The caretakers were not responsible until 1:30 am though. It would be entirely in the caretakers' rights to have taken the kid to the authorities. So the mother also abandoned the child, though I am not disputing the daycare workers are criminally stupid.

I completely agree with you. Minimum wage isn't going to fetch a martyr willing to spend the night at work without warning or, if my assumptions are correct, overtime pay.

Unless she was only a few minutes late, it's abandonment on both ends. If you don't show at a certain time, your new pick up location is actually supposed to be CPS or the local police station, as has been mentioned above. And it's true, accidents happen. But 1:30 am seems a little late for most childcare. More likely…

I worked in childcare for over 10 years. Not excusing it, but I can see how this might've happened. Not a normal day, different hours, not the same count as you might have during the day. That doesn't excuse what happened, but I've worked at centers with over 200 kids. We're still human, and make mistakes.

So nothing went wrong, the kid is fine, the mother got a powerful, consequence-free lesson in alarm-setting... and of course the logical action to take is to fire the two [probably] underpaid and overworked employees who made an honest mistake that was probably more the fault of shitty management than anything else...

The point still remains that if she takes this to court for emotional distress, any lawyer worth their salt would play the "and how emotionally distressed were you when you forgot about your own child for hours" card. Doesn't make it the mother's fault, but it does mean that her best bet, as I said, would be to be…

I think it would be justified also to check on this mother, you know? Did she oversleep cause she had the flu? Or was she sleeping it off after drinking a ton? It makes a difference.

Or she went out, met some dude and got busy.

We had a policy at the place I used to work that if the parent was more than 5 min. past closing the police would be called if no one had called prior.

Here in WA, if you're 40 minutes late for picking up your child with no communication (after daycare hours that is), then CPS is called and you're charged with child abandonment. I know this as the closing teacher for a daycare.

She still showed up 90m after the time, even assuming it was indeed midnight. Seems a hell of a lot more serious than 5m to me.

I'm just perplexed by the popular opinion that the daycare workers left the kid there on purpose because they're horrible neglectful people. I sounds like an honest accident in communication, the same sort of accident that lets a parent oversleep for hours. Everybody screwed up here, but the kid is thankfully fine.

Arriving late for school pickup is an idea that could practically cause me to have a panic attack. I would be embarassed beyond belief.

Nah, any emotional distressed is coupled with the fact that the situation was partly influenced by her falling asleep and forgetting to pick up her child. I'd think her best bet would be being thankful her child was ok, finding a new day care, and moving on.

Child care centers and schools are supposed to have a procedure in place in case the child isn't picked up by closing time, which happens more often then you want to know. I somehow doubt that the specified pick up time was 1:30. She overslept and did not pick up the child. I wonder if anyone attempted to contact…

Even though the child was unhurt and sleeping, I wonder if she'll try to get money out of this. For "emotional distress" or something.

Honestly, I'm down for different religious views, but I once stopped dating a guy when I found out he was conservative. I can't get behind someone who would vote against my best interests in elections.

That's fair.

I'm a christian so I don't see myself being with atheist, nor a jewish or muslim man either. I just prefer to be with someone of the same religious beliefs.