To be upset what WFH has done to DH

[cappuccinoandcats]

All staff in the office where DH works are clearing their desks one morning this week. The office is going to be hotdesking and I'm praying he goes to the office for at least two days a week.
He's making all sorts of excuses. Type 2 diabetes, stairs due his bad knees etc. I'm not buying these excuses. He is currently renovating and removing plaster at the weekends, so he CAN do stairs and carry heavy loads !
He doesn't want to work with unvaccinated. He's had both jabs and I've explained the risk is miniscule.
I just want him out of the house sometime during the working week. AIBU

But he will only be in the office max 2 day per week with the hotdesking situation - so you really need a better working from home solution that him using the sitting room.

He has a right to work from his own home, but equally everyone else in the family needs to be able to use the home. So he has to be able to work in his bedroom or a spare bedroom that he can close the door on.

If WHF is going to a permanent fixture for him, would some sort of garden shed/office thing work?

@Summersnightdream

"Simply displaying the attitude that if the OP only has a 15 year old, she should 100% be working. If she was out of the house during the day earning money to contribute towards the family pot, then she would have her lounge free when she gets home and her husband has also finished work. If you can't be bothered to get a job, you 100% have no right to dictate where the person who does have a job works from"

What a load of absolute cobblers. No-one SHOULD get a job, and as i imagine she's doing all the housework/child rearing, she 100% has EVERY right to use the living room in her house, rather than be banished to the bedroom/kitchen all day, every day.

A desk in another room or he can go a couple of days at a cafe or library.

Suggest he wfh somewhere else in the house as circumstances have changed and you want your living space back. If he says the bedroom etc is unsuitable shrug and say its that or the office.

Also don't tiptoe around him any more being quiet. Don't take the piss but normal living noise is fine.

When we didn't have a choice with wfh its fine to be flexible while its temporary. When someone is actively choosing to commandeer the communal areas and try and dictate noise levels when they have a perfectly good office to go to, that's very different.

[quote Excilente]@Summersnightdream

"Simply displaying the attitude that if the OP only has a 15 year old, she should 100% be working. If she was out of the house during the day earning money to contribute towards the family pot, then she would have her lounge free when she gets home and her husband has also finished work. If you can't be bothered to get a job, you 100% have no right to dictate where the person who does have a job works from"

What a load of absolute cobblers. No-one SHOULD get a job, and as i imagine she's doing all the housework/child rearing, she 100% has EVERY right to use the living room in her house, rather than be banished to the bedroom/kitchen all day, every day.[/quote]
What kind of 15 year old requires rearing? This may come as a big surprise but I'll let you in on a secret - most adults in society function by working full time AND doing housework. Crazy right? They don't choose one or the other, they do BOTH. Mindblowing.

In all seriousness, if OPs husband is the only one working full-time, she cannot shoo him back to the office (where he doesn't want to be) so she can not work and hang around the living room. If OP doesn't like it, she can get a job and then relax in the evenings when neither she or her husband are working.

" If you don’t work outside the home then it’s difficult to understand the change in mindset needed to go back to the office (and I really don’t care whether some people have worked in the office all the way through, it’s not a competition)."

I was allowed to go back to the office one day a week from 9 June. My feeling: elation.
Not everyone is anxious about it.
I admit I don't have diabetes or another thing that would make me vulnerable and I don't work in a hospital, but honestly the only thing that worried me was being able to get up in time!

@timeisnotaline

Covid has been going on for over a year now. I highly doubt the op hasnt suggested ‘darling couldn’t we put a desk in room x…’ already.

You would be surprised, I have a colleague where both her and her dh currently work from home. He works in their bedroom, she worked in the living room. They also have a son at college working in his bedroom, and another working outside the home.

They have 4 bedrooms (one large double guest room), a separate dinning room (which she admits she only uses for family occasions a few times a year but is very pretty) and a separate conservatory and she complains almost daily about having to work in the middle of her living room everyone walks through, or wants to have breaks in, when she has other rooms empty 🤦‍♀️, for her it essentially boils down to not wanting to make the unused carefully staged rooms look untidy/or the window faces the wrong way/or she shouldn't have to as she should be allowed into work. Meanwhile we have been squeezing past the set of drawers in the hallway for a year and she is jealous I have an "office" 🤣

I think it’s SAHM shaming really, which is boring and tedious. She could be working part time, shifts, have lost her job due to covid, left her job to support her children through home schooling, have a child with a disability, have much younger children. It really doesn’t matter.

I’m on maternity leave. I also own a house outright. Does that mean I get to throw DH out of it all day?

Some of the responses on here are fucking hilarious. All the stuff about how much courage it takes to return to the office. Think about all the frontline workers who had to work unvaccinated throughout.

OP tell your husband to either sort out a corner, get a shed or get back to work. You can't spend your summer on tip toes.

I also wfh and have been going to a cafe twice a week since they opened. Can't your DH do that?

@lavenderandwisteria

I think it’s SAHM shaming really, which is boring and tedious. She could be working part time, shifts, have lost her job due to covid, left her job to support her children through home schooling, have a child with a disability, have much younger children. It really doesn’t matter.

I’m on maternity leave. I also own a house outright. Does that mean I get to throw DH out of it all day?

Stop trying to change the narrative to suit your frame of mind. This is one of the reasons why women will never be seen as equal in society. You absolutely do not need to be at home to raise a 15 year old, you just don't. I understand taking a career break to parent very very young children for a limited period, but anything other than that is laziness. I would be so ashamed of myself if I was a SAHM for a 15 year old. Imagine the conversation with new people?? "So what do you do?", "Oh I'm a SAHM for our little one", "Ah that's nice, how old are they?", "15"

I understand taking a career break to parent very very young children for a limited period, but anything other than that is laziness. I would be so ashamed of myself if I was a SAHM for a 15 year old

Oh how do I pity these people with so little in their life that they need any crappy job to give themselves some importance. I feel for you, I really do. You must really resent it as well if you need to be so aggressive towards others.

@MareofBeasttown

I also wfh and have been going to a cafe twice a week since they opened. Can't your DH do that?

My employer doesn't allow this :( They say it's for insurance reasons (I'm not in the UK). I plan to do it anyway and see how it goes, because I'm so fed up of the same four walls.

When my daughter was 15, my son was 10. I did work but it wasn't 9-5 so I would be at home in office hours for the bulk of the time. The OP doesn't say either way whether she works or is a SAHM or has younger children to care for. Either way, it's not really relevant. What's relevant here is that her DH can go out to work and is more practical considering they don't really have the space and it is stopping other members of the family enjoying the home

@khakiandcoral

I understand taking a career break to parent very very young children for a limited period, but anything other than that is laziness. I would be so ashamed of myself if I was a SAHM for a 15 year old

Oh how do I pity these people with so little in their life that they need any crappy job to give themselves some importance. I feel for you, I really do. You must really resent it as well if you need to be so aggressive towards others.

Nope, I love my job. I love my work and I love my colleagues and the social aspect. I'm not yet back in the office and have been WFH since March but I'm looking forward to going back.

At the end of the day, OPs husband works full time to support her. She (I'm assuming) does not work full-time. She has to stay home to raise their 15 year old. So she comes on here and complains that her husband is scared to go back to the office because he has health issues and it's impacting her ability to watch TV when doing absolutely nothing during the day. If my partner had this selfish attitude, I would 100% be out the door

If you can work in an office why would you clog up your home and make the main living room unusable for the rest of the family. It's selfish imo
It totally depends on the circumstances. If OPs home is tiny, living room the only family room, she's also looking after a child under 5, and her OH's office in a 10mns walk from home then yes, he is selfish.

If OP only gas a 15yo, is a SAHP because she doesn't want to work. Her OH has to commute for over an hour in traffic to get to work, but she's not happy she won't be able to watch her favourite TV shows, then she is doubly selfish.

"magine the conversation with new people?? "So what do you do?", "Oh I'm a SAHM for our little one", "Ah that's nice, how old are they?", "15" blush"

Such people are housewives/househusbands surely. Nothing wrong with it really.
I was laughing when a woman told me once her child was growing up, but still needed her at home. I thought maybe 12 or 13, but this was a 22 year old at uni :)
She probably didn't want to just say "I don't need to work".

So really what you’re saying summer is that the person not working should be punished by being at home being made as miserable as possible.

@Summersnightdream "What kind of 15 year old requires rearing?"

mine, he's disabled and needs pretty much most of my attention when he's at home.. so i have to use the time he's at school to do anything/everything else that needs doing out of the house.

And if you think ANY teen at 15 doesn't still need parenting, you need to give your head a wobble.

I hear you op. DH is WFH and I can't wait for him to go back to the office. I'm praying he'll be back during the school summer hols. I honestly cannot cope with him and the DC at home for six weeks

@lavenderandwisteria

So really what you’re saying summer is that the person not working should be punished by being at home being made as miserable as possible.

No, I'm saying the OP should get a job and be out of the house during work hours. That way, when she returns home, her husband would be finished too and she has her living room back for any TV she wants to watch. How someone cannot see that the OP is being selfish on another level is beyond me.

OP, are you wfh or from an office?

Until 3 months ago I was working in our living room as I had no choice - dh was working in the study, ds in the spare bedroom, and our bedroom has no space for a desk. I also can't go and work from a cafe as a lot of my work involves conference calls which have to be confidential. Luckily ds has a new job that he can't do from home so I've now got my desk in the spare room.

If your ds wants friends round in the summer, he either has to have them in his bedroom, or maybe your dh could set up his desk in your son's bedroom and then the living room can return to being a communal space.

I would have been very upset if my dh and ds had made a fuss about not having access to the living room during the day when I was working there, when they each had a dedicated room in which to work.

[quote Excilente]@Summersnightdream "What kind of 15 year old requires rearing?"

mine, he's disabled and needs pretty much most of my attention when he's at home.. so i have to use the time he's at school to do anything/everything else that needs doing out of the house.

And if you think ANY teen at 15 doesn't still need parenting, you need to give your head a wobble.[/quote]
There's a very big difference between 'rearing' a 15 year old and parenting one. Yes an average 15 year old requires parenting but they do not require a parent to stay at home all day for them. I understand your 15 year old is disabled, but considering the OP has not said hers is, and discusses her 15 year old having friends over etc, we can assume he's not.

Also, if we flip it and say actually, the OPs 15 year old DOES need constant 121 care when they are not in school, so the OP uses the school hours to do housework etc, then why is she complaining that she wants her husband out of the living room so she can presumably sit and watch TV all day?

Yes, getting a job is so very easy at the moment, isn’t it

But in any event, you have absolutely no idea why she is at home and to be honest it’s not your business.

How do you know she’s not a nurse, working three nights a week and two at the weekends? Would she be entitled to actually relax in her own home then? Or is it just SAHPs or the retired or the sick you save your disdain for?

I’m currently watching TV, sue me