my company only lets parents work from home

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager.

A reader writes:

I work at a company that is entirely in-office — they really push “office culture.” I knew that when I started a year and a half ago, but working from home isn’t a priority for me so it hasn’t been a big deal. It’s a fairly small organization, around 50 employees in my office, and they frequently tout being a “family company.”

I noticed that my boss was working from home several days a month for various reasons – she had a migraine, her kids were out of school, etc. She’s on the executive level so I didn’t pay much attention to it, as I know executives get special privileges. Then I noticed non-executive employees were being given work-from-home privileges when their kids were sick or when school or daycare was cancelled, and I thought maybe I had misunderstood the policy and that work-from-home was an option in extenuating circumstances but not a regular thing.

Last summer, I was having emergency repair work done on my home and, as I live alone, I asked if I could work from home since I had no one else to be at my house. My boss told me that my company doesn’t allow working from home, but then she worked from home the following two weeks because her kids were on summer break and she had no child care lined up.

Earlier this year, we had a snowstorm that cancelled school for a few days and many employees worked from home because their kids didn’t have school or daycare, but employees without kids were not given the work-from-home option.

And this week, three of the four employees in my area have worked from home at least one day due to sick children, appointments for their kids, or daycare issues. I am dealing with an issue that affects my ability to drive but not my ability to work, and I was told I have to either come into the office or use my sick leave because working from home isn’t an option.

I am one of maybe five employees in my office who doesn’t have kids and I don’t know how to go about addressing this. Being a “family company” is great for people with families but seems almost discriminatory against people who don’t. How can you permit people with children to work from home but not people without children? Is this even allowed? HR is fully on board with this so I don’t know what I can do, if anything.

You can read my answer to this letter at New York Magazine today. Head over there to read it.

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