It should be forbidden that...

[NickFitz]

The last time I worked somewhere where this happened - and it happened three times in the eight months I was there, and once when I was still WFH for them and making a flying visit - I noticed that though all the women in the office gathered round and cooed and gossiped for ages, the men tended towards a perfunctory "Oh, isn't [she|he|it] lovely" before going back to work (or to the sandwich shop, as the sprog-bearers tended to arrive at lunchtime and it was easy to say something brief as one scuttled by).

On one occasion it was the father on paternity leave who actually worked there, yet he still managed to get his wife and child past the security systems designed to prevent such incursions [1]

Anyway, I always assumed that one of the benefits of being a contractor is that none of the permies expect you to give a tulip about this stuff. If you aren't expected to coo yourself, you don't have a problem.

Ignoring the crap that permies get up to in the office is one of the most important skills a contractor can have. At one place they'd have elastic-band-gun battles; at another, they'd throw a large inflatable cruise missile back and forth across the office. Somebody wheeling a pram into the place is nothing compared to stuff like that. Being a contractor means getting crap done whilst this crap happens. Happy Families stuff makes the permies happy and, being permies, they don't have many things that do that for them

[1] Broadcasters have always had strict premises security because of the need to prevent loonies and revolutionaries invading, getting into the studios, and getting on the air. Then there's stalkers. You should have seen the security at TV Centre after Jill Dando was killed.

[norrahe]

Women who leave work to have babies are allowed to bring those babies back into the office to "visit".

This really riles me and I think it should be outlawed. Is anyone really interested in these mewing sprogs whilst trying to do a days work?

It all seems a bit tragic, and what it says to me is that far from being the miraculous and wonderful experience that the mother thought it would be, is that mothers life is actually a tedious and boring slog - so tedious in fact, that the only thing she can think of doing is to try to make herself feel better by going to see ex-colleagues who probabaly only feigned any modicum of interest in the first place.

I have no real point to make, other than that this has just happened in my office and it annoys me.

WHS!

[gingerjedi]

Why has this irked you so much?

Are you a jaffa?

[shaunbhoy]

Awwwwwwwwwww. Nothing cuter than an itsy-bitsy little pink nippleslurper. Besides, it is always a good excuse for a break, and on top of that it gets all the single totty all broody and horny. Carpe Diem I say!!

[Clippy]

Look, we all chipped in to the maternity collection and I for one would like to see where my fiver went.

miserable sods

On Jobs a Goodun running at 4.30 at Aintree.

[Zippy]

Look, we all chipped in to the maternity collection and I for one would like to see where my fiver went.

miserable sods

[badger7579]

[Saddo]

I think the physchology you are dealing with here isn't present in us underling males. I know when ours were very young I was always asked "were you at the birth?", to which I replied "no, I was at the conception and that was bad enough".

[DaveB]

(Sits on sofa, opens a can of lager, reaches for the popcorn...)

Shuffle up and pass us a lager!

[MarillionFan]

(Sits on sofa, opens a can of lager, reaches for the popcorn...)

[Svalbaard]

Women who leave work to have babies are allowed to bring those babies back into the office to "visit".

This really riles me and I think it should be outlawed. Is anyone really interested in these mewing sprogs whilst trying to do a days work?

It all seems a bit tragic, and what it says to me is that far from being the miraculous and wonderful experience that the mother thought it would be, is that mothers life is actually a tedious and boring slog - so tedious in fact, that the only thing she can think of doing is to try to make herself feel better by going to see ex-colleagues who probabaly only feigned any modicum of interest in the first place.

I have no real point to make, other than that this has just happened in my office and it annoys me.