to think residential areas and homes are not meant to be offices?

[MossOwl]

Inspired by the thread where the poster whose neighbour had a very important job and was in very important meetings all day and please could she keep her kids out there own garden, outrageous if you ask me!

I think there is a problem with homes and residential areas being turned into offices. My husband also has a very important job with important meetings and I am expected to go about the house not making any noise, I can't hoover or run the washing machine even watching TV is out of bounds. He also complains about neighbours cutting their grass or getting noisy work done to their homes and even the noise of kids playing out. I tell him to go into the office but he hates the 45 min commute and says he prefers working at home at the kitchen table as opposed to going into the office.

Another neighbour has also complained about the noise from their neighbours during the day, during the school holidays, their neighbours have three kids and they have the garden set up with a trampoline, paddling pool and swings which can be noisy but what else are kids supposed to be doing in the summer?

When other neighbours were on holiday they were out in the garden and were playing some music it was kind of loud but they don't play it all year round they were just trying to enjoy a staycation and they got people shouting to keep the noise down as they were working.

I've told my husband that if he wants to keep working from home and not get disturbed then we will have to move to an area with less neighbours where he can have his own office cabin in the garden. During lockdowns and the pandemic we all made the best of it but now office workers do have a choice to go back but many would rather still work at home and expect their families and neighbours to tiptoe around them.

AIBU to think that homes and residential areas are not really suitable to be offices?

People will undoubtedly continue to work from home at least some of the time now. Each individual and family needs to find ways of making this work. For example your husband could wear noise cancelling headphones to block out most noise. But it would be better to put the washing machine on at a different time.

This would infuriate me too. I am also working from home today and we don't have any space other than the dining table so I went back to the office regularly as soon as I could!

Dc are here at the moment as dh is on holiday and will be taking them out for the day in a bit. Other than not continually asking me for snacks, arguing with each other or covering the table in lego they are free to get on with their day around me as I am in their space, not the other way around. Me choosing to work at home today should not impact on my family enjoying their home.

It's not so much that residential homes aren't suitable to be offices, it's more that people like your husband aren't suitable to work from home.

I have no problem working when there's noise outside from the neighbours and DP and I both happily put the dishwasher or the washing machine on while we're working from home. I work in one room, DP works in another. DP watches TV in his lunchbreak. I sometimes have podcasts or the radio on when I'm working.

We both do quite a few video calls and so on, but if you're wearing a proper headset with a decent mic and not just the earbuds that came with a phone or something, outside noise isn't that much of an issue.

It's not so much that residential homes aren't suitable to be offices, it's more that people like your husband aren't suitable to work from home.

This.

Well it's your husband that's unreasonable. I have Quite an Important job too and wfh most of the time. I'm in the dining room as we don't have a spare room. I don't expect my children to be quiet when I am here. I go into the office or put headphones on or take calls in my bedroom.

The next door neighbour slightly annoys me by playing music in her garden all day, but again, I just suck it up.

Your husband is being very unreasonable imo.

Working remotely doesn’t necessarily mean working from home does it? There are office hubs you can go to. .

It’s perfectly fine to work from home; I did it for years.

It’s not perfectly fine to expect everyone else to keep quiet. Your husband is completely unreasonable.

Ha, my DH tried “there must be complete silence while I do my Very Important Job”. When I’d finished laughing I told him in no uncertain terms that his company doesn’t get to dictate what I do in my home.

I notice it’s only men that come out with this shit, women sit there with two kids hanging off their neck, cramming the washing into the machine with one foot, keep one eye on the dinner cooking, and still do their jobs perfectly well.

I don’t think it’s as simple as residential areas not being suitable as office spaces. I actually think there needs to be some consideration from both sides. Some people have worked from home for years, since well before the pandemic.

Each household needs to make the decision that’s right for them. Me and DH won’t be going back to the office regularly as we can comfortably WFH and spend much less on fuel, and spend much less time sat in traffic. We’re happy to compromise on hearing our neighbours during the day. If people expect pindrop silence when WFH then they should go into the office or go to a coworking space, imo.

I would walk round the house stomping like an elephant if that was my DH.

I think WFH can work well, but your husband is being completely unreasonable in the way that he is going about it. Working at the kitchen table is wholly inconsiderate and he needs to move elsewhere. The kitchen is the busiest area of the house. If your house is so small that there is no corner of a bedroom then he needs to go back to the office.

When my DH or I ever have to WFH, we use our 5yo son's bedroom and just move the desk to create a plain background away if we need cameras on. Neither of us would bring the laptop to the kitchen table unless we were happy to be surrounded by normal household goings on.

It's not so much that residential homes aren't suitable to be offices, it's more that people like your husband aren't suitable to work from home.

Agree with this. It was slightly different when we were in lockdown and people didn't have the option to go into the office/find a shared working space but if your home isn't suitable for working for whatever reason (barring genuine noise nuisance) then you need to find an alternative.

I call it "Performance Working" , meaning EVERYBODY BE QUIET because my environmental conditions are more important than yours.

Fuck that. Go and work in a cafe, or in your car, or a shared work space, or in a room with a closed door where you're not going to disrupt the rest of the household (and annoy the neighbours).

During lockdown my DH started making work calls from our garden. I nipped that in the bud straightaway. "Nobody wants to hear you going blah blah blah for hours on end. It makes you sound like a selfish knob."

How do these people cope in an office if they struggle with the noise at home? My office is far more busy and distracting (due to there being people to chat to) compared to home where yes there is noise from outside and it is somewhat harder with the noise from teen DD over the summer but I still find it better than the office.
also people can’t have it both ways and have the ease of working from home and the quiet environment

I agree with PP that it's more about having the proper equipment, and attitudes, rather than wfh per se. I wfh a lot and one of the perks is being able to run the washing machine and get some laundry done in breaks. I also find (and always have done) that offices are MUCH noisier than being at home, so I really don't understand all the complaints. I don't think kids playing on a trampoline generate anywhere near as much noise as 200 people on an open plan office floor. Try concentrating with people on different zoom calls at the desks either side of you...

I don’t think this is really about working from home being the issue I think this is more about people generally being dicks and thinking they’re more important than others.
Both myself and my husband work from home. We’ve found a way of working alongside each other. I’ve got an interview to do tomorrow when both of the kids will be home. I’m not telling them to go out or stay quiet, I’m going to take myself out of the house to minimise the impact on others

You have a DH issue not an office issue.

Before covid only a handful of people actually WFH and most would rent offices if they were SE or go into an office paid for by their boss.

I wanted to apply for a WFH job before covid and it said you needed a spare room so they can install the telephone, else you wouldn’t be considered.

I think people like the idea WFH but in most cases it’s simply not possible to do it.

If you have an office space and it’s quiet - great WFH.
If you need to take over areas of the family home or tell neighbours or family members to be quiet - then you can’t WFH and need to go back to the office.

10HailMarys summed it up perfectly.

I've been WFH since March 2020, I won't be going back into the office, other than maybe the odd day. WFH suits me better, less distractions, better coffee, bigger whiteboard, no commute, can do the school run. I'm more productive at home.

I don't work from the kitchen table, I have my own desk. There's about 90 minutes per week that I ask for relative quiet (don't hoover next to me, don't talk to me) other than that, noise cancelling headphones and life as normal.

You have a DH problem. I have a high paid job, been working in a hybrid mode for over 20 years. I’ve managed to create a space, even if it’s just a dressing table in a bedroom. Lock myself away and generally don’t be a dick.

I close windows mid call if neighbours start lawn mowers etc, I use washing machine/tumble drier etc out of working hours. I would t be happy if DH started vacuuming though, he has a point about that.

The problem here is unreasonable expectations rather that the fact of it. DH and I manage it well because we’re not dicks.

I don’t tiptoe around him and the benefit of his convenience outweighs the inconvenience of the occasional interruption by a toddler in a nappy.

The number of men who think they can commandeer them entire house because they have a ‘big job’ really pisses me off as do the people who facilitate their massive egos.

Ha. I live on my own so haven't had this but the bloke in the studio next to mine tried this shit a couple of years ago - told me to keep my voice down when meeting clients because he did Very Important Art and needed Total Silence and I should tell him whenever I was planning to have people there - fuck off love, we all pay the same for our spaces!

It's a building with more than 30 studios, it's on a level crossing and it's essentially a barn with plasterboard divisions so he got very short shrift from me and a suggestion to buy some noise cancelling headphones or fuck off to a building where there aren't 30+ people. The entitlement was breathtaking and I don't think he expected the response he got from me.

But he's not my DH, obviously - I'd be even less polite to someone trying to make me do this at home because they were too lazy/stupid/inconsiderate to get some headphones or shut a door!

Me and DH both work from home and it’s fine.
However when DD was 1 and I didn’t work he changed from corporate land to a small co who wanted him to wfh back when it wasn’t as much as a thing as it is now, I said that it wasn’t reasonable for me and DD to have to creep around him so if he needed quiet etc he had to get an office. He agreed and his new company arranged and paid for one
Now we have teens and wfh is more acceptable so it’s ok but it doesn’t work in all cases

Yeah, definitely this.

I manage to wfh fulltime (in a Very Important Job much like the neighbour in that post 😆) in a tiny one bed flat with crappy soundproofing on a busy road with loads of outside noise, and a husband who is often off work at home due to his shift hours.

I work from the bedroom so keep that door closed to minimise TV/kitchen noise/toilet flushing etc when my husband is home, and shut the window if the road is particularly noisy and/or there are roadworks (loads this summer!). If I need to concentrate on a contract review or something I use headphones. If appropriate I apologise for the background noise when on a call (as do the other participants, most of whom also work from home).

It's fine. TBH I found it more distracting working in an open plan office - having people around you also on calls or having conversations at their desks is way less easy to zone out!

I think it depends .

People who have important jobs need quiet space and the rest of us muddle through .
Going forward people will buy houses that match their needs and new builds may include small studies .

I’ve worked from home, employed in the public sector, for nearly 20 years. We get issued with headsets so nobody in the house hears our callers, and we and our callers can’t really hear noise from outside unless somebody’s digging up the bloody road again right outside the window.

DH has a similar job and has been working from home since the start of the pandemic, our offices are directly opposite each other across a narrow landing, and we have no trouble at all working, making calls, joining meetings, without disturbing each other. But then we are a reasonable people and we aren’t engaged in a power struggle over who is more important in our house.

I think it comes down to the character of the people involved rather than the concept itself.