After a childless manager revealed she’s tired of always calling the shots for parents, a working mum responds…Mums like me should always be off at Christmas

A few weeks ago I received the message I’d been dreading from my retail manager at the chic High Street store where I work part-time.

She wanted a meeting to discuss my ‘availability’.

Such a call is a bit like sending it to the school principal, but at 43, and as a mother of three, I am old enough to reject any offer to intimidate me.

Moreover, I knew exactly what we would discuss during this not so pleasant conversation. Earlier that month, I had taken two unpaid “parental leave” days: one because one of my children was sick, and the other because it was biannual.

Legally it’s hard for them to say no, but my lack of availability started to become a problem. Now they wanted to discuss when I would like to work in the coming festive weeks.

After the meeting it was quite clear that my ethos was different to theirs – and at some point I knew I had to make a decision whether to stay or go.

The source of these problems? That I am a mother. And there are times – Christmas is one of them – when I’m not willing to sacrifice time with my family to come to work.

I jumped into this role when I was first hired, confident that I could fit it in with my life as a yoga teacher, running a household, and my main priority: raising my children.

I had taken a contract for two shifts a week and at first it sounded ideal. The shifts varied from week to week depending on the needs of the store, but I always hoped to work during the week.

However, with the new management, the staff schedule was not prepared in advance, resulting in shifts being cut and changed at the last minute. It meant that some staff, including mothers, received a phone call the day before a shift telling them to come in. Worse still, I was suddenly asked if I could work on weekends.

I was unhappy and my bosses were unhappy too. Because, unfortunately, some childless women in the workplace feel that women like me are somehow using our status as parents to get preferential treatment, or abdicate our responsibilities at work, leaving them with the lion’s share take on.

In a glowing piece in last week’s Femail, former retail manager Samantha Walsh outlined why she, as a childless woman, was so fed up with calling the shots for mums like me at Christmas that she quit her job.

Well, just like Samantha, I also canceled last month when I couldn’t make myself available to work, both on Christmas Day and Boxing Day as well as on New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day. Working just wasn’t an option for me at that time.

I wouldn’t want to miss the Christmas carol concerts, opening presents and enjoying precious family time with my children, who are thirteen, eight and seven years old.

They are only little once and I want to be there for all the important moments. If I miss Christmas when they are young, I will never get that time back and I couldn’t bear it if missing that time with them affected our relationship in the long run.

We moved from Surrey to a nice village for better family life, so I had to be there for my children.

People may say that vacation arrangements should be fair to everyone, regardless of whether they are parents or not. But while I understand that, I’m not willing to compromise.

Like many mothers, I took a part-time job in retail to ensure my work met the needs of my children. God knows it’s not about career – before I had kids I had a senior role as a web developer – it’s about convenience.

People like Samantha Walsh won’t thank me for saying this, but it was supposed to be a worry-free job where I could show up, put in my hours, and then not have to think about when I clocked out.

However, I was not a misty-eyed innocent when it came to the retail world. As a teenager I started working on Saturdays in a fashion store on the High Street and in my early twenties I worked at assistant management level in a shoe store.

Don’t be shy, I know what demanding customers and demanding bosses are all about.

Back then, I was always happy to do the shifts on weekends or holidays, no questions asked, while my colleagues who were parents spent important time with their families. I never blamed them for it. And that includes Christmas. But now that I’m a mother in my 40s and a family that relies on me, it’s a different story. I only wish my colleagues could be as understanding as I once was.

My female managers at the store were in their twenties and thirties and childless. As such, I felt that they had little sympathy for the pressure I was under and that I did not seem to understand that the job was not my everything.

We moms on staff really struggled with the lack of notice around shifts and the expectation that we had to drop everything at the last minute to meet work demands. It almost felt like we were being blamed for having children.

I felt like I spent more time negotiating my shifts than working them; none of my childless colleagues ever seemed to respect my position.

And yet mothers often feel like they have to bend over backwards to meet the demands of their bosses. One mother started work 15 minutes later at 9:15 am instead of 9:00 am, and made up the time by taking a shorter lunch break.

The extra 15 minutes allowed her to do the school run, and the store didn’t open until 8:30 anyway. It worked until she was told in no uncertain terms by the new manager that it was no longer convenient for the store. She started to feel like her children were a burden on the team.

I am not a difficult person and I can proudly say that I am a hard worker. When I wasn’t serving customers, I was helping with deliveries. It is a physical job: moving goods and going up and down ladders.

The run up to Black Friday was brutal this year, it was chaos with VIP email campaigns, the reorganization of the store for sales inventory and the click and collect system to manage.

It’s constant go-go-go and I was exhausted but kept my nose to the grindstone. Because, despite what some people may think, we moms really don’t want to let our employers or other coworkers down.

However, when you are a mother, your family always comes first. What else should I do if one of my children is sick and my husband is working?

Every time I took a day off at short notice, I felt guilty, knowing full well that someone else would have to fill in for me. But there is no option if your child needs you. So after weeks of stressing about my availability, the Christmas edict was the final nail in the coffin.

I have since found a new job in a small, independent boutique, working two days a week, where I don’t have to be there over Christmas and New Year. The owner has no children and she offered me time off during the holidays.

I understand why these types of solutions can infuriate childless staff. Regardless of family status, we should all be able to spend time with our loved ones at Christmas.

Retail management needs to put more money into hiring seasonal staff so that they can meet all the needs of their staff.

We need to champion mothers in the workforce because we have so much to give.

And when it comes to the holidays, it’s not a matter of preference or laziness; We should just take Christmas off.

There’s too much to organize to leave it solely on my husband’s shoulders, and my children’s memories would be ruined if I wasn’t there.

Will I regret leaving that job? No, not for a second. Life is short and for this mom, no job is worth missing on Christmas with my family.