To think this woman was ridiculous

[lastqueenofscotland]

I am leaving my job and am helping interview for my replacement.

Just had an interview with a lady and were just confirming that everyone is expected to work one Saturday a month and there is some overtime (paid at 1.5x hourly rate) certain months of the year.
The woman said that wouldn’t work for her and we were like “oh it was in the job description” and she puffs out her chest and declares loudly
“But I am a mother I can’t believe you have NO flexibility for this.”

Colleague who is the mother of 4 inc an 18 month year old had to seriously bite her tongue.

It’s really annoyed me and I can’t work out why

The entitlement of colleagues who had children used to really ennoy me when I was a full time night nurse. Most only worked 2 nights per week and expected preferential treatment with regards off duty. They didn’t want to work weekends or bank holidays at all and mostly got their way. Not one of their partners worked shifts, weekends or bank holidays. They just thought their right to a family and social life was mort important. Christmas was the worst as they wanted Christmas to be with their kids and new year to go out and expected to get it.

Anyway one year a couple of them were bragging that they’d already sorted Christmas and New Year off duty out and id just have to put up with doing it all. There little faces dropped when I explained I was pregnant and wouldnt be working. Quite soon after a lot of staff left due to the unfairness re off duty and they finished up having to do their fair share. I really enjoyed hearing about them moaning

If shops don't open as late, say they just do 8am-8pm then there will be less jobs. This in turn will increase completion for jobs, meaning that those who are most flexible, will work for the least money, have less commitments outside of work will be successful. Who do you think that will be? Not women with children.
My mum works in retail and there are women who, in this instance, have husbands who are home in the evenings, who won't work in the evening. Their reasons are that they have children to put to bed and want to spend time with their husband. My mum also wants to spend time with her husband, but can't because of the lack of flexibility of others. It's also always my mum who has to change shifts at short notice, cover Christmas etc. This isn't fair to my mum but the company will argue they are being "family friendly".
When we were kids my mum worked nights as my dad was at home. She then slept whilst we were at school.

I can see that might be true for a village shop, but this is a Co-op in a small town with another supermarket convenience store, a small supermarket, a large supermarket and an independent corner shop. All in or near the town centre.

So why do you think is staffing the other convenience store, the small and large supermarkets and the independent convenience store? Why don’t you care about those staff? What will you do when they want to work ‘flexibly’?

Who, not why.

How to we support women to be both mothers and employees/have careers.

I have worked for my organisation for 10 years. My core hours are 9-4pm but given the nature of the job (social services) I would often work very late in the evenings.

I returned to work in September after maternity leave. My dh works 2-10 so I need to pick my DD up at 5- 6 pm latest. I have no family or friends who could collect her.

My colleagues are wonderful but I fear that they will eventually get fed up with doing overtime whilst I leave early. And I also feel guilty that they are staying whilst I leave.

I do not believe that allowances should be made for me because I have a child but I don’t think employers support women who are mothers to ‘have it all’.

I should not have to leave a job I love because I feel guilty or because I now have a child.

I hear women saying ‘I want a career before I start a family’. (This was me). Why should a woman have to choose. Why can’t she have a career and a family. Do men make such statements.

I would like to see more available and affordable childcare.

I would also like to see more flexible working hours for everyone.

And I wish that big corporations would have subsidised crèches.

I think the solution is don't blame the parents at your workplace who are trying to assert reasonable boundaries with their employer - assert your own boundaries too. … I just think the attitude that 'things are unfair so it's important the unfairness be spread around evenly' is kind of missing the point.

This.

It is disheartening that women are turning on each other to 'spread unfairness evenly' instead of pushing back against unreasonable working hours and pay.

Eventually, there is a natural limit to the argument for mothers 'to make it work'.There should be a "hard backstop" there.

So we don't go back to victorian times when destitute mothers were locking toddlers in cupboards to go to work to feed their child. This race to the bottom would not benefit anyone and would not make this country competitive in 21 century, at the time of automation and AI.

Nor should we normalise the misogynistic discourse to deny our humanity and to 'price out' child rearing for the sake of corporate profits. No way.

Raising children is not a lifestyle choice on the par with gambling and smoking marijuana.

It is disheartening that women are turning on each other to 'spread unfairness evenly' instead of pushing back against unreasonable working hours and pay.

So if anyone works outside of school hours, they are ‘turning on’ other women? I’m guessing these women will never need to go shopping after work ? Will never want to go out for dinner or to the pub?

Non-standard hours are part of life. Where do you think these hours go if no one who has ever given birth can fill them?

Reminds me of this
www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=%23&ved=2ahUKEwjhq-LX5ubeAhVKAsAKHTjJC0MQwqsBMBN6BAgJEAU&usg=AOvVaw0VTJzWxrN8ZFOD4xbU2nov

I think it is absolutely right the interviewee in the post explored the flexibility at the interview and was able to assert some boundaries. I think what makes this thread poignant is the OP reaction, the realisation that she herself has traded her boundaries too easily and now tries to channel her disappointment.

In the OP working conditions what is worrying for me is 'there is some overtime (paid at 1.5x hourly rate) certain months of the year'. Child minders don't work over time before Xmas or during school holidays. If anything, they cut back. A parent without the grandparents ready to step in anytime for free does not have any flexibility beyond the usual childcare hours of 8am to 6pm. And they can't make it 'impromptu'. Apart from exceptional one-off events when one can ask a not so close friend to step in, there isn't any possibility for parents of really young children to do 'some overtime' on an irregular basis outside of standard childcare hours. This assuming the parents can afford the childcare. Because if they can't, there isn't any flexibility at all, unless the partner and grandparents step in.

But then again, a couple with children that hardly see each-other because one is going out to work when the other comes home is the modern equivalent of the victorian mother having to lock the baby in the cupboard. It's not good for the children and for the couple, their life is a very stressful bare subsistence imo. They don't have any quality time together as a family and as a couple. One or the other is always too tired. There is nothing to be proud of. It is the unfairness spread very wide.

A truly sustainable business should not assume working hours that are unsustainable for the workers. Having people to work 24/7 might be profitable, but just wouldn't work.

Any solution should involve

• Universal free or affordable childcare
• Paying carers and child caring grand parents the living wage
• More flexible working patterns.
• There should be cost attached to unsociable hours for employers and for service users. Perhaps shopping in the middle of the night should be more expensive.
• Equality for men and women, so it's not always the mother who have to 'make it work'. Attitude to men working flexibly for childcare needs to change.

Ultimately people who work impossible hours should be doing this by choice, because they are able and willing.

*Any solution should involve

• Universal free or affordable childcare*

Excellent idea! And the money comes from... where? If this is a tax-funded initiative, presumably we'll all have to earn more money to pay for it. But what happens when we all want to do flexible hours?

If it was the norm for everyone to work a 6 day week everyone would make similar arguments to say a two day weekend was impossible. We'll never know how flexible work can be until more people care enough to insist on it.

CoughLaughFart - that loud sucking sound you hear is the sound of money on its way out of the UK en route to the Channel Islands, the Isle of Man, Cypress, the Cayman Islands, and probably a few more offshore destinations where they don't ask too many questions.

While nobody knows exactly how many billions are expatriated annually, I think it's a fair guess that there is enough sitting in anonymous accounts overseas to fund free or low cost quality child care for all who need it.

Many here seem to believe that business is entitled to make a profit on the backs of employees, so maybe the fact that the ordinary taxpayer carries the can is ok with you.

Someone argued about business going to France... it made me lol

They have 35 hours week and yet productivity is higher than here.
They definitely will require x1.5 pay on Saturdays and x2 pay on Sundays and holidays. They also have universal free school from the age of 3, and voluntary from 2... And childcare generally is much cheaper.

I've never interviewed anyone but I remember my first job was in a call centre and we had 4 weeks training before being let loose on the phone.

Anyway in the last week of training we listened to some call recordings some good some bad and then we had some training calls. The training calls were us calling the customer as aftercare and just asking had they received their documents and were they happy with the service. Tbh the people that answered were just quick to get off the phone lol.

Anyway this woman said to the trainer, I won't be talking on the phone or making any phone calls. Trainer was 😒. ITS A CALL CENTRE!!

I don't get it. I'm sure people apply for jobs without even bothering to read the job description

I understand a high proportion of Britain believing the government ‘owes’ them XY&Z but surely that braizen entitlement can’t extend as far as private businesses and companies? Who could quite easily pick up their offices and shift them over to France if England (as a whole) gets too (hand out) grabby! - we should be cautious of this given our looming departure from the EU.

@TeapotFairy
You need a grip on with the overlooked idea that this is a democracy.
Last time I checked, the government serves the people and not the other way around.
The laws and policies are enacted on a democratic mandate.
The people’s mandate demanded the 8 hour week, holidays, pensions, the NHS, education and is perfectly in its right to demand childcare.
The business operates within the frame of law. Within the boundaries of laws and regulations enacted democratically. On a democratic consent.

The law provides for flexible working.

If you think Brits are ‘demanding’ of their working conditions and public services, you really should try the French.

And don't assume that brexit gives mandate to the race to the bottom back to victorian 16 hours work day and children locked in cupboards.

8 hour day

Children are not a lifestyle choice on the par with gambling or driving a German car.

They are us, our common humanity.

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/nov/19/new-grandchild-love-parenting-trends by Susan Moore
There are still things I can’t work out, such as the enormous amount of kit. But there is one thing I can: with all the awful things in the world there is little more joyful than a tiny human, and this special time when one enters a universe in which they are the centre. This universe is both smaller than everything else but somehow larger, too.

... I realise, for I am indeed slow on the uptake, that at my age and in my house I have been living in a love story. It’s happened. I have fallen for someone entirely new.

I don’t agree with purely monetary economic analysis which always tends to overlook the important externalities and intangible benefits and costs.

There are emotional and social benefits of having children in society, intergenerational mix. Like the ‘old people’s home for 4 years olds’. It upholds our human values and norms, enables to project to the future, having hope.

We benefit in older age from innovations and technologies invented by the younger generation.

The elder use NHS and receive pensions from contributions by the younger generation. The young also pay the public debt which finances our consumer economy.

Significant part of the economy depends on children, the products and services that exist because of parenthood.

I can't believe nobody brought up this.

Children also bring economic benefits.

Children are “public good”.

Here are some elements:
crookedtimber.org/2005/03/30/are-children-public-goods/

Critics often assert that parental leave, public child care, and other family support programs force society to pay for people’s private choices. If parents do not want to bear this burden, they should not have children in the first place, rather than foisting the costs onto everyone else. Nancy Folbre, an economist at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, counters these claims by arguing that children are like public goods. While parents bear most of the costs of raising children, to the extent that children grow into productive, tax-paying citizens, they create positive externalities that benefit the rest of society. People who contribute little time or money to the raising of children essentially free-ride on the parental labor of others. As she wrote in the American Prospect a few years ago:

“[Children] grow up to be taxpayers, workers, and citizens. The claims we collectively enforce on their income will help finance our national debt and fund Social Security and Medicare. Even if all the intergenerational transfers in our tax system were eliminated, leaving all us baby boomers to rely on our own bank accounts in old age, we would need to hire the younger generation to debug our computers and help us into our wheelchairs.”

To those who say having children is a private choice, much like deciding to get a pet, I’ve heard Folbre trenchantly respond, “Yes, but will your golden retriever pay for your Social Security?”

www.dissentmagazine.org/article/children-as-a-public-good
This is a different author. I can’t access the full article, but here some:

Certainly, parents have primary responsibility for meeting the needs of their children; the argument here is that meeting children’s needs should be a collective responsibility as well. Although parents reap the rewards of well-reared children (emotional rather than economic rewards in this day and age), children whose needs have been met confer benefits as well on society as a whole. We need to make a reality of the rhetoric that sees children as our most valuable asset.

As an economist, I argue that children must be considered a public good whose welfare and education need to be addressed collectively. In other words, it really does take a village to raise a child. A public good is one whose provision confers externalities-benefits beyond those accruing to the direct beneficiaries.

Who should pay for the kids?
Because the production of children's capabilities creates a public good that cannot be priced in the market, individuals can free ride on the efforts of parents in general and mothers in particular. We need to redesign the social contract in ways that encourage more sustainable forms of intergenerational altruism and reciprocity.

Here 's another

A detailed argument.

www.fhu55.com/sites/default/files/hanehalki/Okumalar/Children%20as%20Public%20Goods.pdf

Increases in the private costs of raising children, however, are exerting tremendous economic pressure on parents, particularly mothers. Economists need to analyze the contributions of nonmarket labor to the development of human capital: as children become increasingly public goods, parenting becomes an increasingly public service.

Children.. have been described as consumer durables providing a flow of utility to their parents, investment goods providing income, and public goods with both positive and negative externalities. Children are also people, with certain rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

However we categorize children, we know that the consequences of raising them are changing. Economic development tends to increase their costs to parents in general, and mothers in particular. Yet the growth of transfer payments and taxation of future generations "socialize" many of the benefits of children. All citizens of the United States enjoy significant claims upon the earnings of future working-age adults through Social Security and public debt. But not all citizens contribute equally to the care of these future adults. Individuals who devote relatively little time or energy to child-rearing are free-riding on parental labor.

Increases in the cost of children have also been associated with trends that shift a greater share of the cost to mothers, such as new child-custody laws, growth in the proportion of families maintained by women alone, and poor enforcement of fathers' child-support responsibilitie..

However, public policies have provided far greater benefits to the elderly than to mothers and children on their own, particularly in the United States. Social Security expenditures dramatically reduced poverty among elderly men and married couples

Those who benefit from children's future income do so partly at the expense of present-day parents…

Moreover, there is no reason to assume that parents are equally affected: mothers often invest more time, energy, and affection in their children than do fathers..

It goes on:

Inputs of parental labor are crucial. Yet estimates of the value of nonmarket work lump child care in with other tasks and value it at close to minimum wage (Robert Eisner, 1989). Recent studies of the accumulation of human capital define it entirely in terms of formal schooling (Dale Jorgenson and Barbara Fraumeni, 1989). Official definitions of the poverty line ignore nonmarket labor, with perverse results such as failing to consider the cost of a paid substitute for a single mother's time when she works outside the home (Trudi Renwick and Barbara Bergmann, 1993)..

When an infant cries in the middle of the night, why does a mother drag herself out of bed to feed it? … Both moral commitments and social norms are subject to erosion as the price of satisfying them increases, and even altruistic preferences may be endogenous. In the long run, failure to remunerate commitments to parental labor may weaken the values, norms, and preferences that supply it.

Most economists ridicule the utopian socialist vision of a society based entirely on altruism. Is a utopian vision of a family sustained by love alone any more realistic?

.. the incidence of desertion and divorce has increased rapidly among all families, partly because men's values and preferences seem to have shifted more rapidly than women's away from family commitments…

In an economy increasingly based on individual careers, parenthood seems to promise moral and cultural rewards but no economic rewards…

.. *In fiscal terms, children represent a positive externality. There are good reasons to believe that we are currently underinvesting in human capital as well as flouting our collective moral obligation for children's welfare...

The best alternative is to promote more equal distribution of the costs of children _as well as more equal opportunity for children themselves.Improved child-support enforcement would help, as would increased public subsidies for child care. But however necessary, these are not sufficient. Parents should be compensated for their efforts through a greater tax exemption or credit for raising children. And families with children should be guaranteed the means to obtain a minimum income above the poverty line. While there are good reasons to encourage all capable adults to engage in job training or paid employment, it is important to remember that nonmarket work is still work. In fact, it is probably the most important work we do.

Sorry link fail before but this story reminds me of this

I assert my boundaries, which include working the unsociable shifts I am required to do in my contract but no more, for reasons that no-one at work needs to know about.

This thread has reminded me of someone I once worked with. It's a common thing to have a one hour commute to my workplace but this person had a 3 hour commute. No changes of circumstances between application and starting but that didn't stop them complaining at every turn because they had too far to travel. I was glad when I left that team as they clearly thought the rest of us were responsible for accommodating their long drive.

"But there's ways of reacting to that.
"I'm sorry, I hadn't been told about that."

Why should she apologise if she hadn't been told by the agency???