To be sick to death of hearing about the world of work from someone who's never worked?

[MerryShitmas]

Which is, my mum. She's in her 40's. Had a job mucking out stables when she was under 16. Hasn't worked since (her choice).
Every time I speak to her about my job, not only does she try to give me pointers (which are 9/10 incorrect) but If I have a bit of a whinge, which I've since stopped, she'll say things like
"God, I wouldn't put up with that! I'd throw something at him and go home and never come back" (regarding fairly normal managerial arseholery, nothing illegal/discriminating/more than a bit annoying)

I've also been on the receiving end of
"God can you believe Jane couldn't come to x with me on Saturday? She couldn't get the day off. Pfft. Can't believe people let employers dictate to them!" 'Jane' is a nurse

Today she's had a huge moan at me because my sister can't go over on x day because she has to work. My mum can't see why she can't just say no. When I point out sister could lose pay, be in trouble or lose her job my mums default response is "well she's very good at her job I'm sure she'd have a new one in no time!" Aibu? Think I just want to vent
I'm at the point of ignoring it and giving a sympathetic "mmmm" once in a while. It's really bloody irritating.

DPs mum is like this - doesn't seem to understand that you can't just tell your employer or anyone you're dealing with to 'shove it.'

Maybe she's conscious of her never-had-a-serious-job status and is trying desperately to pretend she's part of the normal world? Annoying for you.Try to feel compassion, but avoid the subject as far as possible.

Or maybe just an off-kilter way of showing sympathy? "That's a dreadful way of being treated but that's what work is like" maybe doesn't sound as sympathetic to her mind as "I wouldn't have stood for that"?

I've had this from my mum to, also connected to it has been unhelpful/ unsolicited financial advice.

DM took over a decade out of work whilst DB and I were small, and then only went back part time, all Monday to Friday normal office hours, before having DB she worked full time mon-fri 9-5 for about a decade.

It took her years to understand that when I was working a run of 3 or 4 12 hour night shifts it did not mean I had lots of extra time off (during the day when I was sleeping). It took a decade of nights and them making me really ill for her to "get it".

She also has only ever lived/ home owned with my Dad after leaving her parents (with DF always being the main earner), they were also of the generation to benefit from lower house prices (which I'm not jealous about, it is what it is), however when I was running a house I had bought in my early 20s off a single low NHS salary, her constant "advice" that I should be saving used to really annoy me. Save what?! Since buying with (now) DH I have discovered how easy it is to save when you have two incomes and one set of bills :-)

However, the flip side that I am seeing since DF passed away last summer, is how my DM is floundering trying to deal with finances and house management etc. My DF left her financially in a very safe position, but without my DM really having a clue what is coming in and going out and how to manage it. She has admitted that she is "scared to spend any money", this is with substantial savings, a good pension income and no mortgage. So the years of no financial/ employment independence have come back to haunt her, which is quite sad really.

my mum has worked in totally different environments and about 30 years ago.

she asks me indepth questions about work all the time. If I answer them she has all kinds of "that's not possible" comments to make. If I say I prefer not to discuss work, she thinks I'm being weird.

YANBU. My MIL is like that too and it drives me crackers.

I'm doing rather well in a highly-paid professional field with long hours, and she's constantly telling me how sad it is when women "prioritise their careers over their families" (we don't have a family yet) and how I should "tell my boss to fuck off" when I have to work evenings and weekends. Because that goes down super well.

She had intermittent, part-time, relatively low-level public sector jobs since her mid 20's, and hasn't worked at all for the past 5 years, so she really doesn't get it. I reckon most of her comments must come from her own insecurities, but it would be much easier to deal with if her 'helpful tips' weren't thinly veiled criticism of my choices and career, which I'm proud of. (Coming from somebody who never had a career and didn't do the greatest job with her family - and fiddled her taxes for years - it's so grating. Especially as I need to keep a highly paid position to afford a tiny flat in London because her generation ruined the property market and we have to work so much harder to get financially stable and AAGH.)

I try to stay zen, but one day I might bite her.

My parents do this as well!
But neither have ever both worked full-time at the same time, so just don't understand that everything midweek is choreographed logistically because it has to be, and we use weekends to catch up! (Food shop, bills, washing)

When they worked full-time and part-time briefly together, before DF retired at 55 (yes, from a mid level office job), they also had commutes of about 20-30mins at most, walking.

It was a totally different work world to them.

I've heard gems like "I don't know how you cope with the stress of this commute every day, I wouldn't do this" when they once met me after work. (ER, how would we pay bills then?) Ironically that was me leaving really early at 4.30pm before the worst traffic started

And don't get me started on their suggestions to "we don't understand why you don't just move closer to work" (££££££s being the reason)

Completely deluded but I've given up trying to get them to understand.

allthgoodusernamesaretaken love that advice!!

My mother has worked hard, but that job and her background means that she thought it a reasonable idea, when I was struggling to find a job, to take out an ad in The Times, saying something like : "[X] graduate seeks employment." I was and had to ask her bluntly whethershe could actually imagine what sort of propositions I would receive! not to mention that I didn't have a spare £1k kicking around, to pay for such an ad!

No use channelling Agatha Christie, Mum: those Empire days are over!

My mum. Last worked nearly 40 years ago. She was criticising a young neighbour for driving to a job interview by car because the prospective employer might consider them to be "big headed".

Ugh, I have a relative like this too, one of the Elevenerife type though.

Despite having a job which not even mildly related to mine, she's apparently an expert and an expert who likes to tell you how piss easy your job is and "here's one I made earlier" which is actually unutterably shit.

Say for example I was John Constable and painting amazing landscapes for a living. She'd tip up with a PowerPoint slide filled with fuzzy clip art/watermarked images off the Internet pictures of a horse and claim it was better and obviously showed her superior expertise

(You can't then defend yourself without looking snippy and precious)

My DM has worked, and does this as well. My dad worked in the same industry as me but it has changed rather from a sort of gentleman's club with nobody bothering to do things like tell anyone where they were, or book annual leave, to one where you actually have to act professionally.

My DM is forever asking why I can't just work at home with the DCs there instead of booking them into holiday club (er, because I'd get nothing done?) or take off for weeks at a time randomly e.g. the whole of the school summer holidays. Just because my DF did this and said he was "taking work away".

(Also, my DF was a bit of a workaholic and I suspect the only way she could get him to take any holiday was to persuade him it was a working one).

worked, I should have had more sense, I meant "last had paid employment"

Although you do se a lot of this attitude on MN as well. Apparently (as if) pretty much everyone will happily tell their boss to fuck off without a care in the world.

This is also the special MN workforce who clock off in the dot of 5, turn their phone off till 9 the next day and give no flexibility whatsoever (but then get outraged when they want a half day for a school play; or expect to stay off work for a fortnight when they get a slight sniffle)

My father is in his late 60s and he drove a car when he was 16. A really old car. For about three weeks. On some real backroads and really badly. He has never had a driving licence, not even a temporary permit.
But he knows everything about the cars. He knows everything about driving. He used to tell us how and when to change gears when we were driving. Would sit in the front to give us advice. A total arsehole.

'Although you do se a lot of this attitude on MN as well. '

This. Or, 'Can't you just retrain?'

allthgood . That’s hilarious.

My mother used to give me very useless advice. She never really had a job with responsibilities. Unfortunately she and my stepdad put immense pressure on me to leave the best job I ever had because the pay wasn’t good. It took me 2 years to get the job because there was so little out there and had been temping before that. It was the mid 90’s and time was still difficult for recent graduates. Water under the bridge now. But it hurt for years.

I see how much it has changed for dh in his industry, which has gone from cash cow to thin pickings. Recent redundancies.

Some of these comments are crazy about choosing when you work or going on strike over comments from the boss.

I haven’t worked for a company for many years. I don’t miss the politics, the stress and taking work home.

I shall refrain from using these pearls of wisdom when dd is old enough to get a job.

shotsfired I work in the sort of job where we finish at 5 and don't give work another thought until the next day. It can be done.

 [grin][grin][grin]@expatinscotland "can't you just retrain?"

Yeah of course. I only spent 5years of formal study plus 20years working in my field. I bet it's piss-easy to just start over ...

What jobs are people doing where this airy notion of retraining (and to what, exactly) is such an easy option?!

I've a couple of relatives who would have been sahm, wouldn't have had kids if they weren't ready to stop work and look after them etc - who of course are all childless and have never had to fully pay their own way.

And my recent favorite "I would have got a phd if I'd wanted to". From a relative without a bachelors and who had access to free university education and grants.

This must be a mother's thing.

My DM is the same - she has always worked but in the public sector, part-time, a lot of consultancy & academic work which is VERY different from the industry I'm in. She thinks she's an expert on all sorts of things, including managing people which she really isn't.

@PoorYorick yes, that was funny and the chip/problem is quite clearly your sister's if she didn't think it was!

@LoniceraJaponica yes they do. I was more referring to the "fuck you" inflexible but entitled attitude that so many posters display when they clearly aren't in a role like yours.

Sometimes I wish I had a job like yours, say when I am sat in an airport at stupid o clock. But then I think about how much flexibility and personal satisfaction (and £££) I get from my job and it all evens out. I imagine you sometimes feel that the grass is greener too. We're only human.

My Dad’s the same. I work in education and despite not progressing very far at school himself, he seems to have bizarre ideas about the parameters of my role and can’t be told that he is mistaken. I just nod and say ‘yeah maybe’ and leave the room before I explode.

I've also had the "but you are at home, how can you be working" and/or "oh yeah I get it - 'working' from home wink wink!"

Like they are making you complicit in their misapprehension about modern working styles and assuming you are skiving or have no real work to do.

My mother often wonders why I don't travel to overseas conferences like my STEM siblings do. I should put my name down for them apparently. Then I'd get free holidays like they do.

I'm a receptionist.

Bless.

I'm like your mum and I would have been the same before i started my pt job.
YAB a bit U, because people like your mum have a different view to employment, which is usually why they don't work.
Maybe talk to someone else about work as you'll get more sympathy and the responses you'd like to hear.
When she talks about the unfairness of not being allowed time off, point out how lucky she is and make a joke about how the other half live.