It is a choice for two parents to have professional career. It is a choice to have children. It is a choice to live in an expensive urban centre. These are choices that my partner and I made, together.
Summer is a tough time because school is out. It’s even tougher economically for many working parents because we do not have 2 months of paid vacation to coincide with school vacations (what an idea for work schedules or rotations to match annual school calendars). I live in a smallish city in the lower mainland. My partner and I are both nurses, an essential healthcare profession. We both have careers that we love, it is increasingly tough to live in the lower mainland. We chose to have four kids, a seemingly incredible choice in a country where the birthrate is much much less. It’s childcare expenses times four in the summer. Our oldest child is 12 but there’s no way they are staying home unsupervised all summer and they are too young to get a summer job.
I have many parental failures each month. This month started off with a doozy. This year Canada Day fell on a weekend. Normally, when the statutory holiday is on a weekend the following weekday is the day off for all those who regularly work Monday to Friday. As you probably know, childcare is a service that is almost exclusively for parents who work Monday to Friday roughly between the house of 8:00is to 4:00ish. I made the mistake of assuming the childcare I booked and paid for for my kids this week started today. This is a mistake I made despite emails sent out by the childcare provider with dates July 3-7. I just assumed it started on Tuesday because why would parents who work Monday to Friday need childcare on the Monday if Monday is a stat? Nope, I was so wrong. And my mistake is one times 4 because I paid for 4 kids.
This morning when I realized my mistake I immediately emailed the childcare camp provider, admitting it was my mistake but could they provide me with some kind of refund, after all this was a super expensive mistake on my part. They didn’t call or email or have any kind of communication yesterday when all 4 of my kids failed to show up for the day camp. I got a pretty heartless email back that essentially read “it was your mistake, we don’t call and assumed something came up and you decided not to bro t them” the end. My heart kind of broke. I have sent my kinds to this camp for a number of weeks over the past 3 years. The complete lack of empathy was shocking to me. It was my mistake, but it was a $400 mistake. At least some sort of empathetic response would have been nice.
So now I am on the defensive. I feel like I am not a valued customer. And frankly, I am angry that their reminder email did say something like “Please note this camp starts on Monday July 3rd despite it being a recognized federal statutory holiday”. So I am holding on to this anger because I am a parent of 4 in one of the most expensive cities in the Country who works in a job that is essential and I just flushed $400 down the metaphorical toilet with no empathy from the company that I have been a loyal customer to for the past 3 years.
Needless as to say, I am giving them a negative Google review…because of this incident and because my 11 and 12 year old are too old for the camp that takes up to age 13.
Love,
Michelle D.
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