SAHM/WOHD Issue
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| Thu, 07-13-2006 - 4:35pm |
My husband came home the other day with this story:
His coworker, J and J's wife, K just had a set of twins born via in-vitro after 17 years of marriage and infertility. Anyway, the end of the pregnancy was difficult and K was on bedrest and the babies were born (I think) 6 weeks early - one of them had to stay in the hospital for 2 weeks after birth. OK - that's the background.
K got a lot of attention during pregnancy - not being able to move around on her own. Now the babies are 4 months old, but although she is a SAHM, she expects (yes, expects) J to leave work every day at 4. That's the normal time, but at times they are required to work overtime if something has broken and needs to be fixed before the next shift comes in. According to my husband, J comes home every night and fixes dinner, washes bottles, takes care of the babies, and then gets up with them in the middle of the night. The only time K is bothered with them is during the day when she's home alone. (I know, this account is how J related it to my husband, so the story is probably more one-sided than the situation really is.) And K may have post-partum depression and that can explain needing J so much....
K's mom and sister both lives within a halfmile of her and can come to help with the babies, but she expects J to leave work everyday at 4 to do it. She also calls a lot during the day. Anyway, the other day something had broken and J needed to stay past 4, but he tried to leave - my husband's and J's boss told J that he needed to decide what is more important - him taking care of those babies or him working to provide for those babies? Sounds to me like J's job is starting to be in jeopardy and he makes pretty good money for the area of the country we live in. Replacing that income would be very hard.
Just wanted to see what y'all thought about this.

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Jennie
Jennie
In the last two companies I've worked for, I've usually worked out my summer vacation sometime in spring. Other vacation I've often given less than a month's notice. In one dept. I worked in, people put in their planned vacation time maybe a couple of months before their vacation should start. Most of the time this didn't even merit a comment on the group level. For summer months, we usually sat down all together and worked out who would handle which projects at which times to cover for other people and that was about it.
In my current company, we all pretty much announce when we are taking our vacations and work out our schedules accordingly. I try to give at least a couple of months' notice so that my boss can plan my travel schedule but that's about it (he tends to plan travel for me based on my needs and schedule though that doesn't work out all the time and I just deal when a conflict comes up). The only people who have to try to balance vacation time so that work is covered is the support people and they work it out among themselves without regard to seniority.
I was out in less than 5 days too.
"Don't you get something for working for a long time?"
Ummm...a nice present if you turn 50? Great experience? Just kidding :-). Dh has worked for the same company for nearly 8 years. He has the same vacation and benefits as people who have just come into the company at the same level. He gets yearly bonuses based on performance as do the others. I can't really think of anything he's entitled to based on seniority. I'm one of the newer members of my company (I've worked there less than two years) and I can't think of anything I've been denied because of seniority. I have the same vacation as others who have worked a lot longer.
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