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 think some people are not trying very hard to arrange childcare. Someone at work was having a panic because they’d picked a term time only nursery and couldn’t find holiday camps for a 2 year old. They were told quite dimly that they were not going to be spending 6 weeks working with a 2 year old. It’s those sorts of situations that get into piss taking territory. The odd day of sickness is fine as are older children but you just can’t work properly and look after an under 5.

If it is an external person can't you request someone else to organise it? I would email to her manager and request replacement

I think I would have just terminated the call after the second interruption, said something like "this isn't working for me, or, I suspect, you- we need to be able to talk about this uninterrupted. Let's arrange when you do have childcare. Bye"

Urgh. I was interviewing with a colleague a couple of weeks ago and she broke off mid interview to scream at a teenager to open the front door (for a delivery), she didn’t mute her mike. It would have been really unprofessional even if she had.

I apologised to the candidate. He didn’t pass the interview (unrelated) and it would have been grounds for a complaint. She worked for HR as well.

Not just women, my male manager (and I use that word loosely) never, ever has a full day in the office. Despite the company having a work from office policy he never bloody there!

School runs both ends of the day, ‘off site meetings’ which you know is absolute bollocks and he’s shirking from home, visits to the little darlings new nursery, collecting them from grandparents and taking them home where ‘he’ll work from home’ later.

It’s a joke, all his focus is on his kids and family - work is just one of these things he does around that.
it’s especially galling as he doesn’t afford the same flexibility to the rest of us, we wouldn’t get our jobs done if he did. He has no respect from his team whatsoever.

Good way to handle it!

I don’t give a flying crap what childcare people have or not but when I’m left hanging on a Teams call while they cajole their child, or dog, it’s affecting me and my job. Totally unprofessional and they’ll get shirt shrift. I agree with pp that after the second interruption I would’ve suggested rescheduling the meeting as she clearly was unable to carry it through.

Why shouldn't she let the manager know that she wasn't able.to do her job as she was looking after her child?
If I dont do my job I would get pulled up on it she's paid to work not watch her child.

I have refused permission to WFH for purposes of childcare for precisely this reason. It's taking the piss.

I worked from home once with my kids....it got to 11 am, and I had lost count how many times they came to the office for one thing or the other. I said never again,so now I am paying £1000 for 4 weeks holiday club for my twin boys. I literally put £90 away every month for to cover this. I always make use of the early bird discount, to save extra.

I doubt my boss would care. We worked full time through lockdown and got everything done.

my manager (who owns the business) mentioned to me the other day she looks after her granddaughter sometimes when she’s WFH.

Shes never told anyone that we can’t WFH with kids.

I’m so bored of miserable employers paying people a pittance so they can’t afford childcare and then whining when their employees have to juggle work and their kids.

Believe it or not, your (general ‘your’, not specifically op) twatty little business will never mean as much to someone as their kids do.
Their kids will always come first and I very much doubt they give a flying fig about you or your company.

Pay people more or accept that they have other responsibilities that will pop up that are far more important than you making more money than you’ll ever pay them.

Simple 👍🏻

Believe it or not, your (general ‘your’, not specifically op) twatty little business will never mean as much to someone as their kids do.
Their kids will always come first and I very much doubt they give a flying fig about you or your company.

Someone with that attitude frankly doesn't deserve to be in paid employment.

Children are their parents' responsibility. Not their employer's.

Don't just copy her boss on the email, put a formal complaint or separate email to her manager and copying HR. It should be a big offended in most companies or at least she would get a warning.

She should get childcare obviously, you can't really focus on work of you're looking after a child.

Because It affects other employees, like op. Why is this mum's time more important than op's?

I'm glad to see this thoughtful post, although I understand the frustrations of others too. I had a baby 10 years ago and the childcare landscape was very different then - not to mention the there has been a huge increase in the cost of living. I have been squeezed from every angle to the point childcare is barely doable. There are days this summer where I'm WFH and my daughter is here. I use annual leave as much as I can but it it doesn't cover all holidays, and of course there are various times throughout the summer where leave would be declined due to numbers. I don't have family help. I hate feeling like I'm half-assing everything on those days but I don't feel I have a choice. I'm just lucky she isn't younger, and I'm lucky that my employer is flexible and that I can take a longer lunch break and take 10 minutes away and then make it up. If I couldn't do it that way and have her here while I WFH, I wouldn't be able to work at all because I couldn't commit to the hours, and I've read plenty of threads moaning about it of work mums as well.

Nothing demonstrates the extent to which mothers juggle and make do in a society not built for them than the lack of grace extended to them around work and childcare.

Wait what? BCC is invisible to the recipient? I never knew that! I thought it was just another line on the email. Mind blown

I also think many of the posts stating we HAD to pay for childcare pre-wfh are missing the fact that quite often many just didn't work because they COULDN'T pay for or source childcare. Or we worked less hours - I did. I was only able to increase mine because of WFH and I'm still struggling to make ends meet. Take away WFH and the ways in which I manage it, and my hours would go down and I would be utterly fucked.

The 'b' stands for 'blind'.

Agree with pps
Nobody disputes childcare is extortionate but so are lots of things. You wouldn't just not pay your electric bill or steal food because its too expensive and expect to get away with it. It's just one of those things you have to suck up.

Most people who wfh will already have reduced childcare costs compared to people who work in careers where that isn't possible (or indeed their own jobs 6 years ago) - if you're not commuting everyday there's often less need for breakfast/after school clubs, reduced chance of being stuck in traffic and having to pay late fees, not to mention just generally shorter hours.

And tbf I agree that once kids are old enough to not need constant supervision it's different- once they are, say, between 8-11, that's even more of a potential saving. Same with emergencies or sickness.

But not getting any childcare for children young enough to need constant supervision, for whole days or even weeks at a time, is a piss take and "but its expensive" is not an excuse.

My own example was after covid, so that wasn't an excuse.

I had a meeting with a potential client at their request. The women i met had her toddler son in the call. At first I was like that's nice and proceeded to discuss what we could offer. The child became more and more disruptive. Woman said she'd be back in a minute, never returned. I was fuming.

Definitely send the email, in a subtle way, something like

"Great to connect earlier today, and it was lovely to meet your little one too! I've popped over some notes and initial thoughts below on what we discussed.
Its unfortunate that we weren't able to cover everything, as your child frequently needed your attention. To ensure future calls are productive and focused, could you give me a heads-up on whether you'll have childcare in place? It'll really help us get everything done efficiently! I've copied in [manager] so he/she is in the loop on our progress with [project/task] so far"

@IcedPurple aaahh I see. Thanks for that. I don't work in admin, just as well! But like everyone else I use email for life admin etc.

I worked in a supermarket as a teenager and during one terrible spell in life where my parents were divorcing and my then 11 year old sister was struggling, I was told that 'the needs of the business' was paramount. There was absolutely no humanity in the place. I understand people being professional and wanting to do the best job they can, I've always had a strong work ethic and I enjoy doing a good job myself, but that attitude can get fucked. I will never understand people the absolute lack of compassion people have for human beings when it comes to sucking up the arse of employers instead.

Maybe I am a bit salty as when DS was young I was the one brandishing my diary at sports day in June trying to call in favours over the summer holidays for childcare because he wasn’t keen on going to holiday club all the time. I worked reduced hours and usually took out someone else’s DS on that day so I could build up some credit. It got easier age 10 because he could go a sports holiday club which he much preferred.
I also used some of the unpaid weeks of parental leave.

I would never have considered it an option to keep DS at home with me whilst I worked, probably because in those days we were mostly in the office.

Whereas these days parents seem to take it as given that they can look after their DCs and get paid for working at the same time. It’s fine for the odd couple of hours or days, but at a minimum people should at least be aware that other people expect them to deliver their work and to make alternative arrangements if they are going to be unable to communicate about work matters without being interrupted.

I am glad you said something OP, because otherwise when your project doesn’t deliver it will be your fault.

Put it this way, would you be happy if the childcare workers who look after your children were doing another job when they were meant to be looking after your child? No, because you pay for that service. You pay for them to be looked after. You expect professionalism. The same applies to any job, if your kids are taking away from you doing your job efficiently (which in the vast majority of cases it is especially with small children) you are not being professional, you are not doing the job you are paid for. In fact you are double jobbing. Not on.