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.

The "childcare is expensive" argument is moot. It's always been expensive, and before WFH was the norm, we all managed accordingly.
What's happened now is that people have got used to not paying childcare, prioritise spending elsewhere, and then complain that they have to work with their children around because they can't afford to do what they always did before, which was pay for childcare.

Yes, I see that now. The entitlement is unbelievable for us who had to arrange childcare. We had someone on a full time contract 9.15 to 5.30pm say they were leaving a prearrange 2 hour meeting at 3pm to pick up their children in front of managers and the whole team. Absolutely no awareness what so ever of how this looked. Thought it was their entitlement.

This is exactly why after having to deal with two complaints from clients about staff WFH dealing with children's needs during calls I have now brought all my team back to office every day and they are only allowed to WFH by exception which has to be requested and agreed. It is really amazing that in the past 6 months since doing this how performance has improved and the two staff members that did not like the back to office instruction and coincidentally the same two whose performance was below expectations have now resigned and left the company.

This issue with 2 individuals lead to a team of 40 being pulled back into the office. Why? Because rather than the crap managers dealing with the offending staff, a blanket ban was imposed and all suffered. Not my team, but one that has a tough job, one easily handled at home, now all impacted.

I think I’d send that email but not cc the manager this time, hopefully she will think about it and will sort out childcare if it happens again then go for the cc.

I'm willing to bet it was rather more than just '2 individuals' taking the pee pee.

It's not like people are going to casually admit that they faff about all day while 'working' from home 'so productively.

Let's face it op, you should be charging her double as she wasted your time this morning and you'll have to redo.

She thinks her time is more valuable than yours. And ain't afraid to let you know

It’s specifically stated in our hybrid policy that you must have childcare (save for emergencies when WFH and you have to be available to come in to the office with no notice so must have childcare in place.

I pay for 4 days of wraparound to include WFH days (I have 1 day off) even though I don’t need all of it. But I can’t use lack of childcare as a reason to be unavailable.

The only time DD is home when I am working is if she is ill and I think I can juggle my day to avoid taking leave (sometimes possible, sometimes not). Or the last day of term this summer when there was no after school wraparound so she was at home 3.30-5 but watched a film and ate snacks. But I didn’t have any meetings or calls.

Employees who do this are not fully engaged with their job and will not actually be delivering their contracted hours. This reduces a company’s productivity and therefore their profit margins which is (at least in part) why this country has such high levels of public debt.
If you can’t afford childcare, don’t have children and don’t use this as an excuse. You knew you wanted children and could have saved money to help with the childcare costs.
Why do so many people complain about things that they can control?

In the last month I've had two meetings with constant interruptions by children. One was an external committee meeting and one an interview, so hardly informal. Neither of them stopped it, just smiled indulgently while the children gawped at the screen.

I don't find it progressive or modern. It's unprofessional.

You are being unreasonable 30 years ago. We used to be able to take our children to work with us. They sat quietly and let us get on with our job.
It’s probably a combination of shit parenting with badly behaved children, No doubt caused by the fact that the parents are constantly on stupid teams calls I don’t have time to give them any attention to teach them where pencil should go

Do you actually know the company's policy on this? Just before you go CCing or BCCing in her manager.
My husband's company encourage their workforce to have the children around - to them, it's a huge benefit of WFH, and if a kid pops into a meeting asking for a snack to be opened, or a pencil to be sharpened, then so be it! It's very common at his workplace and productivity is a long way up from pre-covid and wfh levels (their theory is people were working shorter days as they had to leave the office at 3pm to go and collect the kids for instance, whereas now they collect the kids from school and carry on working.

It's also generally expected that work will slow down during school holidays as people are off so if they're still in work but their kids are in the background that's better for them than people having time off all at the same/similar time

I’ve had to spend over £1000 on childcare for this summer holiday period. It’s all so complicated! There is no way I could work with a young kid around.

There are sometimes varying sides to this.

I work part time. I am not paid to be at work 1 day a week. I spend that day with my child. I recently had to have a series of meetings with an external person who was insistent they could only do that day. I said fine, but you'll have to accept my toddler in the background. I'm doing this in my free time. And no I can't just pop him into his nursery with an 18 month waiting list for an extra day and effectively pay to work.

I feel like with Teams, people are way less respectful of your day off than they used to be. It used to be that no obviously you wouldn't bring your kid to the boardroom on your day off. But now there is all this wheedling to "just pop onto a meeting for a bit" and you basically can't win. If I say no, I'm being too rigid. If I say yes, people whine about my baby interrupting.

It's so disappointing that the responses in relation to childcare costs are: "well I suffered and paid a fortune so you also have to suffer. Work should come first and foremost over anything else and if you didn't plan out every cost that might incur from having children before conception you shouldn't have had them"

rather than

"what can we as a society do to make childcare more available and affordable so that more mothers can work?"

I was in the workforce 30 years ago and this didn't happen anywhere I encountered

In my view you are either working or not ,end of..she was not. I think alot of people have a false sense of entitlement regarding wfh and childcare. Do the one you get paid for properly please. I have had enough of ringing places like my bank for example to hear sshhh mummy will get you a sandwich soon or sorry xx I just need to pause this call little fred has fallen over..then they get upset when you say sorry I dont care ....go back to fking work!!!

That is awful. I work from home one day a week during hols with my mum helping, and even that’s a nightmare. I have to lock myself away otherwise it’s constant interruptions. If my mum couldn’t make it I’d maybe do it if I had no meetings and thought I could finish my tasks/make time up. If I had meetings, no way - I’d either book the time off or ask to make it up another day.

If she had been apologetic and it was a short notice childcare issue you’d be a bit unjustified, but it’s the sheer entitlement of it! Will it affect you work wise if you send an email like that though?

I don't know what job that was but I was a civil servant 30 years ago when my DC were little. My job is largely WFH now but there is no way on earth children of any age could go into the office.

It wasnt always easy and it could be very expensive and include juggling and using all your A/L but they did it.

When my DC were little there was no WFH. DH and I used absolutely all our annual leave on childcare when nursery wasn't available or children were sick.
When I had used it all up I was sometimes able to get unpaid leave.

That’s a shame. I feel really sorry for you.

Yeah, it has never been normal (in modern times) to bring your child to work.

"what can we as a society do to make childcare more available and affordable so that more mothers can work?"

I agree with this but if you have a job where you need to be on a lot of calls, your solution can’t be to try and power through with kids butting in, surely.

Why? 🤣

You're not a "bitch" for being frustrated — you're human, and you're dealing with a real workplace challenge. That said, how you handle it matters a lot. Here’s how to think about this, and a professional path forward:

Let’s break this down:

1. You’re right about the core issue.

Working while actively caring for a young child — especially in meetings — is not sustainable or professional in most cases. Emergencies happen, sure, but if this is her standard operating mode, it’s not fair to the team or the work.

1. Your frustration is completely valid.

You lost productive time, had to pick up extra slack, and now face inefficiency because someone else didn’t set boundaries.

1. But tone matters. A lot.

If you express your (understandable) annoyance in a passive-aggressive or pointed way — especially if you CC her manager — it can reflect poorly on you, even though the issue isn’t your fault.

External contractor?

Dear Ms Unprofessional, thank you for meeting with me this morning. We shall not be going ahead with having you organising our event and shall be looking for another supplier. Yours...

And copy her boss. Completely unacceptable.