Kids are the new smoke break

I was telling my friend Laura the other day that I think I need to adopt a child so I can get out of work early...or show up late...or take the week off (not vacation though). It seems like my fellow sales assistants use their kids like smokers take advantage of smoke breaks. When I worked at the bookstore, the smokers would be taking 5-10 min. breaks every couple of hours and this wasn't an issue. Granted, it helped that several of the managers smoked and would be running outside every couple of hours as well. Now, instead of people constantly disappearing for a nicotine fix, we have baby related crap to deal with, pardon the pun.

Both sales assistants are breast feeding so they pump during the day. Now, I know that one of the assistants is using the same style of pump that my friend used. It is very discreet. She would shut her office door to get hooked up and then she'd open her door and continue working like nothing was happening. Disney doesn't see it this way. Both she and the other assistant shut their door while pumping. They pump at least two times a day and usually their doors are closed for at least 20 min. if not longer. No one has any idea what they are doing in there. My friend who works the front desk says it seems like they are on their phones the whole time.

They come in late after taking their kid to a doctor's appointment. Fine, I get it. You schedule the thing as early as you can and you are stuck till the doctor actually comes in to see you. BUT, you don't come in at 11 am and then take your hour lunch at noon. Seriously.

The best had to be this week. One assistant called and left a voice mail to our bosses that she wouldn't be in on Monday. Her babysitter's kids were all sick and feverish so the sitter didn't want the other kids coming in and getting infected. Fine. Understandable. Not so kosher was the fact that she didn't call back to let us know when she would be coming in. She didn't come in to pick up her computer to work from home (which is an option...we have laptops). No one knew what was going on until one of the sales guys called her with questions on a job (that was one of three that got handed off to me in her absence) and said "oh, when are you going to be back?"

Our main boss was out of town at business meetings Tues. and Wed. According to the front desk gal, he was upset to hear the assistant hadn't been back in and hadn't checked in. She finally shows up on Friday. Doesn't say anything to me about the files that were missing off of her desk that got passed off to me...actually forwards a voice mail to me to take care of on a job that she was responsible for (and that I had actually gotten called about and took care of on Wed. thank you very much) and, best we can tell, doesn't get in trouble at all for not calling in, etc.

I think they both must possess some sort of voodoo that keeps the guys in our office wrapped around their fingers. They both leave early every day, don't always work through their lunches to make up for leaving early, and then pull crap like this with no consequences.

Oh, did I mention she had a job bidding this week that she didn't check in on. The rep just grabbed the proposal off her desk without looking at it and sent it out to the contractors. The next day he gets a call. Our bid is $11,000 lower than everyone else's, which usually means there is a mistake. Apparently there were several things missed. The rep had to quickly revise the bid and fax it back out.

Sigh.