Beta Mum's Blog Beta Mum on 20 Sep 2007 12:38 pm
The dog ate my homework
Lots of working mothers apparently feel they need to lie, if they’re late for work because of childcare problems.
A survey of 1,500 working mothers by The Family Care Company found that half would prefer to blame traffic or a broken alarm clock, fearing that otherwise their employers would doubt their commitment.
Having heard quite a few excuses for lateness in my time, childcare problems would be one of the least irritating. But perhaps that’s because I’m a mother and more understanding when carefully constructed arrangements clatter to the ground with a resounding crash.
In my experience any excuse given habitually will cause eyes to roll, whether it be childcare problems, traffic, exploding boilers or malfunctioning alarm clocks.
I was once late for an early shift because I’d set my alarm for 5pm instead of 5am. The extra hour in bed didn’t make up for the near heart attack I suffered when I got to work and had fifteen minutes to get everything ready.
It was a lesson well-learned, and it only happened once.
It was a lesson unfortunately not learned by a colleague, who didn’t turn up for an early presenting shift, didn’t wake up when I called him every two minutes for half an hour, and whose heavy sleeping meant I, a new and inexperienced reporter, had to call another presenter in, while the broadcast assistant read the news and I presented (very badly) the programme.
And his excuse was, the alarm didn’t wake him up.
Since those early days I’ve had to grit my teeth and express sympathy over -
- colds masquerading as flu
- pets with splinters
- “I’m not on shift today” “yes you are” you’ve changed the rota” “no I haven’t” “yes you have” type conversations.
And all of these homework-eating-dog offerings are far less credible than a child with chicken pox or a school which has had to close for the day because of central heating failure/snow on the road/conkers on the trees.
Children exist, and they have parents who go to work. If employers can’t get used to that idea, then perhaps we have to come up with a raft of irrefutable excuses which relate to neither children, traffic accidents nor clocks.
We don’t have a dog, but we could blame the guinea pigs…
