I currently work in a call centre, the pay is decent for that sector but still not high earning by any means. Full time I bring home about £1900 after tax. I WFH 2 days a week, the rest is office 10am-6:30pm. It’s a full on job, constant calls, 2 x 15 min breaks and one 30 min lunch break. I often stay up to 40 minutes late if I get a complex call last minute with a customer who is complaining or has a complex query. The hours are usually Monday to Friday and 1 in 3 Saturdays.
I’m 5 months pregnant and had originally planned to go back after maternity leave but I’m now beginning to dread it and don’t even think it’s possible. We’ve had quotes from childcare centres near us and I’d only have a few hundred left each month even with the funded childcare hours. Plus it wouldn’t even work with my hours, if the nursery shuts at 6pm, I work until 6:30pm, wouldn’t get there until at least 7pm, potentially later if I get stuck on a call. I’d need nursery and wraparound childcare, and that would fully kill my income. Baby would still need to be in nursery even on the WFH days as the job has no down-time at all. My call-centre is big in every worker being treated the same therefore there are no part timers as apparently it would make resource planning too complicated.
DH works on a rotating shift pattern and barely ever has weekends off. He usually works 4 x 12 hour days and the days he works are different each week. He also has the opportunity to do at least one overtime shift a week for double pay where he can make £380 in one day, and he tends to do this when he can. He probably gets 2 full weekends off every 12 weeks. Including the overtime he makes about £40,000 a year. He works 7am-7pm usually. We won’t have any family support, my parents live an hour away and had me in their 40s so they are elderly. DP isn’t British and his family all live abroad. There is quite literally nobody.
He doesn’t want to change jobs as the overtime opportunities at his current job help us have a decent lifestyle, 2 holidays a year, nice car etc. If he had a Monday-Friday 9-5 it would be different as I could get a weekend or evening job but it’s just not doable for us. He also has dyslexia and couldn’t do an office job, he needs to be out grafting. Also what is brilliant about DP’s job is sometimes there is no work on site and he’ll work 2 hours and then get sent home the rest of the day, on full pay. But you never know if he’s going to be kept the full day or not so you can’t plan childcare around this.
Even if I could find a 9am-3pm job for example (the holy grail for parents), I would still feel like we were wasting money. On DP’s 3 days off in the week, ideally I’d like him to be with our child whilst I work (he wants this too) but to retain the nursery place I’d still have to pay for the hours each week even if the child didn’t go during DP’s days off! It would be a complete and utter waste of money and I would feel resentful as child would be at home with DH 3 days in the week but I’d still end up paying the 5 full nursery days to retain the place, as the following week the it’d be different days I’d need baby to go in to nursery.
Also I have a health condition and DH has lactose intolerance so we need to watch our diet and eat freshly cooked home-made meals. Any “throw in the oven” processed food makes us both so ill. I have to meal-plan and cook extensively. Being at home with baby I could manage this so much better.
Working currently seems insane to me. Our mortgage is only £600 per month. Even if I stopped working and factoring in baby costs, DP would still have about £500 left at the end of each month. I’ve explained these concerns to DP and he understands.
I feel like it’s going to just be impossible to work unless DP changes jobs but he doesn’t want to which I completely understand as he’d never find another job where he can do a £380 overtime every week and where he sometimes gets sent home but is still paid for the full day (this happens at least once a week).
AIBU?