Get frigging childcare

[JuniperJuly]

Yes another one of these posts.

Emergencies dont count obviously but otherwise, no you cant do your job and look after your young child at the same time.

This morning I had a 2hr teams meeting with an external person trying to organise an event for September. It was almost impossible. Every 2 minutes it was no darling, dont stick the pencil up your bum (true story. I dont care if she is on here), or telling me to hang on a second while she dealt with her child or her child shouting down the headset and being told he is sooooo cute.

I said that its awful when you get let down by childcare and she said that she was always planning on working with him at home. But she obviously isnt working! If shes like that on a teams call what is she like normally?

Last week I was on a group call and could hear someone's baby crying. Maybe she has a nanny or something, whatever, but then it became very obvious that the person wasnt actually on the call but had dialled in and buggered off, presumably to look after the crying child.

Ive now got to send an email to the person from this morning to discuss all the things we couldnt do this morning. Im not even going to bother putting in another meeting with her.

I've half a mind to send an email along the lines of
lovely to meet your child this morning. You had your hands full with him so we couldnt discuss everything so here is what I need. Its probably easier to do via email to limit distractions"
and cc her manager in.

Would that make me a bitch? Im so annoyed at the delay and the extra work it will give me.

I haven’t voted because you’re being both reasonable and unreasonable.

YANBU to be very annoyed that the child was there and you couldn’t get things done. However, was it a one off?

YABU to send a sarky email and even more unreasonable to copy in her boss. I highly doubt that she wanted her kid there and to have her boss telling her off, as well as you, isn’t very nice.

I think the key thing here is she has said she deliberately didnt have childcare which is madness...

My company are happy for us to WFH in emergencies like if kids sick/childcare cancelled etc etc as they figure us getting some work done around the kids at home is better than paying us in full for a sick day/last minute a/l and obviously it's rare...

But on those occasions if I have teams meetings ill always start by explaining and apologising and people are really fine with it as it cant be helped.

Planning not to have childcare with young kids would be a no go for most though as surely its not sustainable day in day out?!

It’s a difficult one, but generally if a child is young enough to require parental supervision, they should be in some form of childcare. My kids are now older and are able to look after themselves. They know not to interrupt me when I’m working unless there’s a genuine emergency. If they are going out they text me to let me know. Occasionally colleagues have a sick child at home in which case I’m understanding. Otherwise no, I don’t expect to hear or see colleague’s children during meetings.

If it is an external company and impacting your ability to work effectively you need to deal with it yourself (say in call when it happens, there are too many distractions here for me, when will you be free to discuss this?), or raise it with either your manager or theirs.

Take the personal out of it. This is work.

I agree. I occasionally have to WFH with my daughter around, she's 5, and she knows the rules- you don't come into the room if Mummy or Daddy are on the phone or on a Teams call, you find the other parent or sort out your problem yourself. Obviously 5 year olds do break the rules and once in a while she will appear on a Teams call with colleagues, I'll usually mute myself and remind her she needs to go to a different room until I'm done and she will.

This summer, we're either on A/L, or she's in holiday club, or she's with Grandma, bar 2 days when we have relatives coming staying and we will be WFH.

How much longer was that call though because she wasn't doing her job properly? It's disrespectful to the OP who now has to take even more time out of her day emailing when she's already tried to sort it on a meeting. Not ok.

I'd send your email copying the manager.

There is a bigger issue here that has featured on MN quite a lot lately of the unaffordability of childcare. Many people do not have parents that can watch their children.

bollocks to that. I spent an absolute bloody fortune in childcare over the years as no family. I lost days of work when the childcare fell through etc etc.

If i encounter something like this i end the meeting, email the other person and anyone else who was on the call, cc to my boss and their boss and explain that it isn't acceptable and that an alternative meeting needs to be had.

If this is someone you work with in your organisation, I'm sorry but I think you have a duty to report. They are getting paid to do a job, which they clearly can't do, as they are caring for their child.
She was being totally unprofessional and possibly breaking work policies by her actions. She is spoiling WFH for others who do do it responsibly.
She was also preventing you doing your job, as she was not focused on work matters during your meeting.

I’d be furious and unlikely to use that company again if it was external.

I'm assuming someone is paying that woman's company for a non-existent 'service'

Only ever accepted in my team in an emergency. Our dogs often join calls… depends who is on the call and the subject being discussed. When I say often, it’s a handful of times a year. I would say though, if the meeting could have been an email, why not just do that to start with? Forget dc being there, stop having unnecessary meetings.

I’m passive aggressive so would definitely send the email 😂

the thing is, if she's an external consultant, OPs company gets billed for 2 hours where productive time was way less than that.

If she's consulting internally, same kind of thing applies, except that it is stealing OPs time and her own time.

Definitely, professionally, flag it up to your boss and to her.

I agree. A planned meeting isn't an emergency and she was highly unprofessional.

This!

Our house rule is if DHs door is open it’s ok to interrupt or be noisy, when it’s closed the general house volume is turned down and he’s not to be interrupted. There has never been an issue our DCs know the rules.

It’s the ones who don’t separate working from home and being at home that cause the issues because employers think that people can’t be 100% focused on work at home, especially if they have kids, but that’s not true for people who are professional.

I would absolutely be letting her manager know, especially if she had no intention of getting childcare.

I think you all care far too much about your employers, who likely don’t care about you at all.

Yes, I would flag it to your boss, not hers. You have no idea the relationship she has with her manager. Maybe they are all one big happy family and love having the kids around. In which case, you'll look like a meanie and perhaps someone they don't want to work with. Either way, her manager's first loyalty is to her own staff, so keep your escalated frustrations in-house for now (athough deffo pull your meeting woman up on it) and let your manager escalate if needed.

I just do not get it. I really don’t. I’ve been a SAHM (not something we could afford and Involved having to move house to make it work) due to having an SEN child who no after school/holiday club would touch with a barge pole. But 7 years ago when I was working finance in a large multinat it was completely inconceivable to work from home whilst looking after kids during the school holidays. In extreme emergency situations, illness, childcare let down…etc you would either take emergency time off of managers would look the other way for a day or two but the absolute cheek of actually planning to spend the entire holidays selling your time to your employer whilst multitasking it with looking after small kids. It baffles me.

Here is my understanding. You absolutely cannot plan to work from home without child care IF

• Your child can’t entertain themselves for stretches of at least 2 hours without disturbing you
• your child cannot fully toilet themselves without any supervision or assistance from you.
• you have more than one child and they are prone to fighting or arguing that requires your involvement
• your child cannot get themselves a drink/snack without asking you.

I say this very fairly as a parent of two (one with SEN one without)

Lol @ 'no pencils up the bum darling' followed by 'you're so cute'. 🤣

It's bang out of order really. If someone's working their kids shouldn't be in the same room ideally. If space doesn't allow this then there needs to be someone else taking the kids away from the area the person is working.

It's fine if it's just typing, doing spreadsheets etc but if you're speaking to a colleague on call or video or client it's not on for kids to be disrupting it.

You can develop a strategy pushing the WFH person to get her shit together whilst doing it w appropriate business speak.

before next meeting - suggest to streamline video calls and cope with distractions, that both you other person do some preparation. Agenda, bullet points, graphs charts. Perhaps stick to a shorter call - say maximum 15 minutes to hit all points. If meetings need to be longer - suggest 2 shorter ones.

be blunt, when she’s talking pencil in bum. Say- you have an important distraction, I’ll disconnect now. Send me a message when you can focus, and we can finish. Let her know you have not no time to waste. “Like you, I have other priorities’ don’t have time & need to be efficient“

she is wasting your time.

Just CC the manager , this is completely unacceptable. What a waste of your time!

When I’ve had this before on a Teams call with a toddler climbing on someone’s lap and chattering I said “Oh so sorry Sarah I see you’ve joined this meeting on your day off. How kind of you, I could have rearranged if you’d said”. She didn’t reply but I got a few smirks from others. It’s so unprofessional.

I would 100% send the email.

Is the external contact a customer, or supplier, or a different type of relationship?

If customer then I’d escalate my side, but next steps would depend on the overall relationship/politics, and how senior the contact is.

If a supplier I would be absolutely fuming that I was paying for support and received half a service. I’d want the wasted time rectified their side tbh.

you are literally not doing your job. Grounds to be fired.

Then you just have to care about how to keep a roof over your head and employer has replaced you with someone who is probably cheaper.

Grow up

Maybe I'm old school but I do remember the very real struggles of juggling full time work and childcare. I have a lot of sympathy for those doing the juggling and those working with the jugglers. In this instance I would email her and say can you find a slot in the next couple of days where we can talk without interruption because I felt that last time it was a waste of my time and I have deadlines etc.
Also responding to an earlier post, I love it when pets pop up in Teams meetings!