time off for a sick child

[gardeningmum05]

my youngest of 4 has diarrhea this morning so the nursery wont take him and frankly i want to look after him so i had to phone in work and tell them. my boss was really funny with me as its the 3rd time in 8 weeks i have to take a day off. i work 3 days a week and will make the time up when hubby home in the evening.
i do over and above my duties at work, never take a break and feel pissed off at him to be honest.
i have no family support to call on , always take this time when they are poorly as holiday, so why does he feel its ok to swear at me! does he think i would prefer to be at home covered in toddler shit rather than in my cosy office!
unlike him i dont have a stay at home wife sitting on her arse with 2 grown up kids .
there.thats better

Just out of curiosity do they ask both male and female applicants the question about childcare strategies?

Swearing at you isn't acceptable.

But if your boss sees that every time a child is sick you take a day off and your husband never takes a turn, he's bound to get a bit fed up with it, and being 'funny' with you isn't surprising.

There's no obligation on your employer to allow you to take emergency time out of your holiday entitlement, and the trouble is if you keep doing it they might stop allowing you to do that and instead not pay you at all.

You have my sympathies, it doesn't sound as though your boss has a lot of empathy and you should certainly have been able to take up to a year maternity leave when you lost your daughter.

However I can also see your boss's point - the fact that your husband isn't in the luxurious position of being able to take paid time off isn't your boss's fault or problem so I can understand him being a bit fed up with it all.

And making derogatory comments about his wife isn't pleasant, relevant or necessary. What she does with her time is absolutely nothing to do with you.

I'm in the same situation - no family nearby - and can sympathise. I'm very lucky that my boss is sympathetic (although not everyone else is) and I also save annual leave to use as emergency cover for illness.

I find splitting my 3 day week helps as when I worked 3 days in a row I could find myself not working at all that week by the time I'd had to wait 48 hours after the last bout of vomiting before DS could go back to nursery. This way he's often better by the other end of the week and I can return to work.

I'd definitely have a look at the link Readmylips added and if your HR is anything like ours (sounds like it is!) you might have to point out what you're entitled to.

Not much help but I do sympathise!

hobnobs I don't know, but I don't think it is an unreasonable question to ask anyone. I don't think any employer has to allow emergency days as holiday as they are not pre-booked, so I think he has been quite generous to do this so far. I would anticipate that they will soon become unpaid and then it will be reasonable for you and your DH to take it in turns.

Absolutely no obligation for an employer to allow staff to use holiday for emergency time, no. Most employers require a certain amount of notice for holidays.

So in terms of emergency time off your employer is already doing more than they have to, and demonstrating a certain amount of goodwill, and the trouble is goodwill might evaporate if your boss feels your husband isn't doing his fair share.

Maybe suggest his wife has your child for you whileits ill seeing as its of such paramount importance that you are in work and she has nothing better to do?

I think it's very generous to give you a day off annual leave at short notice.

Swearing is not on though.

It may be generous but it is her right to have a day off as a carer. It can be unpaid but taking it as annual leave as she does means that she's not away from work as often as she could be.

If it were unpaid she would of course be more likely to share the care with her DH but then this is a problem that affects single parents too and not everyone has someone who can share the care.

My boss is a bit like this. If I have anymore sick days (my own sickness or DD's) I'll get a disciplinary. I have no idea how legal this is.

I am just grateful who looked after my chicken pox riddled DD last month because, as my boss so helpfully pointed out "I'd have been on very shaky ground had I taken 8 days off work for that."

yes the OP is entitled to unpaid time off for emergencies like this, but her employer allowing her to just ring up and say she's taking annual leave instead means she is not forced to use that right and is being given an option to take paid leave instead.

Unfortunately for her employer, allowing her to do this has had the result that she takes twice as much time off as she otherwise would, because her husband's employer is not so generous. So it's backfiring a bit and therefore understandable that the boss is a bit peeved.

Saffy85 why the face? You are entitled to emergency time off, which would normally be a day or two. It's not to take off the whole duration of a child's illness, it's for things like taking a day or two to sort out alternative arrangements. So your boss commenting that it wouldn't be acceptable for you to suddenly take more than a week off isn't out of place, although it doesn't seem hugely sympathetic.

In terms of disciplinaries for sickness absence, yes perfectly legal and common to have triggers of how many sick days you can have before a disciplinary happens. Your sick days and the emergency (presumably unpaid) leave you might take when your DD is not well are entirely separate though.

Many employers are more generous, and will allow a couple of days extra paid leave, or time off in lieu, or will allow people to take the whole duration of a child's illness using annual leave, but it's by no means legally required.

The face was because obviously I wouldn't have taken the whole time off. There's the face again and I'll make the face as much as I want .

He has a generally shit attitude to sickness anyway. I had to phone in at 7.30am on my way to work as DD had been unexpectedly sick on the way to nursery. He asked me to prove it (there it is again!)

Ok, I get all that but what are the alternatives to taking time off? (whether as annual leave or unpaid?)

Not right to swear.

However, 3 days off in 8 weeks when you only work 3 days anyway is a lot. Have you agreed it's ok for you to use holiday like this or are you just assuming? It would be starting to annoy me as your boss

How hard you work comparedto others doesn't matter here. If they can hit their targets by takng long breaks then good. If they can't then that's a separate performance management issue.

It's hard but I think you have to thank your lucky stars your boss has allowed you to take the time as holiday. I wouldn't if I felt I was being taken advantage of. And you are taking advantage by not sharing the load with DH.

I also strongly object to your (repeated) comments about his wife. Unless you know her personally and closely you have no idea of why she isn't working and what she does all day.

Who said you couldn't put whatever emoticons you want as much as you want saffy? Of course you can - saying 'I'll put whatever I want' makes you sound childish I'm afraid. I was simply asking why that face at that point in your post. Perfectly reasonable question which you answered, no problem.

And no it's not at all 'obvious' that you wouldn't have taken the whole time off. It sounded as though you were grateful for someone else doing it otherwise you would have had to.

HappySeven the alternative will obviously vary from individual to individual, but the point is that finding alternatives is not the employer's problem. I don't at all advocate employers taking a very hard line on this type of thing, but the bottom line is there is very little they are required to do by law, and the rest is up to the individual, which is why I pick up on people moaning when their employer is in fact acting perfectly legally.

My employers (local council) will only pay for 2 child-sick caring days per term - they let you have more time if you need it, but it's unpaid.

Although I think Flowerybean bag is right sometimes there is a need for a bit more empathy. However, most contracts of employment are contracts of employment not contracts to facilitate childcare when children are ill. Yes it's tough - I know I've done it but none the less if you are paid for three days work you are expected to be there for the three days in question.

I have in the past heard of people ringing in sick themselves if their child is ill.
Quite clearly wrong but I can understand how desperate some people can get especially if they don't want to be the office 'problem' and they have no immediate family and the childminder/nursery/ school can't have the child while poorly.

However from the employer point of view we are in troubled times financially and if you have to pay staff for work that they don't do that isn't good either.
I know people are saying about unpaid leave but like it has been pointed out work is planned and to have someone off suddenly can disrupte things immensly.

Ive know idea what the answer is but in this case the OP hasn't done herself any favours and although the husband is self employed maybe they need to work around that. Like I said before him being off at his quietest time. When you are in that situation sometimes you have to take a financial hit.

Actually I DON'T know what the answer is.

Sorry I have no revelations just typos!!

One idea is finding someone who works opposite days to you and who has similar-aged children. That's what I used to do. The pro is that you don't use up all your goodwill at work. The con is that you end up looking after someone else's sick children.

Not easy, but I agree with some of the others - taking leave at short notice can cause problems for your manager and colleagues. One week in the past eight is a lot.

He shouldn't have sworn at you, but as a full time working mum who either drives 20miles (each way) to drop kids with family or splits (unpaid or made up hours) with DH everytime one of my two is poorly I can see why they would be a tad miffed at 3 days off in 8 weeks when you do a 3 day week. Really sorry.

Regarding the childcare when sick interview question thing, I was told (after being asked this in my interview, and my 2 assessments following) that this if asked only of females is considered discrimination (and rightly so if your not asking the dads too!)

i can see it from both sides of the coin, for 5 years i was the manager and know what some one phoning in with a sick child can cause, now i am on the other side of the coin!
i gave up an extremely well pad job to care for my children when i left my 1st husband who was a SAHD but couldnt be arsed to do any thihg.
now i am in the position of having a great partner working a minimum of 12 hours a day, who is a great dad, but unfortunately doesnt get sick pay, and because i only work 3 days a week we cant afford for him to take time off.
as it is, he has tomorrow off, so i am going in work to make my hours up.
unfortunately, this means we get less time off as a family but it pays the mortgage.
i never book weeks off for holiday, i just use my holiday when one of my children are ill.
my boss can generally on me every week of the year, and because of this i generally dont take all my holiday leave.
after paying child care i come out with about 20 pounds a month but i feel it is important to my children that they see i work, even though i feel thrown at times like these

I'm sorry to say my sympathy is with the employer,and while it is women who keep taking the emergency time off to look after kids, then it is not surprising that employers ask about this. I do have genuine sympathy for single mums but the OP is part of a couple and so are many other parents. No other employee can simply drop everything like this - frequent incidents just piss off your colleagues as well as the boss since they have to cover/do extra work/stay late to pick up work and deal with customers. It 's particularly difficult in a small company. I'm not sure what the answer is but I do think it involves dads stepping up more.

I am a TA, single mum. If DS is ill, I have to take unpaid leave. We can´t take it as holiday because our holidays are set by the school/LA. I don´t have the luxury of family who are available to help, or partner (ex does nothing), so all the responsibility falls on me. There are lots of lone parents in my department, and we all find it hard to arrange alternate care. Schools/nurseries and childminders won't take them. So what are we meant to do?

I always have it in the back of my mind "what if DS got really sick for a long time?"

Hope it never happens because on top of the heartache and worry abotu him, we'd have the financial troubles of no income.

It is something that needs to be addressed, but I don't know how.

scuttle, my partner cant take the time off work as we simply cant afford it.
i work extremely hard in my job, not like some there, i only book 2 weeks off for our summer holiday, work the other 50 so i know i have holiday in the bag if this happens.
i try to make the time up later in the week and my job can be worked on flexi-time.
absolultely no family to help, i dont know what the answer is either, but with having 4 children the odds of 1 being ill is obvioulsy higher than if i had 2.