Working Mom Who Let Her Toddler Help Her Make A Potluck Dessert For The Office Is Told It Was ‘Unfair & Unsafe’
Is this really about the dessert? Or is it about her co-worker's dislike of kids?
Evgeny Atamanenko | Shutterstock Thankfully, it's becoming more and more acceptable for people, especially women, to be open about not wanting — or even liking — children. The stigma against these things is long overdue for coming to an end.
But as with so many social and cultural shifts, it sometimes seems like the pendulum has swung too far in the other direction, to the point that people have expectations and demands that are just as unreasonable as the outdated mores they're trying to change.
A situation one mom on Reddit is facing with her co-workers is a perfect example of this overreach, and it's resulted in a conflict that is frankly ridiculous.
The working mom was criticized for letting her toddler help her make an office potluck dessert.
Ah, the dreaded office potluck. Can't we just do away with those altogether? Does anyone actually like them, anyway? The food is usually terrible and the pressure adds to an already full slate of work duties. Who needs it? Just order pizza for the office parties and call it a day!
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But of course, the other problem with office potlucks is that you never know if your colleague's houses and kitchens are clean, which gives some people the willies. That's perhaps understandable.
In this Redditor's case, her co-worker shared that she had cleanliness and safety concerns regarding the mom's potluck dessert. However, it seems an awful lot like her co-worker was just using those concerns as an excuse to be combative and unkind about her kid having "helped" make it.
The mom put out her dessert at the potluck with a sign saying her son helped, and her co-worker wasn't having it.
"We had a potluck at work last week," the mom wrote in her Reddit post, and for her assigned dessert, she made a "delicious brownie and cookie concoction with a caramel sauce." Who doesn't like that?
The mom has a 2-year-old son, and as toddlers are wont to do, her little boy wanted to be in the kitchen "'helping' as much as he could." Cute, right?
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"When I put the dish out at the potluck I added a sign that my son helped make it," the mom went on to say. "I thought that was the right thing to do in case people had an issue with it." It's hard to think of what issues anyone would have with this, but one of her colleagues quickly found some.
Her co-worker said it was 'unfair' and 'unsafe' that she allowed her son to help make the dessert.
The mom admitted that she's had issues with this co-worker before. "[She] has made it known she does not like kids," she wrote, "[and] has complained to HR about my kid being around at the end of the day for 15-30 minutes."
So perhaps the well was already poisoned, which would explain the absurd complaints she had about the dessert. "[She] said that it wasn't fair that I made a dish that she wouldn't eat," the mom wrote.
Whether or not she or anyone else will eat the dessert is no one's concern but her own, of course, but when the mom said as much the co-worker switched tacks. "She said that making a dish that wasn't made in a safe way and bringing it is not OK."
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This is absurd unless the co-worker assumes the mom was allowing her son to dump bleach into the brownie batter or something. Most germs encountered in people's homes cannot live past roughly 140 degrees Fahrenheit. That's… literally why you cook food in the first place.
Many online insisted this mom's co-worker was wildly overreacting.
This conflict butts up against a common source of debate — or all-out war is probably the better word — between parents and some of those in the "child-free" movement who often demand children not be allowed to so much as exist in public unless they remain completely silent and unobtrusive.
It's hard not to assume this woman's co-worker is of that ilk, given the absurdity of her issues with this potluck, and many on Reddit were not having it.
"If you want all of your food to be prepared as if the state health inspector supervised the whole thing, you shouldn't eat ANYTHING at a potluck," one commenter wrote.
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Many did side with the co-worker on the hygiene thing — but even those who did felt the co-worker was blowing things way out of proportion. "Your co-worker is being dramatic and could have just not eaten it and not said anything," one user wrote, though they added that they wouldn't have touched the dessert either.
Which is fair enough — maybe everyone is wrong to one degree here because having a kid help make food that's intended to be eaten by people outside your home is kind of a weird choice. But so is making a big fuss about it being "unfair." Just eat something else. It's really not this serious.
John Sundholm is a news and entertainment writer who covers pop culture, social justice, and human interest topics.