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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I don’t get it. This was what it was like when I had my kids in the late 2000s. [/quote]

We all agree that you truly don’t get it, PP.[/quote]

+1. It was like this when I raised my kids, born in 2002 and 2004. And I ended up feeling like a crappy employee, a crappy spouse and a crappy parent.  It wasn’t good for my kids. It wasn’t good for my mental health. If I close my eyes, I can still panic of last minute snow days and kids waking up with fevers in my gut.  Moving into a federal 3 telework days a week job with 9:30 to 2:30 core hours (but can take a half hour lunch 11:30-1:30) was a game changer.  Just because I did it for ten years doesn’t mean women coming after me should have to. It’s better for employees, kids, and families if a job can allow telework and flex schedule.  And it’s true that not all jobs can have telework.  But maybe job flexibilities, like job availability and job pay,  are something people should consider when accepting a job or choosing a career.   And the “I suffered so you should too” attitude is, frankly, gross. How about “I suffered, and I don’t wish that on my own kids and their peers as they enter the workforce”?[/quote]

I completely agree with you but I also think some people are just pointing out that people like OP are screaming bloody murder after two months of living like many people lived their entire careers. Our country is in a scary place and we are all going to need some resilience to get through a tough time. In my own family, we’ve been affected but we are doing our best to keep our heads up and enjoy life despite being put out by our less flexible schedule. Perhaps the difference is we do not see this as a forever thing, just a time to get through.[/quote]

Np. I think what many members of the public don’t see is that our fed jobs are taken with lower salary and slightly more flexibility. Most of us have spouses who are doctors, nurses or other jobs who have zero flexibility. My husband has never once been able to telework, which is why I have my current job. [/quote]

Quit the whining. Nurses have the same level of education/ training and get paid a lot less than many of you and have to work the night shift and deal with people's bodily fluids. Teachers also have degrees (often graduate degrees) and have zero flexibility (as in can't be 5 minutes late so actually show up half an hour before students arrive and find it very difficult to take a day off here and there). The incessant whining of the white collar class about society going to ____  because they suddenly have less flexibility is really tone deaf and unbecoming.[/quote]

Ah yes, teachers, people who would never predict that their schedules would suddenly change. Who also have months off in summer and a better pension and full job security. Remind me of this when that suddenly changes for them. Until then, it’s not the same situation at all. [/quote]

I’m a teacher and my schedule has been changed. Start times / end times were altered, throwing my childcare plans into chaos.

And can we stop with the summer argument? We aren’t paid. And you say “long vacations,” too. I don’t make enough money to do anything except stay home. I suspect you make far more than me and for fewer hours.

And the pension? It’s nowhere near how good it used to be.

So as you sit here and try to say how everybody else has it so much better than you, make sure your argument is actually a good one. [/quote]

PP. I don’t feel a need to debate about whether everyone has it much better, just that the PP I was responding to was implying that Feds should stop whining because others are in the same boat. They aren’t.

I only wrote to that point because I’m a fed who has been an MCPS teacher (in more than one role and more than one school for almost a decade). I know a bit about this.

Yes, we didn’t get to set our own schedules but I didn’t have mine arbitrarily and suddenly changed for no clear reason. Have you experienced that?

I’m well aware of not being paid during the summer. I didn’t say the thing about long vacations. And yes, my pay is much better as a fed than a teacher, but you’re wrong about the hours. My fed job is highly intense and worse this year. I’ve been putting in ten-hour days for weeks on end. Today is day 125 of the year, and I’ve worked on 115 of those. We all know of teachers who choose to work this much, and many want to, but rarely is it so necessary for such a long time.

Finally, yes the pension isn’t as good in public schools as it used to be. It also isn’t as good in the civil service. With MCPS you pay 7.5% in and get a 1.7% per year benefit. With FERS it’s 4.4% for 1% per year unless you get to 62+20. These are the same by ratio, but you can retire a little earlier in MCPS than under FERS. Also the FERS benefit looks set to diminish again. So I’d call it a draw… but there’s definitely better job security as a teacher right now.

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