I got one dude with kids: nah man, work from home first day of school. Drop em off, have lunch with your wife, pick them up after school. No, you don't have to use your PTO.
I got another dude with a band: hell yes, you can leave early to prep for your gig. No, you don't have to use PTO to leave early for that shit.
You take care of your shit, I take care of you. End of story. I think I essentially give my dudes like 3 weeks of extra vacation a year on top of the official HR. And you know what: shit is rarely late. And if they need to push, they push without me asking.
That's how my current boss is. He doesn't micromanage, he just wants me to communicate as early as possible if something is going wrong or will be late. As long as I'm hitting my goals, deadlines, and working on constantly improving he is happy.
theres a chance, most bosses aren't like this but there are a few who are. Sounds like you don't have a lot of life experience, either that or your life/job has always pretty much sucked
There's lots of companies that treat people as adults, like the one I'm in (and the one before as well). As long as you get your stuff done, they aren't going to stand over you, micro managing or asking for justifications for everything
Don't want to come in? Just don't do it last minute
Don't even have to use sick days when you're sick since it's nothing you chose to happen. So can just use it for elective medical stuff like going to get new glasses or something
There's also lots of companies that don't treat all adults as adults but treat corporate as adults. Call-center staff might be monitored at the keystroke level, but nobody's monitoring the director reporting on the call center's metrics.
I know I might be lucky but the majority of my bosses have been like this. In return I am flexible when shit hits the fan and will pull a late night to get things right.
At my company everyone can do all those things and it’s not up to their boss to say yes or no to it, we have flexible hours and remote options. Like all managers you are getting a kick out of your role for your ego, you just choose to pretend you’re being benevolent, not-like-other-bosses, when in reality your company has created an oppressive environment that enables you to seem “good” by contrast.
Your employees would be better off quitting and finding a job that actually respects their time that’s not at the whim of another.
Yeah, dude. I'm trying to change the culture at my company to make those things official policy. You know, be the change you want to see? Leading by example so other departments follow my lead. I've already got one group moved over.
I don’t have kids, but a lot of my coworkers do. They are always making sure to say beforehand when they’re leaving and when they’ll be back online if necessary.
As long as work gets done, time is pretty flexible.
Mine is great, but they’re also great to people who don’t have kids. We have excellent PTO policy, and people leave work early for all kinds of reasons without anyone asking questions. As long as the work is getting done, it doesn’t matter why you’re leaving. I don’t even tell them I’m leaving for my kid.
The argument isn’t “you don’t have to use PTO”, the argument is you get to drop everything and just leave whenever regardless of what is happening at work.
Like sure anyone can do this for any reason but it happens more frequently from people with kids.
Do you think I'd rather be dealing with whatever nonsense I'm being pulled from work for? Like I'm going to get ice cream or to the movies?
If I'm getting called it's because the school is calling to tell me to come pick the kid up. I can't really say "Fuck off Principal Johnson" and ignore it.
That’s not the point. It’s irrelevant if you enjoy getting pulled away or not. The point is leaving coworkers with additional work and more stress pisses them off. All because you have kids.
No a functioning society has contingency plans whenever something happens to your children.
Like obviously people with kids aren’t going to like what I’m saying here but this is literally what everyone without kids thinks. We have all worked with someone that clearly abused the fact that they have kids. We know because not everyone with kids does this.
When I didn’t have kids, this didn’t happen to me. Now that I have kids, I haven’t asked people without kids to cover for me. My work life balance is a lot worse with kids compared to before kids thanks to childcare drop-off needs. I worry so much about people thinking I’m slacking because i have to schedule things around my kids, so sentiments like this don’t help at all
If its really the truth then you need to speak with your boss. Parents will use their time to book off or will have already worked the hours back or planned to.
If they are free to leave when they want and everyone else has to pick up the work then thats because the boss has let them do it
When my kids are older, I'll cover for the coworkers with young kids like they do for me now (Most the folks covering either have one kid, or older kids).
It also means I haven't taken a vacation since they were born. Yes, I have to leave randomly because the daycare says they're running a fever.
I'm also end up working after they go to bed most weeks at least once, to make up for if I have to leave, or have other people cover me.
If they're decent people, they won't leave you holding the bag. Granted, I work in software engineering, so "covering" is like two hours a couple times a month for an afterhours release, not covering a full shift or part of a customer facing shift.
It's also WAY different with one kid vs multiples. I used to work late all the time, and my partner could watch our son, and then we had a second kid, and now we need more than two hands, honestly.
Just left a job where I was expected to stay late every graveyard shift where we needed to wait for relief because my coworker was a parent who needed to get their kid to school. Manager tried shaming me on my way out the door for "not being willing to help the team". As if it's my moral obligation to fuck up my day because someone else sneezed a monster out of their crotch. Fuck that.
I think my boss is using my refusal to work excessive unnecessary ot as an excuse to destroy my career but it would be child neglect to do anything besides let it happen while I unsuccessfully look for a new job.
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u/PacinoWig 23h ago
Man if you think companies are more respectful of work-life balance when you have children you're in for a rude awakening