to only work my contractual hours of 22 hours rather than doing lots of unpaid extra hours?

[MrsDW]

I used to work 4 days a week but after doing this for about 2.5 years felt no longer able to sustain it. Had to commute about 3 hrs a day in total to get to work, was often late picking dd up from nursery in the evening, and more significantly felt I was missing out on dd early years not to mention feeling knackered all the time. About 3 months ago I applied for a new job which is 22 hrs spread over 3 days a week. I had a chat with my manager when I accepted the job and told her one of the reasons I wanted the job is because it is part-time and fits in with my childcare commitments. She seemed to understand.

However, it is now obvious that everyone else in the organisation (I am the only part-timer) works way in excess of their hours. They spend long hours in the office and a couple have admitted they work at home during evenings and weekends. I wasn't to worried at first because I work hard at my job and do put in extra hours, often arriving 45 mins early in the morning so get started on work straight away before I'm "meant" to as it were. However, working late in the evenings is non negotiable as I have to pick up dd from nursery- there is no-one else. People have started making snidy remarks "it must be nice to be able to leave on time" and "I wish I had children so I could leave early". I normally politely reply something like "yes, but I only get a part-time wage" but no-one seems to get this...

I can see why my colleagues get a bit annoyed, they are paid for 35 hours a week and yet put in loads of extra hours, unpaid. However, my point is why should I work 35 hours a week and only get paid a part-time wage and more importatnly, why did the organisation take on a part-timer if they wanted a full time person? My manager has now started arranging evenings for 3 when she knows I have to leave at 4 and often the meetings over-run. I sit there at 3.50 panicking inside, thinking "I'm going to have to walk out of this meeting and all my colleagues will hate me". I can see them getting annoyed when I have to leave the meeting early.

I do try to be flexible. Recently I spent 2 nights away from home at a conference which meant re-arranging nursery days and getting DH to take annual leave. I put in more than my 22 hours that week but didn't complain, didn't put in for overtime etc. I work as hard as I can and have done work at home but I am now dreading going back to work tomorrow (the first time after christmas) because I dread all the comments. I know all my colleagues will have been working flat out and putting in extra hours and will expect me to do the same. AIBU not to?

should be "arrange meetings at 3pm" sorry.

No you're not unreasonable - they are idiots and they should not be picking on you. You are part-time for a reason and getting paid way less.

yanbu - would say have a talk with your manager about this. Snide comments on leaving work early as you have kids are unacceptable.

Could an email be sent to all telling everyone you work 22hrs & thanking you for the effort & time you put in?

Just smile and say "martyrs corner is over there"!! Don't let them bully you!

I wish I could stop feeling so guilty! They talk about how they were in the office til gone 9 and didn't get home til 10 and then mention how it must be nice for me to get home early etc. I do tell them I have a dc to look after so I'm not sitting at home with my feet up having a cup of tea but it seems to cut no ice. I tell myself they are getting paid more but then wonder if they think I am not as committed as them because I don't put the hours in. I am committed but must admit their attitude is making me feel less committed to the organisation. I just wish some of the women their had children so they could understand what it is like to be a working mother.

This is the same in the organisation I work for. Have you spoken to your manager about it? I think you should. Even if you don't want to tell her about the comments from others, you could politely point out that meetings at 3pm are tricky for you and could she bring them forward half an hour.

Don't feel guilty. It's their choice to work extra hours and not be paid for it. It isn't your problem if they can't stand up for themselves.

Of course YANBU, i think you need to develope a thicker skin if this is their attitude, just let their comments go over your head, and still to your contracted hours, after all, there is fuck all they can do about it, if they see you wont give into pressure they will eventually give up and leave you to it

And i would have no qualms about leaving a meeting early due to your child care commitments, just tell your boss 'look, you know what time i have to leave, if you need me to be at the full meeting then you must arrange them at an earlier time in the day'

Get tough with them, you will gain their respect and they will know your not a walk over, even if they secretly hate you for it, there is nowt they can do

Of course YANBU, i think you need to develope a thicker skin if this is their attitude, just let their comments go over your head, and still to your contracted hours, after all, there is fuck all they can do about it, if they see you wont give into pressure they will eventually give up and leave you to it

And i would have no qualms about leaving a meeting early due to your child care commitments, just tell your boss 'look, you know what time i have to leave, if you need me to be at the full meeting then you must arrange them at an earlier time in the day'

Get tough with them, you will gain their respect and they will know your not a walk over, even if they secretly hate you for it, there is nowt they can do

Of course YANBU, i think you need to develope a thicker skin if this is their attitude, just let their comments go over your head, and still to your contracted hours, after all, there is fuck all they can do about it, if they see you wont give into pressure they will eventually give up and leave you to it

And i would have no qualms about leaving a meeting early due to your child care commitments, just tell your boss 'look, you know what time i have to leave, if you need me to be at the full meeting then you must arrange them at an earlier time in the day'

Get tough with them, you will gain their respect and they will know your not a walk over, even if they secretly hate you for it, there is nowt they can do

Of course YANBU, i think you need to develope a thicker skin if this is their attitude, just let their comments go over your head, and still to your contracted hours, after all, there is fuck all they can do about it, if they see you wont give into pressure they will eventually give up and leave you to it

And i would have no qualms about leaving a meeting early due to your child care commitments, just tell your boss 'look, you know what time i have to leave, if you need me to be at the full meeting then you must arrange them at an earlier time in the day'

Get tough with them, you will gain their respect and they will know your not a walk over, even if they secretly hate you for it, there is nowt they can do

I would just continue doing your contracted hours, ignore the comments and soon they will stop making them.

I work three days a week and have to leave at 4pm too (in a job where it is mostly expected that you will work unpaid overtime) or I don't get home in time to pick up dd. Just do your work and no-one will be able to complain about you. I do wonder whether people who are staying at work til 9pm or whatever are actually just inefficient!

I can presume that you don't believe that she is being unreasonable, Vinegar?

There was a thread a few months ago in employment where the norm in the office was to work late.

No, you shouldn't feel guilty. And if people are working late, then it should be an indicator that they have either too much work or they aren't managing their time.

Yes, be flexible to a point, but believe me, the unpaid overtime is a culture thing....

They are jealous. Smile and say 'its quality not quantity that counts' Or flick them the bird.

YANBU - just keep doing what you're doing, i.e. telling them that you're paid for part-time work and therefore you work part time. If they keep on with the 'must be nice to leave early' comments, just say 'well, we all make our own choices, don't we' and DON'T let them make you feel guilty!
They are clearly a bit fed up with feeling that they have to work lots of unpaid hours, and are trying to make themselves feel better by picking on you. That's their problem, not yours.
Long hours cultures will only ever change if people stand up for themselves and don't comply - you're probably paving the way for others to do the same.

This happens in the NHS alot,not t he bullying comments,but t he 'expectation' that you can stay beyond the end of your shift.
Unless someone is dying/critically ill and I am the only person around(an unlikely scenario in a ward with teams of staff) then i go,pretty much on time.
However we frequently miss breaks/lunches due to pressure of work.
When anyone comments about how few hrs I work,I smile and say'yes,and I only get paid for 10 hrs as well'.

YANBU. However it is extremely difficult/impossible for the childless to understand that leaving at your allotted hour is not through laziness or work shirking.

I would speak to your boss about it. At the end of the day if he/she is on board with it then thats most of the battle won. Explain that you work hard in the hours you are in and that you do demonstrate flexibility as often as you can ( I wouldn't be bending over backwards to do this though as you seem to be. At the end of the day you are paid for 22 hours and whilst it is good to be a team player, personally I think you get a better reputation for not wasting a minute of your working hours rather than presenteeism)

However I would say that its your bosses right to have meetings at 3.00pm and perhaps you are being a bit oversensitive about the situation.There is a full hour before you leave and as a manager myself I am reluctant to have meetings between 12-2 because it impacts on peoples lunch break so it doesn't leave much other time apart from the morning.

With the other people I would call them up on their snidiness every single time they make a remark about your leaving. Don't do it in a sarcastic or amusing way, just be completely deadpan and explain the facts. " I need to leave at 4.00pm so I can be back at the nursery before it closes at Xpm. If I leave any later I won't make it." If you really want to bore them you can explain the routine when you get home, if its anything like mine then working a few extra hours would be a breeze in comparision to preparing dinner for the family, entertaining small child, trying to catch up on housework, then doing wifely duties.Hopefully a few weeks of that should cure them of the need to comment.

If that doesn't bring results then ask if there is some aspect of your work that hasn't been completed, again politely and calmly. As the answer will be a negative then it will hopefully again dissuade them from mentioning it again.

Alternatively you could just smile enigmatically....

( Am meant to be off mumsnet at the minute, must go and wake up rookietoddler

Having to work unpaid OT sometimes when there's an emergency, there's a shortage of staff for some reason or there's some kind of issue is one thing but having to do it all the time almost as part of standard hours is just not on. They should have enough staff for the workload. If they don't then they need to sort something out.

When I first started working part-time at my old company, I got a few comments. My response was "Do you want the part-time salary?".
Since the answer was always no and they could all have applied with or without children (precedents set within the company). The comments soon stopped.

Rookie-I take your point about it not being unreasonable for my manager to hold meetings at 3pm. I'm quite happy for meetings to be held at this time (quite happy not to attend either, we have far to many meetings imo) I just hate the having to get up and walk out scenario which inevitable follows when the meeting overruns. I probably need to be a lot less sensitive about this though. I have thought about saying at the start something like "and of course I have to leave at 4 so please don't mind me when I get up and leave" and make a sort of joke of it. However I work with the same small team all the time so had hoped they would all know my working pattern by now, There have been a couple of times where I've been put on the agenda at say 4.15 to talk about a project I'm working on and I have to go through the whole "I leave at 4" routine which wears me down.

Out of interest, for any other part-timers out there who have a job which involves lots of meetings, do you find sometimes you spend more time in a meeting than doing actual "work"?. I calculate I spend 1 of my 3 days in meetings which leaves only 2 real days to actually do the work and of course more work results from the days worth of meetings. Sometimes its just bloody impossible to stay on track of it all.

I have had almost exactly this problem. I worked school hours until recently and had to leave at 3 come hell or high water. With sufficient notice I might be able to arrange someone else to pick the DC up but not often and not always. Usually my manager was great about this - he knew I worked more than my contracted hours at home. But some of my colleagues made the odd snide remark.

BTW the response to 'Huh! Wish I could leave early' is 'Huh! Wished I had so many noughts on my payslip'. Funny how the renumeration isn't a big deal when you're talking to a part-timer

Having said all that, I am now back full-time and it's so much easier in many ways. I hadn't realised how hard part-time working was.

MrsDW, a solution that I thought of but didn't have to implement in the end was to set my phone or watch to beep at 4.00pm every day.

That way when it beeps in the meeting, its not you thats leaving early, you would personally love to stay, but darnit the phone/watch says No. Somewhat similar to using a timer to potty train a child, it depersonalises the situation and hopefully shifts the focus away from you.

We use outlook calender and I block out time before 9.30 and after 4.30 that way, the foolhardy few that book meetings outside that time know that I am unlikely to attend. There are still some people that do this, and occasionally I believe it has been done on purpose, but generally it is done, because although my working hours are frightfully important to me so therefore I take them into consideration when arranging meetings, clearly this is not the case with my work colleagues.

Do I find there are too many meetings ? Well yes and no, I run a small team and find that unless we speak often as a combined group then it degenerates into bitchiness very quickly. It sounds as if your workplace could do with more agendas and timekeeping and as these are things that are important to you then you could offer to do them in as many meetings as possible, this might also get your co workers on board if they too are wasting unproductive time in poorly organised or pointless meetings.