BellaOnline Forums Relationships Married No Kids post here if you're childfree and need to vent

[color:"blue"] Dito. [/color]

Then the intern made a comment about bringing my husband over "to fix that."

So bring him into the break room and start getting it on...and just smile and say "well, you said I should bring in my husband to fix my lack of pregnancy...."

[color:"blue"] Very humorous, Katja. [/color] <img src="/images/graemlins/rolling.gif" alt="" />

LOL...you'll have to forgive me if I don't take your advice too literally! While it would be funny, hubby and I both try to be very modest people. Not to mention said employees might notice that hubby and I actually use protection, a concept apparently unknown to them.

I sure wish there was a way to get back at some of these people. There's somebody at work today who brought her newborn to work and she and about 5 other people have been doing no work whatsoever for at least 3 hours because of it. I would really like to go to a manager and snitch on them, but I'm afraid I'd get little sympathy.

I *did* find out that my vision is so bad, that if I don't want to see something, all I have to do is not wear my glasses. Needless to say, with a breeder playing show and tell all day, every time I got up from my desk I've been walking around blind. Better blind than nauseated, I say.

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[color:"blue"] I have bad vision, too, that I have to wear glasses. If I don't want to watch anything, I too, go around blind. <img src="/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" /> [/color]

Wow. I'm CF and this is so totally beyond my experience.

I don't mind when people bring in their kids/babies to show them off. I think its really pretty cool that they feel so involved and comfortable in their working communinty that they can share these things with their co-workers.

I don't see this as any different than taking time out of the workday to have a birthday party or a retirement party or something. The work will still be there for that person when the show is over (at least at my place of employment); but the little time outs we take can sure help make the workplace more comfortable and inviting.

The problem of course arises when people feel so "comfy" at work that they forget to do any. We bill between $90 and $150 per hour for our paralegals' time, so when a whole gang of them are standing around for a half hour cooing at someone's newborn, the loss of billable time starts adding up. Plus it's just so freakin' annoying....blecch.

Sure. I've been in that kind of workplace. But the policy was always, if you take time out you make it up later so it was never a problem. I think alot of issues like this arise from management. I'm a manager now and its my responsibility to set the tone for how the office flows. I've absolutely no issue with these things, as long as the work time is made up later. I don't feel that any of the staff in my charge or any of my peers or higher ups lose work because they take time out--we all know our responsibilities.

The problems I had with my situation were these:

1.) An office environment is no place for a baby or child, period.
2.) A baby or child is a human being, not a posession to show off; it seems degrading to me to "show off" another person.
3.) It's highly disruptive to everyone when someone brings in a wailing child. It is beyond my understanding why some people feel a need to bring it in instead of just bringing in photos or inviting their coworkers to go out to see the baby after work sometime.
4.) Most of all -- these people receive preferential treatment. My managers would not let my department take half an hour to set up a department potluck/pitch-in; they have discontinued all birthday parties and retirement parties. This is all because we're short-staffed. Yet, this same woman who brought her baby in yesterday and wasted everyone's time with it, also had a big, noisy, disruptive baby shower a month ago. It interfered with my and everyone else's work, and none of the rest of us get to celebrate the things that are important to us. It hedges on workplace discrimination, and I don't take well to that.

Also, the time for the baby shower and baby-showing-off was not made up later. I saw all parties involved just walk away at the normal time at the end of the day, and from my understanding, they didn't ask their managers for permission.

It is probably a problem with my specific workplace. If you are a manager and you can treat your employees more fairly, that's great and I applaud it. Just please make sure one or two people don't jeapordize everyone's time or have a monopoly on celebrations; give everyone an equal opportunity to celebrate what's important to them.

Oh yeah -- you may not know this unless you have perused my posts thoroughly, but I am phobic of infants and very small children. I start to have what's like a panic attack when I see them or are too close to them. So that's why I take my glasses off -- so I can stay calm enough to continue working. I hope this clears things up. Please remember that's not an ordinary thing for childfree to do, and most childfree are not phobic of babies like I am. Sorry I didn't make this clear before -- I probably sounded kinda mean. I apologize. <img src="/images/graemlins/blush.gif" alt="" />

I think that there are many different types of childfree people. Some are quite happy to be around children and like them. At the other end of the spectrum are those who dislike children intensely and do not want to spend any time around them at all. Some people can be phobic about children, as xantres has said.
All of these feelings are completely valid. It's so important that we accept people's feelings and not try to make them feel bad about them. I too dislike the 'baby parade' at my workplace. If i wanted to see the baby, i'd visit the family. I hope my colleagues would do the same. But time and time again the working day is disrupted by someone who will not only bring their baby, but all their other children along as well!
Is it too much to ask that we not be criticised for our feelings? I think all of us understand that people will always bring their babies to work to 'introduce' them, we just don't necessarily want to be a part of it.