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

Tinkety your company might be surprised to find that if they offered far more money for a part time job with the hours they were trying to fill they would have attracted plenty of people willing to work those hours.

Four hours, 2-6 daily, is a job that kills off your hopes of qualifying for some benefits. It most likely stops you from getting a night job. It won't work for anyone who doesn't have free childcare or someone who has evening meal/homework/putting children to bed to think about between 6 and 9pm. Of course you had plenty of inquiries about 10 -1 or 11-2. If there was surprise at that there shouldn't have been.

If your company didn't make it really, really worthwhile in the financial sense, then management must be living in some sort of bubble.

Choosing to become a parent is not a wildly irrational, weird, or unreasonable thing to do. Stating that parenthood is a choice is incredibly bone-headed. People who have children do not have 'choices'. They have responsibilities, like it or not. It is not feasible to shove a three year old back where it came from.

Stating that people should have taken into account the dog-eat-dog business culture before having a baby and should be prepared to essentially phone in their parenting (literally) in order to 'make it work' have everything upside down, backwards, and inside out.

Let's face it, 'making it work' means not rocking the boat. It means bending over backwards and making children put up with far less than optimal care and conditions. It means 'making it work' for the employer.

Businesses need to stop ignoring the fact that millions of people make the choice to have children and if the climate is such that having children is seen as an unacceptable, irrational and unreasonable 'lifestyle choice', equal among all other 'lifestyle choices', that should and could warrant discrimination in the workplace, then society and the economy are headed for disaster.

It is actually a disaster even as we speak, if parents and parenthood are so denigrated, and the only value that matters is profit for employers.

As for social constructs/barriers - I’ve heard a lot of bashing tonight but not a lot of solutions. We scrap the 9-5 and everyone just works hours that suit them? With no semblance of organisation?

Yes.

Treating grown adults like children or raw recruits, with a short leash and unreasonable demands on their time and physical presence generates stress, which causes lower productivity, burnout and poor or non-existence of willingness to operate as a team. Turnover is higher than it should be, with associated recruitment and training costs, and loyalty is lower.

You clearly know nothing about best practices for optimising workplace culture if you thought that question was unanswerable, Meteor.

And as soon as I decided to have kids it meant that my working hours would be dictated by childcare provision. Children are a lifestyle choice and you have to accept that sometimes hours can’t fit round them with some jobs so you can’t have those jobs.

And yet, it is women who take the career and financial hit from having children. Do you not understand that your attitude facilitates the maintenance of barriers to employment for women?

To borrow the loathsome phrase, parenthood is a 'lifestyle choice' for fathers too. Did your partner not assume his hours would be circumscribed by the need to care for his children? If not, then shame on him and on you too, for making sure the hostile environment for working parents emains unchanged.

I am aghast at the number of women here who say the status quo is fine and nothing should be changed because they are alright Jack and anyone who has a problem with it is clearly some sort of entitled, short sighted eejit who failed to plan.

PinkSparklyPussyCat
So just because I consider my life choices as valid as theirs I'm a child hater now!

Your use of the phrase 'lifestyle choice' in relation to the decision to have a child is what tips me off.

Let's face it, 'making it work' means not rocking the boat. It means bending over backwards and making children put up with far less than optimal care and conditions. It means 'making it work' for the employer.

But sometimes there are compromises that have to be made on all sides. Most schools have some form of before or after school care, and so saying that you must be there for drop offs and pickups is not reasonable on the part of the employee if they still ;expect full time wages. You can't expect to work 9:30 to 2:30 with a full time wage in a business environment that needs a staff member on site 9-5, because it is not reasonable for an employer to be expected to hire someone 9:00 - 9:30 and 2:30-5. You may be able to negotiate a job share that you can start early and finish early (or the other way around) so that you can at least do drop off OR pickup. You can't always have everything, and if women want to be able to be continue their careers after having children (and they should), that means utilising available options for care or family support.

It’s also a bit shitty to make out that you’re ‘saving the future’ by procreating. You’d be contributing to the future just as effectively if you volunteered helping unemployed youths into work...or adopted and gave a child a brighter path!

It's the shitty truth, Meteor.

No children, no economy down the road.

No amount of helping unemployed youths or adoption will help when there are too few adults to work at the jobs that are necessary, or pay the taxes to support the social services.

You can look up the problems facing Japan if you like.

To those congratulating themselves on planning ahead and securing 8-4 jobs, so superior to those other 'slacker' women - you should consider the fact that the only alternative to raising the birthrate on a massive scale is increasing automation of most jobs, as this alone can guarantee the sort of productivity levels that make a future economy possible. If your 8-4 job was 'travel agent' (remember them?) you perhaps already know what I am talking about.

Nobody is talking about regular business hours, MidniteScribbler.

The problem arises when employees are required to work 9-7, or on weekends. Or when someone is given 24 hours to cobble together a childcare arrangement to facilitate a change to a night shift.

The problem arises when employees are required to work 9-7, or on weekends. Or when someone is given 24 hours to cobble together a childcare arrangement to facilitate a change to a night shift.

So if a business is open those hours, are you actually saying that the parents on staff should be allowed to choose their hours, and everyone who doesn't have children should take whatever is left over?

I am saying that employers who require hours that are not parent friendly need to offer some alternative to 'suck it up/we are all equally inconvenienced by these hours' if they value their employees and sincerely want to create a co-operative, stress free, productive environment where loyalty and morale are high.

It's not good business practice to divide and conquer, or to refuse to work around the needs of employees you have spent money training, people who bring value to your company and contribute to your profit margin. Employees are resources and it is foolish and short sighted to squander what they offer by causing stress.

They could offer an on site nursery or a creche.They could offer the sort of paycheque that makes it possible for a parent to afford a nanny as opposed to relying on a grandparent who is thus knocked out of the job market and reliant on welfare instead of an income and cannot pay taxes to support social services...

The idea that decisions made by each individual company are taken in a vacuum with no knock on effects on wider economy and society, and that businesses have no responsibility to anything but their own bottom line, should be examined closely. How much does each job require from parents in terms of 'making it work' and how much does this have a negative effect on the wider economy?

If it takes the unpaid childcare work of one adult (a grandmother for instance, or a sahm) to enable another adult to earn an income, then it is possible that the practices and requirements of the employer may actually be holding the economy back, preventing optimal use of available talent, education, and skills.

How much does workplace stress contribute to the ailments that require medical treatment and thus cost the taxpayer?

Nobody should be forced to do something super inconvenient by their work place without getting something in return. Whether that's more salary, a bigger bonus, decent overtime pay, generous time off in lieu, promotion prospects... because most people at some point have something in their life that's more important than work. It's more obvious when you have a childcare issue because sometimes there just isn't a viable solution and it's probably harder to change jobs if you can't cope with the demands (your job options are likely to be more limited). But if there wasn't a culture of the employer expecting something for nothing it would be less of an issue. It seems to be mostly an Anglo American thing. 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. That doesn't mean I support all the CF parent examples on here, I don't, 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.

Here’s an idea: the reason why (most) men haven’t pushed back about fitting work around childcare responsibilities is NOT because they are afraid of the consequences...it’s because they don’t want to.

I will add, when people say you should get a job, that suits you and your family, thats sound advice, but the job centre requires you apply for every job available and go for any job, whether it's suitable or not. Unfortunately this means you end up, wasting a lot of time doing pointless interviews etc. Also when people say about before and after school care, theres very little for disabled children, other than family members and if you've got that your very lucky. Also if your a single parent or your OH, work long hours or away, your the only one to pick the slack,so need a flexible job. We do need the system overhauling a loit. Extra support for those with caring responsibility, also needed.

Bit disappointed that no one has even commented on the idea of a living wage for mothers and other carers - I posted a link a while back. That would enable mothers to either pay for childcare so they could go out to work, or get paid for the work they do raising their kids/looking after sick and elderly relatives.

I'd be really interested to hear what people think about it?

@mathanxiety

The truly shocking attitudes such as yours are exactly why working mothers can struggle in the workplace or in getting back to work. My choices, whatever they may be, are just as valid as the choice to have children and no I do not expect to be travel she favourably in the workplace because of it. Do you honestly really believe somebody who is say, infertile, should have the last pick of shifts or holidays every single time. It seems you do. Wow.

Fortunately I have never met anyone as self centred as you in real life, if I had, I am afraid I would soon learn not to hire mothers either. And I am sorry to say that because I happen to feel strongly about gender inequality at work. In my working life, it has often worked out well that others can take half term / school holidays and I prefer to work those times. I am not in an occupation that does shifts / weekends / bank holidays, but if I was and I was always expected to work them whilst parents were not, well I would leave and maybe all the others being discriminated against would as well.

*treated less favourably

@onefootinthegrave
I saw your link and forgot to post.
It sounds fantastic but I couldn't find the part where you talked about where the money is coming from to fund this.

Do you honestly really believe somebody who is say, infertile, should have the last pick of shifts or holidays every single time. It seems you do. Wow.

Do you honestly believe that, if there is that sort of inequality in the workplace, it’s because working mothers are running the show?

Surely you can’t possibly believe that?

I'm a florist. It's a mostly female dominated industry and appreciate that the economy won't come to a halt if floristry ceased to exist.

However, our shop is open 7am to 9pm. This is dictated by when we are most busy. We could open later and shut earlier but lose maybe 40% of our trade. If we did that, we'd have to close as we wouldn't make rent.

A huge proportion of our staff have school age children - the early starts and late finishes mean those staff members want a later start and earlier finish. We aren't busy enough to overlap too many members of staff, meaning I can't give somebody 7-3, someone else 1-9 and have the parent in 10-2 - that would mean I've got too many people floating around at the point of the day that's not busy.

It's so hard: we try and be as flexible as possible, but I have to turn away perfectly suitable candidates because the company can only employ so many staff with particular childcare needs. It would be helpful if these staff members could press their partners into taking part in the school run, But apparently that's "impossible".

I don't know what the answer is: shops particularly are driven to respond to the increasing expectation that they be open 24/7. If we as a society stopped treating shopping as a leisure activity there may be more of a move to decrease the hours the staff need to work.

Think some posters are being a bit harsh with the assumptions that all mothers are able to work at the weekend as easily as they do.

I'm a single parent with no family around and would struggle to get children one in every 4 Saturday's as that would be very difficult to get a childminder for and nurseries local are closed at the weekend.

She didn't approach it the right way but is not BU to ask for flexibility imo

@mathanxiety 'its not work life balance it's taking care of your responsibilities'

I'm not interested in your hierarchy of what is more valuable. But those responsibilities the parents responsibility. Your attitude to non parents stinks.

As I've said before I absolutely believe that if the job itself can be done flexibly to accommodate parents then it should be, but it can't be at the expense of other workers. We've all got the right to decent rest time hours, regardless of how we choose to spend that time.

@math

😂 I’m currently writing a thesis on flexible working hours in the modern work place and it’s impact on employees. Interesting fact!

@math - You’re failing to grasp the bigger economic picture whilst homing In on the tiny part you want to. I’m not sure whether you’re an intense idealist of actually don’t understand so I’m going to assume it’s the latter.

Allowing employees to work flexibly (hours and location is financially beneficial for large companies - less rented office space, lower overheads, less liability for employees working from home ....etc. So where they can they often do - I did a study of a Ftse 500 company currently leading their market in flexibility. However, there will always be rolls which require constant staffing levels and presence (nursing, customer services...emergency services) and to be flexible would cause absoloute

Is A cant make an important transfer until he speaks to B,C and D about it. But A works 9/5 and B,C and D only work weekends to juggle care for small children with their partners - it’s going to take over a week to do something that should have happened in 1 day.

Consider the knock on effect - you think UC/benefits and the council are a shit show now? Let’s see how bad it can get when everyone starts working the hours which suit them!

“Oh sorry you didn’t get your payment and can’t feed your children but try back in six weeks as the summer holiday just started and everyone is on holiday. We have 20 staff cover 70 roles”

THAT’s NOT ACCEPTABLE

“Sorry- most of our staff ‘are parents’!!!”

This also applies to small or struggling companies, for who hiring someone to work a set shift - then having them turn around and say they can’t do that- could often mean the end!

It ok to say ‘just hire someone else to cover the shifts they can’t’ - but what happens when that person had a child/ circumstances shift and they can’t do those difficult hours anymore- they’d end up in the same situation you’re talking about now. So really it’s not ‘resolving’ anything you’re just shifting the ‘make it work’ owness on to someone else. Or would you just expect a company to allow it and end up with a huge surplus of people working the desirable hours and having to keep hiring people who can cover the difficult ones.

🤔 if your answers made sense- beyond that of two dimensional idealism - I’d be the first to say it was a fantastic idea. But when people go stomping around mums net with ‘everyone should be able to work flexiblly’
‘Benefits should be stopped’
‘Living wage should be paid to everyone’

😂 it’s like when a toddler does something naughty and you’re annoyed but at the same time - you know they don’t know any better!

Your whole attitude ‘tips me off’ math. You seem to think that because someone doesn’t have children they are less important. Why should I give up my lifestyle? Why should I risk reducing my lifespan just so other people don’t have to do the shitty shifts?

I made a choice not to have kids but that wasn’t because I wanted to cover for anyone who did. Thank god I’ve never had to work with anyone with your attitude as you’d be covering my shift when I walked out!

Also, since when did underpopulation of the world start to be a problem that needed fixing?

All this bleating on about how parents are worthily saving the planet by providing the next generation. We need less people on the planet, not more!

This idea that parents are entitled to more flexibility that non parents causes huge amounts of resentment in the workplace.

I used to manage a team where you were required to work evenings and weekends regularly - these weren't set days as we were responding to requests to attend events. You were usually given at least a few weeks notice but occasionally last minute requests came in. There were also quite a lot of overnight stays required.
The biggest issue I had to deal with as a manager was the number of women in my team refusing to work evenings and take on early starts once they had children and the expectation that the childless members of the team would pick up the slack.
It was unfair and not entertained. We offered a huge amount of flexibility and paid well but we needed people to do the actual job they were hired to do - children or no children. And I say that as a parent who works full time so I understand the amount of organisation and planning life with children requires.