Unsupportive boss about pumping: need advice

[Anonymous]

I never imagined that I'd be in this situation but I'm really struggling with pumping at work. I work for the federal government and until I went on maternity leave, had my own office. I'm a senior, non-supervisory employee in a small office. While I was gone, we moved buildings and no longer have an office, so I use our work lactation room, on a different floor. The policy is first come first serve and there are only a few other women using the pumping room. You can choose whether or not to share the room, but most of us don't know each other and take the room for 15-30 mintues at a time including cleaning and storing items (you can't leave pumps or other things in the room).

The issue is my work schedule. I have a job where I am on the phone or in team meetings for 85% of the day. It is typical for coworkers who telework or even those who work in the building to call into team meetings. I have tried to work my pumping schedule around my set calls (determined by the states and tribes I work with as recurring monthly meetings) and team meetings. We often have back to back team meetings from 1 pm to the end of the day. Often when I go to the lactation room it is occupied by another colleague and I need to come back. There have been a few times when I needed to pump while we were having a team meeting. I always brought my blackberry and called into the meeting and came immediately to the meeting. If this is going to occur, I've tried to let my program manager know in advance that I would be calling in and coming to the meeting.

Today my manager said "you really need to get your time management with pumping under control."

I explained to her that the lactation room was occupied at the times that I didn't have meetings and that other women have the discretion to allow others access. There are only a few other ladies using the room.

In response, she said, "you know I support you pumping. Now you should go pump (our call ended early) as it's distracting when you have to call into our team meetings".

I don't work from home, am always on time, get my work done and have been maybe taking two 15 minute breaks--and not in addition to a break.

I explained to her that I was trying my best, but it just so happened that the other women and I were on the same schedule and we had even tried to coordinate. Until recently, I was pumping in a coworkers office and reserving empty conference rooms. I've even brought a hand pump for situations like this to pump discretely in my cubicle under a nursing cover with a scarf blocking my door.

I don't know what to do. I am not willing to stop pumping at work. I am killing myself outside of work pumping after my son is in bed or waking up at 1 am or 3 am to pump before I start the day pumping when I wake up at 5 am, get dressed, breastfeed my son, pump for extra supply, feed him before we leave and pump again. I rented a hospital grade pump to speed up my pumping sessions at work to 10 minutes rather than 30. I've started coming into work earlier to pump before my boss gets in and we have meetings scheduled.

I think that she is also upset as I had a discussion with our supervisor about not traveling until my son was older and now am not going on a few site visits. Also, last week we had a conference and the hotel could not provide me a place to store my milk all day so I went back and forth at lunch and our half hour break to pump and drop off my milk in the refrigerator.

I think that what really irks me is that I have several colleagues who will regularly call into these meetings or just not show up and I'm being singled out.

I don't really want to escalate the issue by reporting it to my supervisor or HR, but I feel like if it continues, I might have to. I thought being honest to my boss and explaining the situation would help, but now it seems like it is making the situation worse.

I had decided to look for a new job, despite really liking mine, after the travel and conference situation arose. What would you do?

[Anonymous]

This is one of the many reasons why this stupid open office trend is just BAD.

[Anonymous]

Are you an hourly employee? I wonder if this statute applies to the US Government: http://www.usbreastfeeding.org/Employment/WorkplaceSupport/WorkplaceSupportinFederalLaw/tabid/175/Default.aspx. If not, I am sure you could make a good public policy argument about why your manager's actions are inhibiting your right to breastfeed. I know you don't want to escalate, but this is the type of situation that HR is meant to assist in, especially where many co-workers telecommute so you calling in to meetings should not have an effect. Good luck!

[Anonymous]

I'm not an hourly employee and not in the collective bargaining unit. I'm in a weird situation in that my program manager/day to day boss technically isn't my supervisor. She gives my supervisor input but technically I'm assigned to a different program office but work mainly for our Assistant Secretary's office (political but I'm not a political). The program manager and I are both the same grade, GS-14s.

[Anonymous]

The worst is that we work on a program that promotes breastfeeding!

[Anonymous]

OP, that sucks, and is illegal: http://www.dol.gov/whd/nursingmothers/faqBTNM.htm

I would definitely elevate this to your boss's boss and HR. I am really sorry you are going through this. If you have any questions about your rights, I will bet you that the Breastfeeding Center could answer them.

[Anonymous]

I hope it gets better. Pumping is hard enough without all the challenges you are describing.

Can you telework a day or two?

[Anonymous]

What is a boss vs a supervisor? I would better understand the situation if I understood this.

[Anonymous]

My program manager aka boss is my everyday manager who I report to daily. My supervisor is really only in name only but responsible for my performance review. She gets input from my program manager/boss.

[Anonymous]

I'm considering teleworking even though it would suck as the majority of my day is on the phone/meetings and the technology we have for teleworking isn't the best.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
Until recently, I was pumping in a coworkers office and reserving empty conference rooms. I've even brought a hand pump for situations like this to pump discretely in my cubicle under a nursing cover with a scarf blocking my door.

I don't understand why you don't continue to do this? Personally, I hate when colleagues call into meetings on cell phones. The reception is often bad, it's hard to understand when the co-worker speaks and they often have a hard time hearing what's said at the meeting. Land-lines are much better, especially work phones which are on the same phone system as the speakerphone. The connection is clearer, the volume better and there isn't as much static and signal breakup as a cell.

So, why have you discontinued reserving empty conference rooms or coordinating with a coworker to use their office. If you have a team member who has a private office who is often in the same meetings, can you ask them if when a meeting is on and the lactation room is busy, if you can use their office? Then you can connect to the meeting from their office phone.

I think that she is also upset as I had a discussion with our supervisor about not traveling until my son was older and now am not going on a few site visits. Also, last week we had a conference and the hotel could not provide me a place to store my milk all day so I went back and forth at lunch and our half hour break to pump and drop off my milk in the refrigerator.

You should invest about $70 into getting one of those plug-in travel/picnic coolers. Most have cigarette lighter sockets, but you can get a 12V to 110V converter that will allow you to plug that into a wall socket. Then you just find a place at the conference out of the way (maybe a back corner of the conference room) to plug it in and leave your pumped milk.

I understand you being upset that your supervisor is not more supportive of you, but it sounds as if you could be making more of an effort to compromise and be more accommodating to the work schedule.

[Anonymous]

I think you should raise the problems with the LR to HR because it's their responsibility to make sure it's serving its purpose and complying with the requirements. So work with HR to find a space that allows you to do your work and get your pumping sessions in.

[Anonymous]

I no longer have the luxury of the colleagues' offices and conference rooms as we moved buildings to a building that is an open concept work space with low cubicle walls and very few conference rooms.

I totally understand about the poor quality of cell phones/blackberries on conference calls. This is precisely why I don't work from home as we don't have a landline and my entire day is on meetings or calls. When I say I'm calling in, this might be once a day for 10-15 minutes when I then join the call.

Good idea about the cooler. I live in the city and walk to my child's day care and work and am already loaded with my sin's stroller, a messenger bag, my pump parts (keep hospital grade pump at work), small cooler with ice pack and gym bag plus my son's diaper bag. I'm just wondering how I will carry yet a burger bag. Parking at my office is cost prohibitive (over $18/day).

[Anonymous]

Also I'm not sure you understand my schedule. I get to work at 8:30 am after dropping my son off at day care and walking to work. I immediately check my email and pump. Usually I have a meeting at 10 until 11:30-12 noon. I might have an hour break to do work plus pump. Then I have back to back meetings at 1 pm, 2 pm, 3 pm. The 3 pm meeting is until 5 pm and then I need to leave by 5:15 to pick my son up by 6. Right now I'm pumping before the meetings start and then at noon and if possible around 3:30-4ish. I'm not setting the meeting schedule.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Good idea about the cooler. I live in the city and walk to my child's day care and work and am already loaded with my sin's stroller, a messenger bag, my pump parts (keep hospital grade pump at work), small cooler with ice pack and gym bag plus my son's diaper bag. I'm just wondering how I will carry yet a burger bag. Parking at my office is cost prohibitive (over $18/day).

In the morning, you can put the pump parts and small cooler with ice pack inside the cooler bag. Ask to leave your son's diaper bag at his daycare. Our daycare let us leave bags in our kid's cubby (or even occasionally in the small storage space where parents left their strollers and/or car seats as long as there was room. If you have a conference/meeting, maybe you'll have to skip your gym bag that one day.

As for the LR, I agree with the other PP. If the office has moved to an open concept office with no privacy and the LR can only accommodate one person at a time, then you need to report to HR that the facilities are inadequate for two mothers. It will be up to HR to determine how to ensure that each mother has a location to support their requirement. If that means that they have to designate some other space with a door as an area that can be used, so be it. If not then they need to explain the situation to your supervisor to establish the appropriate working environment and restrictions which may include that employees like yourself will need to be available to use the facilities when they are available. Then it won't be up to your supervisor to be able to criticize when you are unavailable due to the schedule of the LR.