I've heard this argument before also. Not only am I a parent, but I am also in management, so I've had to make decisions based on both ends of the spectrum. I want to take a moment to step even further into this for a minute:
I was in a meeting once where this question was asked and I was fuming. I do not work in an environment where someone else can "take up the slack", but we all have a certain amount of hours that we can miss without incurring a "write up" (which is examined on a case by case basis). Anyway, the example that was used was what if John has band practice and Mary has a sick child. Both are equal because John doesn't have a child, therefore band is everything to him, just as the child is everything to Mary. Then the example was used, what if John's dog was sick. Should he be allowed time off to take the dog to the doctor? Now, I was fuming because we do not have sick time, just those hours, and I had a child that was in the hospital for 2 weeks. I thought that it was very insensitive to use that comparison. Compare the life of my child to bandpractice or a dog? And again, this has nothing to do with asking someone else to do my workload, because I've worked up to 60 hours a week to ensure that I'm ahead of the game. This is just speaking of what we deem as important. I'm still pondering what type of selfish, self serving society are we becoming when we can can make such analogies?
Anyway, being in the position that I'm in now, I tend to be more lenient when it comes to a family emergency (dealing with someone's well being) rather than someone that has errands to run. Run those errands on your own time, the emergency is unexpected.
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