... to feel embarrassed about sitting round MNetting while a man is working in my garden?

[Florp]

I've paid a gardener to come and cut back some bushes in the garden - it needs a power-saw, and I'm useless at that sort of thing (the lead on mine is about 6 inches long because it's been sliced through so often!). I meant to have a lazy day today because I had to work yesterday so this is my only day off. But I feel very self-conscious sitting on the sofa with my laptop, in full view of this man doing strenuous work (through the French windows) and keep having to get up to do bits of housework to 'justify my existence'. I worry that he's thinking what a lazy cow I am. AIBU?

YABU.

You will get over it

Why do you care? Why do you feel the need to "justify your existence" to a total stranger?

If you weren't being a "lazy cow", there wouldn't be any work for him to do and he wouldn't get paid.

Can he see the screen? As far as he knows you could be doing Very Important Work on that laptop.
Look into middle distance in an 'I'm thinking hard' kind of way occasionally and then type manically for a minute or two. You'll look like you're writing an important thesis or something.

I understand how you feel!

Could you take your laptop into another room - sit on your bed, for example - so you don't feel like this?

You have every right to do what you want in your own home, of course, but I do get this when I'm occasionally at home when my cleaner is here!!!

I clean people's houses and I don't give it another thought when I'm doing a 3 hour clean and the client is mooching around doing nothing.

I feel like this sometimes. Window cleaner here yesterday and I felt really lazy sitting on sofa mumsnetting as they cleaned those windows. It's even worse when the cleaner is here 😂

I get this when my cleaner is here - often coincides with my only sit down of the day when DS1 is at school and DS2 has his nap. I worry she thinks I am lazy, but then I know that when she finishes at mine she is done for the day at 3.30pm whereas I am just about to embark on school run/ teatime) bedtime etc. It's swings and roundabouts really.

Germgirl No he can't - that's a brilliant idea! I'm now frowning as I type and have just feigned 'counting something up' on my fingers.

I gets like this when the window cleaner is here, and it's made worse by the fact I know him as he's a friend of dh.

When I know he's coming I make sure I have little tasks to busy myself with, washing up or something. Also been known to ensure I'm doing a puzzle or building blocks on the floor with DS

BIWI I would, but I want to be 'in reach' in case he needs to ask me anything. I don't want him to have to come and find me in the bedroom (that sounds like the start of a 70s film called 'Confessions of a Gardener' )