Every moment is raw and unfiltered, from the messy struggle to get her little girl into the car to the tense drive filled with sobs and mismatched boots. Yet, beneath the exhaustion, a fierce determination burns—to protect her child, to honor her role in the company, and to face whatever comes next with unwavering resolve.
I’m the 1/3 owner of a company with 2 friends from college. Mike and Eric.
I run the Technology side of things, so I’m not the “face” of the company, so I rarely go into the office.
I have a 4-year-old daughter whose father is Mike. (We have never been in a relationship and chose to co-parent our daughter)
Mike got into a car wreck and required surgery. Eric was out of town. My nanny is on holiday break, so it’s me taking care of my daughter and trying to run a company.
There’s a project that Mike’s working on In the office, and I have to grab it and a portable server.
My daughter is already upset because she knows her dad is hurt. Getting her loaded into the car to go into the office was messy. She refused to wear matching boots and is in an elf outfit.
At this point, I’m like, whatever, let’s go.
The whole time in the car, she’s crying and upset.
I get her to calm down because I told her we would grab some things from work.
I meet our VP of operations, Adam, and everything is fine. Until my daughter realizes she left her dinosaur in the car.
She will not be appeased. We are in Adam’s office trying to get everything together to take to my home office.
My kiddo will not stop crying because Sara (the dinosaur) is in the car alone, and Sara might not be able to breathe.
Adam and I are like, “it’s ok, Sara, it is fine.”
I’m mortified and want to get my kid back in the car and home.
Adam has to run to the IT department to grab a few more things for me.
My daughter is in total toddler meltdown over Sara the Dinosaur.
A man walks by and tells me to “shut my kid up.
This is an office, not a daycare.”
I’m had it. I told him this wouldn’t be his job if it weren’t for this child’s father or me, and he could be the one to shut up or find a new job.
Adam comes back, and the man starts yelling at Adam about how he’s trying to work, and my kid and I won’t shut up.
He told Adam he needed to get me out of the office.
I’m like this is my office, and if you don’t like it, you can leave.
Adam agrees and says I’m the owner, and there’s nothing he can do. The man walks back to his desk.
Adam tells me he will handle it. Wishes me good luck with the project and sends my daughter out.
Adam fired the man for insubordination because the situation did not get better after I left and made some sexist remarks about women in business.
I get it wasn’t one of my best days, but I’m trying to run a company and take care of my daughter in a stressful time for her.
The man was rude, and to be honest, no matter who I was shouldn’t be telling a child to shut up.
Conclusion
The owner faced an intense conflict, balancing the immediate crisis of co-parenting an upset child while handling urgent business needs due to a partner’s injury. Her actions, though defensive and sharp, stemmed from the stress of the situation and the perceived insult to her role as both a parent and a co-owner, directly clashing with the expectation of professional workplace decorum.
Is it acceptable for an owner to use their authority to immediately terminate an employee for disrespectful behavior toward them and their child in a high-stress scenario, or should workplace policy dictate a more structured disciplinary process even when the initial provocation involves personal family matters?
Here’s how people reacted:
The only reason I didn’t say YTA is because you mentioned the man made sexist remarks about women in business, otherwise you would be TA.
It sounds like you made some puzzling decisions and need to acknowledge your own contribution to getting this man fired. Your daughter was clearly upset and wanted her toy because she was traumatized. Why couldn’t you just get the toy? Your work isn’t more important than your daughter’s well being. In a comment, you mentioned your office as an “open office” policy and the employee could have chosen to work from home with no repercussions. If your policy was so open, why couldn’t you have taken a few minutes to go get your child’s toy? If you only needed to pick some things up, you could have called from the parking lot. Was it really necessary for you to work that day? I’m sure everything wouldn’t fall apart if you took a day to comfort your daughter and her father.
Expecting an office full of workers to put up with a screaming, misbehaving, child is not okay and it’s not professional even if the reasons the child is misbehaving are totally normal. Just because you are the boss doesn’t make it okay. If anything, it makes it worse because you are the boss and many people might not feel comfortable addressing it, even if they have special sensitivity to noise. You just happened to have an AH employee who handled it inappropriately rather than someone with a sensory processing issue.
You also claim you had some work to get done, but doesn’t everyone? And how easy it is to get work done when you have a child screaming endlessly and the parent (i.e. you) won’t do anything about it? Your child is your responsibility and expecting everyone else to deal with it because you’re a parent and the boss is really entitled. Do other employees get to bring their screaming children into the office if they are in a bind? How would that be handled? I really doubt that, if you were in your office working and an employee was in the same position with their child screaming nonstop, absolutely nothing would be said about it.
but… yeah, you suck too. i get that you’re dealing with an emergency, you didn’t have childcare, the kiddo is anxious and stressed on top of being 4yo and being a ticking emotional bomb on a good day, it’s a shitty situation all around. but you still inflicted your screaming child’s meltdown on your open-plan office. your employees show up to work in an office, not a timeout corner, and had any of *them* done as you had here, they would’ve been told that they can’t disrupt the whole office because they didn’t have other options. you took advantage of your status as owner and instead of apologizing when somebody legitimately pointed out your disturbance, you went on a power trip.
i’m sure the ex-employee would’ve shown his ass eventually in another situation, but you created this problem that he then reacted to. why didn’t you just call Adam up and have him bring the stuff out to your car? or why didn’t you take the kid back to the car once she started melting down and he could’ve brought you the other few things? it would’ve been less hassle for you on top of keeping your office professional for your employees.
If you weren’t the owner, you would have been asked to leave by whomever you were talking to until your kid was calm. You took advantage of your status to allow a disruptive child to remain in a place of work.
I hope your husband comes out of surgery ok and I hope that the guy you fired does some malicious compliance on your servers.
Adam fired the guy because you were there and he had to save face but nice job on being so entitled that you don’t see anything wrong with what YOU did to create the situation. Being stressed isn’t a reason to inflict your AH behavior on everyone around you.
I mean, yeah. One of the owners is a woman so I’m not sure what he expected to happen here. Depending on circumstances, I would let his reaction slide a bit with minimal consequences, but never none. If he was in the middle of a stressful and important time crunch, well, people can snap sometimes. As long as that snap doesn’t happen often at all and he doesn’t prolong it, like the guy did, then we can learn and move on.
None of that happened though. The consequences were well deserved and escalated to that point by the man.
NTA
On the other hand, it is super rude to everyone trying to work and generally unprofessional to bring a screaming toddler to an office, and being part owner is the only reason it was semi-acceptable for you to make that choice. (Insofar as anyone with common sense would just put up with it because look what happens when they complain.)
I’m going to say ESH but more him than you.
A normal person would have immediately apologized when they found out you were the boss, if it got that far. Most people would have come in and asked if there was anything they could do to help you. This guy didn’t do any of it. He continued to dig himself a deeper hole instead.
However he if he was spewing shit about how women are not supposed to be in business, then him being fired was completely justified.
ESH… but 4 doesn’t sound like a toddler to me. That’s a child..idk but her behavior is kinda wild for her to be screaming in an office at 4.
“…the situation did not get better after I left and made some sexist remarks about women in business.”
NTA.
Hope it all works out with your child’s father.