He wanted to be there for the special moment.
There is nothing more precious that a new born baby, and for parents, being at the birth with the mother who is in labour is a very important part of parenthood.
One man claims he was fired because he chose to attend the birth of his son over going to work.
Lamar Austin from New Hampshire told the Concord Monitor he was one month into a 90-day contract as a part-time security guard.
When another employee cancelled due to a snowstorm, Lamar was asked to cover, but couldn’t because his pregnant wife was due to give birth in a few days and he was bringing her to a doctor’s appointment.
The dad-to-be was scheduled to work the following Friday and Saturday, but then his wife went into labour so he told his boss he would not be able to come in.
“The second day I told my boss, ‘My wife is still in labour,’ and he just said, ‘You’re forcing my hand, if you aren’t in work by 8:00 tomorrow we are going to terminate you.’’ He told local paper, The Concord Monitor.
“I thought, ‘Family comes before anything else,’ ” he added “I’m not going to turn my back on them for a job.”
At 1am, just hours before his son was born, Lamar got a text message that his employment had been “terminated.”
“I just responded ‘ok’, I was in the hospital, it was a long night, and I wasn’t trying to argue with nobody about a job while my wife was in labour.” he said.
Companies in #NH can fire employees for most reasons, including missing a shift due to birth of baby boy. https://t.co/WFVUwJxzBv
— Concord Monitor News (@ConMonitorNews) January 4, 2017
A GoFundMe page has since been set up to help the family with their new baby which aims to raise 10k and Lamar has also gotten several job interviews since his story was made public.
Lamar said that though losing his job was tough, he made the right decision.
“It was hard, but if I have to choose between work and family, I’m always going to pick my family,” he said.
“Sometimes you lose something and you get something even better.”
The company that Lamar worked for denied that his termination was anything to do with the birth of his son.
