Parenting is, for the most part at least, a real joy.

But when your kid gets sick, that joy turns to unfathomable anxiety – especially when you don’t know what’s wrong.

So when the mom in this story wanted to take her kid to the ER she understandably wanted to get out of work early to do so.

But she never considered the repercussions on the women she carpooled with, expecting them to simply drop everything too.

When they made alternative plans though, she was not happy.

Read on to find out why.

AITA for refusing to clock out early so my coworker can take her kid to the hospital?

I am a 31-year-old woman, and I carpool to work every day with four coworkers.

We all live about an hour away from the office and have been carpooling ever since they forced us back to full time in person, so that we could share commuting expenses (gas and tolls).

One of my coworkers (let’s call her S) has a young child who recently got very sick.

For the last few days he’s been having constant nosebleeds so bad that he’s even gone through an entire roll of toilet paper trying to stop the bleeding.

Yikes! Let’s see how this is affecting the mom’s colleague.

Last Sunday night it got so bad that they took him to the hospital. On Monday she still came to work as usual and didn’t mention anything about it until we were all driving home.

That’s when she told us she hadn’t asked her boss for time off to take her kid to the hospital because she “didn’t think she would be allowed.”

She also said that if she doesn’t get him seen soon, “he could die.”

She asked if the next day we could all take her car instead of the usual driver’s (Let’s call him A), and if everyone could clock out at 4:45pm instead of 5:30pm (5:30pm is when A and I normally finish, the other three clock out at 5pm).

Uh-oh. Read on to find out how this worked out.

We told her we’d think about it and would need to clear it with our managers.

After talking it over, A and I decided we would just find another ride home so S could leave whenever she needed. The plan was: she would drive her own car to work, we’d all ride with her in the morning, and then in the afternoon A and I would get a ride with someone else so she could go straight home and get her kid to the doctor.

When A called her later on that night to explain this plan to her, she got furious.

She accused us of being heartless and not caring about her child, said “what goes around comes around,” and then dramatically announced she would just reschedule the doctor’s appointment so it “wouldn’t inconvenience us” even though we never asked her to do that – and even though she had just told us an hour before that her son’s nosebleeds haven’t stopped and he could literally die.

Wow. Let’s see how this woman – who made new plans to support the mom – reacted to being called out like that.

I’m angry because she was the one who originally said she’d take her own car and drop us off so she could go straight home to her kid, and we were totally fine with that plan, but we knew there was no way our managers would let us leave 45 minutes early for someone else’s child.

A and I don’t have children but honestly, if my kid was bleeding that much, I would have called out or left early the day before and taken him to the ER, not shown up to work and dropped the news casually on the commute home.

I’m also confused, and concerned at her saying that her kid ‘could die’ but yet she’s scheduling a doctor’s appointment instead of dropping everything and taking him straight to the ER.

AITA?

This woman has been nothing but understanding, changing her plans and getting a new ride to accommodate S being able to leave early to take her kid to the ER.

Moreover, if it was such an emergency she should’ve taken him already, instead of attending work, in order to get him seen to and prevent his apparent untimely demise.

If the situation was as desperate as she made it seem, surely she’d be reacting accordingly, not making plans for the next day.

Let’s see what folks on Reddit had to say about this.

This person agreed that she should’ve been taking her kid to the ER immediately.

While others thought that the very fact she wasn’t was highly suspicious.

Meanwhile, this Redditor thought the mom was simply letting her emotions spill over onto an innocent party.

Regardless of the situation with the mom and the kid, it’s totally unfair that this woman is being treated like this.

She’s gone out of her way to make the mom’s life more convenient, but rather than being thanked she’s being made to feel like she’s the bad guy.

Sure the mom is probably worried sick about her kid, but there’s no need to take it out on a colleague who is doing her best to help.

It’s totally unfair.

If you liked this post, you might want to read this story about a teacher who taught the school’s administration a lesson after they made a sick kid take a final exam.