The struggle to find a new job is real and it can be especially stressful if you're a new parent. Not only do have to compete with other qualified applicants during those nerve-wracking interviews but you also need to figure out child care for your kid during those times. Trying to make the best of both worlds, one woman asked if she could bring her baby with her to her interview at a child care facility. But now she believes that she lost out on the opportunity, despite the kid-friendly setting, for that exact reason.
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The new mom explains that after a phone interview in March, she finally landed an in-person interview for a summer role.
But no matter what, she knew that she would have to bring her 7-month-old son with her. On the Am I the A–hole forum on Reddit, she explained that she'd made 100% sure her son would be welcomed.
"When I got the call yesterday to come in, I verified that they had room at the center for my now 7-month-old and that I could bring him to the interview with me," she wrote.
The mom was ready. She arrived 10 minutes early and even had time to fill out a questionnaire before her interview.
"After filling out the forms I was called back to the director's office, just as my son was fussing for his lunch," she wrote.
The mom asked the director of the child care facility if there was a place where she could set her son's car seat down while she fed him.
"She looked at me funny and asked me if he could wait until after the interview to eat," she recalled. "I smiled and said, well he's hungry now, and I'd like to go ahead and take care of that. She told me there wasn't anything to put him on and she had no food for him."
No worries – she had brought her son some food, and he just needed to be fed.
The director wouldn't budge, and she told the mom that she would need to wait until they were done to feed him.
"I laughed a bit and invited her to explain to my infant son that he needed to wait, saying he may listen to her, but I'd doubt it since you know, he's a baby, and when babies are hungry, you feed them," she wrote.
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The director agreed to allow another applicant to interview first so the mom could feed her baby.
The mom ended up sitting on the floor of the lobby "as they had no tables to put the car seat on," fed her son, took him back to her car to change him, and then came back in for her interview.
Almost immediately the director called her back to be interviewed.
She promptly thanked the director for allowing her son to eat before they met.
"She immediately told me that in 20 years she has only done this twice, and told me that she didn't think I would be a good fit for the position," the mom recalled.
"So Reddit, am I the [expletive] for feeding my baby?" she wondered.
In short, yes.
Many people in the comments thought this mom had really bungled her interview.
"[You're the A–hole] – I've never hired anyone that brought their kid to an interview," one person wrote. "I read that as this person doesn't have reliable child care, so how often will there be a problem with their work schedule."
Someone else thought the mom's attitude was the problem.
"I honestly think the biggest thing that made Original Poster the A–hole was her extreme rudeness and belligerence to the interviewer (laughing in her face and giving her sarcastic answers)," the person wrote. "In the long run, though, OP probably did the director a favor by putting all her cards on the table in the interview and demonstrating herself to be someone the childcare facility didn't want on their staff. I definitely would not want to hire someone who acted like this in an interview, baby or not."
A third person put it this way: "Here’s the thing: by 7 months that kid should have developed a schedule. OP should know when he'd need to eat. She could've asked for a different interview time or could've arrived earlier and fed him before her interview."
Other people defended the mom and argued that the interviewer should have been more understanding.
"Not the A–hole – you asked if it was okay to bring the baby and they said yes," one person chimed in. "Babies need to be fed. If this was an Am I the A–hole for someone not feeding their baby and letting them cry for whatever reason they'd be the a–hole."
"They said you could bring your infant – TWICE," someone else commented. "They're a [expletive] childcare center, and they're irritated by babies that need to eat? Yikes, I think you dodged a bullet!"
The mom seemed to agree.
"I'm the primary caregiver at home because of my mom's rheumatoid arthritis, my MIL's arthritis and my husband's work schedule," she wrote. "Of course the center director 'held my fate' in her hands, she's the one who gets to decide who to hire."
She isn't really sure what the director expected when she told her she could bring her son.
"Why allow me to bring him if I'm not allowed to care for him or expect a baby to just wait to wait when they're hungry?" she wondered.
These stories are based on posts found on Reddit. Reddit is a user-generated social news aggregation, web content rating, and discussion website where registered members submit content to the site and can up- or down-vote the content. The accuracy and authenticity of each story cannot be confirmed by our staff.
