Or does anyone else get tired of the way men treat women's home-based jobs as if they aren't real?

[Thepeopleversuswork]

Does anyone else have this? I WFH two or three days a week, have done for years, have a home office. I feel like whenever I interact with men (and sorry but it is usually men) in the course of my working day they treat my job as if it's a joke and something I can just drop at any minute. Little things, but these three things happened to me yesterday and I'm 90% sure they wouldn't have happened to a bloke.

Having work done on my house: I had a plasterer round to do a job. When I spoke to him last week to arrange it I said Monday is good but please can you try not to arrive between 10 and 11.30am as I'm on a work call which I can't step away from. All good, he says, he'll be here by 9.30am latest. He tips up at 10.30am and knocks on the doorbell. I'm leading a call with about 15 people and have to get up to let him in which is embarrassing and awkward for my junior team.

I'm irritated but I get that you can't always control the arrival time in heavy traffic so I don't get pissed off with him, but he doesn't apologise for the timing and starts yammering on to me in excruciating detail about what he's going to do when we've already had this conversation. I then make my excuses and say if you're going out to your van can you leave the door on the latch because I can't get away again. 15 minutes later he does exactly the same thing, rings the doorbell, drags me off the same call and then drags me down into the kitchen to talk about what he's going to do.

A bit later my ex husband calls to speak to my DD (he's overseas at the moment) and insists on putting me on the phone to his mother (who I still get on well with) for a chinwag. I tell him I'll call back after I've finished work. "But you work from home," he says. "You can talk to my mum for a minute." I say no, call after work hours. He calls back half an hour later (11.30ish) and puts his mum straight on to me without checking if I'm free. It's embarrassing telling an elderly woman who I hardly see that I don't have time to talk to her so I have to spend 10 minute chewing the fat when I'm frantically busy.

Later still the dad of a friend of my DD calls me to say he's going to be late back from work and can the friend come back to mine for an hour after school. I say ordinarily it would be fine but today it's not ideal because by then DD will be out and I'm working. "It's fine, she can just watch TV," he says, before I put my foot down.

Despite the fact that hybrid working is the norm for many people, I feel like a lot of people (mainly blokes although some women do it too) feel it's a nice cushty one for women which they can do to earn pin money while they look after their kids and think they have an absolute entitlement to butt into it as they see fit.

No one would dream of doing that to someone working in a City office. It's a job. It doesn't matter whether you're in the suburbs or in a gleaming building in the centre of town, you still should have the right not to be endlessly disturbed by other people just to make their lives slightly easier. It's just another example of men thinking they have the right to interrupt woman and take as much of their time as they need, isn't it?

Both DH and I work from home. Our work is heavily scheduled and we can’t go and open the door or answer a phone call or anything while we are at work.

Slightly flumoxed by all the "you answer your personal mobile phones during working hours?!" comments - presumably your work provides you with a work mobile phone but surely you must realise that it's relatively unusual for people to carry two separate mobile phones around with them?

All my work calls go to my personal number, which is the norm in my industry. It would be very very unusual to own two separate mobile phones.

Turquoise my work calls come in via Teams.

However even if all calls came via my personal phone it would be pretty easy to see it is my ex H calling and press send to voicemail.

Not just men.

I have worked for myself, at home, for almost 20 years. Far before it became common in 2020. I have done a range of different things, all freelance, and have been treated with suspicion throughout. It used to be you said "you worked for yourself from home" and people instantly think a scammy MLM scheme. Now people are aware that more people do work from home, but still think I am free to meet for coffee or be around whenever is convenient for them.

My own mother has no idea what I do.

I wouldn’t expect any work calls to come to my mobile phone. All work calls come via Teams.

All my work calls come to my personal phone number (which is the norm in my industry) and there's no way to know whether a withheld number or a number I don't recognise is personal or business.

I don't know what "Teams" is.

Not sure why you mentioned your ex-H when the thread is about workmen. Presumably your ex isn't the only person who calls you.

It's very very commonplace in many different industries for people to have jobs that involve making and receiving phone calls where it's the norm to not have separate work and personal phones, or whatever else some people use to receive work calls. If you worked in a different industry then you would expect work calls to come to your personal phone.

I honestly don't understand this about MN. Anytime anyone posts anything about their job you always get people lining up to make these blanket statements about how their own job doesn't do that, like it's some kind of definitive thing and every job works exactly like their job.

I don't know anyone who works in the kind of job you describe. Sure they exist, but so do millions of other jobs.

It’s not a blanket statement. I’m just describing how it works at my workplace. I make and receive a lot of work calls, but none of them are on a mobile phone, personal or otherwise. We’re not even allowed to access any work stuff on our mobiles.

I actually had to give up my job because of this. Worked in an office prior to covid but covid made us all hybrid with only one afternoon a week in the office. I had a baby in 2021 and was due back September 2022. I live rurally and there is no childcare however my sister in law offered to look after baby as I was going back on reduced hours for 2 years until she could start at school nursery and these hours fitted around her job.
Because I was on reduced hours I wasn't going to be in office regularly only if necessary so sister in law decided that this meant I wouldn't need child care as I was at home and she would take DD if I had to go into the office. I ended up not going back because work with a 1 year old would have been impossible.

YANBU, but i'm a man and my female partner has been known to have this attitude to me. She is a 100% hospital-based doctor.

It didn't seem too bad at first, although when she started rearranging shifts and thus changing our childcare pickup timings without asking because 'i'm always home anyway' (even though this meant i had to reschedule an important meeting) I knew I had to put my foot down.

After several rather abrupt reminders she mostly seems to understand now, although there are still complaints if i'm catching up on work in the evening having, lets say, taken some time out in the day for errands or even taken a somewhat longer than usual lunch break to do some much-needed exercise, which she also doesn't seem to understand because the evening is not 'work time', even though her shifts often seem to overrun.

She also completely fails to understand that this is how life is for lots of people now. Sometimes I get the feeling that she thinks i'm the only person entire world who is able to WFH as much as they wish.

Boundaries, and sticking to them, are the key here.

It's WFH generally.

For some people, work is somewhere you GO and for others it is something you DO regardless of location. I find that many people who GO to work cannot get their head around WFH.

I'm with you, although I found it much more difficult to drum into people's heads before COVID made remote-work better understood. I've been WFH for almost 20 years and the number of pop-ins I got was mind-blowing.

It got to the point where I would stick a notice in my window "WORKING, UNAVAILABLE UNTIL X TIME" and ignore the woefully late tradies who hadn't bothered to call in a reschedule, and also the oblivious relatives/friends who had repeatedly been politely told about my working hours.

Amazingly, most would stand directly in front of the notice (!!!) banging on the window to get my attention.

And yes, apart from one particular woman they were all men.

Communication and clear boundaries (and sticking to them) are ultra-important if you WFH.

My day-to-day job is a mix of tasks of varying importance ranging from things that can be interrupted or done with minimal attention, to things that cannot be interrupted at all. Usually I have some idea of when those things will happen in advance. So if arranging a tradesman I would avoid the days which are higher-stress, higher-intensity or higher in terms of Cannot Be Interrupted. If it can't be avoided and if he didn't turn up when he said he would, I'd message him and/or stick a note on the door saying I'd be unable to let him in until X time.

I can't really fathom the ex-husband/MIL scenario. I assume his overriding your boundaries is a reason he's an ex, but... you don't have to answer the phone.

Let the phone ring until it's convenient for you. Let the late tradesman stand at the door until it's convenient for you. That's how you train other people to respect your time.

I don’t think it’s a man/ woman thing- when I was out working and dh was wfh the exact same thing- it’s just that people don’t class wfh as work

I think you can't have it both ways. If you arrange for tradespeople to come and do work on your house when you're supposed to be working, it's pretty obvious that it's going to disrupt your working day and people will naturally assume that you will be able to work around the interruptions. Likewise if you take personal calls - if you're busy, just don't answer?

You seem to want to mix work time with personal stuff as and when it suits you to do so, but then you object when others assume that this isn't a problem for you.

This first response nails it.

You're taking the piss. It's nothing to do with being a woman. Your junior colleagues might well be eyeing up your job in case you get the boot for carrying on your private business when you're supposed to be in an online meeting with them.

Honestly, I don't recognise any of this, but that might be because I don't have kids, so I feel on an absolute even footing to men when it comes to the working world.
Tradesman have often never done anything else, so can't understand how tied to a laptop you are in office work. But it's probably not personal.

I get this CONSTANTLY and it drives me nuts too!

It doesn’t help that I work in Academia, so I also get ‘but your hours are flexible’ - possibly, to a point, but if there’s a meeting or if I’m leading a seminar, that isn’t flexible at all! I also suspect that many see it as ‘not REAL work’ because it’s not like I work in finance or something, so basically I’m a glorified uni student.

I have literally answered the door to tradesmen and delivery men who have been incessantly ringing the doorbell during my calls, with my laptop in hand and clearly on a call, and they STILL blithely chatter on like I have all the time in the world to cater to their every need!

Mind you, my mother is just as bad. She really doesn’t understand ‘why I can’t answer my phone during work hours when I work from home’. I tell her that she often calls me whilst on a video call to 100+ students, or during admissions interviews, or Management Board meetings, and it’s not something I can pause - but it never sinks in.

Lots of people are in that exact situation. You book annual leave to be available or arrange for someone to go to your house and let them in.
Parcels go in the parcel box or to a neighbour.

You're justifying having a wfh job to enable the exact behaviour that you’re finding annoying.

And wow. Some of the replies on here are super rude. They must all be the most ‘professional’ women in the world to be so unforgiving of someone leaving a video call for 2 minutes. Wouldn’t like to work with such judgemental people.

I couldn’t possibly do that. I work in live TV. I can’t just disappear even for five seconds.

"You need to tell people you are busy and not answer the phone when you are working!" Some people do and some people don't. Teaching should pay at least 3 or 4 times what it does based on my perception of how appealing a job it is.

I used to use annual leave, just as I did when I was working from home.

I have worked from home for years.
Earlier this year when I started having a lot more meetings I would put a note on the front door saying "Please do not knock on the door" anytime I had a meeting and my husband wasn't home.
Over 2 months 19 people knocked on the door (none of them wanted me). It really annoys me.

I don’t think it’s a woman thing I think it’s a WFH thing.

My DH works from home on occasion and I used to be the person telling him xyz needs doing leave him with the dog (we use day care or he comes with me). During Covid I used to get deliveries daily etc as he was home most of the time. He used to moan about it and I never got it. I would leave for work and he would still be asleep then when I got home he was on the sofa with his feet up. I think even some days worked from the sofa. I think I saw him as having an easy life.

I then got a job wfh (unfortunately i was an and am a key worker) and I seen the reality of what I was asking him to do. Yeah there are benefits like doing washings, tradesmen, deliveries etc but in actual fact these things are a nightmare fitting in around work. A key benefit was the lie in before work as no commute and when you clock off your home already.

I think the main issue is people who have never wfh don’t understand. They just see that you’re in the house more than likely in comfy lounge clothes and not the workload you have.

I found the best way to get through to people was arrange for deliveries to a collection point, take actual time off for tradesmen and ignore my phone until breaks.