Turner away from nursery

[Mulch]

I don't know if it's my pmt and I've not had breakfast yet but I've just been to view a nursery to be told they can't show me around and to come back later as their having lunch.

Reason why I ask is after working In a care setting, it didn't matter how busy we were or what we were doing if someone came to visit we'd juggle things round to make time for them. People could turn up at any time.

Wow it sounds like the place where you worked was staffed with sycophants.

Try somewhere else if if pisses you off so much that they didn't drop everything to show you around!

YABVU

Um no I think she means the place SHE used to work was a SEN school and they were still happy to show folk around.

Sorry but some of those people may have been looking after 15 screaming toddlers since 7am this morning. Let them have their lunch.

Newsflash OP... the world does not revolve around you. Why on earth would they drop everything to show you around?

Aha I see, you are comparing teachers who are used to and expected to work through their lunches to a nursery where relatively low paid staff are expected to take their breaks. Does your SEN school have additional staff for lunchtime supervision/cooking? Because most nurseries don't have that, they have just the staff they have so have to balance having enough staff to cover lunches and breaks and usually someone cooking.

The office staff are usually in the chidlren's rooms for lunch time in order to let other staff members take their breaks. If a staff member misses their lunch, it can be very hard to find spare time later in the day they can have their break.

You were asking someone to either not have a lunch break or to stop the food prep/serving/helping children eat.

Schools and nurseries are very different.

No one of the staff members on their lunch break would show people round then take theirs later

But what if they have part time staff and they can't take their lunch later? An awful lot of nursery jobs are part time.

Plus, at a SEN school, there will be extra staff who are not legally required for compliance with staff ratios but needed for extra support for learning. So legally they might be able to do that. Although morally whether they should withdraw that support to show around parents is a different matter..

You work in a SEN school, or you've just tried to view one?

I seem to be spectacularly missing the point that you weren't turned away because the staff all wanted to sit around eating their sandwiches and didn't want to help you.

You were turned away, because they were FEEDING CHILDREN and couldn't take someone away from that job to pander to your inflexibility.

Nursery staff don't take lunch breaks on mass. They take breaks for the bear minimum of time while keeping the correct ratios for the children in their care. They may even have to wait until they are napping before they are able to eat.

Use some common sense, please

For all manner of reasons they may not be able to accommodate visits during lunch, I said it before and I'll say again you yourself admitted you wanted to go when they wouldnt expect visitors to catch them out.

Meh, just scrub this nursery off your list and move on to one that is willing to ditch small kids and babies while they are eating to show someone around who could go any other time but wanted to pick a busy time to catch them out, Im sure this nursery are gutted to have lost your custom.

If it wasn't lunch time would it be okay to call in unannounced?

Sparechange - I read it that the OP normally works in an SEN school but was viewing a nursery for her DC.

They may have been working at minimum ratios so wouldn't have a staff member free. Don't forget staff will have gone on their lunches too

...okay if it's a bad nursery for not showing you around then cross it off your list. If you're fishing for compliments about how efficiently you run things in your nursery then you're in the wrong place!

Some of those staff will have been on duty since 7am, (possibly earlier), and there are legalities of breaks and shift changes. It's murder trying to free up people to get their needed breaks without messing with the ratios so break times often have to be quite rigid, and its all hands to the pump at mealtimes anyway as many children need feeding, putting down for naps and mass toileting/nappy times and many new children are arriving for the afternoon session and needing settling.

It's not like schools where there's a senior management team who are supernumary much of the time and where assistants' break times can be flexible because a qualified teacher can hold a class together for half an hour to let an assistant get their break later. I've worked in both, it's a totally different ball game.

But if you're not happy with the service you received, all you need to do is take your money and custom elsewhere.

I think the SEN school was her workplace

And more fool them for giving up their lunchbreak

And oh SOD IT to safeguarding eh

If I was turning up at a nursery unannounced I would avoid first thing, lunchtime and end of day as I would realise these would be very busy times and it wouldn't be fair to the staff.

Unplanned for random people wandering round a sen school is just as bad if not worse.

Also meant to add: schools have paid lunchtime supervisors to cover staff having lunch breaks, adding in yet more pairs of hands and flexibility. Nurseries don't.

This seems to be one of those threads where everyone is saying the OP is being unreasonable but the OP is refusing to accept it. So why ask?!

No one of the staff members on their lunch break would show people round then take theirs later. It was a sen school no child had their lunch go cold...
This thread gets worse.

You expect a member of staff to leave the lunch break that by law they must be given to show you around on a whim and go back to it later on.

Assuming of course that this is possible in the schedule.

They prioritised the care of the children - which includes making sure the staff have adequate well timed breaks IMO.

They should probably revise their wording but pitching up at lunchtime, you were trying to catch them out. As well as handling children and staff lunches they would probably have been expecting pickups and dropoffs for any half day kids, plus potentially staff changeover for part timers. Having to pull a member of staff of to show a random around could put kids at risk.

There was an almost identical thread last month. Why do people keep turning up to nurseries unannounced and expecting to be given a private tour?

Sounds like a good nursery to me if they put the welfare of the current kids rather chasing potential future income.

YAB utterly U!

Pretty much everyone here thinks so, so why don't you just show you listened and admit you were wrong.

Learn that you're not always right.

You expect a member of staff to leave the lunch break that by law they must be given to show you around on a whim and go back to it later on.

This.

My wife works in a Day Nursery and someone rocked up at lunchtime last month (it wasn't you was it OP?) and the owner very politely told them to come back after lunch, if someone expected me to do something like that during my lunch time after working my arse off all morning I'd be a bit