Working Mom Lets Child Help Make Dessert For Office

Fortunately, it is becoming more and more acceptable for people, especially women, to openly say that they do not want children, or even that they do not like having them. It is high time that this kind of discriminatory behavior ends.

But as with many social and cultural changes, it sometimes seems as if the pendulum has swung too far in the other direction, to the point where people have expectations and demands that are just as unreasonable as the outdated mores they are trying to change.

The situation a mother on Reddit is facing with her coworkers is a perfect example of this excess of power, and it has resulted in a frankly ridiculous conflict.

The working mother has been criticised for letting her young child help her make dessert for the office.

Ah, the dreaded office potlucks. Can’t we just do away with them? Does anyone really like them, anyway? The food is usually awful and the pressure is added to an already hectic workload. Who needs them? Just order a pizza for the office party and call it a day!

A pizza party at the office instead of a shared meal fizkes | Shutterstock

But of course, the other problem with shared office meals is that you never know if your coworkers’ homes and kitchens are clean, which gives some people the creeps. Perhaps understandably.

In this Redditor’s case, her coworker shared that she had concerns about the cleanliness and safety of the dessert the mom made. However, it appears that her coworker used these concerns as an excuse to act aggressively and meanly toward her child for “helping” her make it.

The mother served her dessert at the meal with a sign saying that her son had helped and that his colleague did not want 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 mix of brownies and cookies with caramel sauce.” Who doesn’t love that?

The mom has a 2-year-old son, and as toddlers tend to do, her little boy wanted to be in the kitchen “helping” as much as he could. Cute, right?

Working mother prepares meal with toddler SERGIOKAT | Shutterstock

“When I served the dish at the dinner, I added a sign saying that my son had helped prepare it,” the mother continued. “I thought it was the right thing to do in case people had a problem with it.” It’s hard to imagine what problems this could cause for someone, but one of her coworkers quickly found some.

Her colleague said it was “unfair” and “dangerous” that she allowed her son to help her make the dessert.

The mother admitted to having issues with the co-worker in the past. “She made it known that she didn’t like children,” she wrote, “(and) complained to HR that my child was there at the end of the day for 15-30 minutes.”

So the well may already be poisoned, which would explain her absurd complaints about the dessert. “(She) said it wasn’t fair that I made her something she wouldn’t eat,” the mother wrote.

Of course, no one cares whether she or anyone else gets to eat the dessert, but when the mother said that, the coworker changed course. “She said that making something that wasn’t prepared safely and bringing it in was not acceptable.”

Working mother prepares meal with toddler DMITRI SIMAKOV | Shutterstock

This is absurd, unless the coworker thinks the mother was letting her son pour bleach into the brownie batter or something. Most germs in homes can’t survive temperatures above 60 degrees Celsius. It’s… literally the reason we cook food in the first place.

Many netizens claimed that this mother’s colleague had overreacted.

This conflict runs into 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 that children not be allowed to exist in public unless they remain completely silent and discreet.

It’s hard not to assume that this woman’s coworker is of this type, given the absurdity of her issues with this potluck, and many on Reddit were not happy about it.