to think I can get by without childcare in August because work is quiet?

[isitPeri1]

Every August, work slows down massively. It has always been this way. There is barely anything coming in, hardly any meetings or deadlines, and most of my team is off. My manager and her manager are both away for the whole of August, so it is very unlikely anything urgent will come up.

I have primary school-aged kids and I am thinking I might skip childcare this year. I usually only have about one to two hours of work a day in August, and some days there is literally nothing to do at all. Anything that does come up, I can usually fit around the kids early in the morning or after they have gone to bed. I have proper annual leave booked for September when they are back at school, so I will get a proper break then.

Has anyone else done this? Just managed without childcare when work was super quiet?

That is a nasty, lazy take from someone who clearly has no idea what they are talking about.

The comment about not wanting to talk to my kids? That says more about you than it does about me.

How my weeks been every day.

Message boss. Any work today?
boss, Nope enjoy your day, you know what it’s like this time of year.

In fact my boss will be in America as of Monday for four weeks he is so sure of it being dead. Twiddling his thumbs by a pool.

Regarding my contract it states I will be given exact jobs and can even reject them if I deem them not appropriate.

I will basically live on retainer in down times to fix fuck ups. Our clients want everything tip top 0% failure for times like August and Christmas so work triple in the lead up to have back ups of back ups in place. If something falls between the gaps and a oh shit comes though there are four of us, but only one of us will have that particular job still leaving three sitting on our thumbs. So we just make sure between ourselves not all of us are on holiday at once.

Come September will we start preparing for new to be ready for keys dates again. Mandy will have job one, I’ll have job two, Kerry job three and Amanda job four. When I’ve finished my job I’ll be on job five and so on. We don’t share.

We also have zero contact with the client. We just get the job info, the only contact is the boss.

If boss says no work it’s no work. We have nothing else to do.

That is not how redundancies work. You make a role redundant, not pick the person you think is slacking off. That would be a performance management issue, not a reason for redundancy.

Carry on trying to put the fear onto OP though.

So if there are several people doing the same job one of their roles will be redundant. You choose between them if you want to lose one role.

Well, not quite.

You make a role redundant by looking at whether that role is needed in your new Op Model. One of the criteria for deciding whether it is needed is likely to be demand/productivity.

Equally, if that role translates to a position with several incumbents, productivity of the incumbents might well pop up in the selection criteria for redundancies.

However, OP has already explained that she is confident that there are unlikely to be redundancies and that she wouldn’t be likely to be at risk.

I've been away from this thread for about 24 hours - has OP given us any insight into what she does yet/what her industry is?

To all those people saying 'not all businesses are the same, maybe it's fine in OP's industry and this is what is expected'.... yes maybe it is, but until she tells us the bare minimum about what kind of work she does, it's extremely hard to judge whether she could or should be using her time differently.

After you’ve had a rest before during the summer holiday, whilst your DH takes them away.

Abd a month off paid, just you know looking after yore DC, why would you need a rest from that? It’s just parenting.

Unless you're her manager, then whether she could or should be "using her time differently" is absolutely none of your business.

I wouldn't share my industry either if I was the OP, it would just invite a whole load more bitching from people who think they know the ins and outs of everyone's job.

I’m finding the number of women clearly unhappy about a woman making work work for her, with a flexible, understanding manager, and who takes care of herself while not neglecting her children or her job a pretty unpleasant read.

Jealously and envy are always ugly.

It's so depressing, isn't it?

We have a woman with a job she enjoys, flexibility, a great manager, the ability to save money on childcare and who takes annual leave to spend time by herself, and she's slammed. Sounds like the fucking dream to me.

It is not for random strangers on the internet to judge whether I am using my time appropriately. That is for my manager to decide and they already have. I have been open with them, they know exactly what the workload is like at this time of year and they are completely fine with how I am managing it.

I do not need to share the details of my role to justify a working pattern that has already been approved by the people who actually matter.

I do not need to justify to you how I use my annual leave.

Exactly this. Thank you.

The way people jump to conclusions and twist things has made it really clear that no matter what I said, someone would have a problem with it. Everyone thinks they’re an expert on everyone else’s job even when they have no idea how things actually work behind the scenes.

I’m glad someone gets it.

Of course you don’t, but you posted it on a forum and will get views, I know you like the ones saying it’s fine, but you’ll get opposing views.

Which of course you don’t like.

Why ask then? If you already know people will respond differently and you are clearly fine with giving your own opinion, why is it a problem when I push back?

Of course I do not expect everyone to agree. That is the nature of a forum. But if people come at me with judgment or assumptions, I am going to respond.

Why ask what? 😕

Read your post at 15:44 to find out what you asked.

I’d assumed as you’d already answered that it was over, and you’d moved on..

Clearly not, you’re going back to it.

Why did she post in the first place?
And for someone with two young kids and a ' full-time job ' she has an insane amount of time to respond to all these responses 😆

I have the same age children and if I had a job which only required me to answer emails or take the odd phone call I could definitely work from home/a day out. I wouldn't want to do it for the whole of the month, I would mix it up where some days they were in a club, some days I would take off and some days I would stay at home or go out somewhere like a soft play or a park where I could keep half an eye on them whilst I worked.

Pretty much what I do now but instead of taking the time off to stay at home because I can't work from home I would save my holiday days and use them for more exciting things.

That also includes having some time just for me too, I'm off all week but I've booked the kids into holiday club for 2 days so I can have some time to myself.

I don't think a work from home job where you have constant meetings and phone calls is suitable even with an 8 and 10 year old but for a job you can pick up and put down when it suits then go for it.

I want to know what job you are in where you get paid but don't need to do anything 😂

Clearly you haven't read the thread 😂

Just for giggles. Is op working in a school?
No wonder it's quiet in August.

Enjoy your well earned rest in September! You deserve it