update: do I have to fire someone due to his lack of child care?

by Alison Green on December 10, 2024

It’s “where are you now?” month at Ask a Manager, and all December I’m running updates from people who had their letters here answered in the past.

There will be more posts than usual this week, so keep checking back throughout the day.

Remember the letter-writer wondering if they’d need to fire someone due to his lack of child care? Here’s the update.

We did wind up letting the employee go, but it wasn’t because of the childcare issue.

As I mentioned in my email, I was waiting for guidance from HR but I knew what they would tell me: that being on call is a requirement of the job and if he could no longer meet that requirement, he could not remain in the position. We have a company policy that he was informed of before taking the job and it had to be maintained. HR is located in another state, so we had a Teams meeting with HR, his immediate supervisor, and me. He was not happy after the meeting, but he understood. After discussing with the rest of the team, we decided to move him to the end of the on-call rotation, giving him three weeks notice to figure something out for childcare for that week.

As a few readers suspected, he had a contentious relationship with his ex-wife and she was initially unwilling to budge AT ALL on their scheduled custody days. However, once she realized he could be fired over this, she agreed to accommodate and switch up custody arrangement for his on-call weeks. This seemed like the only solution all along, but it took the threat of job loss to get her to agree to it.

Just to clarify a few things I saw in the comments: he did not have this custody dispute when he took the job (it was a recent development), there aren’t enough calls or work at night to hire a night shift person, and he did not make enough money to hire a night babysitter or nanny for seven days straight. The on-call arrangement is normal for our industry and the rest of the team, while open to some accommodations for now, did not want to split up their on-call weeks over the long term.

There were some unrelated job performance issues that began long before the on-call issue and it was ultimately a repeat offense that led to us having no choice but to let him go. He wound up being let go just before his on-call week came up.

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{ 198 comments }

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  1. Madame Desmortes*

    I’m sorry. It sounds like a difficult situation for everyone. I think you did the best you could, OP.

    1. Silver Robin*

      Agreed, this whole thing just seems like a situation with no good outcomes. Truly stuck between a rock and a hard place for everyone, even with everyone being reasonable (except perhaps ex-wife, but she did adjust once she fully understood the consequences).

      1. LavaLamp (She/Her)*

        Yeah, if he was paying child support no job means less or no money until he gets a new one so she had an incentive to compromise. I wonder if she wasn’t clear on the nature of things until it came to that.

        1. Dahlia*

          She stepped in so her small child was not taken to work or left alone. Speculating on child support feels really unnecessary here.

          1. Arrietty*

            She wasn’t willing to compromise until job loss was on the table. LW being unemployed would also have prevented the child being taken to work or left alone.

            1. Dahlia*

              And???

              They aren’t married anymore. His job isn’t her problem. How he deals with childcare isn’t her problem. Her only problem is the safety of her child.

              Again, we are hearing this 3rd hand. None of us know what happened. Speculation about the ex-wife is unnecessary.

            2. Roland*

              We don’t know what she’s giving up on by switching the custody schedule. She also has a job and a life and a family which could have all sorts of demands. We have no idea and it’s really frustrating to see all this negative judgement thrown at her.

      2. rebelwithmouseyhair*

        The ex-wife was quite rightly furious that he was taking the child to his on-call visits!

    2. Keymaster of Gozer (she/her)*

      Agreed. Managing on-call rotas and being on them is one of the least favourite parts of my job. You want to be kind, but you also need the work to be done and it’s a situation where things can quite often get messy.

      I had to voluntarily remove myself off the on-call job long ago when health issues meant I couldn’t go out late at night. I really miss the money those shifts brought in :(

      1. Science KK*

        Key master I just want to give you props for voluntarily stepping down. We had someone join my group semi recently, and she insisted on being our first emergency on call person.

        This entails going out in the middle of the night usually to save thousands to millions of dollars worth of supplies and irreplaceable samples. Call comes, she doesn’t come. sends a couple texts, it ends up being almost an hour before someone actually comes and handles it. Not much got lost thankfully since it was a new freezer, but we have to have meetings about it and our boss is PISSED.

        Turns out she can’t drive at night due to a medical issue, but didn’t think it’d matter for the on call list. I’m sorry you’re missing out on the money but I’m sure your coworkers appreciate your honesty.

        1. Observer*

          Turns out she can’t drive at night due to a medical issue, but didn’t think it’d matter for the on call list

          Does she not understand the nature of the job?!

          I can see why your boss is so angry. She’s just lucky that there wasn’t much to be damaged. But still…

          1. Science KK*

            Hypothetically it could also happen on a weekend day, but at the same time she is the one who brought up being 1st on the list!

            But based on things she’s said/done both at work and in her personal life, I think she’s just one of those people who doesn’t think through their actions. I’ll probably post an open thread one of these days of all her antics for people to be shocked by. Teaser: our work holiday party was after it was dark, when she can’t drive. She didn’t try to get a ride until the final RSVP day, after several people asking her. Several coworkers told her they were more than happy to drive her.

  2. Erin*

    Interesting, thank you for the update! Sort of convenient he had to be let go anyway? I feel for him and the OP, either way.

    Going back to the original post, it was emphasized that he knew about the on-call requirement when he was hired.

    What if he hadn’t known, and it wasn’t necessarily a norm to expect in the industry? What if he’d gotten hired, and then say, two weeks later the on call aspect was implemented? I wonder how that might have changed things and Alison’s response.

    1. Cmdrshprd*

      “What if he hadn’t known, and it wasn’t necessarily a norm to expect in the industry? What if he’d gotten hired, and then say, two weeks later the on call aspect was implemented?”

      I would say at the end of the day if business needs change and an employee can’t meet the requirements of the position they can’t stay on, it is not reasonable to expect the business to keep them on forever. In the situation OP mentioned having having 1 out of 4 employees exempt from a core/critical part of the job is not reasonable. Even if this was say a new part of the job that the company started doing, such as they only did regular (9 to 5) HVAC calls before and hired someone, but then 2 weeks or even 2 months later due to business reasons decided to start handling emergency (24/7) HVAC calls.

      But in that situation it would put more of the burden on the business to give more grace to the employee to find a new job and/or a generous severance. Say 3 to 6 month severance, a great glowing recommendation, or 3 to 4 months of exempt from the on call with an exit date fixed to allow the employee to job search, while doing the regular part of the job.

    2. Mostly Managing*

      I worked somewhere years and years ago that went from 9-5 Monday to Friday to “call centre is open 8am-10pm, seven days a week”.

      We had to hire more staff, of course.
      But before we hired anyone we asked our existing staff if anyone would like to shift their hours. There were a surprising number of people interested in changing their hours, with the understanding that it would still be regular shifts rather than rotating. Then we hired to “fill the gaps” – which also had the advantage that we had at least a couple of experienced people in the call center at any given time.

      (Then new management came in and declared that everyone should work every shift at least once a month, which annoyed the entire staff and they all started looking elsewhere. I had left by that point, and gave some very good references!)

      1. Smithy*

        Yeah – I’m in a sector where for years it was common to have your major EU hub based in the UK. Management structure, advancement opportunities and all that were largely centered around these larger UK offices.

        Brexit happens, and at different speeds other EU offices open with the intent of being that new hub or previously opened EU offices get positioned to become the new EU hub with the management/advancement opportunities. Some UK staff were happy to make those moves, others not.

        In my sector at least, these changes have been largely been rolled out slowly with one exception where staff were told the entire London office was shutting down in a year and they could move to the new EU location and keep their job or they had a year of employment left. But ultimately, however these employers have tried to be understanding the reality of the business priority is to have an EU hub.

    3. Person from the Resume*

      I think as long as it is a legitimate need, you just give people enough time to adjust or find a new job if cannot fulfill a condition of employment. I’d say something like 3 months.

      But it is possible some people might leave because of it.

      That is why it’s key to make it very clear before hiring that these are mandatory, non-neigiable requirements.

      1. MigraineMonth*

        Also, in the case that an employee can’t make the new schedule work, the company should treat it as a layoff. It’s a separation due to a changed role rather than the employee quitting or being fired for cause, so it would be a jerk move for the company to contest unemployment

        1. rudster*

          Even being/becoming unable to do your job (or just generally being bad at your job) wouldn’t usually be considered “cause” for purposes of denying unemployment. It typically has to be some kind of gross misconduct.

    4. Dust Bunny*

      Except none of that was the case, so that’s an entirely different theoretical job. He did know, he knew when he was hired, and it’s common in the industry. Business needs didn’t change-the employee’s family situation apparently did. Allison’s answer would obviously have been completely different.

      I used to work at a place that was open daylight hours seven days a week. We didn’t have evening on-calls but it was made very, very clear during the interview process that everyone worked two weekends a month, no exceptions. If people couldn’t or didn’t want to do that, it was on them to remove themselves from consideration.

    5. CubeFarmer*

      Sounds like he knew, but then his ex-wife wasn’t initially willing to be flexible about custody arrangements. We don’t know the backstory here. Maybe the ex-wife is a jerk. Maybe the ex-husband has a history of demanding inconvenient adjustments to previous arrangements.

    6. The Other Virginia*

      It shouldn’t change it at all. Some people have an unrealistic expectation that the job they are hired to do can never change in any way or the policies that are in place when they start can never change. That is just not the way it works (minus a contract). I can’t even count the number of times my job description has changed in the 18 years I’ve worked where I do. Business needs change, technology changes, goals change, etc. Sometimes, when duties or policies change, there are accommodations and flexibilty that can be negotiated and sometimes, not. Is it fair? Not always. But in work and in life, that’s just the reality.

  3. EngineerRN*

    This kind of sucks all around. It’s definitely yet another job that assumes the employee is married or childless (given that the position doesn’t pay enough for someone to hire a night nanny when on call), which is really frustrating. The company is eliminating the pretty much the entire pool of single parents, spousal caregivers (imagine trying to care for a spouse with early Alzheimer’s!) & adults caring for elderly parents or adult disabled children.

    1. Sloanicota*

      Yes, it’s disheartening that so many jobs have night and weekend requirements while knowingly, openly stating that they do not pay enough to cover childcare during those periods. That basically assumes everyone is either has no care responsibilities or that “someone” is taking care of that for them unpaid. Our entire society depends on those someones.

        1. Clisby*

          I agree that it’s too low, but there’s no particular reason to think this employee was paid minimum wage. According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, fewer than 2% of hourly workers in the US are paid at or below the federal minimum wage.

          1. H.C.*

            That would be a lot higher if it was calculated using state/local gov’t minimum wages. And 2% earning $7.25/hr or lower is 2% too many!

      2. Tradd*

        There are some jobs that are not suited for all personal situations. Long haul truck driving, for example, wouldn’t work for a single parent.

        1. Nicole Maria*

          Right, I don’t think it’s sad, it’s always going to be true that different people have different needs and some jobs have requirements that don’t match those. Not every job is right for everyone.

          1. Kitry*

            Yep. Not every job is suitable for every person. In my twenties I had a job where I would work really long shifts (16-18 hours) for 4 days, then be off for 6 days. That schedule would never work for me now that I have kids, but at the time I loved it because it allowed me to do So. Much. Travel. Just because a schedule only appeals to a niche group of people doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with it.

      3. Quinalla*

        This is so true that unpaid care is such a HUGE part of how our economy operates and it is either invisible or devalued.

        1. Rex Libris*

          This is because, like so many things, if employers admit it exists, they’d have to explain why they aren’t accounting for it.

      4. Tea Monk*

        It’d be one thing if they didn’t complain that people don’t want those jobs but they act like people are morally deficient to not take jobs with horrible hours and pay

        1. Tradd*

          People who work days probably would think a 2nd or 3rd shift job is horrible hours. We have no idea what the employee in this post made. Nighttime childcare is going to probably be at a premium and even someone who made good money would likely have issues affording it.

          Just because a job has night/weekend hours doesn’t mean it’s horrible or going to pay horrible. Nurses work nights and weekends and they don’t make minimum wage.

      5. WillowSunstar*

        Yes, this does concern me having aging Baby Boomer parents. At some point, they will need me to help take care of them. They are in their late 70’s now.

      6. LifebeforeCorona*

        Indeed, for years I had open availability and would take any shifts holidays and weekends included. That ended when grandma time started. Being available for short notice childcare impacted my own ability to be available. Fortunately, I had a lot of earned capital with my job that it worked out. But is was a stark reminder of how many parents are juggling and are one dropped ball away from chaos.

    2. bamcheeks*

      Genuinely, I don’t think this is a problem for employers to solve. Valuing, recognising and supporting care work is a much broader problem and needs a social solution.

      1. Pescadero*

        Eh… employers are a big part of the reason we don’t have living wage legislation, single payer healthcare, etc.

        Employers are part of society, and given Citizens United – they are a part of society with an outsized voice/ability to drive (or prevent) social solutions.

        1. Wayward Sun*

          In the current environment single-payer healthcare doesn’t seem like a good idea. Among other things it would probably result in an immediate national abortion ban.

          2. MigraineMonth*

            I think that’s as likely as the US military draft including women. It’s not that it’s necessarily unreasonable, it’s that the overlap between those political movements is almost nonexistent.

      2. Sloanicota*

        The employer could pay an hourly wage that covers the average cost of childcare. I bet they make a lot more than that per hour of employee labor.

        1. Jennifer Strange*

          We don’t know what they pay. Even if someone makes a lot of money, finding child care at the last minute (especially at odd hours like 3 am) isn’t feasible. You’d basically need a live-in nanny, which is not a cost most folks can afford (I make good money and I couldn’t afford that).

          1. Happy meal with extra happy*

            Yeah, realistically, for some of these comments to make sense/be feasible, we would need to implement an entirely new economic system. And, like, if someone wants to argue for some type of socialistic or whatever society, great! But, it’s disingenuous to not acknowledge that this is the type of change needed to make these scenarios possible.

        2. Cj*

          Something to consider regarding your comment and others like it that say people should be paid a living wage, which be high enough to account for child care.

          I would assume people making such comments also think that child care workers should be paid more (which they undoubtedly should). But that means that the average cost of child care would increase, which would mean the employee in question needs to be paid even more, and so on and so on. I have no answer to this problem, but that is the reality of it.

          Also, the OP said the company doesn’t pay enough for the employee have an overnight babysitter or nanny during their on call weeks. A lot of employer’s don’t have to pay anything for on-call time (depends on the restrictions on the employee), and only pay the employees regular rate if they actually work. If company pays something for an on call shift even if they aren’t required to, it is generally a small fraction of the employee’s hourly pay. So you could earn good wages and still not be able to afford a babysitter/nanny for your entire on-call shift when you aren’t being paid for it yourself.

        3. Cj*

          Something to consider regarding your comment and others like it that say people should be paid a living wage, which be high enough to account for child care.

          I would assume people making such comments think that child care workers should also be paid more (which they undoubtedly should). But that means that the average cost of child care would increase, which would mean the employee in question needs to be paid even more, and so on and so on. I have no answer to this problem, but that is the reality of it.

          Also, the OP said the company doesn’t pay enough for the employee have an overnight babysitter or nanny during their on call weeks. A lot of employer’s don’t have to pay anything for on-call time (depends on the restrictions on the employee), and only pay the employees regular rate if they actually work. If company pays something for an on call shift even if they aren’t required to, it is generally a small fraction of the employee’s hourly pay. So you could earn good wages and still not be able to afford a babysitter/nanny for your entire on-call shift when you aren’t being paid for the entire time yourself.

        4. Starbuck*

          Lol, lots of employers don’t even pay an hourly wage that covers the cost of housing! For a single person even. I do want to dream better of course. But I did laugh first.

        1. Jennifer Strange*

          Do you know how much a nanny costs? It’s MUCH more than general child care. I make good money and even I can’t afford a live-in nanny.

    3. ferrina*

      Some jobs require on-call overnight time. That doesn’t mean that the employer is vile or heartless- can you imagine being locked out of your apartment and not being able to call anyone? (as sounds like this job was). I had a relative who did on-call night shift for years as a nurse- it was key that the patients had someone they could call at any time. The hours worked for my relative because their spouse stayed with the kids, but my mom (single parent) was more limited for the hours for her work because she didn’t have any back-up childcare.

      There should be more resources and support for single parents/caregivers and I could wax on about that, but ultimately that’s not the company’s issue to solve. The job truly requires after-hours on call work for truly time-sensitive situations. Not every person is going to have the life circumstance to fit every job.

      2. Llama lamma workplace drama*

        Exactly. I work in IT. I have required oncall shift. I am paid very well for this position because of the knowledge the job requires and the fact that there are oncall requirements.

      3. Dust Bunny*

        Yes, thank you. Not every job can shut down at 4:30 in the afternoon. Someone is going to have to be either on the job or on-call during those other hours. Some people are not going to be available to do that.

        1. doreen*

          And sometimes it’s impossible for people to know ahead of time that they will work past those hours. I used to work in CPS and my workday was supposed to end at 4:30. There were shifts of people who worked nights, weekends and holidays who took investigations that came in outside M-F 8-4. But if 4:30 came, and I was in the middle of an investigation or waiting for a foster-care placement , I couldn’t just leave. I’m sure that meant that some people couldn’t take that job – but there were plenty of single parents working there and no one had a SAH spouse.

      4. Six for the truth over solace in lies*

        Right, and when I was renting and my ceiling started to leak, I needed someone to come take care of it *now*, not when business opened the next day. Some jobs are just like that.

        1. rebelwithmouseyhair*

          If you call a plumber at 3am he’s gonna charge a hefty sum of money. How come OP’s business is not charging hefty sums that would cover a decent salary in acknowledgement of being on-call?

          1. Bella Ridley*

            Charging who? It’s unclear what you’re referring to here. OP sounds like a building management supervisor whose maintenance team oversees the facilities, and if they have to dispatch a maintainer at 4am because a pipe burst or there’s a lockout or something…who are they supposed to be charging a hefty sum to? Themselves?

          2. Jennifer Strange*

            Considering the LW doesn’t note the fees/pay to employees we have no way of knowing what the employees make. The employees could be making a low six figures and that still wouldn’t be enough to have a night nanny depending on where they live.

      5. sofar*

        The employer can then staff for around-the-clock work. If the work calls for 24/7 coverage, the employer needs to staff for that, not require day employees to fill the gap.

        My field has a season where we go 24/7. Some companies in my field staff dedicated night employees, others require existing employees to cover the nights AND days with no additional compensation, others incentivize volunteers to take on the on-call night shifts while still working days (extra pay, extra PTO days to use later).

        The schedule LW is describing is the worst for morale, in my experience (doesn’t seem like the employees are getting extra pay for this coverage). Yes, the night shift is quieter and PREDATORY employers use that as an excuse to say “we can’t justify hiring someone to cover that shift.” But being available to the point where you need child care IS work that should be compensated.

        I get the employee was let go for other reasons, but the on-call night shift is still something that needs to be resolved either via incentives or paying an additional employee or two to sit up all night.

        1. Bella Ridley*

          But this is very, very common for this type of job. It’s different because it isn’t a 24/7 job, which you are correct would require dedicated night employees. My job has the same–where sometimes you will be on-call for a week. Most weeks, no calls. Occasionally, one in the afternoon/evening. Very occasionally a middle-of-the-night 5-bell emergency. This is part of the understood role of the job, as it sounds like with OP’s role. I don’t see why a situation that is commonly accepted and works for most people should be changed.

          1. Zephy*

            Because this guy isn’t the last primary caregiver this company will ever hire, and making it a policy to not hire people who have caregiving responsibilities is toeing the line of illegal discrimination in a lot of places if it isn’t outright illegal already. It makes sense to come up with a plan for this situation.

            1. Bella Ridley*

              The plan is for him to sort out his own caregiving responsibilities, as does everyone else who works on-call work or graveyard shifts or even a regular, standard old 9-5.

        2. HonorBox*

          The LW never mentioned compensation, so there’s no way to infer whether employees are getting extra pay, or if they’re compensated at the level they are because of the on-call expectation. We don’t know that and shouldn’t assume that the business is operating in bad faith. I also don’t think it is predatory for the business to say they can’t justify hiring more people. The cost to staff for this is so much higher than the value they’d ultimately bring. It sounds like this is maintenance and calls are somewhat irregular. Hard to justify staffing 24/7 when on-call can work.

        3. Wayward Sun*

          No one’s going to pay for a full night shift for issues that might come up once or twice a week. It’s just not feasible in most industries.

          1. Roland*

            To add, let’s say they did pay someone to work only nightshift… That wouldn’t change the fact that this theoretical job also couldn’t be done as a single parent. Predictability doesn’t make nighttime care any cheaper.

        5. GoodNPlenty*

          I was a night shift RN most of my career; I found as a rule night shift employees aren’t terribly valued. It was increasingly hard to find a job that would let me work straight 8 hour night shifts….they wanted 12 hour people. I was an agency per diem night shift nurse and took call on my regular nights off. But none of those places wanted to pay a full time night shift float person to fill gaps.

      6. Sloanicota*

        We certainly need on-call overnight staffing, but employers are making a choice to knowingly pay less than the cost of childcare.

        1. HonorBox*

          We don’t know what the business is paying employees. But what we do know is that they’re paying people an agreed-upon wage, were up front about the requirement to be on call, and this guy’s life situation changed to a point where it wasn’t possible for him to do the work he’d agreed to do initially. That’s all.

        2. Jennifer Strange*

          We don’t know what this employer pays. Overnight care is EXPENSIVE (and for good reason) so the employee in question not being able to afford it isn’t enough to determine that the company is some awful penny-pincher.

        3. Great Frogs of Literature*

          Yes, but also childcare where I live is so expensive that I know couples who choose to have one stay-at-home parent because otherwise that person’s salary literally just covers the cost of childcare, if that. I’m not saying that that’s how it should be, but there are a lot of companies (at a guess, most companies) that can’t afford to double salaries for huge swaths of their workforce. It sucks that that means it hits parents instead, but I don’t think it’s reasonable to look at a huge systemic problem and solely blame employers. We, as a society, don’t value childcare. It’s not just an employer problem.

          (Employers SHOULD definitely pay more, though, especially for low-wage jobs.)

          1. Wayward Sun*

            Childcare is incredibly labor-intensive. It’s really hard to make it work out economically unless you either subsidize it massively, or underpay the workers. It’s one of those genuinely difficult problems where things can end up working out badly even if everyone means well.

            1. Starbuck*

              Yeah it seems like less a failure specifically of employers not paying enough (ok they don’t, but even a substantial raise may not be enough) and more that affordable childcare just really isn’t possible in the “free market”. A public option is necessary for a functional system. Same way school would really not be affordable if it was just parents paying individually for each child. Most people can’t afford private schools after all.

          2. Dahlia*

            I was talking to a classmate about this yesterday and she mentioned her friend was paying 1800 dollars a month for daycare.

            1. Jennifer Strange*

              Yup, that’s about what I pay for one child (and that’s for daycare; I can’t imagine what the cost would be if I needed care overnight).

            2. WorkingRachel*

              Yup. I pay $1200 for daycare that runs from 7:30-5:30. That is low for my area. And because it’s a home-based daycare, they take 2 weeks-ish of vacation every year (as they should, but that does mean you need a backup plan from relatives, friends, or taking your own PTO).

        4. Saturday*

          Paying the cost of childcare would essentially be paying two salaries – for the employee and for the childcare worker. That’s a huge expense that I don’t see a reason to expect an employer to pay. There are a lot of jobs that aren’t suitable to someone who has caregiver responsibilities – this is one of them.

        5. toe beans*

          This is true – though also, it sounds like what this guy needed was childcare at night, ad hoc and with zero notice because he never knew when he’d get called out. That’s basically impossible to find even if you can pay for it. Daycare is daycare and it finishes on the dot – and live-in nannies are beyond almost everyone’s budget. It’s the sort of thing we rely on unpaid caregiving for, whether that’s from the child’s other parent, a relative or family friend.

        6. HB*

          I’ve been thinking about this and I’m not convinced that the cost of childcare is the issue (aside from the point that we actually don’t know anything about what this person is making) nearly as much as simple logistics.

          The rotation is one week per month during which you could get called in or not.
          Therefore you have two options: find someone who is willing to sleep at your house 7 nights every month, or find someone who is willing to let them call/wake you up at any time for 7 nights each month. While overnight nannies certainly exist, your ability to find one is going to vary greatly depending on where you live, and it’s going to be super difficult when your requirement is “give me 7 nights each month for the foreseeable future.” The finding/coordination is just as much an issue (potentially more) as the hourly cost.

      7. AngryOctopus*

        Yes! I have a fuse blow once when I lived in an apartment, and the fuse box was actually in someone else’s apartment (due to the completely bizarre way in which the building was constructed), and I could not fix it myself. If I called them at 8PM and was told nobody could come fix it because it’s not fair to have night on-call hours? Absolutely not. It’s the nature of many jobs to have to have 24/7 coverage, and people have to figure it out for themselves.

      8. Coverage Associate*

        It is much easier for employers to organize privately and politically than for employees to organize. Many times, employers are already organized through trade organizations, chambers of commerce, etc. While no one employer may have a critical mass of employees requiring night time childcare, probably every city does. Those employers can then take that information to an existing public or private childcare organization, or even set up their own, to make affordable overnight care available. It’s much easier for 100 employers who can be identified from the 2024 equivalent of the yellow pages to organize for this than 1000 or 10000 employees unknown to each other. In fact, there are companies that offer emergency childcare to employers as an employee benefit, like health insurance and EAPs. It’s not cost effective for small employers, but it can be made cost effective if employers gather together as a risk pool equivalent. (The emergency childcare benefit would only have given this employee maybe one extra call period to find another solution, but I understand that would have been about an extra month.)

        1. Morning Reader*

          This is a great idea but it wouldn’t solve the employee’s problem in this scenario.

          Scenario 1: On-call employee gets a call for service in the middle of the night. Employee throws on clothes, jumps in car and goes to place needing service.

          Scenario 2: on-call employee who has a small child gets a call for service in the middle of the night. Employee gets dressed, wakes up child, dresses child, takes child to car, drives to child care place, drops off child, drives to place needing service.

          Depending on how much of an emergency it is, scenario 2 takes too much time to respond to the service need. It’s not great to wake up a small child in the middle of the night when it’s not your emergency, either. You’re not refugeeing or escaping a burning building, you’re just going to work.

          In short, short of having another responsible adult staying at the on-call employee’s residence, I don’t see how having night child care on an institutional basis could work. Unless it’s a single institution where many on-call or night shift employees work, like a hospital.

        1. HonorBox*

          We don’t know anything about what people are paid. These four may be well-compensated overall. The cost of childcare is tough, and the cost for one week a month is even more so. But that doesn’t mean that the business is heartless and vile.

        2. toe beans*

          But that’s not the issue here. The issue would be even finding someone who could offer nighttime childcare one week in four, or who can jump in at no notice to sit with the child when a call comes in. That’s very, very difficult no matter how much money you can throw at the problem.

        3. AngryOctopus*

          Lots of places that require on-call shifts pay more salary up front. So if you work standard 40 hours, average salary may be $80K/year. For 40 hours plus the on-call duties, salary might be $95K/year.

        4. Roland*

          I mean, do you think that anyone with on call hours should automatically make more than a night nanny? That seems to devalue childcare quite a lot, that anyone who needs childcare should be out-earning a provider. It’s not like there’s a night-daycare in most places so you are by definition going to be paying someone 1:1. It’s the only the employer’s fault if you think it’s unacceptable for the employee to be getting less an hour than a nanny would charge.

      10. Kyrielle*

        Yup! For years I was one of several in rotation on an overnight/weekend on-call…for if our software went down or had a major issue of any sort. Our software, which was being used in 911 centers to track information on what calls had come in, what units were available, who was where and what was going on.

        I feel like the customers had a reasonable expectation of that support, the company needed us to provide it. But there is no way we needed to staff three shifts seven days a week to do it – if the software went down that often, no one would buy it!

        The rotation wasn’t paid at full wages but there was a weekly token payment as well as one for each call handled. I eventually stopped having to take shifts because we had a couple people who were taking it for the extra money and were much, much less stressed by it than average. But if they’d stopped wanting the extra shifts, we’d all have been back on rotation, it was part of the job (and we got scheduled for shifts every cycle, they just took shifts away from anyone who was willing).

        1. AngryOctopus*

          We have people at work who volunteer to be on-call for freezer emergencies and the like (research). They get a quarterly stipend, plus a payout if they actually have to come out for a call.

    4. Stuart Foote*

      I don’t really understand what the employer is supposed to do to solve this problem. How many people can afford to hire a night nanny? Not every job makes sense for every situation.

    5. JFC*

      It also assumes that employees will have family members who are close enough, willing and able to care for a young child in the middle of the night at a moment’s notice. Many people just are not in that situation.

      1. Dust Bunny*

        It also assumes that adults can manage their own family and employment situations and will have sense enough to explore other job options if they find that [whatever schedule] isn’t working for them.

        I don’t want to do on-call work and it fs with my sleep, so I don’t try to shoehorn myself into jobs that require it. It’s not my employer’s job to interfere with my life to the extent that they would have to to magically make that work for me.

      2. We Are Number One*

        Then they can take another job.

        At least this system ensures that non-parents don’t have to regularly pick up the slack if a parent’s childcare falls through, as happens far too often and also leads to resentment.

    6. We Are Number One*

      Nothing can be for everyone, and that’s fine. It’s a shame things went this way, sure, but this is not a great example for the point you’re making.

    7. JSPA*

      This isn’t unusual for relatively entry level / early career jobs, though.

      In theory (though of course not always in practice) one has some choice as to when to have kids.

      In theory, one also has some chances to progress to jobs with more flexibility, more pay, or both, before one reaches the point of doing spousal caregiving.

      The company may well have quite a number of jobs that can be done remotely. But not these specific jobs–which may therefore pay more, but still not enough to cover childcare.

      Someone above gave the example of emergency HVAC. There may be people working the phones who can work remotely. Or an answering service that employs people who can work remotely. But you can’t fix a broken furnace motor at 10 PM when it’s going to be 40 below zero by daybreak, remotely. However, when only a few percent of the calls are something that brings in cash like, “switch out furnace motor,” while others are, “your dog bumped the thermostat, and the wiring is loose,” you can’t charge enough to pay a wage that’ll cover night-time childcare, one week a month.

      Basically, we can’t make up numbers and insist that this is the company being stingy and short-sighted; this is presumably what the job can reasonably pay.

      How many of us hire the company that has a minimum charge of $250 for night and weekend calls, if there’s a company that has a $75 minimum charge for nights and weekends? Maybe if you live in a small enough town, that your know they’re a great employer, yeah. But if it’s not a trade where you need someone spectacular vs someone tolerably competent…nah, the market is not going to correct based on one company getting 5 stars, and one getting 4-1/4 stars in their reviews.

    8. KHB*

      It also rules out anyone who can’t work on one particular day of the week for religious reasons. I remember once, several years ago, there was an interesting discussion here about whether it would be a “reasonable accommodation” for a religious employee to ask for on-call time to be assigned on a split-week schedule. Most people seemed to be of the view that the full-week schedule was just how things were done, and if that means the religious person can’t take that job, then too bad so sad. That didn’t quite sit well with me, but I’m neither a lawyer nor a religious person nor an on-call worker, so what do I know?

    9. Annie2*

      I’m just not sure what you want the company to do about this. They’re not imposing occasional afterhours work as a fun whimsy – sometimes pipes burst at 3:00 AM. That is indeed going to be inconvenient for any single parent, but it’s not like the company can mandate that pipes should only burst between 8:30 and 4:30. As others have said, not all jobs are for all people.

      1. AngryOctopus*

        This. When you work in lab management, you are on call basically all the time, in case a freezer fails or a cold room goes down. It’s not likely, but it can happen. Now functionally people consult each other and say “can’t do week X because I’m out but I’ll be around July 4 so you don’t have to worry when you’re on vacation”, and non-ops people who volunteer to be on call get extra $$ per quarter for being available for contact and also $$ if actually asked to come in, but if you said “well I’ll never be able to come in at night because I’m a single parent”, that would not go over well. Maybe not the right job for you.

        1. Wayward Sun*

          That would be nice in general, but it wouldn’t solve this person’s childcare problem, though.

    10. JSPA*

      And as a separate reply from my prior…this is, yet again, a situation where a more robust social safety net and/or different social assumptions could do more of the heavy lifting, if we made that a priority.

      Whether that’s by way of direct paid time off, direct access to childcare in general / emergency child care in specific, or third party coverage that treats “carer duties” as an expected part of life, or subsidies, or beneficial organizations / nonprofits making it part of their calling.

      For (random) example, I noticed that in France, one’s supplemental health insurance can cover, as a standard benefit, “paying a person to cover for your regular support of family members, whenever you are incapacitated for more than 7 days, and thus can’t provide services for them.” For other random example, some US cities subsidize “emergency” night childcare (which a recently contentious divorce combined with job requirements seems like it might be a reasonable use, for a couple of months, while working out some other child care tradeoff). That makes more sense than insisting (on slim to no evidence) that a small business could or should pay more for a specific job, or that all jobs would normally be convenient for all people, regardless of their situation.

      1. We Are Number One*

        This!

        A large part of this also comes down to having a community – it takes a village to raise a child and all that. Our current culture of making the two people who produced the child (or adopted as the case may be) almost solely responsible for everything relating to the child may need some rethinking.

        1. JustKnope*

          I never quite understand what mythical village we’re talking about though. And the practical implications of that. Even if I had family nearby, I’m not going to expect them to watch my child overnight regularly? My parents have a full life outside of helping me care for my job.

          1. Lazuli*

            I think there are plenty of people for whom that’s not mythical, though. I’d be happy to keep my ringer on overnight for one week a month and open the door at 2am for a sleepy kid in jammies to flop down on a futon on when needed, whether niece/nephew, friend, or just a neighbor I’m not that close with who I know is in a tight spot. (But anyway, as others have said above, not all jobs are for all people/situations…)

          2. MigraineMonth*

            There are lots of families where the children, parents and grandparents all live in the same house. Grandparents help out with the children when they’re little; then the parents and children help out with the grandparents when they get older. If respite care is needed, there’s the next-door neighbors or the cousins right down the street.

            My understanding is that this was the way most of US society worked before the 1950s, when suburbs and nuclear families broke that (at least for the white middle class and anyone aspiring to it).

          3. Starbuck*

            Multigenerational living situations are not mythical, though. Living with adults other than just the nuclear family parents and children is how this has always been done. Aunts, uncles, grandparents, other adult siblings etc. This requires of course extended family that you get along well enough with a building that also has space. Not always easy but not mythical either.

          4. We Are Number One*

            The mythical village where I let my widowed neighbour know that they can always drop off the kids with me in an emergency (or I can pop over to take care of them) because my job allows for that.

            Oh wait, that’s not a myth but reality. Or I’m an actual unicorn somehow writing this with hooves.

            1. We Are Number One*

              Also please not I am not related to this neighbour. Because being family isn’t a requirement for community building (though it can help, but at the same time not everyone has a great family).

    11. doreen*

      I’m not at all sure the problem had anything to do with his rate of pay – he could be making six figures and still have trouble finding someone who is willing to be available on no notice and doesn’t expect to be paid for the whole week. Just because he can’t afford to hire a night nanny for a whole week when he might not get a single call doesn’t mean he’s underpaid

    12. HonorBox*

      There’s a big difference between being able to pay someone to hire a night nanny and paying people a fair wage. But that’s why they’re up front about the requirement. It sucks because it probably eliminates people from being able to consider the job, but it also sucks for the employer because they may lose out on solid candidates who opt out.

      There’s just no great way around it because to hire folks to work the night shift is probably so cost-prohibitive too…

    13. Jennifer Strange*

      I make good money and I still wouldn’t be able to hire a night nanny if I needed to be on overnight call. Can we not make unnecessary assumptions about the LW and their company? And yes, as a parent, I recognize where our society could do better to support folks who are care givers to family members of all ages (especially those going it alone) but that’s not what this is, and it’s not on this one company to solve that issue.

    14. Starbuck*

      There are lots of other family arrangements that could make this possible (multigenerational etc) but yeah, being a sole caretaker of a young child or anyone who needs round the clock supervision is always going to be hard and not possible to accommodate with every job. 100% of jobs can’t be made to fit 100% of the population. We should make caregiving easier as a society, totally, but I wonder what else you would have done as manager to fix it? I’m not seeing options other than as you say, significantly increasing pay.

    15. WorkingRachel*

      For the people saying “not all jobs are for all people”….yes, and also being a single parent without backup actually excludes you from many, many jobs, including some pretty well paying ones, like nursing and most physician positions. I didn’t realize how much this was true until becoming a parent. I’m a single parent with a relatively flexible, well-paying job, and I am only just making it work. Daycare runs from 7:30 to 5:30 and I have a little bit of support from my parents. That means I can EXACTLY meet my 8-5 working hours, with 15 minutes to spare on either end, and to meet my one day a week in the office requirement I have to cut out lunch breaks every other day of the week. I am supposed to make it to an occasional evening meeting, and I invariably can’t because they run over the 6:00-6:30 time period when I’m getting my son to bed. You can find daycares that open a *little* bit earlier or later, but mostly this is just how things are, so you have to rely on family, friends, or getting a straight up nanny for anything outside of this.

      It’s not on any one employer to fix this, and there are obviously a lot of jobs where nights and on-call work are truly necessary. But let’s not pretend there are a plethora of job options that work just fine for single parents–it’s a pretty narrow swath of jobs that mostly exist in the traditional white-collar sector (or no-benefits gig work, like driving Uber). Yes, many of us had choices about reproducing (I did), but also the system we have sucks.

    16. Lynn Whitehat*

      When I was in this position, I got a housemate, and charged reduced rent in exchange for being available in these circumstances.

  4. Keymaster of Gozer (she/her)*

    Sad but par for the course when on-call work is involved. There’s really no alternative – you either sort out childcare or you don’t take the job.

    1. ActualTeacher*

      He had support when he took the job, per the letter. It was the result of a divorce that he started to lack it, and it was only when he was about to lose his job that his wife switched anything about it.

      It’s not “par for the course” its being stuck in a bad situation.

      1. Keymaster of Gozer (she/her)*

        My queendom for an edit function. I realised after submitting that that yes, the circumstances changed but at the end of the day there was no way he could keep doing the on-call rota without outside help. It was not the manager’s job to solve and it’s not ours to pose speculation as to the ex-wife’s motives.

  5. Pastor Petty Labelle*

    Of course she saw the light when she realized him losing his job would cost her child support.

    In my state, if he did hire someone for his one week on call that would be part of the child support calculation. It would take a while to work through the court, and she would pitch a fit at a lower child support number, but it’s a calculation. She doesn’t get more because she whines and he doesn’t get less because he wants it.

    Sometimes you need to be careful what you wish for.

    1. Ellis Bell*

      I can’t understand how she didn’t see it coming though. “Hmm, his work is on call, so if he ditches work for the kids it’ll probably be fine; they’ll understand!” Bananas.

      1. Cabbagepants*

        We don’t know their history and it feels nasty to speculate like this. Maybe he he he had been flaky in other ways and she wanted him to exhaust other options before changing the custody schedule.

    2. Maleficent*

      Pastor Petty, I love your comments generally but my sister, i take umbrage with the description of the ex-wife as “whining.” In the first letter, this man was taking the child to work and “his ex-wife found out, got a court order that prevented him from both taking the kid with him and leaving him home alone, and also alerted us.” This man was not exercising good judgement, to say the least! She did the right thing to protect her kids. This job was not the right job for our friend for many reasons, OP did the best he could, and let’s hope he doesn’t do anything boneheaded with the kid again.

      1. Silver Robin*

        I agree to an extent, ex wife was right not to be okay with the solution the employee picked and was right that the kids must be accompanied and must not be brought to a dangerous work environment.

        And I want to preface my next statement by saying we have *no idea* what the full context is here. That said, the way the story is presented to us, the employee had no good options and the ex-wife went for the punitive route rather than the collaborative route when it all came to a head. Only when the employee’s job was at stake did the ex-wife show flexibility around the custody arrangements to ensure her (reasonable but difficult in this particular job) requirements were met. Which implies that Employee had brought up the issue previously and was dismissed by her. Hence the “whining”: she did not like what she saw but she also was reluctant to contribute solutions or listen when there was a chance to proactively resolve the coming problem.

        Again, she her expectations are reasonable and we are missing 99.999999% of the context of their childcare discussions. I am just not surprised by Patty’s characterization given when information we do have.

        1. Pastor Petty Labelle*

          THIS.

          She was whining because she saw a chance to make life difficult for him. Getting the court order is fine. NOtifying his employer is out of line. What if they outright fired him? Also refusing to discuss a solution is not good coparenting. She only became flexible when it was going to hurt her. But as long as he was hurt – she was fine with it.

          1. Keymaster of Gozer (she/her)*

            This is becoming fanfiction territory. I doubt people will provide updates if they know the comments are going to include character assassinations.

          2. Colette*

            None of that was in the letter. Maybe she refused to switch; maybe he didn’t ask. Maybe she has her own commitments she organized around their agreed-upon schedule. We don’t know what her position was, and neither does the OP. At best, the OP knows what her employee said, but that’s not necessarily accurate.

          3. Cmdrshprd*

            “NOtifying his employer is out of line. What if they outright fired him?”

            With custody often you have to get the court involved because if you don’t and it happened again it makes it harder to point to previous issues. Custody/divorce you need to document, document, document for things to count.

            I disagree, notifying the employer was warranted to make sure they were aware of what was happening and to allow for an extra layer of protection for the child. If kid is with the employee, ex-wife is not there, so she has no real way to ensure the kid is safe if OP gets called in at 3am.

            We don’t know that she refused to discuss a solution, rather that she refused to take on the burden of adjusting her schedule to accommodate the employee initially. They may have discussed and and if employee just went straight to ex has to adjust her time, it is not unreasonable to refuse. Also to unreasonable to say, okay if there really are not other options and its between employee losing their job (and child support) or ex having to take on more burden, it is the better option.

            1. Annony*

              The safety of my kids comes first. If my ex were putting my child in danger by bringing them out to jobs at night or leaving them home alone when too young I would absolutely get a court order and inform their job that they were doing it. If the boss knows then it is less likely to happen again and I would not trust my ex to suddenly show better judgement.

    3. Hogfather*

      Whoa, why so much assumption about the ex wife? You’re using some pretty negative and loaded terms here to a describe someone none of us have any direct info on.

      I have no idea what the ex-wife’s deal is, or her motives for being firm about the custody arrangement. None of us really have enough info to speculate (I could think of 1,000 versions of this story where she has sympathetic motives and 1,000 where she’s a monster), and we really don’t need to anyway because it has nothing to do with OP or advice.

      1. Keymaster of Gozer (she/her)*

        Agreed. All the information we are given is worse than second hand – the OP only got their employee’s point of view in all this which I wouldn’t regard as 100% accurate because things get messy and meotions get involved. OP had no link to the ex-wife and can only go on what they were told.

        So there’s no villain here, and really pointless to look for one.

    4. Berin*

      Wow, this assumes so much that’s not in the letter! This employee, who knew the on call requirements before taking the job, was taking his child to work with him, without telling his job or his ex-wife. There’s no indication that his ex gets child support; if custody is split 50/50, neither party would get child support because they have the kid equal amounts of time.

      The ex-wife is not the villain because she didn’t want her kid to be woken up at 3am to accompany their dad to work, and she got a court order because the employee didn’t tell her or his company that he was doing this. She was not obligated to change their custody schedule, and yet when it became clear that the employee would lose his job, she agreed to the change, despite the fact that her ex had been deceiving her.

      To be frank, I’m struggling to read your comment as anything other than misogyny.

  6. HannahS*

    Thanks for the update. I was actually just re-reading your initial letter the other day. I think you were as generous as you could be.

    I also work in a profession with on-call/nights/weekends and it’s tough. Some of my friends are either divorced or their husbands work overseas, and it’s really hard to make it work. Most either arrange their custody agreements to accommodate their work schedules, have a relative stay over, or hire a nanny.

    These kinds of jobs are necessary–a lot of services really do need to run 24/7/365–but our society is still structured as if there’s a stay-at-home mom in every home.

    1. So they all cheap-ass rolled over and one fell out*

      Is there a reason that employees can’t switch/move/swap their on-call shifts to accommodate their custody schedules instead of the other way around? Depending on the specific cadence of the two, a single shift to sync up the two schedules might avoid the problem altogether in some cases.

      1. Tradd*

        The original letter/comments said that the other employees didn’t want to change their on-call shifts. They very likely had their own arrangements at home to accommodate their own schedule.

        1. Observer*

          Yes. In fact one of the biggest complaints in certain sectors is the fact that these schedules are not routine and set this way. There is no one size fits all, but for most people who have carer-giving responsibilities, a schedule like this works much better because it’s predictable and consistent. It’s generally *much* easier to create an ongoing care plan.

          Also, as had been mentioned, the other staff wanted the ability to have a whole week where they could make plans. That’s not unreasonable and it’s something that’s relevant to people with and without care-giving responsibilities.

        2. Where’s the Orchestra?*

          That was my thought as well given the fact that the rest of the group wasn’t willing to constantly change the on call schedule at the last minute constantly. We made our arrangements- why should we set ourselves on fire because you aren’t making arrangements for your own childcare needs.

      2. Person from the Resume*

        A condition or perk of a lot of on call jobs is a regular, fixed schedule well-defined in advance. These employees can plan vacations and holidays well in advance because the schedule is fixed.

        My brother once worked a job where there were 7 employees and he knew if he was working holidays (Christmas, NY, thanksgiving, eves) 7 years in advance … assuming he stayed at the job.

        For people who work this, schedule is set and fixed a year(s) in advance and you plan your life events around work, work doesn’t plan around your vacation days. Obviously these people still get vacation too. It’s the holidays that are pretty fixed because the holiday schedule is minimally manned. A random week in July is not minimally-manned so you just request your vacation well in advance to ensure a bunch of coworkers aren’t taking that week off too.

        1. Anon for this*

          My friend was a divorced mother of two boys. She worked nights as a nurse. She knew her schedule in advance so she and her ex worked it out so he would have the kids when she worked. She had a weird schedule like work a week and then have two off. My own work has on-call shifts. We pretty much never have to come in, but we do a year’s planning in advance. People are pretty good about switching shifts if something comes up.

    2. ferrina*

      I agree– I think OP did a great job with a very difficult situation. OP was thinking through the nuances and how any course of action would impact all the different people- the coworkers, the business, the employee and even the employee’s kid. OP was thoughtful and compassionate, and I think they ultimately took the best course that they could do. Kudos to OP.

    3. boof*

      Apologies if this is overly pedantic but – stay at home parent
      Signed; working professional with a stay at home husband AND his mother in law as the reason I was able to have 3 children + work a career where my schedule can be extremely rigid and working hours are long

      Honestly, children are necessary for society, and fun! But they are a lot of work and responsibility. They are a full time job themselves, or like getting a phd. Work can try to accommodate various life circumstance but it’s more on government if they want to help like public school, paying for long parental leaves, and heck I’d be down with state run nurseries if they did it well (that is always the question, isn’t it? Would it be high quality and more efficient or terrible and a waste)

      1. HannahS*

        I was making a point about structural sexism. Nobody is structuring anything assuming that fathers are at staying at home. That doesn’t mean that there aren’t any men who make that choice.

        Men who stay home face a different set of challenges and prejudices than
        women do; women who prioritize their careers face different challenges than men who make that choice.

        1. boof*

          There’s no reason to fwd the structural sexism – even though there are plenty of jobs that cannot really handle another major competing “job”. Any gender can do either “job”

    4. hogfather*

      “but our society is still structured as if there’s a stay-at-home mom in every home”

      and exactly, you have listed the motivation of the trad movement, and it’s ties to capitalism.

  7. Sparkles McFadden*

    It’s a sad situation all around but you handled it perfectly. It’s good to know that there are compassionate people who will work to find a good solution in a difficult situation.

  8. Chad Henshaw*

    Anyone in a divorce/custody issue that is clearly using the kid to attack the other side shouldn’t be allowed near the kid.

    Your kid is supposed to be more important than your petty grievances.

    1. Maleficent*

      This man was taking his kid into work, which nobody (except him) was ok with, and to quote the original letter, “the ex-wife found out, got a court order that prevented him from both taking the kid with him and leaving him home alone, and also alerted us.” That’s telling- was he thinking of leaving the kid alone? Did he leave the kid alone? The ex-wife kept her kid safe. Yes she was inflexible with changing custody times, but it’s NOT up to her to accommodate his job choices. This guy was determined to keep this job and put his kid in a bad spot. A judge agreed with the ex wife. The kids’ safety is not a petty grievance.

      1. Lana Kane*

        Not to mention that maybe the ex-wife was unwilling to budge on the custody days because she has her own shift work to manage. (Not trying to fanfic, but it’s a real possibility).

        1. Annony*

          This is also being filtered through the ex-husband. It is entirely possible he was trying to get her to take his on call week in exchange for more desirable custody days like weekends or wanted her to take more custody days without adjusting child support. We don’t know how reasonable he was being or if it was really her who ended up bending or if the threat of losing his job made him agree to what she wanted.

        2. AngryOctopus*

          This, and additionally possible that the custody schedule they had in place already took a long time to work out, and she was unwilling to go back and start over.

      2. Rex Libris*

        There is no way to know from the original letter what the situation actually was, because there isn’t enough info about the job or the kid. Pretty much every job has a rule that you can’t bring the family along to work for obvious reasons, but it doesn’t sound like the guy was an underwater welder or something. If the kid was an eight year-old sitting nearby playing with a toy while dad checked an office HVAC unit, I can see why he considered it the best solution in a bad situation, and mom may have been overreacting. If the kid is in an infant in a backpack while dad solders water lines, that’s different.

        1. Cabbagepants*

          These calls are at night. It’s important for child development to get high quality sleep at night. Even if the job sites were safe — which the letter specifically says they are not — it’s not a good solution.

          1. Rex Libris*

            It’s also important for child development to have food and shelter, which usually requires a job. I don’t think it was a good solution either, but it might have been the best he thought he could do with what sounds like limited support and the need for a paycheck.

        2. Cmdrshprd*

          “as they respond to calls such as water leaks that could cause property destruction, air conditioning calls (this is a 24/7 facility and the upper floors can get above 90 or higher degrees in the summer), lock-outs, and other urgent calls that can’t wait until business hours”

          I don’t know that it was an office HVAC type situation, I get the sense it was maybe a manufacturing facility of some kind. But even “just” an office HVAC, I have been in some of the rooms that office HVAC systems are located and they are not kid friendly/safe, lots of sharp, dangerous items around and it depends on the age of the kid, but you can’t really watch a child and focus on fixing something at the same time, some of the systems are on the roof, and/or require climbing.

          While I can sympathize with not having any other options, bringing them to work I do think was unsafe, and getting a court order was reasonable.

          1. Wayward Sun*

            Yeah, my experience with HVAC spaces is they’re not meant to be inhabited by people so they’re usually not “finished” in a construction sense. Bare studs, exposed wiring, sharp sheet metal edges, and even piles of leftover construction debris are common even in buildings that are decades old and complete by any standard.

        3. Annony*

          Except his boss, HR, ex-wife and the courts all agree that it was a terrible idea and needed to stop. He did not make a good judgment call. Whatever the details were, everyone except him agrees it was not an appropriate place for a child.

          1. Rex Libris*

            Appropriate and unsafe are two different things. It may have been unsafe too, I was just saying there really isn’t enough info to know. The employer is going to deem anything that’s a liability to the employer unsafe, so that isn’t surprising. And of course it wasn’t a good solution, I just didn’t think there was enough info to automatically condemn him for endangering his kid.

            1. Observer*

              t may have been unsafe too, I was just saying there really isn’t enough info to know.

              The LW explicitly says that it is unsafe. What makes you think that this is somehow not a valid assessment?

    3. ferrina*

      No indication that either the employee or the wife was doing that here. In the original letter, OP says that the job is not safe to take a child to.

    4. Cat Tree*

      It wasn’t an attack. Her child was in danger. Either he went to an unsafe job site or stayed home alone. Would you really be OK with anyone endangering your child like that?

    5. Jennifer Strange*

      So a parent alerts a company to a liability issue involving her child and she’s the bad guy? Interesting…

  9. juliebulie*

    It’s fascinating how often a letter that’s about an issue with an employee is followed by an update where the employee quits or is let go due to an unrelated issue.

    1. Keymaster of Gozer (she/her)*

      It’s often a case that when someone starts looking closer and/or taking opinions from others that they see that the issue was either the tip of the iceberg or that there was an unlying reason that was even more incompatible with the job.

      Additionally, it’s easier (at least in terms of paperwork where I am) to let someone go on performance grounds than in more personal-life related things.

    2. Where’s the Orchestra?*

      I think it can come down to – the employe has lots of problems by the time we hear about them and frequently what we hear about is whatever issue is loudest at that particular moment of writing.

      Advice columns rarely get letters about the good people or best situations.

    4. Rex Libris*

      I think it’s often because the employee has multiple problems going on, and just gets fired for the most straightforward one. I had an employee, for example, who was problematic in a plethora of ways, but “fails to show up on time after repeated coaching sessions and a PIP” was the one they got fired for, because there really isn’t any grey area there.

    5. Annony*

      It’s not surprising. If things aren’t working out, the employee usually knows and is looking for a better fit.

    6. Rainy*

      I think sometimes the issue that causes someone to write in is either the tip of the iceberg or the straw that broke the camel’s back and in those cases, yes, the employee will leave or be fired due to something that wasn’t the explicit issue written about, but more a concatenation of everything that’s going on, most of which won’t have been in the original letter for space constraints if nothing else.

      Sometimes, of course, it’s “well thank god he gave us an excuse,” which is a shame.

    7. hogfather*

      I feel like that correlation is kind of like the stats on how many couples in couples therapy end up divorced, or how many paternity tests end up with surprising results, etc

      In the sense that it seems significant, but in reality you’re already starting with a very specific sample group to begin with, so naturally that will skew results. Couples seeking therapy are typically only the ones with serious issues to resolve so naturally the odds are higher for a divorce, people seeking paternity tests typically are the ones where there is contested paternity to begin with, etc etc

      In this case, people who are having a conflict(s) big enough that someone involved feels the need to seek an utterly unrelated third party for help probably are more likely to be having other kinds of issues going on generally.

    8. Elsajeni*

      Of course, it’s also often true the other way around — a letter that’s about an issue with an employer or a manager is followed by an update where the writer has moved on to a new job because “well, that specific issue got resolved in X way, but the situation made me reflect on all the OTHER problems at that job and start brushing up my resume…”

  10. Observer*

    There were some unrelated job performance issues that began long before the on-call issue and it was ultimately a repeat offense that led to us having no choice but to let him go.

    Given his poor judgement, and the fact that he *repeatedly* did something legitimately and clearly dangerous, I am totally not surprised at what happened.

    It also may explain why his ex was being so inflexible to start with. Maybe – we really don’t know.

    In any case, I think you did the best you could. I am glad that you tried to be as accommodating as you could and did not treat him or the other staff like disposable cogs.

    2. Rainy*

      Yeah, I’ve read through the comments and I think this is one of those letters where experience with humans makes any given reader assume some kind of “type” on the part of one or all of the principals of the issue, and because our brains seek patterns we run with it.

      I can see Petty LaBelle’s point above about the ex maybe being inflexible just to be a jerk, it’s very possible, but we’re also talking about a dude who took a small child to an unsafe worksite in the middle of the night like, “Meh” so it is also very possible that the ex is inflexible because the employee has a long track record of trying nothing and then being all out of ideas, and she’s sick of cleaning up his messes and rejoicing that she no longer has to and instead can let his problems be his problems. The fact that she was willing to be flexible when she realized the stakes doesn’t say “petty b–” to me, it says that the dude is a professionally helpless liar who has habituated her to assume that everything he says is just an excuse to get her to fix what he broke.

      But again, we’re all just bringing our own biases to the narrative.

      1. Observer*

        But again, we’re all just bringing our own biases to the narrative.

        I think that this is true. But I also think that fundamentally it doesn’t really matter. Because regardless of whether the ex was being an unreasonable jerk, a patient saint or (imo most likely) somewhere in between, the employee’s decision to bring his kid to the worksite shows really bad judgement. Both because it’s unsafe and because how did he expect to keep this secret. The surprising thing here is not that the LW found out about it, but that it took so long. How did he not realize that this was just not a tenable long term solution?

        1. Rainy*

          Yes, exactly. The poor judgement is the poor judgement, and I find that this kind of poor judgement is rarely if ever confined to a single area of someone’s life. It’s like how they say that workplace affairs are often an indicator of professional malfeasance because someone who has bad judgement about rules and boundaries in one area of their life rarely has good judgement in other areas.

  11. We Are Number One*

    LW, I just want to commend you for doing your best with what is a difficult situation all around. This situation was unfair to everyone involved (you, the employee, the employee’s relatives, the other employees,…). It sucks that things had to go this way, but considering things ended up with him being let go due to a different repeated transgression this might be the least bad ending.

    You sound like a good manager who tries to be considerate to everyone, but unfortunately that just isn’t possible sometimes.

  12. Moose*

    Nothing brings out misogyny on the internet, including supposedly “progressive” spaces like this one, like the words “ex-wife.” Dang.

    1. Six for the truth over solace in lies*

      Especially given that all we know about this is from the ex-husband in a contentious divorce, filtered again through his employer. We know essentially nothing about the marriage or divorce here at all besides that it was contentious. Which makes it a perfect canvas for projection.

      1. Moose*

        Definitely. Some folks here are definitely coming off like “The only thing we can really know for sure is that the ex-wife is a selfish, money-grubbing, bad mother who is using her child as a pawn in her divorce. Everything else is just inappropriate speculation.”

        It’s not a good look. You are right.

        1. Observer*

          Agreed.

          I would even flip it and say that the only thing we do NOT know is what kind of person the ex-wife is. And the only thing we DO know is that the Dad showed terrible judgement in *repeatedly* bringing a child to a worksite that is definitely not safe for children.

          1. We Are Number One*

            Honestly I wonder if part of the issue is the fact that AAM readers (and by extension, commentariat) skew towards being office workers. I’m wondering if they can even conceive jobs other than, say, bomb defuser as being “dangerous” when the most dangerous thing they encounter at work is an overly-aggressive stapler.

    2. CubeFarmer*

      Yeah, I know. We know nothing about the backstory here and there might have been a very legitimate reason why the ex-wife wouldn’t engage in a discussion about altering the custody agreement.

    3. Berin*

      I’m really glad you said this. The comment section in the initial letter really surprised me, and this one was trending worse before Alison stepped in.

  13. Chewy*

    The fact that there was a custody agreement of some type is also complicating matters and why we really shouldn’t be so quick to paint the ex-wife in particular as some terrible villain (or the LW’s employee for that matter). Custody agreements are a *pain* even at the best of times and lawyers are expensive. If either of them were hesitant to mess with the particulars of the custody agreement in any way (depending on what it actually said), well I can’t necessarily blame them too hard.

    1. Observer*

      That’s all good and fine. But you simply cannot get around the fact that the guy repeatedly brought this kid into an unsafe work environment, expected that to somehow stay a secret, and had apparently not thought through how to change the situation.

      At that point “hesitation” was simply reckless. Because basically, if that’s what was going on, it means “I worked hard to get this settled, and I’m not going to change it even though it means putting my kid in harm’s way, and it’s going to require a miracle for this to stay under the radar.”

  14. rebelwithmouseyhair*

    I have a friend in a similar situation once he split up with his girlfriend. As a sound technician, he often works late into the night, but doesn’t work regularly enough to be able to afford regular childcare. When his girlfriend moved out, he rented the spare room out to a student, with the understanding that the student would occasionally be in charge of his kid, and could then deduct childcare fees from his rent.

    Of course, not everybody has a spare room to rent, and this simply means that the student/tenant is also on call.

  15. Chair of the Bored*

    Another point about safety; was anyone else present when the ex-employee was taking his child with him to work site? If I was the child’s mother, I would be concerned about that. Dad can’t really watch the child whilst he’s doing repair work, and mum has no way of knowing who might on site (or whether they’re someone a young child can safely be left alone with).

  16. Someone Online*

    As someone who has a somewhat contentious relationship with my ex, I am sure he complains about the 10% of time I am inflexible with our custody arrangement, conveniently forgetting the 90% of the time where I drop what I am doing to watch our kid with 30 minutes notice for hours on end. Who really knows what is going on in their relationship and as an employer it is not OP’s job to figure that out, thankfully.

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