Christmas Leave 'I have kids'

[paintityellow]

Yes I know this comes up every year, but it's so bloody annoying. The Christmas leave list went around in September, with it being specified that priority for Christmas Day would be given to people who worked it last year.
Despite this we now have a couple of people really trying to pressure others to give up Christmas Day because 'I have kids'. One of these women has had the last 3 Christmas Days off, the other's kids are teenagers. One of the people they're trying to pressure wants to fly home to spend Christmas day with her parents, Another has no family in the area so also wants to travel home for Christmas. Both worked last year.
AIBU to find this attitude infuriating?

Why is compassion only relevant to people with children and nobody else?

Also why bring OP into it, her post doesn't suggest she's either the person asking or being pressured?

We don't have to have cover over Christmas period in my new job but I nearly always choose to work some of the days in-between the actual bank holidays anyway because I prefer to take my leave during the summer, so I probably would volunteer to cover colleagues with younger kids (or any other reasons to want the time off) if it was needed, but I wouldn't be impressed if it was expected of me or if colleagues tried guilt tripping.

Also love the assumption that people without kids are happy to go out on the piss NYE instead. Im not into drinking Ive never even been drunk but also chose not to have kids. its not one or the other

All this thread is doing is cementing for me that I will no longer accept being guilt tripped / bullied into making any sacrifice just because someone is a parent and has the breathtaking arrogance to believe my time / life doesn’t matter.

This drives me mad as I have kids too and grandkids and Christmas is the only time we are all together. It doesn't matter that my kids are in their thirties as I still want to see them.

@DragonFly98 It isn’t up to you to decide who is most important in the “most deserving of Christmas Day”. Thankfully. We all deserve it equally. And if want to swap for a colleague, good for me. Equally if I want to spend it in my pyjamas eating quality st and watching tv alone with my cat, I deserve that too.

YANBU

I can’t stand this attitude and it’s part of the reason we working mums have got a bad name in some quarters. People without young kids are entitled to have a life too and get time off at Christmas if they wish.

Sadly, there are still 6% of 1963 voters who think the OP is unreasonable 🙄

All this post has done for me is highlight the massive child/parent hating population loitering on MN. Oh the irony (I know MN is for everyone) 🙄

Again, before I am lynched - I think everyone has an equal right to time off.

Where I used to work their was one woman who booked as soon as diaries opened and was quite clear that if her requests were denied, she would go sick, as 'she was a single mum and it was only her' , except her DD went to her dad's alternate Xmas, new years. I was wtf, but her demands were honoured by the senior management, as her line manager I was overruled.

Oh come on. The loudest and proudest child haters on MN are parents themselves. I don't know how many times I've read 'I can't stand any kids except my own'.

@FeverBeam True 🤣🤣

As a manager who has done the Christmas roster for years, I think your management are unfair to put it back on staff to sort.

No one really wants to work Christmas but there are a lot of jobs where it comes with the territory.

I’ve done more than my fair share over the years and am still happy to work over the Christmas period if not particularly on Christmas Day.

I do the roster and work on the basis that those who worked last year should have it off this year and vice versa. I won’t generally agree annual leave except in special circumstances. Anyone with issues comes to me and I deal with it or tell then why I can’t change things. It works.

I don’t hate children at all. I don’t hate most parents either. In fact, I don’t really ‘hate’ anyone. I do very much dislike selfish, arrogant, self-obsessed, entitled, me, me, me, take, take, take parents who think they are more important than anyone else and look down upon and sneer at those who have made different life choices. There are clearly some of those people on this thread.

Making a choice to stand up for myself and start taking a stand against those types is not child or parent hating. You’re spectacularly reaching there. I will still consider helping / offering help to those nice parents that thankfully do exist out there.

Where’s the child/parent-hating, please? This one always gets thrown out on threads where it’s argued that parents aren’t the only people in the universe, and I’ve a sneaking suspicion that that is the new bar for “hatred”.

It really isn't the case though. There are people/groups who might not necessarily understand each other. But there isn't a parent hating population. Its a majority parent populated site. We all have different priorities, depending on our circumstances, and we're all entitled to that. We might not all understand the circumstances, but they're all valid. MN caters for everone.

@Acornsoup ironically, for me this thread has highlighted how a small but significant amount of Mumsnet thinks women without children are second class citizens who are less deserving of having time off at Christmas because they haven’t produced a child.

But they are only asking. No harm in that, and they are not even asking you. So YABU.,

Hear hear

For years we celebrated our Christmas Day on Boxing as loads of people working with my DH Christmas off as "they have kids";thing is so do we;we had very young children as one point obviously but did any of them give a shit about our children?;did they heck.

I remember one very entitled arsehole Colleague kicking off because as well as Xmas Eve & Xmas day they wanted Boxing Day off too which would have forced DH to cover all Christmas to which he was told no my DH was entitled to Boxing Day off as he was covering Xmas Eve&day.

Said entitled arsehole called in sick on Boxing Day and ruined our Christmas as DH had to go cover the shift;Entitled Arsehole got his comeuppance though;DH ended up being promoted;twice in fact and became his upline manager;DH got the pleasure of sacking him.

but by the same reckoning small children (under, what, 5?) don't actually have a clue about exactly what day it is and you could easily 'move' Christmas without them having the slightest idea, so they would be less impacted than adults.

Disliking the attitude of those that believe that having children means they should have priority over their colleagues isn’t the same thing as hating children and parents.

Warms my heartstrings to read this.

If everyone said a firm 'no' to these CFs' demands (they are not by any reckoning mere requests): if they stopped sacrificing the holidays they have equal entitlement to, if they said 'you're joking aren't you?' when they're informed they should give up the plane seats they've bought so a CF parent, who didn't, can sit next to their child; if fellow-passengers really shamed those who refuse to fold their pushchairs so a disabled person could have their allotted space, then the CFs would stop doing it. They'd have to stop doing it. They'd be wasting negative angst as they know they're going to be told to get lost.

And before I'm told what an evil, selfish besom I am with no conception that 'it's nice to be nice', the above has been my own fairly consistent experience. These are rarely civilised or apologetic requests for a desperately-needed favour that at some point is likely to be returned - you know, because my colleagues are decent people who don't imagine they're the centre of the universe - they are expectations. They are borne of the belief that the CF is entitled to whatever it is they want; that their needs are more important than those who already have the thing they want (and have bought or booked it), and that they are more deserving than the person they expect will shove over and cave immediately to those demands.

Bog off, CFs. In that old but wise MN maxim, 'no' is a complete sentence.

Absolutely. It's misogynistic imho.

Where’s the child/parent-hating, please?

There isn't any, but as with "spiteful" and general "s'not faaaiiirrrs" it's just something else to chuck in if there's a risk of some not getting their own way

As I said ... toddler-like, but without the stamping feet (although I've personally seen that too)

Mumsnet is a hotbed of misogyny.

Some of the worst culprits in that respect are not necessarily male.