A receptionist and mother has been awarded £20,500 for her case of sex discrimination against a Northern Ireland hotel. She had a verbal agreement to have a fixed three-day working week, enabling her to balance both work and childcare responsibilities. I felt betrayed and deflated that I was less of a contributing team member because of my childcare responsibilities. Proper consideration of flexible working requests by employers can help them to retain experienced staff while supporting working parents. “The decision to move to a flexible working rota in this case was not made out of business need but presented as in the interests of fairness.