To want to rant about DH (or more specifically his job)

[Magneto]

DH has been in work since 6am. He is still there despite his shift finishing at 5.30pm. I have called him, asked what time he is due home and he said he doesn't know.

So I asked if the work could be left until tomorrow. He said it couldn't, no compromises and "Why can't you see it from my point of view". I said I have done nothing but see if from your point of view, why can't you see it from mine? No answer to that. I ended up yelling at him that if the work was that important he should have done it during his actual working hours at which point he put the phone down on me. I've completely ruined the rest of the night because his job pissed me off.

Is my husband a high flying business man or a doctor? Is he a lawyer or a teacher or any other job which would require such long unsociable hours? No. He is the "acting" (ie. unpaid) manager of a local convenience store.

I work full time and when I'm not in work I'm with ds and looking after the house.

DH gets a strop on if I ask him to make tea or load the dishwasher, bathe the baby or put him to bed because "I'm tired". He does not get asked to do another single thing in this house because his shifts are so unreliable they won't get done regularly or at all if I don't do them. We don't see each other much due to the hours we both work.

He insists his job is more stressful and tiring than mine because his is physically demanding whereas I work in an office "on my arse all day".

I cannot do overtime because he is never there to look after ds. My overtime is double pay (and I earn double what he does anyway) but he won't refuse overtime at his workplace in favour of me doing some at mine.

I am trying to look at nursery places for ds so that I don't have to worry about organising childcare every other week (he's currently looked after by MIL and my mum but there are problems cropping up with that). It looks like to cover the 4 days I am in work it would be about £900 a month which is completely unaffordable and there would be no point in dh working. So I'm trying to see how 2 days nursery a week would work but dh won't tell his boss he is unavailable on certain days. Everyone else does so why won't he? He is constantly covering other peolpe's shifts, regularly does 12+ hour days (with no lunch break) and even 17 hour days sometimes finishing at 12am then back in work at 6 the next morning.

I am sick of it. I hate his job, I always come second to it. DH has not missed a days work in years but his dedication is not appreciated at all. He has tried looking at moving up the career ladder but everything comes to nothing.

I am tired too and I would like to see my husband at some point because when he's not in work he's great.

Sorry for ranting but I needed to say all this to someone.

Aaaaagggghhhhhh!

Oh, dear. It sounds as though he thinks there's more status in being an unpaid manager than someone who keeps an extra £x00 a month in the family while the other partner (clue is in the word) brings in more.

Do you have any friends whose OH could express pride to your DH about how they do x or y for their children, and how their children are growing up knowing them, respecting them, etc.? If he won't accept such ideas from you, maybe he would from someone else.

Sorry to hear you are having such a hard time with him.

Yanbu, has he always been like this or is it just this job? He seems to think he is more important than you in general.

Is he worried about losing his job if he doesn't do the hours? Does he find it difficult to cope with the fact that you earn a lot more than he does and he hasn't been able to get promotion?

YANBU and you have my utmost sympathies in fact. I was posting almost the exact same thing on Monday about my 'D'P and his bloody job. Again not a high flying exec but a £17k a year lackie manager in a crap job where they don't reward hard work or overtime, again, i'm prevented from doing overtime that is financially recompensed because of the hours he puts into his job because he holds the view that his is more important as he's management whereas mine, despite earning more, isn't managerial ergo not so important.

it is not nice to come second to anything it doesnt matter what it is, another woman, friends/family, booze/drugs or work. you need to sort it out if your priorities are different it is ridiculous if you can make more money in over time than him, but you are never available for it.
his reaction to your upset wasnt very mature either. does he never help out round the house...ever?

OP, I sympathise, it sounds rough.

This bloody recession. I lost my job a couple of years ago, so became a SAHM by default, and DH is trying to cling on to his to pay our substantial mortgage. He tells me that every day he hears others around him being told to get on and do their jobs, because if they don't, someone else will.

I learned first-hand that years of hard work, loyalty and dedication mean nothing when a company is making cuts. They will simply look at numbers on a spreadsheet and do what works there.

My DH is also working stupid hours, and I am effectively a single parent Monday to Friday, and now increasingly at weekends as he has started working then too. It sucks.

He does the bins and as I said I can usually convince him to empty/load the dishwasher and make tea if he's home at the time they need to be done.

Everything else which literally consists of hoovering, laundry, cleaning the kitchen/bathroom and a little bit of dusting using a baby wipe is done on the 3 days I have off. I only do enough to keep the place presentable because I want to spend my days off with my baby!

Strangely enough, before ds was born it was dh who would have a go at me for not doing enough around the house! But now I feel as though my priorities have change but his haven't - when we were childless it didn't really matter if we hadn't hoovered (unless we had visitors) but now our son spends most of his day on the carpet it really does need to be done! And because I've picked up my share of the cleaning he has dropped his completely.

However...I still feel that this wouldn't be so much of an issue if he was home more anyway! Then I wouldn't feel so put upon doing the baby and the house on my own all the time.

He gets very defensive about his job which I think comes from not being happy about it himself - he feels he has to justify it somehow. The last time he was job hunting he got so depressed because nothing came of it it was horrible to see him feeling like that.

However I'm starting to think that maybe dh isn't doing all this overtime and instead is living a double life as GeneralCustard's dh [hshock] [hwink]

See ranting has cheered me up now - I'm using smilies and everything!

Oh jeez now there's a scary thought! Talking of which, guess who's mobile is going off with text messages from work.

Men!

Still at least we know they're grafters and not lazy shits [hhmm]

Oh yes..I will freely admit that I have "lost" dh's mobile before now when we are due to go out for the day. You can be guaranteed if I don't work will ring him and he will either end up spending hours on the phone to them (last time it was while we were in the cinema so he missed half the film [hangry]) or will have to abandon the trip completely to go into work.

This ranting business if very theraputic.

YAsoooooNBU. Can I join you in ranting?

My "partner" is the same, only his isn't even an actual job. Or at least it wasn't until they offered to pay him minimum wage for 16h a week for a whole three months in the hope that he wouldn't realise they were making him do all their work for them and leave

16 hours is nothing. He's actually there from 10-7, usually six days a week, sometimes later, so that's roughly 54 hours, not including getting there and back.
I am, to all intents and purposes, a single parent right now.

On top of that, he's effed up our finances (which I take care of, as he's so crap with money he isn't even allowed a basic current account) in the run-up to Christmas, possibly gotten us into a position where we can't pay the rent (no more HB) and we might end up owing HMRC money. All this without even asking me. Then he comes home and expects me to be pleased when he springs this little surprise on me. ARRRGH.

[sympathethic hugs to Magneto and Custard]

:( xStarGirl I hope things look better for you soon. You rant all you want!

It's unbelievable how much they can be taken advantage of isn't it? DH's "manager" position was a 6 month secondment during which he was paid an extra £50 a week instead of the managers salary. The 6 months was up in June and he's still doing the same job, but without any of the extra pay. Now this technically means he is entitled to be paid overtime, but because he is technically the manager, they won't pay it. This is a huuuge company doing this. It pisses me off no end. And yes, he's worried that if he makes a fuss he won't have a job at all.

Oh, that's so awful. Hate the crap things big companies do just because they know they'll get away with it. Hope things get better for you too, for you, your DS and your husband's sake.

Agree that the ranting is therapeutic! I don't have anyone I can tell in RL as my family would quite possibly murder DP if they found out But MN is always ready with a listening ear.