"Flexible working for parents is great. But childfree people need it, too"

Finally, a CF woman gets a platform to point out the discrimination current 'family-friendly' policies entail.

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What about child-free workers? Are they not just as disadvantaged by regressive working policies or indeed any less immune to the trivialisation of their lifestyle choices and office double standards?

The answer is yes, and I speak from experience; one that over the years has flared up with particular force whenever I have wanted to work more flexibly. Indeed, the seemingly simple request to work from home occasionally has at times been a torturous and demeaning exercise that has revealed the widely held assumption that without kids, there’s little life to balance.

As many people have experienced, she describes being denied more flexible working hours and being expected to pick up holidays, evenings, and weekends simply because she doesn't have kids.

She then echos what I have proposed, the need for equality in this sphere as a measure which would benefit everyone:

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This sense that your concerns and wellbeing are under the radar is echoed by a broader invisibility in the cultural narrative. Yet childless workers do need to be part of the conversation. While discrepancies and inconsistencies prevail, where one person’s flexible working comes at the expense of another picking up the slack, where people’s needs are pitted against each other in a warped battle to be most deserving, we will still have divisions and toxicity that ultimately benefit no one. Indeed, if the approach to flexible working had been less selective from the outset, we might by now be further down the line in seeing the office-bound nine to five for the anachronism it undoubtedly is, and all be much closer to something far more progressive.

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Professor Sharon Clarke and Dr Lynn Holdsworth of Alliance Manchester Business School find a direct correlation between flexible working and reduced occupational stress...They discover[ed] that the upshot is more motivated, committed and productive staff and enhanced organisational effectiveness. Interestingly it comes with another key recommendation; to avoid perceptions of unfairness, reduced team morale and disruption to working relationships, it must be implemented consistently.

But this is only the tip of the iceberg...I'd like to see her take on parental leave next. How is that not blatant discrimination? It would benefit moos as well if it were converted to sabbatical: taking time off work would become normalized and therefore they wouldn't face career penalties for taking the same amount of time off as everyone else. And CF women, who don't get the time off but do face difficulties getting hired based on assumptions by employers, would finally be treated fairly when everyone, male and female, breeding and non-breeding, took a set amount of time off during their careers.

I don't know why employers smooch breeders' asses. The employees not burdened by kids are the ones who will be more likely to be better employees because they aren't coming in late and leaving early all the time because brats, and they're more likely to go above and beyond instead of doing the bare minimum like most parents do. Employers stroke the wrong people and fuck over the most valuable ones, it seems.

If unchilded people are expected to pick up the slack for their bred coworkers, then their pay should reflect the extra effort and loss of days off, which I'm sure breeders would bitch about because they think they deserve more money because they have kids. Do more work, make more money. Apparently this is unfaaaaaaair to the people who don't work more or something.

Employers should realize that if it weren't for most unchilded employees, shit would come apart at the seams. When you've got all the Moos and Duhs taking off at a moment's notice to wipe their kids' noses or attend the anti-vax rally down the street, it might be the bratless people holding everything together and busting their asses all night long, yet these very crucial employees are often overlooked in multiple ways in favor of parents. You think it's gonna be a Duh that camps at the office and pulls an all-nighter to finish something for the following day? Hell no, the Duhs are outta there right at quitting time because famblee.

Kids or no kids, everyone should be expected to eat a little of the shit sandwich in the form of overtime or covering a shift on short notice. Fuck your kids, Moo, your ass can stay late once in a while - you chose to breed, not your boss or your coworkers, you figure out how to deal with a work-home schedule conflict because that's what people do. Maybe if parents picked up the slack once in a while, their wouldn't be so much professional imbalance and toxicity.

It's fucking 2019, why is it still assumed that no kids = no commitments/responsibilities? Just because I didn't crap out a loaf doesn't mean I don't have shit to do.

Until flexible work is more normalized there is going to be overt favortism whether it is a favorite employee, parunts, or whomever. The majority of people I work with have some flexibility, in that we are supposed to be in the office three days a week (two months ago it was two days a week). There are a small handful of people who are required to be in the office 100%.

The people required to be in the office 100% of the time often get nasty attitudes towards their coworkers, even though they were told during the interview that this would be their reality. One would make nasty comments because most of us could come in later in the morning than him and he was just seething with jealousy over it.

For the flexible group, many do not meet the three day a week requirement and risk ruining it for the rest of us. Then there are the favorites who may make an appearance once a month.

I was told during the interview I had 100% flexibility and could work from home all the time. After this, they changed their minds and made me come in, although there were only two of us out of more than 20 people who ever showed up. I put up with this crap until the other employee quit. At that point I told them I would be working from home, period. And because I was a high performer they left me alone about it for about 20 months.

Some employers use flexible work as a power play. My experience is that employers will arbitrarily change the rules on flexible work and that (as always) the immature idiots who can't follow basic instructions or lack the discipline to actually work from home risk ruining it for the rest of us.

I haven't heard anyone drop the brat excuse but I'm not in management so I don't have to deal with excuses. But plenty of people there definitely try to manipulate their way out of doing the minimum ask.