Thunder!!

Ooooh, we have thunder and lightening today!! I have the blinds in my office full open so I can enjoy the show.

In other news, we figured out that we can probably afford a two month overlap on our move-in, with notice to the old landlord with the April rent. Then we should have enough stuff shovelled out (and the place cleaned up) so that they can do repairs and show the place, if need be.

Hey elorie asshat!

elorie, you are a chickenshit. Fine, you own note_to_asshat. You are free to post all kinds of abuse of members of other communities (like childfree) and then not allow them to respond. It's your little empire, after all. I just think you are so fucking lame, you can dish it out but can't take it in.

But don't fucking assume that we all have the same motive for wanting to join your little community. Some of us just wanted to be able to post notes to asshats. I thought it was a cool concept, and a couple of my friends were already there.

If you can be bothered to read my journal, you see that I encounter a lot of asshats. Only a few of those asshats involve children, or, more correctly, their lazy assed parents who don't know when it just fucking isn't appropriate to take a small child to certain types of (boring for the kid) events. You know, like bars, gory movies, R and X rated movies, nightclubs, business meetings, academic conferences (except those on child development), construction zones, hazardous or crowded environments, etc. Just like CF people don't belong in Chuck-E-Cheeses, or pregnant women don't belong in certain portions of a wafer fab, there are just places kids don't belong.

Hell, my friends with kids would never take their small kids into business conferences, gory movies, bars or crap like that. They actually care about their kids, and don't want to subject them to crushing boredom, risk of serious nightmares, risk of getting hurt, or the irritation of being told to shut up every 5 minutes. They actually parent their kids, what a concept! They care about their kids and other people too!

So, elorie, you make generalizations about people, applying your own little bigotries and stereotypes, and you *will* get lambasted and mocked in the communities that you stereotype *and* in the journals of the people you piss off. You didn't want drama and wank? Then why in the living fuck did you start it, chickenshit?

EDIT: What's worse is that the lame twit is part of the internet pagan community. Sad. You'd think she'd know better than to start throwing around stereotypes about alternate lifestyles and choices. What an idiot. The peabrain has the nerve to call me an asshat because I don't like ill behaved kids in places where they don't belong and chose not to have kids of my own. If it wasn't so pathetic, I'd be laughing at the irony. I bet she doesn't have the balls to post outside of anywhere that she isn't lord and master over, and take her medicine.

You will notice, folks, that this entry is public, and allows comments by (nearly) all LJ users. I've only ever totally banned one user from my journal, and that was a known troll.

Parents and Childfree in the Workplace

Just got through reading Is It Fair to Cater Solely to Employees With Kids? from ABC. I thought it was good, but didn't go very deep.

Disclaimer: I'm sans kids. I have family and friends who aren't.

A lot of companies tout their benefits for parents. Some even go so far as to make all of their non-work functions kid friendly, to the point of kid centered. Some definitely do have a tendency to cut the childed *much* more slack on hours and stuff. I can even understand some of it. Jane won't be productive at work if she's always on the phone with her sick kid. Joe won't be productive when he has to worry about missing a parent teacher conference.

But the childfree and empty nesters have outside lives too. Really. Some people are taking care of elderly parents, or sick spouses. Some have heavy volunteer commitments, or just plain lives outside of work. So why do some companies get their shorts in a know when a kidless person needs to take off early for a non-work commitment? A commitment is a commitment, regardless of whether it involves the person's kids or not.

As the article points out, some companies are starting to emphasize benefits that make the work/life balance easier on *all* employees. This is actually good, because it stops assuming that all outside needs have to do with kids. For example, my $Company just combined their "sick leave" and PTO pools. This removes the value judgements from why a person is out - the leave all comes from the same place, and rewards those who don't get sick as often with more vacation (no, I'm not usually one of those, but my health has been better in the last year than the year before.)

Flexible hours are great in general. Yes, for certain types of jobs they just won't work. But there is something viscerally demeaning to me about punching a time clock. For people with outside responsibilities, or public transit commutes, it's a burden. (I don't know of a single transit system that truly runs on time. The best just run so often that it doesn't matter.)

But back to the parents and non in the workplace. When I was younger, a lot of times it was assumed that a) I would be available to work longer because I didn't have kids, and b) I would get "my turn" when (not if) I had kids. Noxious. Often I didn't mind too much, since I was hourly, but after a while it got annoying. Now, I have a manager who has kids. Does he expect me to carry his load? No, he manages his schedule so that he can do his family stuff (including his turn picking up the kids after work) and still get his work done. That's called maturity, folks. It's a good thing to have when raising kids.

More to come...