I am not sure what to say about that.
Poor guy, at least he did what he could.
As an old medic and firefighter, I missed my share of family things. Holidays were for spending time with your closest coworkers in the ER. New Year’s Eve, (my wedding anniversary), often meant spending quality time crawly inside a car wreak to get someone out alive. My one daughter’s high school graduation I was paged out for some little old lady’s heart attack in the middle of her party.
So, was I a bad father or am I the victim of a bunch of narcistic people that decided to have the worst day of their lives and dialing 911 to ruin my any and all 4 of my daughter’s special occasions?
You sacreficed your family time for the good of the community, which is a worthwile and selfless thing to do.
The post op shared is probably not about a person who sacreficed his family time for the good of the community or as a selfless act but rather out of greed for the paycheck at the end of the month.
How does transportation work when you were paged? Do you just take your own vehicle everywhere or did you leave the rest of your family to find their own way home?
This was a rural setting. So scheduling worked a bit different from it does in the big city.
First, we had just 11 people to provide 24/7/365 service. So, we would work 12hr shifts a week on as primary to respond first during the day. After a week of that you would move to the 12hr night shift for a week. Then you become secondary rig for 2 weeks. This meant you could stay home and only respond if the primary rig was busy. But you couldn’t leave town. And being a rural service, a second rig wasn’t always needed. So you could do birthday parties and such, but you might need to randomly. Or maybe you made only one call all day. Then you became tertiary and would only respond to All Hands On Deck emergency. You could even leave town and go shopping.
Only one time did my family witness me working call. We were headed out of town for Thanksgiving and there was a car accident-- a rollover in the ditch. My daughters got wide-eyed as I drove past the deputy controlling traffic and headed into the scene. We got close, I parked the car and jumped out and ran down the ditch. The car was on it’s side and the fire department was just finishing up securing the car. And I climbed in to start caring for the patient. The 2 EMT-Bs working that day were getting busy organizing the extrication and first aid supplies, (we suspected a broken leg). The boys had fun cutting the roof off enough and rolling the dash to free the patient, and we got them out and loaded into the ambulance. I watched the rig drive away, walked back the car got in, and we drove to Grandma’s house.
Interestingly, after that none of my Daughters ever complained about daddy missing a softball game or play ever again. When I had to skip out on the one Daughter’s graduation party, somebody asked her where I was running off to, I heard her laugh and tell them it happens all the time and I would be back in an hour or so.
One of the nicest parts of going from rural to a city was turning in that damn pager.
I do miss sleeping at night on shift, though.
Not sure what is more depressing: missing your child’s birthday or posting about missing your child’s birthday.
Missing your child’s burthday after already having missed it all the years before and your child already complained about it.
Photo’s of him with her as a baby 'cos that’s the last time they interacted in person
So many people are ragging on this guy, but they don’t understand what it’s like to have 131 middle managers sing you happy birthday before they go splurge their per diem on two mai tai’s and try to get the waitress, who’s actually your daughter’s age, to drink one.
A lot of women like older men, but yeah, not in that situation. Very disgusting.
My wife’s and my 12th anniversary is this week… and she reminded me (again 🍆✊💦) that I usually miss our anniversaries because I’m out fucking mailboxes every night.
Not helped this year that there are still mailboxes in the world.
So I improvised instead of figuring out a solution.
This year, instead of making my wife sad, I wrote “I was at my own wedding” on every mailbox just before I fucked it.
If my wife isn’t satisfied with this solution, that’s her problem, not mine. I’m not here to compromise with things that aren’t those fuckable mailboxes.
Moments like this remind me how lucky I am that the mailboxes I fuck can’t move or talk while I tell them about my wife and then fuck them. It’s like they’re forced to be there.
We are all mailbox fuckers. For some people, shirking fatherhood is their mailbox fucking. For me, fucking a mailbox is my mailbox fucking … cheers guys!
_________ .`. `. / \ .======.\ | | |______|| | | _____ | | | / / | | | /____/ | | _ | | |/ \|.-"```"-.| `` ||| ||| jgs `"` `"Some people put tacos in mailboxes.
https://vimeo.com/944236732?fl=pl&fe=sh
Looking forward to the posts in ten years on aitah “my daughter told me i was a horrible father and cut all contact”
I was angry until I noticed what community this was posted to.
I was at a local live show. The singer was talking about how she sacrificed so much to make the show, and tonight is her daughter’s birthday which she is missing.
Without missing a beat, a highly intoxicated woman slur-shouted “YOU’RE A TERRIBLE MOTHER!!!”
It was like all the air was sucked out of the room and we were in the vacuum of space and could not hear a single vibration of sound. The rest of the show was super low energy.
Was she wrong though?
Yeah it sounds pretty bad but we should not judge we do not know what she has been through
Explain the trauma that means a local singer can’t schedule a show for a different day
Imagine the singer is trapped in an abusive relationship with her manager, who forced her to work that day. Maybe this is her only source of income and her kid has special needs. Maybe she’s divorced and the dad has the kid this birthday and she COULD show up but the dad would make a scene. All of these based on true stories.
What gives people feelings of power
Forcing your coworkers to sing happy birthday to your daughter, whose birthday your missing, during a meeting that already could’ve been an email.
Posting about it on LinkedIn
You decide!
Super American and super gross.
It is gross, but he’s from the UK
Well then, he qualifies as an honorary American!
So much for keeping her off the pole.
I have missed work events to be at something that’s important to my kids and I’ll continue doing that. In 20 years the only ones who will remember late hours and time spent at the office are my children.
When my coworkers plan meetings at noon I tell them to have fun without me cause that’s when I eat lunch. They don’t do that anymore.
Right. Or Friday after 2pm. Fuck off with your work shit, some of us want to leave for the weekend.
They know that.
it’s thursday at 1155 and i just clocked out for the weekend shuttup or my boss will notice
We have a ‘Lunch & Learn’ at noon every other Friday… “No Actual Lunch Provided”. There’s no set agenda, just for people in IT throughout the company to get together and talk about anything tech related they want to discuss. It doesn’t even have to be work related.
It actually sounds like a fun meeting that I’d love to attend, but… Friday is my Pad Thai day, and I’m not missing that.
Exactly this. If the lunch isn’t gluten free AND good, i consider it a request for me to not attend.
Although, if they get pizza, I’ll scrape half a pizza’s worth of toppings on to a plate and let them see me dropping the crust in the trash. They always ask about dietary restrictions… and they consider shitty pizza shop salad a GF meal?? LOL. I always plan for my own food for events like this.
How can you eat at a time like this???
You mean lunch time?I have a 1h meeting at lunchtime my TZ on every work day. It helps especially the Brits to respect continental lunch times.
Occasionally the company sends out emails about these extra optional special seminar things, random topics, often not even about work, and they almost always seem to “conveniently” be scheduled at like 12 or 1230, when people are most likely to take lunch.
Like, I see what you are doing and I don’t like it.
Go to the seminar and take a separate lunch break.
Oh yeah, but it also really feels like bait to get people to do it while on lunch.
There’s no “feels like” about it, it’s almost entirely the point.
I can’t wait to meet my peers that used the grindset mindset in the retirement home. Don’t worry, I don’t have kids, so neither of us will have visitors. The key difference will be them tethered to their computer striving to launch one last product.
I’ll be on year 40 of my retirement.
That’s a nice thought but this is the kind of guy who will hire live-in care
i’m kind of curious how the retirement home will go. because i’m bringing my video games. having food prepped, like, the biggest loss for me will be my kitchen.
gran ran retirement homes so i know exactly what i’m getting into from a mechanical standpoint. social standpoint too i’ve already spent a good three decades of my life just hanging out and helping out. as long as i can transfer myself i’m happy in even the cheaper homes, but i wish i could tell them i wanted to cook my own meals sometimes. maybe run loose in their professional kitchens once a week, but i ain’t got that kind of money.
I remember the VP of Engineering for the company I worked for held a mandatory meeting for his managers on a weekend afternoon. One of his managers was a no-show, and when he commented on it another guy said “It’s his son’s tenth birthday and they’re having a party.” The VP looked incredulous and said “Why would anyone miss an important meeting for a 10-year-old’s party?” Luckily it was a rhetorical question because no one said anything. Oh, and the VP was divorced and estranged from his kids; I wonder why.
GOOD. i have run a small (generally noncustomer facing) business before. i have stated upfront to my new hires that they have to work their hours unless it’s a life or death issue. Now let’s go over the life issues: i want them clocking out at noon (if they work at all) on: their birthday, their spouse/SO’s birthday, anniversarys, children’s birthdays, sporting events/concerts, etc. (you gotta be there for your kids) if their favorite band is in town, the bakery down the street has the twists i like (not the ones you like, the ones I like), the dispensary has either of our favorite strains of weed, like, be reasonable to us and we’ll be reasonable to you.
honestly by the time i got to the bakery (i was not into weed when i was employing people) they got my vibe well enough i didn’t have problems with anyone i hired.
Fuck, dude. I just hope this is a satire account and some doctored image.
I work with tech bros.
They flex nonstop about how many life events they miss to be at work. It’s like a badge of honor to say stupid shit like “Ah my 4 YO is in the ER but I know how important this meeting is…”
“Ah my 4 YO is in the ER but I know how important this meeting is…”
And the meeting is just some dumbass monthly progress review where section heads brag about what ‘they’ (their team) accomplished in the last month, with at least half of it being bullshit, exaggeration, or preemptively taking credit for what they’re probably totally going to do next month. Nothing would change if the meeting was entirely cancelled and skipped.
It’s all about quantity in corporate. Performative employees get further quicker compared to quiet ones that actually deliver quality output.
Not to that extreme, but I’ve seen one say how their kid cried because they were away working on some tech bro stuff, and they never want their kid to go through that again. Except they didn’t have to do it in the first place anyway. It was literally a choice. They chose work because it was fun.
Cut to 20 years later “Why does my daughter never visit doesn’t she know how much I sacrificed?”
“I gave her a whole slide at the beginning of the deck where people still pay attention! Kids are so ungrateful these days”
What a waste of a human life.
