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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I’ll go back but flex my hours. There’s no way I’m sitting in my office until 5:30/6 5 days a week. If they take away maxiflex then forget it. Currently we allow people in our office to leave early and continue TW from home if they have long commutes or need flexibility for kid after school activities. Most of the working world allows flexibility. If the govt becomes so backwards about this with E and V in charge, I’ll leave. [/quote]

Losing maxiflex is my major concern, too. Without it and with 5 days a week in the office I need to either start at 7am or pay $5‐600/ month for after care. But I've got almost 20 years of service and I believe in our mission so I'm sticking out. This too shall pass. [/quote]
What do you do for childcare when school is closed on random days?[/quote]
Take leave.[/quote]

Seriously. My husband and I are feds and [b]we have teenage children[/b]. Prior to Covid we both worked downtown 5 days a week. Feds get generous annual leave and we used to plan ahead and swap days off when our kids didn’t have school and were too young to stay home alone, or we hired babysitters if neither of us could take a day. I’m sure it was nice for parents to not have to do this in the last 4 years but you may have to return to what everyone else’s experience was pre-Covid.[/quote]

So I had a big gap between kids 2 and 3. I remember what it was like pre-COVID to go into an office and have to manage sick days as a working parent.

But now that I am dealing with childcare issues again this third time in the post-COVID world I can tell you a few things:

Childcare options are still cut back (either smaller admissions and/or shorter hours due to staffing problems). Oh and prices are up of course!

There are also fewer extended day spots (again see staffing issues). Many people left the childcare industry when it collapsed during COVID closures and also the pay hasn’t kept up with inflation and wage growth in other sectors.

Even things like school break camps fill up quicker because some of the private ones I used to rely on don’t exist anymore. So the county run spots go fast.

I also think the fact that so many employers allow telework/Flex Time (both private and public sector) means that places that offer childcare have become used to parents being able to pick up earlier. Also my agency used to offer 5 days of backup care per year, but got rid of that because of all the increased work flexibility. Are they going to bring this back?

Employers have also gotten used to workloads continuing to progress regardless of illness, school breaks, etc. because parents can still work at least a few hours.

Overall there are more hurdles and expenses, plus major changes in work culture and expectations that didn’t exist with my first 2. Parents of teens brushing off these changes is about as useful as an older person talking about how they paid for college with their part time job. It’s just not relevant to today’s working parents and I say this as someone who has tweens and a preschooler.[/quote]

I am sympathetic, but again these challenges have existed for working families for decades and parents have found a way to muddle through. As a kid my own parents hired young teenage babysitters for my siblings and I after school. My own kids got shut out of extended day one year because there weren’t enough spots and we hired someone’s housecleaner to pick them up and watch them for a few hours before we could commute home. Was it ideal? No, but it’s not for that long and [b]is a necessary trade off [/b]if you have two working parents, commutes, and no extended family or other free care nearby. The comments from feds who want to be able to close the laptop at 5 every day and start family life sound out of touch to me.[/quote]

Except it's not necessary. That's the whole point. There is no need to commute to a physical office every day in order to work on a computer and have Teams meetings. You are the one who sounds out of touch.[/quote]

If your employer has decided that working in person in an office is necessary than you can comply or quit. That’s the whole point. The years of whining I’ve heard here is just exhausting, if you can find a better situation for yourself and your family I genuinely wish you well somewhere else but please stop complaining because working is hard.[/quote]

DP but my employer has not decided this is necessary. In fact the head of my component and our overall agency leadership have done metric studies that prove telework is a success and tout it as a great tool for employee retention.

The issue is that fed employees don’t want to be used as pawns by billionaires in an effort to prop up commercial real estate prices. Can you really not understand that most of us are do not want to (and in my case I’m unwilling to and will leave) completely upend our work/life balance to be a part of this scheme? I have a job to serve the public, not to put my butt in a cubicle chair so the private sector can bilk taxpayers to prop up their real estate investment portfolios.[/quote]

No sector is immune from change. Private sector employees have and are continuing to navigate RTO mandates. Most studies on RTO indicate hybrid produces the best results. This is really important for new employees and managers and critical for oversight. And the real estate portfolio languishing is government owned and taxpayer funded, which is inexcusable. [/quote]
Perhaps they should sell the real estate. Needlessly putting people in a middle when they don’t need to be there does not make paying for the building any less wasteful.[/quote]

This is exactly what republicans have proposed in multiple bills. Either use it or sell it. I don’t know why the current administration is insisting on hanging onto these buildings while at the same time not requiring RTO. And multiple agencies (like 17) utilized their space less than 25% of the time in 2023, which is again, very wasteful. [/quote]

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