"Very important job"

[KILM]

A thread for a bit of fun -
Inspired by the classic 'My DH has a very important job which means he cant do housework/parenting when he's not working'

Has anyone ever known of a DH whose got a 'Very important Job' that actually... isnt that important or as difficult as they make it out to be.
(Disclaimer: there is zero excuse of opting out of parenting etc.)
Just thinking of all the women out there doing Very Important Jobs who manage to contribute to their household.
And sometimes i think... i bet this guy isnt a C level exec, or a brain surgeon etc etc... i bet he's just in middle management which while it can be extremely challenging depending on a variety of factors... still not CEO/brain surgeon territory. Plus women in these positions have to manage at least find solutions that dont involve leaving all the heavy lifting to their OH.

Not interested in examples of DHs who do have super stressful high pressure long hours jobs etc etc.
Just in people you may have come across who make out they are v important but actually arent.... and maybe they over-egg it specifically to get out of doing stuff at home/with the kids.

The thing that seems to define whether a job is very important/couldn't possibly accommodate any flexibility is whether a person with a penis is doing it. I once read about a study of straight couples where one was an academic and one was a medical doctor. When the woman was the academic the couple would explain that it just made sense for her to do all the rearranging for childcare etc because her job was much more flexible and family friendly. When the woman was the medical doctor the couple would explain that it just made sense for her to do all the rearranging for childcare etc because her job was much more flexible and family friendly...

I have heard of a similar comparison when discussing a police officer and teacher. It's the one without the penis who cant possible be flexible. The male teacher needs to recuperate during the holidays and can't take time off in term and the male police office can't take time off as work would not allow it/ too busy.
Shocking enough the female police officer / teacher in these scenarios were the ones picking up slack.

To offer the other side the female academics I know in the professor pay brackets are the ones who have flexible husbands or those that don't work to stay at home with kids. So while I agree it's mostly men that disengage its not necessarily always the case.

DH can be like this. He's a teacher. he has never covered a sick day, emergency pick, dealt with school admin, fancy dress and all that shit, PTA requests, forms to go back, paying for lunches etc.

I earn three times what he does, working to deadlines that can't be missed but I can manage it.

What pisses me off the most is that he has never asked. I know it would be a ballache for the school but funnily enough female teachers I know are able to do it. I'm not talking regularly but in extremis.

I think people also convince themselves that they 'won't be allowed' with no evidence. This happened at my work where there was a long-standing belief in my team that only people with children could have flexible working arrangements, which caused a lot of resentment. No one without children ever applied. Then one did, and their request was approved. People still insist that there's 'no point' them applying and then go around resenting others for having something they want but have never asked for.

Various know-it-all colleagues of my husband assured him that the school (he's a teacher) 'wouldn't let him' take shared parental leave or go down to four days a week. They were wrong (clearly so on the shared parental leave, which was his legal right) and he's been given a leadership position since going part-time, which again people said, with zero evidence, would never happen.

he is meddle management in a tech firm

I don't know if that was a typo or deliberate, but 'meddle management' sounds about right for some of these (not)VIJs

My STBXH is one of these. Fairly senior - but not C level - in tech. Earns a lot because it’s a sector that pays well. Qualified and experienced in specialist ways.

BUT, he’s not more qualified or more experienced than me (objectively, I’m more highly qualified!) His role isn’t harder than mine. He’s not got more responsibility than me. He just earns more because I’ve worked in sectors and roles that just aren’t as highly paid. They don’t pay what his corner of tech does for broadly comparable roles. He earns 3 times what I do. People far more senior than he is, and with much greater responsibility, earn half of what he does in my sector. It’s just how it is.

But the patriarchy is strong in him and he literally will not see that his salary doesn’t make him more important. It doesn’t mean his job is harder. It doesn’t mean everything else is my job because I’m a woman or I made different career choices.

What it does mean is that he’s a dick.

It was a typo but I'm going to own it and say its an app new description for the individuals we are discussing here.

Not exactly what you're asking for, but at one point my exH was a fairly junior council employee. How he loved his lanyard - he would wear it all evening if we were out of the house, and he'd have worn it on weekends too if he could possibly have justified it.

'meddle management' eh?

I know it's a typo, but you're probably right anyway!

Oh god my ex-husband was one of these! Always too busy in his very important job to do anything to do with childcare, absolutely everything fell to me despite the fact I was also working full time. Never did a school run, holiday cover, medical appointment. And if he was running low on fuel he’d take my car and leave me with the empty one!

The thing that really pushed me over the edge was when he decided to do a lengthy college course to improve his prospects in his very important job. That apparently meant he could check out of family life completely as weekends were then for studying.

He was quite bewildered when I told him I had been managing very well as a ‘single’ parent for many years and wanted a divorce. The very important job by the way was in accounts.

I work with loads of these. I always think of it when people on here talk about their important husbands. In fact it’s doubly ridiculous because actually senior people can run their own diaries anyway. I have people on my team (lawyers) who will go to the gym for 2 hours in the afternoon then “have to” stay late and miss bedtime. It’s bollocks.

Yeah, my DH. Makes out/made out (because now I know the truth) that he's some fancy pants exec whereas I've discovered he's pretty much the same level as me.

He's been giving training recently - anyone giving training ain't some hot shot c-level. Let's face it.

I'm less impressed than I used to be, put it that way

My ex boss had 3 primary school aged kids at home and a stay at home wife. He could have worked from home as much as he liked but never did and frowned on others that did and he always stayed until nearly 6 despite having an hour plus commute. I always wondered what his wife thought of this as I can't imagine he did much of anything at home. Tbf he was a total dick so maybe his wife was glad to not have him around.

What pisses me off the most is that he has never asked

Sorry - asked what? How you manage to juggle all those balls AND do a high level job at the same time?

I can think of a man who has what we would consider an important job, who puts little effort into it, and still seems not to bother with family matters (for those of his children he acknowledges). Who hopefully will be unemployed in 2024 or sooner.

@Pruella totally agree about more senior people being able to manage their own time more freely.

Haha! My husband IS out the house 7.30-6.30 which means he gets to do breakfast and bed times, otherwise he wouldn't get any "quality" time with the kids. It just so happens, as an unintentional parenting perk for me, that I get to stay in bed later/sit in the garden alone holding my head in my hands* whilst he is doing some very important bonding.

In all seriousness though, we divide up the work, we feel like it is fair, we don't take the piss.

*full disclosure, I'm usually folding washing alone because I need a break from the kids and then when they are in bed, we can relax for 10 minutes before one of us falls asleep. IT WORKS!

Asked if he can leave, it's all on me

I (c-suite) used to have someone in my team who never failed to tell me how busy he was.

He blocked an hour for lunch every day and all but refused to engage during that hour even when something was super time critical.

Used to drive me mad.

I know someone who does the 'at home' version of this. Apparently he can never spend any of his evenings/weekends parenting his own kids as he has terribly important 'home maintenance' tasks to be doing.

When I first met the couple I assumed they must live in some fixer-upper or decaying period property to need so much constant work, but no, it's an ordinary fairly modern house just like ours, he just manages to always to stretch his list of 'mow grass', 'hang one picture' etc to last an entire weekend.

My ex was a Grade 6 Civil Servant but you'd swear he was a Perm Sec or something! I was a mere Grade 7 but expected to do everything as the "lower earner" 🙄. This, amongst many other reasons is why he's an ex

Totally agree about people convincing themselves with no evidence - we did have one woman who always grumbled about not being 'allowed' to go from part time to full time because she thought her manager had a grudge against her and i felt really sorry for her as other people had increased their hours. When i became a manager i found out the last time she'd asked was 3 years previously just after we'd lost a big contract so we couldnt get the business to agree to any additional hours at that moment. This had been explained to her, and she'd been told (in person and in writing) to put a request in again in 6 months time as they were due to gain an even bigger contract back. She never did. Worst part of this was that her manager was fully aware that she still wanted the hours, but as she was also aware that this woman had spent the 3 years since the request slagging her off behind her back (inc. vicious personal comments about her weight etc) and this individual had NEVER mentioned it directly to her manager again.... the manager wasnt going to bring it up herself.

That’s just the IT set up in that particular studio! I’ve presented places where I didn’t have the option of a remote, there was an AV operator in a cubicle somewhere sorting all the lights, slides and microphones out.

I can assure you he moves he own slides on himself in normal situations. I’ve seen him speak at conferences since then.

My H strategically uses the Very Importantness of his job. If it suits him it’s so important that it cannot possibly be interrupted in any way. So I have to do everything But if it suits him or he wants to try to pretending I’m ‘excluding him from DS’s life’ 🙄, then all employers are flexible about family these days. Funnily enough, this flexibility only becomes apparent after I’ve spent a week off work with a sick toddler…