH ways. It's definitely a benefit of working parents to be in a company that is supporting of your family and knows you work incredibly hard for them because of it.

That’s great in itself, but I wonder if other people are afforded the same or comparable consideration?

I've worked in 3 companies that work this way now and I wouldn't go back.

I just wanted to demonstrate this flexible working can be a good thing and doesn't necessarily mean your working less hard.

Just to challenge the narrative. I'd love for this for more people to be able to have true flex.

I wanted to come back to this to say a few things.

I think flexible working is brilliant and to be encouraged, for men and women.
I agree that life is more important than just work.
I agree that genuine mental health issues should be taken seriously.

I also think that most companies exist to make a profit or deliver a service or support something (in the case of charities or the public sector) and they can't do that as effectively if a high proportion of their staff aren't doing the work they should be doing and are being paid to do.

I also agree that it's an issue for individual managers to manage, along with making the job expectations clear at the start of employment.

It's been an interesting discussion, some great posts here. And some which show that some people absolutely are taking the piss and don't see an issue with it.

I work at a large financial services company. Part of the company is a customer call centre, where customers reasonably expect to be able to speak to someone on the phone during 9-5.30. So you can see why too many people ‘nipping out’ at the same time causes an issue.

We have a 2 days in the office rest WFH policy. The majority of people are flexible- so they might duck out for harvest assembly but also regularly work 10-15 minutes late to wrap up something.

We have a small minority who are contracted to work 9-5pm with no flexible working arrangement. I know this because I keep a record of all these agreements as part of my role. Their diaries are blocked out every day 9-930 and 3-3.30 PLUS they block out an hour at lunch. They don’t make up the hours and refuse to come into the office because of dogs and childcare. Their managers have been told to treat it as a performance issue- they don’t get all their work done and they don’t work their hours. Some of my managers are woefully incompetent which is another thread in itself!

Sorry to chime in I couldn't help but read the thread between the two of you. If you're working until 1am are you sure it's the right job for you. My partner used to work with a H/O who claimed to work weekends and evenings. She was shit at her job he left because of how bad she was and he didn't want it to reflect on him. You working until 1am is not a good sign that you understand the work that you are doing. Are you staying for the money?

My store has cut everyone's hours, they were crying out for lobby people to work nights and I extended my availability to do it. I'm staying because I love my job and I intend this to be my last job before I retire in 9 years. I'm as good at my job as I can be without the reasonable adjustments they should be making. Not giving me long lists of instructions for one.

It's your experience they are giving you long lists because you will do it. There is ageism in the workplace and there is that fear that they could replace you. Put your foot down and do what you are paid to do. If they say anything to you tell them you need more support and team work. They should not be shoving the workload at you while they sit there and watch. From the sounds of it they need YOU more than you need THEM. Office's are toxic environments.

No. That's not what I mean. First of all, I've been doing this job for 3 years, know it inside and out and they don't actually have to tell me what to do at all, they just think they do. Second of all, I mean tell me one thing to do at a time, because by the time you've told me the last thing, I've forgotten the first thing. I'm currently a closer. The shift manager doesn't even need to tell me to close, much less break it down into the 20 different tasks that entails.

God, ND or NT it's shit being unfairly judged by colleagues, isn't it? I'm sure my colleagues think I'm a bit of a wet wipe struggling with minor issues, because it would be completely inappropriate for me to discuss with them the major issues that are actually at play.

Counter argument further:
You used to have a job for life. Now you can have 13 in a lifetime, I have been made redundant twice after mat leave by company.
There's ni loyalty, so as employees we've realized this and are now more boundaries about how we work. Just doesn't mean we don't do all our work and more to the highest standard but it also doesn't mean we're going to kill ourselves for an employer that'd let the entire workforce go tomorrow at 1 year and 11 months to avoid paying full employment benefits or restructure and dump those people's workload on to a smaller "more efficient" team.

agreed! This isn’t right!

I asked about time off for my grandmother dying, one day was the answer. I took the day off the funeral off.

that’s it. No drama

resilience in this world today is non-existent.

It's a very long time since a job for life was a widespread thing.

I started work in 1976 and there was no such thing then. I personally managed the redundancies of a third of the posts in the company I worked for in 1981. My OH was made redundant by his employer along with the rest of the workforce in 1992.

The really big change has been in the attitude of employees to having a pride in doing the work you were paid to do, whatever that work is. But since we bring up children these days to believe the constantly repeated lie that "you can be whatever you want to be as long as you want it enough", it isn't much of a surprise that they check out of the social contract . "You go to work to earn the money for a roof over your head and food and hopefully a bit over to do some stuff that makes you feel good" is a very old fashioned attitude these days.

@Rothschild you started a stimulating discussion here!

Having worked for over 30 years now, I think that there have always been piss takers and there continue to be piss takers - they just do it differently now.

When I first started, piss takers were endlessly in the smokers room, out "running essential work errands" which meant never at their desks with no mobile phones to contact them on, or chatting at other people's desks, deliberately sabotaging the shit computers we had back then and so on. They would be technically "at work" but not actually doing any work at all.

Nowadays piss takers hide at home, pretending to work when they are looking after their children or out running their own errands. And obviously there are a million and one "mental health" issues today. It completely ruins it for people who are genuinely struggling now that everyone has a mental health issue that they need time off for. However, it is the new piss take.

'Twas ever thus and no doubt will continue to be so!

Same at my large public sector organisation. There is a big thing going on in my department about discrimination and it’s because senior management are ruthless in passive aggressively managing people out through exclusion from interesting work, promotion etc if they dare to challenge anything or be anything other than sycophantic. The upshot of this is that people are going off sick with stress, are underemployed so find other things to do while wfh and are therefore easier to get rid off, mostly through bullying so people leave for other jobs, claim constructive dismissal or some get fired. This is based on mine and some colleagues’ own personal experiences but also it is so bad an external company were commissioned to find out what was going on and found discrimination against a number of legally protected characteristics, including mental health disability manifested in this way. So the “piss taking” behaviour the OP described was actually orchestrated by leadership. A example of this is giving a hybrid employee virtually nothing to do all day then deciding they are needed for an “important” meeting at 4pm, by which time they’ve often found something else to do and don’t immediately respond. Toxic organisations engender disengaged and disloyal employees and need to do better if they want a workforce who prioritizes work over all the other shit people have or juggle in the 2020s.

Do you realise that giving someone one day off for the loss of a grandparent is actually what isn’t right?

When my ex FIL died I took 2 weeks off. 3 days compassionate leave; the rest in holiday. I wasn’t bothered what format leave looked like, I was taking it anyway. They could have put down that I’d fucked off to the moon, I still wouldn’t have been at my desk.

The correct answer to “my grandparent has died, what leave can I have?” has to be “what do you need, and what can I do (within reason) to make that work.”

We cannot think it’s fair or right to give someone one single day off for losing a loved one.

If you need more than a day off for the death of a grandparent, then you should take the rest as holiday, or negotiate unpaid leave. The employer is not your mummy - they actually have to make money to pay all those salaries, and your not being there will have a negative impact on your colleagues and may lose your employer customers. And if an employee takes a lot of time off for mental health / lack of resilience reasons, then the employer should start a capability or disciplinary process (whichever is appropriate in the circumstances). What about someone who breaks up with her boyfriend and is upset? Whose cat dies? Who has to be at home to take delivery of a dishwasher? Whose child is ill every couple of weeks? Why should an employer be expected to allow time off for all this stuff - pair or even unpaid?

@SleeplessInWherever at one time in corporations I would have agreed- however having run my own thing for last 20 years it’s not as simple as that especially in smaller private companies- you might have to pay and get temps in or can’t service your clients or whatever - my own view is 5 days paid compassionate leave, unless it’s spouse /live in partner or child and after that up to 2 weeks unpaid if wanted - for spouse/live in and child then negotiated but minimum of 28 days paid .