She Brought a Child Into the Office

[dougiezerts]

One of my co-workers brought a little girl into the office, during her shift. I think she's around 7, or 6. Actually, this is the second time she (my co-worker)'s done this.
I personally think this is a very bad idea. We are on the phone with customers all day. What if she started getting restless and decided to run around the office, or yell out something? Kids that age aren't always well behaved, no matter what their parents say!
What do are of you think?

[Rapscallion]

Moved to general work chat.

Could give the child the benefit of the doubt, I guess. I take it she hasn't done the screaming and running thing yet?

Give her a chance, but if there turns out to be a problem, make sure her mother deals with the issue.

Rapscallion

[BlakeMP]

In my old job at the newspaper, we'd see this happen from time to time. It wasn't too big a deal with the older kids -- 8 to 10 or so. We'd just set 'em up in the conference room with a coloring book or something. But more than once, I had to wrangle a toddler charging through the production department.

[Mighty Girl]

Totally depends on the kid.

My old manager would bring in her nieces and nephew all the time, and expect everyone to dote on them. They would get bored, and she would expect us to entertain them. Annoyed me like mad! And they were good kids, I can't imagine if they were total brats.

Also- if they're sick, it ticks me off. My friend worked with this woman who broght her daughter in to work- turns out the daughter had strep, and therefore the daycare wouldn't take her, so the whole office got sick because of this woman's self centered-ness.

[NightAngel]

I'm guessing by the "what if" comment that the kid hasn't done this either time she's been there? If not then who cares if the kid is there?

My kids have been to work and even college with me on many occasions. Never really had a problem personally- but if the day comes the child does cause a disruption simpy speak to the Mom and/or the manager.

Daycare is EXPENSIVE and all it takes is one bad experience to ruin you on it forever.
Someday I'll have to tell the story of my oldest son's one and only daycare experience- it's enough to curl your hair. Or at least get me severely angry to this day!

[Special Patrol Group]

Also- if they're sick, it ticks me off. My friend worked with this woman who broght her daughter in to work- turns out the daughter had strep, and therefore the daycare wouldn't take her, so the whole office got sick because of this woman's self centered-ness.

That happens sometimes where I work. What I find is annoying is that they will bring their kids in when they don't know what they have. We have a few pregnant women working in the office and sometimes ththey have to leave because the parents will warn them "I've brought little Timmy in. He's not feeling very well, not sure what's wrong with him but there was a measles outbreak at work." So these poor women are forced to leave work for fear of birth deformities connected with these diseases. I wouldn't mind so much if they knew it was just a cold, but bloody hell there are so many nasties that can hurt unborn babies that it's so much more than inconsiderate.

[Salesmonkey]

My workplace is very child-friendly. For example, our overnight shift is a mother and grandmother team. We have a bed set up in the back office for the grandkids. When the night shift arrives, they put the kids to bed. When I get here in the morning, they feed the kids breakfast and take them to school. Being flexible about this lets us attract talented and skilled workers that would otherwise be unable to work.

[Ree]

It really depends on the child, I think. A child of 7 or 8 is different than a toddler.

I can understand that the woman might have been desperate for babysitting, and that's probably why she has brought the child with her.
I have so many horror stories of babysitters that we had while our daughter was small.

I say, if the child isn't causing a fuss, why worry about what could happen and focus on the fact that the woman seems to be raising a pretty well-behaved, independent child.

If the situation changes, then speak to the mother or the management.

I wouldn't bring a sick child in to my workplace, but that would be more because I would want the child to be at home in bed for her own sake.

Both my husband and I have had our daughter with us at our workplace on occasion, though.

With me, it was only for a short time until I was off work, or my husband could pick her up, because she had been dropped off by somebody since it was too short for notice to get a babysitter.

Same with my husband, usually, but there was one day when he had her for the whole day, as we couldn't find a babysitter.
At the time, he worked at a restaurant that also rented out cabins and a couple of rooms attached to the building. She spent the day in one of the empty rooms, colouring and playing with the owner's children. (The owner also lived in an apartment attached to the restaurant.)

He's worked at a few other restaurants, though, and when she had to go to his workplace, he would he would have her wash her hands and help with small things like putting salad in bowls, or get her to do small housekeeping jobs that the waitresses never had time to do. He always made sure she was in a safe area, and she learned kitchen safety at a young age.

At my workplace, she sat in the breakroom and coloured, but sometimes, she would stand near the cashes and help bag up stuff for the customers. (I didn't let her do that a lot, because I know how bad it looks to customers.)

I didn't like when my daughter was with me at work, because I couldn't stay focused on my own job, because I was always looking to make sure she was safe and behaving herself.

I do know that there is one girl who works in paint, and she has her children come in all the time in the evenings, and it's very disruptive.
They sit on the paint counter, and the staff of the department does nothing but play with the kids while they are there.
The kids are cute, but they are busy and noisy.
They are usually with her sister, who is supposed to be babysitting them.

I don't do anything, because it's not my department. I figure they can deal with their manager when she chews them out for not having shelves filled or colourant dispensers filled, or any of the other hundred jobs that they could be doing while they are making stickers for the little guy's arms and forehead and such, or listening to the stories that the kids are telling.

[DGoddessChardonnay]

My store also happens to be child-friendly, even if it is a grocery store.

Our scanning person, NikkiPooh, has had to bring her younger son (he's almost a year old now) to work with her a few weeks ago for a few hours until her backup babysitter could take him (primary babysitter lost her father and had to go out of town for the funeral and the backup was still at work herself.) She had called ahead and asked Gambler (who was still there as manager) if she could bring him for a bit, otherwise she'd have to come in later after the backup could pick the child up. He said okay . . .

Not only is he cute, but he's pretty well behaved for such a young child - he doesn't make much fuss. He rode in his car seat in a shopping cart while NikkiPooh would go around the store, changing tags, taking the cart with her.

And of course, he had PLENTY of adoring female co-workers (myself included) who would peek on him.

I guess it would depend on the workplace and the management.

[Antisocial_Worker]

My workplace is kid-friendly too. The housekeepers are all moms, and moms-to-be, and there's usually at least one baby hanging out in a laundry cart in the back room at all times. Either that, or a little kid watching cartoons in the lobby.

It's annoying sometimes, but not often, and thankfully if a houskeeper catches one of her brood misbehaving, a rapid-fire blast of angry Spanish sends the offender slinking back to couch or crib.

Kids in the workplace can be an okay thing if the parents are actually willing to parent.

[Gurndigarn]

Daycare is EXPENSIVE and all it takes is one bad experience to ruin you on it forever.
Someday I'll have to tell the story of my oldest son's one and only daycare experience- it's enough to curl your hair. Or at least get me severely angry to this day!

I ran one arcade that had a lot of daycares come in. We offered them an amazing deal, and picked up quite a bit of business.

The good daycares were... reasonable. About what you would expect from a babysitter. The bad ones were... ah... well, my children will never go into a day care, just in case.

[Mighty Girl]

Someday I'll have to tell the story of my oldest son's one and only daycare experience- it's enough to curl your hair. Or at least get me severely angry to this day!

I totally know what you mean.... people assume since I'm now a SAHM that I think daycare is evil- but I went to daycare. But when I was pregnant, my husband and I did the math and it simply wasn't worth it for me to keep working. Good daycares around here run about $900/month on up, and after paying for that plus dry cleaning, going out to lunch, gas, etc. I would be lucky to have a few hundred left.

However, my mom didn't send me to daycare until I was around 2 years old. And the first one she sent me to either didn't feed me, or something because everytime she picked me up I would whine continuously for food- she had to keep crackers in the car. So then she found another better daycare and I flourished there.

Even without the money thing- I read too many news articles to send my daughter to daycare.