Thread regarding AT&T layoffs

Working mother here! I am appalled at the comments from other moms denigrating you for your situation.

I was a manager at T for over 30 years and retired last November. I was one of those long-term employees hotter than fish grease about losing the benefits I earned to accommodate new employees who benefited from the benefits I lost without having worked one day. However, that in no way means that we shouldn't be able to sympathize with moms in your situation - AND I DO!

The attitudes of the women and especially the men on this post are personal and triggering. I have encountered MANY experiences with entitled men at T who don't have to worry about childcare or maintaining a household because they rely on their significant others to do it all. One experience that comes to mind is when I had a staff position and was responsible for delivering a KPI dashboard to senior leadership every Tuesday. The report was dependent on some huge data sets that took so long to run that the person (male who was married with kids) responsible for pulling it would start running it early on Sunday to deliver it to me on Monday. Well, he quit and wasn't backfilled so my boss (male who was married with kids) wanted me to start pulling the data and suggested I should start running it on Saturday evening thru Sunday since I might have a learning curve with SQL, etc. EXCUSE ME but I had a family and responsibilities outside of AT&T that I had to attend to. For me, it just showed how men can so casually do their own thing because, at the end of the day, it would be up to the woman of the house to figure it out!

I hope you are able to find daycare for your child. I agree with some of the other suggestions made to possibly look into at-home daycare. Good luck to you!

Sorry, the company does not pay you to take care of you child while you are on company time. Nor should they. And yes I am a working.

Are you kidding me?? I've raised 2 kids during many many years with this company. Not that matters.
PARENTING ADVISE: Grow up, figure it out and own up to your responsibilities. Stuff happens, deal and adjust. SMH. (Yes, I'm a woman).

Anybody else notice the amusingly ironic typo in the title? Mangers...heh heh.

As a working mother, no sympathy here either. WFH was never meant to eliminate the need for dependent care of any kind. I'd suggest taking an extended leave until you can find adequate care. A little prior planning could have avoided the mess you are in now. Companies can change the terms of your employment (unless you are bargained for) anytime they want and you should have know that post-pandemic something like this was bound to happen.

OP, lets hear from you now, any news?

"This topic did NOT go the way the OP had hoped."

And I'm impressed by the number of working mothers who have weighed in on the matter.

"This post drips of victimized apathy and truly shows: the more things change, the more things stay the same."

Victimized apathy? Is that a thing? Maybe victim apathy? IDK WTH you're trying to say. But I bet you thought an old white boomer guy wrote that, didn't you?

OP just can't seem to decide if it's about the lack of childcare. Then no, let's add on assumptions about pumping accommodations. Throw in some lashing out at craft employees. Then it's about "I'm a top performer; how dare they?" Then no, it's gender pay discrimination.

OP has been called out by multiple other mothers who are not appearing to be sympathetic to your whining, myself included.

This topic did NOT go the way the OP had hoped.

"The post drips of entitled white woman"

This post drips of victimized apathy and truly shows: the more things change, the more things stay the same.

OP, easy peasy....Just take short term disability for some unknown medical issue that your family practitioner will sign off on. You can turn that into long term once short term is up...I'm sure this falls into a mental health category somewhere, you just have to do some work, errrr, research to discover it! This is just like my daily job with my SRO...enlighten, train, reassure and then recess time! Hope I made this as easy as possible for you...good luck with life!

Typical management and parenting in todays world! Unable to think proactively and certainly not trainable thus, the fly by the seat of my pants approach! Great, now we have them raising the next participation trophy mini's!?!?! Yep, this gives us all the feels of a strong future...can't you feel it too?!???

People are quick to point how parenting is a full time job. Sounds like you'll need to give up one of them.

OP, just a bit of sarcasm here, but the world does not stop just because you are a new parent!! You are now enjoying the Equality part of the American DEI initiative, welcome to the NEW Merica' and leave your "old, worn out complaints" at the door please, Thanks!

This is a pathetic post considering so many are losing their jobs. Taking care of an infant is a full-time job. Why would you think otherwise? Poor planning on your part.

The entitlement in this post is truly disgusting.
You are not effective working this job and caring for a baby. Full stop. Stop lying to yourself.

Gross entitlement. I can’t believe you had no plans for childcare and thought this was OK.

I’m sorry but this is a YOU problem. Did you expect to never go into the office again? How effective are you caring for a 5 mos old while working your job? I wasn’t effective at all and put both kids in daycare. That’s what you’re supposed to do. So I can say, with certainty, you are NOT effective caring for a baby/toddler and working from home.

Working from home is not childcare!!!! Read that again!

You should’ve had a plan in place since before the birth! WFH is not daycare!

THIS is why we’re being forced back into the office. People like you abusing it.

The post drips of entitled white woman.

Then maybe leave AT&T and open a childcare and make more money AND have a place where your kids can be with you at work!!

“Ive done it with two children already never had a negative mark on my performance reviews, never had any issues, and even won performance incentive awards, all while watching a child.”

Well you are certainly out of the running for Mother of the Year. You are the type of employee needing to be a full-time office worker (5 days/week).

There is no way you can effectively WFH while keeping a 5 month old.

T and any other business should not be concerned about your child care.

Work from home I have never been intended to allow people to care for their kids. As a woman, this is the kind of stuff that pi---s me off. Take responsibility for your situation – no one forced you to have a kid. You choose to have a kid in a job you need somebody to care for your kid when you’re working. That doesn’t change if you’re working from home or working for an office. Give me a call women look bad when you put this type of sh-t out there.

And what does this have to do with layoffs?
Easy solution to this crisis, find another job that can accommodate your needs. I might even suggest a business opportunity for you….open a daycare. Apparently there’s a great need for one in you area.

Search for a home daycare provider. They’re wonderful when you find someone you like and they are state licensed. I found a lovely polish woman that cared for both my children until they started Kindergarten. My kids have beautiful memories of Miss Joanna. Most T buildings will have a private place to pump, but I have had to use a restroom at times. These are small every day life challenges, which are much easier to tackle than no flowing income. You can do this!

Dear Karen,
You are the #1 reason for the RTO mandate being inplemented. It is widely known many have abused the privilege of “working” from home. WFH was never intended to include the ability to watch children or elderly parents full time at home. See you soon at the office!

I suspect SLT (Senior Leadership Team) asked the artificial intelligence Ask AT&T interface, “Which employees are most productive?”, and then it said, “Old white guys who come into office early each day, listen to sports radio, send emails to people to remind them about putting a cover letter on the TPS reports and schedule hour long calls that last 5 minutes and drag the whole company to a halt by 3pm. They also spend 3-5pm calling other people in the old boys club to audibly complain about how the diverse people don’t work as hard and that women with children are not committed to AT&T success.” Ask AT&T was programmed by the old boys club and has a “glass ceiling module” to prevent women from having a future at AT&T.

Boohooo
I feel no sympathy for you. Company took away vacation for older workers and basically gave it to younger and then added perks like unlimited "dependent care". I see it all the time with workers, typically younger ones with kids who seem to be taking their kids to doctors, teacher conferences, you name it, on company excused time for every sniffle. I don't feel bad that kid gets the treatment, but rather how it was yet another shuffle of benefits from one band of employees to another.

I have no sympathy for someone who now says they can't work because they can't get child care.

Please help me understand how it is AT&T's fault regarding your childcare dilemma.

If you can't find and/or afford childcare, that is your problem, not your employer. Perhaps quit, and/or start your own business where you can do as you wish. Soooo tired of all these people trying to be victims with a sense of entitlement- the company owes you nothing other than a paycheck.

Many workers at AT&T in call centers and other positions have had to return to work. The managers just said “well nothing we can do,” now that they need to return it’s a problem for them?

You guys actually make enough to pay childcare?

@hly+1nki0w3n Our child is on the waitlist at our other child's daycare for when they turn 1. No, I don't expect to watch my daughter until they go to school. That's absurd, but people are more than capable of watching a newborn and effectively work from home. Ive done it with two children already never had a negative mark on my performance reviews, never had any issues, and even won performance incentive awards, all while watching a child. SHOCKING, I know, and most likely I'm paid less than my male counterparts.

Haha. You really think you only spend 90 minutes in a workday tending to your kid, and most of that is during breaks? Oh okay.

If your 5 month old is sleeping most of your 8-9 hour work day, that's weird. But she's only going to be more active going forward, and she's not going to wait or entertain herself for hours waiting for your breaks. So you're either going to be parking her in a crib all day (stunting her development) or you aren't going to be focusing on your work.

And honestly, I don't know why people weren't paying attention. Stankey said at the beginning of the year that he wanted people back in the office. MONTHS ago. Nobody did it, and now there's an RTO mandate.

"So if I understand your concern, if AT&T didn't require you to RTO, you would be providing your own childcare while on company paid time. OMG! Management or non-management, that is not in any job description and is simply defrauding the company."

Managers are not hourly. While we have a number of hours we have to spend per week on our work, we can do it early in the morning, late at night, on weekends. As long as the work is done, no one is defrauding anyone. We don't get paid extra for overtime, but we work it if we have to, and yes, it means if we have to make adjustments to work around obsticles in our lives, we make them. I know it upsets all these union workers who don't see anything wrong with taking 7 lunch breaks, or logging overtime while sleeping in their trucks, but the way I see it, I don't get paid for hours worked, I get paid for the work I actually do.

Child care for a 5-month-old literally consists of feeding them (which the company is required to allow time for pumping), changing a diaper, and watching them nap. Over a work day, all of that accounts for maybe an hour to 90 minutes. Which is what we are allotted for lunch and breaks.

At home, I can feed her while working, now I'll have to step away. Sure, I'll save that 5 minutes of changing a diaper and putting my daughter down for a nap three to five times sper day. but now I'm surely going to leave at exactly 5 pm and not work a minute over.

Breaks for lactation, look it up on HR OneStop. You don’t have to be expressing milk in the bathroom, your department will accommodate.
Sorry to hear about your child care options hopefully a spot opens up soon. If you can afford unpaid leave, you should call and ask about your newborn leave of absence options.

FYI....

It's a legal requirement that all companies over a certain size provide a private room for nursing mothers. If there is no designated room, the company must provide other private accommodations. You should contact CRE on their web site for options available to you.

So if I understand your concern, if AT&T didn't require you to RTO, you would be providing your own childcare while on company paid time. OMG! Management or non-management, that is not in any job description and is simply defrauding the company. Multiply your thinking by all those who WFH and do childcare at the same time (or other non-work task while on company time), no wonder why we all have to RTO!

Most states require employers to provide a secure location for pumping, other than a bathroom. CA manager here and I was required to give my office for a mother br---t pumping. Most be lockable and not visible.

When you are told you are a teleworker and your work location is your house for the foreseeable future. and then AT&T closes your home office location to save funds, and then 18 months later, then you are expected back to a brand new office with four weeks' notice, and child care places all have 6-12 month waiting lists. Yeah, you can't plan for that. If you are an office worker, can you get on a wait list before giving birth and have a plan in place. Four weeks' notice is not enough time to secure long-term child care.