I don’t want to babysit my brother in my office

[ResidentialBusiness]

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

A reader writes:

This letter has a lot of personal issues attached to it, but I swear this is job-related.

My mother is trying to strong-arm me into letting my 13-year-old brother stay in my office with me after school since his school is close to where I work.

I’ve had an exhausting feud with my mother because of her passive parenting of my brother. She simultaneously thinks I don’t do enough to control him, while any actual consequences I give him always get me a “why did you have to be so meeeeeean to him?” (My father passed away a few years ago, unfortunately.)

Predictably, this has led to my brother being insufferable for anyone to be around and, bluntly, a professional liability. To briefly give you an idea of what my brother is like:

* On a family trip to the zoo this last Christmas, my brother “innocently” pointed out the size of the zebra’s genitalia loud enough for anyone within ten feet to hear.

* Made inappropriate remarks every time one of our toddler cousins used a phrase with the word “daddy.”

* Remember those DJ Bouncin’ Beats toys where the toy makes a song and bounces to whatever someone records on it? Guess who followed the TikTok trend of making porn noises to it in the Walmart toy aisle?

* And the reason why this discussion about me babysitting him at work came in the middle of the school year? Because he isn’t allowed in extracurriculars for the rest of the year because he’s been sexually harassing a female classmate.

My response to my mother was ABSOLUTELY NOT, and I put my foot down by saying I couldn’t let my brother into the office even if I wanted to.

Unfortunately, my mother has taken it a step further by calling my job without my knowledge. She only got to talk to the receptionist, but when my mom asked if single moms are allowed to bring their kids in, the receptionist confirmed that it was allowed. My mother then let me know how wrong I was about the policy at my own job.

I haven’t brought any of this up to my manager because I wanted to solve it on my own first, and I didn’t think my family issues should be his problem. However, I’m starting to feel like I should bring it up to him to figure out what we can do to keep my brother out of the office (especially now that my mother already involved my job).

Do you have any suggestions or scripts to navigate this professionally without any undue burden to my manager or coworkers? In terms of telling my manager about my family situation, do I just say that I do not trust my brother to curb his disruptive behavior in the office? I felt like my mother contacting my job herself was also a huge unprofessional breach, so how do I tell my manager that I had never asked her to call on my behalf? Or is there any way I can approach this without dragging my poor manager into it at all?

Whoa, your mom really overstepped when she called your office!

Remember this, though: your office isn’t going to make you bring your brother in just because your mom wants you to. You don’t need to figure out a solution with them. You only need to hold firm with your mom that it’s not happening.

It was reasonable to tell your mom that you couldn’t bring your brother to work even if you wanted to; that would be the case in many — in fact, most — jobs. And for what it’s worth, even if your particular office allows parents to bring kids in, (a) this isn’t your kid, and (b) that generally means “on rare occasions during a child care emergency,” not “as a daily supervision plan.”

But even if you worked in the rare office that would allow your brother to hang out there every day, your mom should have dropped it as soon as you said you couldn’t make it work. Wanting to be able to focus on your job without babysitting a challenging kid is a very, very reasonable stance; most people would feel that way. Pushing you to divide your attention every day would be unfair to you, to employer, and to your coworkers (and probably to your brother, too).

And even if your office welcomed the daily presence of your brother (which, again, is highly unlikely even if he were well-behaved), it doesn’t matter because you get to decide you’re not doing it. You’re not doing it because he’ll distract you from work that requires your focus / he’ll distract other people from their work / he won’t behave appropriately / it would reflect poorly on your own professional judgment — take your pick. All of those are legitimate reasons.

If your mom will only accept a no if you first persuade her that you have a “good enough” reason: that’s too bad for her. You don’t need her to sign off on your decision. You can just say, “No, I can’t do that” and hold firm. If you want to explain more, you can say, “I can’t do my own job and watch him.” You can say, “I’m not willing to jeopardize my job over this.” Sometimes when you’re dealing with boundary-crossing family members like your mom, it’s better not to give any reason at all because the person will just debate you, but you know best whether that’s the case with your mom. Either way, what ultimately matters is that your answer is no and you’re not going to change that.

You don’t need her to be happy about your stance, or to convince her that her proposal is a bad one. You just need to convey that it will not happen and it’s not up for further debate. Her feelings about that are up to her and she will have to work through them, but you do not need to give in just because she’s unhappy. Maybe she’s going to be unhappy about it, and that’s okay.

As for your boss, I don’t know that you need to say anything about it to him at all. But if addressing it would give you peace of mind, it’s fine to! You could say, “I want to give you a heads-up that my mother, who tends to cross boundaries, has been trying to convince me to let my brother stay at the office with me after school. I consider that an absolute no-go and told her that — and then unbeknownst to me, she called the office and asked Jane if it would be allowed. I’m handling this within my family — and my brother will not be coming here — but I wanted to loop you in in case she tries calling again. I’m sorry to involve you at all.” (You don’t need to get into your brother’s behavior at all; it’s understandable to refuse the request regardless, even if he were an angel who would mop the kitchen and deliver snacks to your coworkers.)

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