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ITT: people thinking that offering everybody the same flexibility means taking that flexibility from parents
smfh
It absolutely does. If you have 2 employees and 1 works from home due to kids. All of a sudden the other guy gets butt hurt cuz he wants to work from home now you have to accommodate the asshole that wants to work from home so he can sleep in.
ITT: people pretending others “cheese” some unfair advantages by having kids when having kids is almost always a net negative in terms of time, money, career opportunities and so much more.
People who choose not to have kids do so for a reason, don’t pretend these factors don’t exist for parents. As a society we need a next generation, how would you ever retire otherwise? Because of this we should support parents, not envy them for whatever small benefits they get to slightly offset all the disadvantages and are often absolutely necessary to allow them to raise kids.
Once you make the workplace adjustments and accommodations for parents, there’s no good reason not to do the same for everyone. It’s like cutting curbs or making wide doors for wheelchair access. Once you’ve convinced the company to do it for new premeses, why would they ever decide to make some without that access? Shits and giggles?
If you’re talking about mat/pat leave then that’s a separate thing (which everyone should definitely get)
I am one of 2 people in my department and we service the entire continent. He has been on paternity leave THREE TIMES in the years i’ve been here and each time he gets 5 weeks off.
I swear every time he takes off, it’s a busy part of the year and i’m absolutely slammed doing everything by myself and customers don’t understand.
Then he also gets like 4 weeks of vacation, so it feels really unfair for me with my dog and no kids. But then again, i hate kids and want nothing to do with them, so i guess he needs those 5 weeks.
I guarantee that during those 5 weeks paternity he was jealous of your office work and well defined sleep schedules.
Maybe they should hire another person. Your problem shouldn’t be with this dude who’s doing this thing that literally creates a new generation.
And you should get a legit amount of vacation, but paternity leave also isn’t vacation.
But he also needs to stop having his kids during busy season, come on guy.
Of course childless people have needs too and deserve workplace flexibility. This post smacks of looking into your neighbor’s bowl though. If you don’t have all the additional obligations that come with parenting, don’t claim to be the same as those who do. Whatever life concerns you also have: your own health, aging parents, mental wellness, pets, etc etc etc parents ALSO have on top of kids. So get the workplace flexibility you need without crying about what parents get. If you know, you know. And if you don’t know, you really don’t know (but your mother does).
I’m so fucking sick of being looked at like a prodigal slob for being a parent. SMfH. Here we are taking swipes at each other instead of focusing on the employers. Good job playing right into their hands. Fuck.
Nobody has anything against parents getting these benefits or is saying that they don’t need them. What’s the problem is that everyone should be getting them, parents or not.
Yes. If you can’t take care of your kids and have to rely on strangers (coworkers) to sacrifice their life, don’t have kids.
I beg to differ - there are definitely people in here that are against parents getting these benefits.
What’s shocking to me is that people are blaming parents more than the system/employers that overburdens the workers without kids.
Seriously - the employers could end all of this nitpicking about who gets what by simply offering the same level of time off and flexibility to everyone.
Parents aren’t the enemy here and never have been.
I’m fine with people with dependents getting higher priority. If you have one pill, one sick person, and one healthy person, you don’t give each of them half a pill for equality sake. https://welleatyouupweloveyouso.com/2023/08/14/what-does-equity-and-equality-have-to-do-with-being-spoiled/
But, also, society in general and employers in specific should strive to provide a level of flexibility to all employees where all of them find joy in their lives.
I have kids, worked full time as a parent for 25 years and no problem with this. Set the baseline flexibility and treatment good enough to accommodate parents. You don’t need to take it from childless people to give it to parents. Not a zero sum game here.
What I do have a problem with is hostility towards parents, and hostility towards non-parents. We are all in this together, and it’s not frivolous to raise the next generation, someone did that for you. Nor is it selfish to just live your own life - work should not demand our whole lives.
Now that my kids are grown, I still work at a flexible employer, and use that flexibility for doctors appointments, errands to places only open during working hours, and concerts & shows. Would I defer to someone with a child or aged parent with an emergency? Yes. Would I defer to someone with no kids whose partner was having an emergency? Yes.
So are you for giving more flexibility for people who don’t necessarily need it, or for taking away flexibility from people who do?
They’re advocating for equal treatment for equal pay. Having kids doesn’t make you special.
They’re advocating for taking away flexibility. I’m all for giving extra flexibility, but let’s be honest, they just want others to not have it
Choosing to not have kids doesn’t make you special either.
This is just another way for the ruling class to pit each of us against the other so we’re focused more on infighting than overthrowing the bourgeois.
Poverty is caused by greed and wealth hoarding, we should have good enough working conditions it wouldn’t matter if you’re a parent or not; 16 hour work weeks, universal housing, universal access to clean water and food, etc. without the constant distractions and division by a wealth class of leeches.
Four day weekends for everyone, and three months of vacation time too.
Yes. Flexibility for everyone. Unironically, this is not a bad idea.
I have a feeling that that’s not what they had in mind.
On one side people shouldn’t get special treatment for things of their chosing - that’s just the Principle of fairness of treatment.
Nowadays in modern countries with easy access to modern contraception, having kids is a choice.
However given how for example in America there is a crack down on abortion, things are going backwards in this and having kids isn’t always a choice anymore, in which case it’s actually fair to more easilly accomodate people who have kids more than people who don’t.
On the other side if a country wants to incentivise people to have children in order to, at minimum, avoid a fall in that country’s population, it makes sense to do things to make life easier for people when they have children such as providing free childcare.
Just give everyone the same level of flexibility and access to time off.
We don’t have to debate whether parents deserve to be treated better or worse or why people would have kids or why it’s better to not have kids. Treat everyone the same, give everyone the ability to take time off when needed. That’s it.
Simple solution: lie and say you have kids
Modern problems require modern solutions
… because surely nobody would check.
Sir, this is a meme community
Hot take, company executives should get as little flexibility as the employee at the company that’s awarded the least flexibility.
I find it so sad that your take shouldn’t be a hot take.
And non-smokers should be given as many breaks as the smokers!
Hot take: as a non-smoker, I regularly took “smoke breaks” anyway. Often, i was hanging out on the loading dock with the smokers.
Same. I used to tell people I second hand smoked.
Should be “as many minutes” rather than “as many breaks”. If a smoker get five 10-minutes smoke breaks a day, I’d rather take two 25-minutes breaks and use them for long(ish) walks around the area to breath some fresh(ish) air.
True!
what i have observed is that they don’t ask or simply don’t take as many breaks. but yeah, stepping outside for five minutes and taking deep breaths is a good idea for most, regardless of nicotine!
I once started sitting outside with the smokers whenever they took their collective break. I was told I had to stop doing that because I wasn’t a smoker…
I was like… “Do I need to start smoking? Cause I can start smoking…”
The boss didn’t like that…
You were a smoker though. A passive one.
I smoke a special brand of invisible, pink cigarettes. They have a unicorn pattern on the wrappers.
Same treatment - yes. Same flexibility? No. Children do tend to provide legitimate emergencies from time to time.
I’m not saying a non-parent should have their months-ahead approved PTO cancelled because a parent suddenly decides they want to take their kid to some event on that same day. But if a parent needs to leave early because they got a phone call that their kid got wounded at school - that should be arranged even when non-parents are not offered flexibility of the same level.
except non-parents should also have the flexibility to leave early if some sort of emergency comes up
And anyone else should have that same flexibility to cover legitimate emergencies even though they don’t have children.
How dare you claim there are other emergencies than non-kid-related ones!?
Child emergencies, family emergencies, pet emergencies, personal medical emergencies, household emergencies… I mean, yeah, if shit is happening at home, everyone should have the right to go take care of it, child-related or not. If I were a boss, and someone said, “I need to go home, it’s urgent,” I’d shoo them out the door and reassign their task no matter what the nature of the emergency was.
Unless they ‘urgently’ need to stand in line to buy a video game. That isn’t an emergency.
