Mom Consistently Picks Up Her Son Late From His Boxing Class To Use His Instructor For 'Free Childcare'
"The kid's great, but I have things to do."
LightField Studios / Shutterstock Childcare nowadays is incredibly expensive and often inaccessible. However, that doesn't mean parents can shift the burden onto others, as one mom did to her son's boxing instructor.
The mom took advantage of her son’s boxing instructor by using him for free childcare.
An anonymous man took to Reddit to share his experience and ask for advice on how to proceed.
“I teach boxing in my spare time, and one day a week, I teach it to kids,” he explained. “There’s a mom who I’m starting to feel like is taking advantage of these classes. She’s increasingly late with picking up her kid after the session.”
LightField Studios / Shutterstock
The instructor described the woman’s situation, explaining that she is not exactly in desperate need of the free childcare she is finagling.
“To give some context, this is a rich woman,” he wrote. “It’s not that she’s out working a job. She is a stay-at-home parent. No other kids. She told me all this because another thing she loves to do is have really long conversations with me on top of already being late.”
After being late all throughout the month of March, the instructor began timing the mother to track how late she was showing up to get her son.
“I made a point to show her my timer, and I gave her a warning that I will [sic] remove her kid from my class,” he said. “She tried to derail the conversation, so I raised the timer and turned it on again. She said I was being ‘unjustifiably rude.'"
While the instructor had a good plan, it unfortunately backfired. “She reported our conversation to my boss but twisted it,” he said. “She said that I threatened her kid with getting kicked out of the program.”
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Although the man clarified that the woman's report was not entirely accurate, he still ended up on the line for it. “My boss still gave me a lecture about how I don’t have that power and can’t make the statements I did. He went over professionalism and how I’m being too hard on this mom who could have other circumstances going on."
Reddit commenters were fully on the man’s side.
The overwhelming majority of Reddit users agreed with the instructor and insisted he deserved to receive fair treatment and compensation.
“Call your boss anytime she is late,” one person suggested. “And then call back every five [minutes] to let them know she is still not there.”
Another person wrote, “You should be filing for wage theft if you’re babysitting kids an hour off the clock.”
A third user questioned, “Why doesn’t your program have some sort of contract about this? That’s what you need to talk to your boss about.”
Charging parents for late pickups is an effective way to avoid them.
According to Penn State, charging extra when a kid is left at a program later than they are supposed to be is a good idea.
“One way to keep parents coming on time is to charge an extra fee for late pickup,” they said. “If parents know they will have to pay more for coming late, they probably won’t stop at the store or run some errands before they come for their child. They will want to show up on time.”
It’s true that what this man is going through is incredibly unfair. He should not be expected to watch a child after his class time is over. Charging for late pickup seems like it would be a good option in this situation.
In an update, the man revealed that he did, in fact, go to his boss and request such a policy.
Unfortunately, it didn't go exactly as he hoped. "[My boss] kept trying to minimize the situation, and make me feel that I am in the wrong. He told me that I'm being greedy," he wrote in a second Reddit post.
"Having proper policies in place not only protects the staff, it protects the kids, not to mention his [expletive] business," the boxing instructor continued. "After I made my perspective clear (in a mostly professional manner), he came around a little."
While his boss refused to give him back pay for the extra hours he worked waiting for the child's parent, he did agree to implement a late fee policy going forward — and it, thankfully, seems to have helped, as the mom hasn't been late since.
Mary-Faith Martinez is a writer for YourTango who covers entertainment, news, and human interest topics.