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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

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Original poster

AIBU to want my DH to stay in his home office?

95 replies

KO2018 · 23/04/2021 11:40

Currently at loggerheads with husband. He is working from home and I am on mat leave with our 4 week old baby.

He’s got a lovely home office set up upstairs with plenty of sunshine - I never go in there and it’s a good quiet place for calls where he won’t be disturbed.

However now it’s nice and sunny, he keeps coming downstairs to the patio to work which I find weirdly annoying. Yesterday I was trying to have a nap on the sofa and his loud boomy voice kept coming through the window and waking us up. Sure I could go upstairs but I don’t want to be stuck upstairs all day either!

He says I can be out on the patio too but he likes work in total undisturbed silence and gets all crabby if I start talking to him. I can’t relax feeling like I’m in his workspace...

AIBU to want the whole rest of the house to myself???

OP posts:

diddl · 23/04/2021 17:51

There must be some compromise here?

I don't think that you can expect to have the house bar one room & the patio.

So sleep in a bedroom if you want quiet & he's outside.

Likewise if he wants quiet he needs to be in the office.

Abracadabra12345 · 23/04/2021 17:52

@MissMarplesGoddaughter

OP- I feel sorry for your NDNs if your OH is taking work calls outside in the garden unless he speaks quietly, he is probably disturbing them too......

Yep. This WFH lark impacts so many lives, doesn’t it? We had that last year when our next door NDN was wfh and of course the sun never stopped shining. He has a booming voice, which we heard all day, and of course we were all trapped in our homes and gardens. So glad he’s returned to the office! He probably is too.

LittleLionMan23 · 23/04/2021 17:55

I WFH and on one day a week, DH is home with our toddler. I have a designated office space away from the rest of the house. I honestly couldn’t imagine wandering around the house on calls, sitting in communal areas and shushing them for disturbing me. It would be so beyond rude. They have a right to use the house as a home, as that’s what it is. We work from home, we don’t live in the office!

It’s nothing to do with “hysterical women” , it would be the same regardless of the gender.

Mistressinthetulips · 23/04/2021 18:00

About the OP napping in her bed, surely she needs to nap wherever the baby has gone to sleep?

Hardbackwriter · 23/04/2021 18:05

Did you ask him to stay in one room all day rhen?

As I said, that's exactly what either of us do if they're working from home and the other one is looking after our children.

AtLeastThreeDrinks · 23/04/2021 18:07

My partner’s currently on a work call in the kitchen. I want to start dinner! He also works from the living room, which is ok for now but we’ve a baby on the way and it’s not going to work then. Problem is our tiny house! So I sympathise and it annoys me immensely too. If my partner had an office that he chose not to use it’d wind me up even more!

Bluntness100 · 23/04/2021 18:08

@Hardbackwriter

Did you ask him to stay in one room all day rhen?

As I said, that's exactly what either of us do if they're working from home and the other one is looking after our children.

That’s not the point. You do it through choice. This is telling him he’s to stay in his room all day like a prisoner.

Caspianberg · 23/04/2021 18:10

It’s annoying.

Those saying. She shouldn’t sleep on sofa and go to bed, did you not read she has a 4 week old baby? At that age I was lucky if baby fell asleep in pram or bouncer 20 mins instead of on me. No way would I have woken baby taking them out of pram to go upstairs as they would be awake again and end of any nap time

Dh does this. Nice office, upstairs. He leaves the office door wide open and I can hear every word of video conference and it keeps baby awake from napping. I also can’t use upstairs in the day to get baby to nap as walls to thin so baby gets woken. So yes I expect him to not then come downstairs and continue calls loudly as it wakes baby napping, or is just very annoying if I’m trying to entertain baby.

WhereYouLeftIt · 23/04/2021 18:14

"He says I can be out on the patio too but he likes work in total undisturbed silence and gets all crabby if I start talking to him."

So, if he comes into the garden, he still expects 'office conditions' - i.e. silence to prevail? Nope, nopity nope. I would be fine with him working from wherever he pleased, but I would laugh out loud at being asked to creep silently around him. If he wants silence, he has his office. If he enters the domestic part of the house, he fits in with everybody else there. He could get as crabby as he wanted, tough shit.

Dddccc · 23/04/2021 18:16

I am on the dh side here like I would hate to be told in my own home I could only work in 1 tiny room, he was outside he didn't want complete silence he just didn't want the op to keep trying to chat to him when he is working completely different, and he woke op up from a nap on the sofa the op should have gone to bed but no she didn't want

KOKOagainandagain · 23/04/2021 18:17

A home is a home and office is an office.

An office is a place to work that is controlled and kept artificially quiet by excluding TV, radio, hoovers, kids, pets, etc.

A home is sometimes noisy and chaotic but that's ok because it is not an office.

If someone is wfh by choice or not they don't have the right to impose office rules (especially if they have a proxy office workspace) on the home.

My H worked from home long before lockdown. The kids had to be quiet, I couldn't Hoover, the dog couldn't bark, I couldn't listen to the radio.

If your husband chooses to work out of his home office he just has to accept normal home life and hope that his employers are ok with his choice to not work in his home office. You don't have to change. I would start hoovering whilst naked and blasting music because that's allowed in your own home as a non employee. Preferably whilst he's on a conference call. If he doesn't like it he can go to his home office.

Caspianberg · 23/04/2021 18:27

How can op just ‘go to bed’? She has a baby to look after. If baby falls asleep downstairs in pram or Moses basket, op shouldn’t just leave baby and go to bed

Floweree · 23/04/2021 18:30

That would get on my nerves to be honest.

diddl · 23/04/2021 18:45

@Caspianberg

How can op just ‘go to bed’? She has a baby to look after. If baby falls asleep downstairs in pram or Moses basket, op shouldn’t just leave baby and go to bed

Radical idea-maybe she could take the baby with her-especially if her husband is also waking the baby!

notanothertakeaway · 23/04/2021 19:02

@Brefugee

Our rule is that you can work where you like but you can't complain about noise if you're not in your office. Works fine

@Brefugee

I think this is a good compromise

Caspianberg · 23/04/2021 19:13

@diddl - well yes. But most 4 weeks olds wake when you move them, so if she’s already managed to settle baby downstairs, it’s not really fair on someone 4 weeks after having a baby to have to re wake baby, take upstairs and attempt to resettle, by which point op has missed any chance of a quick easy nap.

If my baby has slept terrible overnight, and I’m exhausted, the last thing I want to do is wake a napping baby by moving them because someone who said they would be elsewhere decides to change mind last minute. If he dh wants to work on patio, right outside living room, he needs to discuss with her he is going to do so in the next 1-2 hrs so she can plan accordingly

optimistic40 · 23/04/2021 19:19

@LakeShoreD

We had the same dilemma in our house. We’ve agreed that if DH wants to work in silence and not to be disturbed then he stays in the office with the door closed. The same applies if I want a nap with baby- I go to the bedroom and close the door. If you’re in the common areas of the house e.g. living room, garden then that means you’re ok with background noise, having a general chat etc. IMO it’s not fair to silence someone in their own home and we’ve found our rhythm a lot better since we started sticking to this.

This sounds about right to me

ClarkeGriffin · 23/04/2021 19:23

Biggest issue to me is should he even be having loud conversations outside where anyone could hear? Major privacy violation there depending on his job. I won't even have the window open for some of the calls I have.

He also cannot dictate how you act while working anywhere else in the house except his office. If he wants to sit outside, fine, but is he going to tell his neighbours off for mowing their lawn and disturbing his call? I doubt it, and he'd look loopy if he did. If he wants quiet, he has an office. Otherwise sod him on the quietness thing.

diddl · 23/04/2021 19:24

Well yes it obviously depends on the baby.

If he just needs to be left to sleep where he is, if Op could take him up with her when she knows he's getting tired.

Most men I would have thought if told that baby is asleep & it's easiest to nap on the sofa would go to the office.

If Op is falling asleep without giving her husband a chance to move that's one thing (I think that's what happened in OP) if she's asking him to & he won't then that's another issue!

Mumofboys1 · 23/04/2021 19:32

I work from home, two days in the kitchen as it’s much lighter and more spacious. The day when my husband is at home I work in our “office” (literally the smallest room ever!) I don’t think it’s fair on him on his day off to not be allowed to make noise/come in kitchen if I’m on a call so I work out the way so he can just be a normal person and enjoy his day off! (I do tend to pop down frequently tho!)

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