My Work-Life Balance for Everyone Manifesto (Another Rant Posted Elsewhere)

Since it worked so well last time I posted a rant that I had written as a comment elsewhere, I thought I'd do it again. This time, the rant was in response to a comment on a post about how society is not set up for working moms, on Ginger's Its Hard Being Perfect blog, which I found via RambleGinger's twitter feed (a different Ginger, by the way). The commenter, Nikki (who was quite polite, and I'm sure is a lovely person), brought up the old criticism that any accommodation/flexibility companies grant to working parents is unfair to their child-free employees.

Here is what I said:

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Nikki, I want to amplify on Ginger’s response about your friend who is pulling most of the afterschool duty. My perspective on this is two-fold: I am a working parent who has to manage the balance between work and home, and I am a manager who manages employees, some of whom are parents. I work in IT, so there are times when work has to be done during non-work hours.

I try to accommodate everyone’s schedule, and I expect my boss to do the same for me. We’re all professionals, and we can usually find a solution that gets the work done and works for everyone.

BTW, the scheduling issues I accommodate include the fact that I have one contractor who is an Orthodox Jew and therefore absolutely cannot work after sundown on Fridays. I mention this as an example of scheduling constraints that have nothing to do with kids.

BUT- I expect my employees to speak up for themselves. I try not to let anyone be a martyr, but in your friend’s situation- does her boss even know that she is unhappy with the situation? It is not exactly analagous, but I have some people who prefer to work odd hours.

I think a lot of the angst single people feel when they look at parents leaving “early” or what not is actually self-inflicted. No one handed me a “get out of work early” card when I had a baby. It is just that I now have other commitments that are important enough to make me speak up and say “no, I cannot stay for that 6 p.m. meeting. Sorry.”

It is not the parents’ fault that the child-free folks don’t feel as strongly about their spin class or whatever.

Now, if a boss is faced with two employees who both say they don’t want to accommodate an after hours meeting- and doesn’t find a way to rotate that duty or something, but instead always gives the parent the free pass? That is unfair. But I don’t think that is what is happening most of the time.

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I thought about this some more during my weekly run by the bay today (look at that! Work-life balance in action!).  I'm actually hugely sympathetic to the desires of people without kids to have work-life balance, too. I had a supervisor once who would tell the married men to go home on time during crunch times, because "their wives will yell at them" and my god, did that make me (at the time, a single woman) angry. I eventually stopped staying late, too- I just said I couldn't stay. And you know what? Nothing bad ever happened from that. But it was a horrible thing for that supervisor to do.

Perhaps because of that experience, or perhaps because I am a sane person with a modicum of empathy, I try to accommodate everyone's scheduling needs. In addition to the Orthodox Jew I mentioned in the original comment, I have also accommodated in recent memory: a developer who takes time off every year to go to Comic-Con (this is non-negotiable with him, regardless of project timelines), a colleague whose cat had to have emergency surgery, leaving me to prepare slides for an important presentation with almost no notice, and more opening nights of big movies than I care to count (what can I say? I work with geeks.)

The one thing that is harder with parents is unpredictability: as a parent, I can't predict when my kid is going to get sick and have to go home from day care. I also cant' respond as nimbly to last minute work requests. To this I say: that's life. Everyone should just deal with it. And by everyone I mean that both family and work have to deal with some surprises. My husband and I take turns leaving work unexpectedly when day care calls, and that way neither of us is always disappearing without warning. But on the other hand, if a really important last minute meeting comes up at work, I will try to work something out with my husband to make it possible for me to attend. I will not, however, tolerate this sort of thing becoming a standard practice. If someone starts having weekly emergency meetings, I stop making as much effort to attend. I've never had this come back to bite me, either- mostly, people are happy that the parents on the team are pushing back on that, because no one really wants to stay until 6 p.m. for an emergency meeting once a week.

Anyway, I think I can boil down my opinion on this topic to the following bullet points:

• If you are a child-free person who feels like your schedule needs are not being accommodated at work: speak up. Force the issue. As I said in my original comment, no one just grants these accommodations to parents. We take them because we think our committments to our children are more important than acquiescing to a scheduling need at work. 
• If you are a parent who does not respect the scheduling needs of your child-free peers: cut it out. Your child-free colleague's need to come in late one day so that she can go to early morning yoga is just as valid as your need to leave early so that you can pick up your kids from day care.
• If you are a parent who is always the one who has to leave work for the kids: talk to your partner and work out a more equitable split. (I know, I know... sometimes this isn't possible. But usually, it is. My manifesto doesn't cover the edge cases.)
• Everyone: work together to resolve scheduling conflicts. We're all adults. We all presumably care about our jobs. We can work things out.
• If you are a boss who is giving priority to the needs of the parents over the needs of non-parents: cut it out. That's not fair. If there is an off hours work need that no one wants to cover, set up a rotation or something. Don't just decide that Molly has to do it every time because she has no kids. 
• If you are a boss or project manager in charge of organizing things: actually organize things, so that there aren't a bunch of last minute emergencies. It is amazing how many emergencies are really just poor planning allowed to run on unchecked. 
• If you are someone who has power to set company policy: make sure your employees can work from home. We'll use that flexibility to make sure our work gets done.

I think that about covers it. What would you add or subtract?

A Rant from the Deep Archives

I came across an old notebook recently. It was a small leather bound notebook, which I used to carry around in my work bag, during an earlier bout with my persistent "I should be a writer" daydream. I bought it to record ideas and observations. I never did anything with what I wrote... until now.

I was amused to come across an account of a conversation I had with a particularly annoying coworker. He was sure that my opinions on the topic would change once I had kids. In fact, they have not.  Here is what I wrote in my notebook, dated September 19, 2005 (so I was married, only recently promoted into management, and had no kids yet):

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I've been thinking a lot in the last few days about taking responsibility for our choices. A coworker's argument that scientists can't make a decent living started me thinking about this. I was startled when he made this argument- I think I make an excellent living. I don't think his argument is based on faulty numbers, because he referred derisively to a salary of $125k, which is more than I make. Rather, I think the problem comes from expectations that are perhaps unrealistic. The coworker has four children, ranging from teenager to toddler. He lives near the Connecticut coast- perhaps one of the most expensive real estate markets in the country. He wants a house large enough for the kids to have rooms of their own and to have a backyard. He wants to live in a good school district. From his comments, I think he wants to do all of this on a single income. All of these are perfectly understandable and perhaps even admirable goals- but the combination is not realistic. He seemed to feel he had some sort of right to have all of these things, and of course, all of these things are hard to have on the "buck and a quarter" salary he correctly assumed mid-level scientist/managers make.

He argued that their was a problem attracting young people to be scientists and engineers because of this perceived mismatch. Perhaps, but I can't agree with his assumption that any professional career must be able to provide the extremely upper middle class lifestyle he wants. We all make choices and all decisions are tradeoffs. He has traded job satisfaction for all of those other things he wants, but it wasn't his only choice. No one forced him to have four children (and I couldn't help but wonder to myself what he says about poor families with four children). There is no requirement that he remain in coastal Connecticut. I know from personal experience and from that of many of my friends that a slightly worse school district will not destroy his kids' chance at happiness. And the list of options could go on and on.

We make choices. It would be nice if the tradeoffs were always easy, but that is not realistic. I am probably being unfair to my coworker, but I couldn't help but think- he needs to grow up. I hope that I will remember the fact that I will need to make similar choices when I have kids. In fact, I hope I can teach them about the need to accept that we can't always have everything we want, and that we need to analyze the tradeoffs, make our choices, and accept the results. The best way to teach this is by example.

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As I said, I still agree with what I wrote back in 2005. I might be a little more sympathetic to my coworker now, though. I think that he ended up with four kids because the third pregnancy was twins, and those twins were toddlers at the time of the conversation. One toddler can drive me to the brink of insanity- or at least to whininess- so I imagine two could push a person even further. But I stand by my central point, that we make choices, choices have consequences, and living with those consequences is part of being a grown up.

A Much Delayed Post about "Eating for Beginners"

I have had Eating for Beginners: An Education in the Pleasures of Food from Chefs, Farmers, and One Picky Kid, by Melanie Rehak, sitting on my desk for months now. A friend of mine recommended it to me when I was in my food book phase. Then she recommended it again when I was laughing at one of Pumpkin's (many) picky eating episodes. Finally, she just brought it to me and lent it to me. And I read it, and enjoyed it.



It is the story of a woman who responds to the potentially overwhelming food-related concerns that have taken root amongst the upper middle class- Should I prioritize local or organic? Is it OK to eat meat if it is ethically raised? What does that even mean? Etc., etc.- by taking a hands on approach to learning more about where her food comes from. She goes and works in the kitchen of a "local food" restaurant, and also works for a day on several farms that supply that restaurant. Along the way, she deals with her angst as a food-loving grown up who has given birth to a picky eating toddler.

Spoiler alert: by the end of the book, her kid isn't such a picky eater. Of course- because no one ever writes about the picky eating kid who stays that way. Given Pumpkin's genetic inheritance, I suspect that will be the narrative in our house. Maybe I should write a book about it....

Also not surprisingly, by the end of the book, Rehak no longer feels overwhelmed by her food choices, and has settled into a preference for local food, organic if possible, where she feels she can trust the food producers' methods and intentions. Because, again, no one ever writes a book where they set out to figure out the confusing mess of choices that confront us when we go to find something to eat, and then comes away from all of the research still confused and unsure about the "right" thing to eat.

Hmm, I think I could write that book, too.

I suspect that it sounds like I didn't like the book, which isn't true at all. I really enjoyed reading the book. I liked following Rehak's transformation into a knowing local foodie. But the book suffers a bit from the same problem I had with the (far preachier) Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life , by Barbara Kingsolver: the solution that she seems to be proposing isn't really generalizable. Rehak's "meet the farmers" approach works really well for people with the flexibility to go spend time finding and visiting local farms. I can't take her approach and fit it into my life. So, while I enjoyed watching her progress as she became more sure of her food choices, the book ultimately didn't help me with the food choices and problems I face.

But perhaps it is unfair of me to criticize the book for that- it never promised to tell me what I should eat, only to give me an example of one woman who solved the problem for herself. It is not her fault that my neighborhood in San Diego lacks a farmer's market, and that we haven't figured out how to make a car trip to a farmer's market a regular part of our weekend plans. My own food solution will have to take place in the supermarket aisles, and accommodate a picky eater who is unlikely to reform. Anyone know a good book for that?

Quotable: Advice for the Working Woman

"This is what I tell young women who ask me for career advice. People are going to try to trick you. To make you feel that you are in competition with one another.... Don't be fooled. You're not in competition with other women. You're in competition with everyone."

Tina Fey, in Bossypants.

I've been wanting to read Bossypants for a long time. I finally did. It isn't great literature, but it is definitely funny.

Weekend Reading: The Computer Edition

This week, I have a bunch of links related to computers for you. But wait! They're interesting, I promise!

First up, an interesting Wall Street Journal blog post about one researcher's theory about why some technologies (like the internet) cause moral panic amongst some segments of the population, while other technologies (like fountain pens), do not. She also points out that this panic is usually framed in terms of the impact of the technology on women and children.

Speaking of women and technology, here is a depressing story about an open source software package with an inappropriate name. The worst part of the story, in my opinion, is that one of the lead developers on this project was a woman who is not a native English speaker, and one of the male developers basically lied and told her that this was a good name. She is apparently fairly distressed by these events, and has decided to stop contributing to open source projects. Score one for the sexist pigs, I guess. Comments around the geek blogosphere are predictably up in arms over potential "censorship" and the "free speech rights" of the male developers. That is all poppycock, in my opinion, but I know better than to wade in and try to argue the point. However, I can say here, on my own blog, that this sort of nonsense contributes to the perception that the software/IT world is a male culture- and one that is stuck in the freshman year of college, to boot. This perception, of course, tends to make some women decide that they'll look elsewhere for careers.

This story about vacations in IT made me chuckle, particularly since I stumbled across it the day after I posted something that included a whine about my lack of vacation time. I actually agree with the argument that having people in IT/informatics take vacations is a good risk management practice. It certainly exposes the areas in which you are heavily dependent on one person.

Finally, Marion Nestle had a post about Google's food program. It is interesting to read about how Google tries to make its free food program healthy. I don't know if I'd like to work someplace with unlimited free (good food), because the cost of food is actually a useful reminder not to overeat.  As I discovered when I rather effortlessly lost some weight after being laid off from my last job- free candy is awfully easy to overindulge in.