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?

As soon as we get some free childcare hours I will definitely do this 👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻

I understand this OP. You're trying to keep your boundaries, and be polite to everyone, and you feel like you're being walked over. I feel it's harder to keep those boundaries rigid when you're female, and everyone expects you to #bekind

I also wfh fulltime, which sometimes includes hosting meetings, and often includes lots of calls (with colleagues, not clients). I also warn tradesmen that I have a meeting I cannot step away from between x and y time. If they interupt me during that time, I will mute myself if possible, answer the door, and VERY directly remind them I'm in a meeting until y time, point them to the kettle, and tell them I will come and find them as soon as I'm done. Then I just walk back to my desk and close the door. I don't give space for them to argue that it's important. So is my job. If I don't get paid, I can't pay for the work.

I have found that being very direct, and leaving no room to argue, are essential. I'm never rude, but I won't put up with being messed about, and certainly not for the sake of being polite.

Disclaimer, before anyone jumps on me, I am on flexi time, I am allowed to have work done to my house during my work hours. I am paid to do a specific role, and outside of key meetings, and meeting targets, when I do that work, is my choice.

I think you might be creating your own monster!

you aren’t available- SAY THAT.

you can’t talk - DONT ANSWER THE PHONE.

it wouldn’t happen to a man as HE WOULDN’T BE SO ACCOMMODATING.

YEAH it is sexist. Because you will do what you can, a female trait. And a dude would be like ‘f off’ . sometimes you need to act like a dude to get treated like one.

the contractor. You should’ve planned a better day. Or said you aren’t available, and not answered the door.

the husband. If you were at a workplace would’ve you answered the phone? Then whatever.

the friends dad. Sooooo inappropriate! You need to put him in his place.

from a work perspective. It sucks that you wasted your teams time. Outrageously disrespectful to them. You’re giving Wfh a bad name!

we all have that coworker or friend or boss that puts the meeting on mute and vacuums. That’s the wfh rumour, if that’s not what you have then may down your rules.

My husband works from home and I guarantee he wouldn’t leave a call he was leading to answer the door. He’d possibly phone the plasterer ahead of time to tell him to let himself in because he was on a call and not to be interrupted. Otherwise he (or me) would take a day off for trades coming round.

Did an induction at the gym, was talking about the classes available and the schedule with the person showing me around and I said I'm not sure which ones of these I could come to, maybe the lunchtime ones, and he said they get busy if you work from home you could come to the 9.30am ones...

I nodded along. As if I can just pop out at 9.30am and do an exercise class when I'm supposed to be working 😜

This isn't a men v women thing. This is a boundaries thing.

People are inherently selfish. At any given time they are only thinking about their own perspective. For example you're thinking about how inconvenient it is for you he turned up late, he could be thinking about how stressed he is from losing a large amount of time out of his day due to traffic etc, and how that directly affects his income as a self-employed person just before Christmas. As a self-employed tradie, he has limited hours he can get money in, you are sitting at home getting paid regardless (even when you're not working because you're having long chats with plasterers).

Recently we booked a buffet restaurant and were queuing outside with a lot of other people. We became aware that a small older woman was pushing past everyone in the queue. My DH didn't see her coming up behind and didn't move out of the way for her, and she was huffing and puffing and muttering to herself because he was in her way. When she'd pushed past everyone waiting it became clear that she just wanted to ask a question about a booking she had next week. Something that could have easily been done by phone, internet, when she could see it was less busy, or by asking another member of staff other than the person taking payments for the queue. Yet it was us, the people who actually had a booking now and had been waiting patiently in the queue for 20 mins, that were the problem because we were in her way and she wasn't considering anyone else.

If you're working from home, you need to set more boundaries.

If you don't already have one and need one because just shutting doors isn't enough, get a doorbell that you can turn down/off when you're on calls. They are cheap and easy to set up. Ignore the door. You are at work.

When you knew he was going to be late, stick a note on the door saying you're taking a work call and will be available again to answer the door at X time. (Add a bit on because meetings always run over, plus it gives you an excuse to leave/wrap up/mention the time). This also lets him plan his time to get a coffee, send some invoices in his vehicle, all kinds of small tasks that take up time.

My phone is on silent during work hours. If you don't use it for work at all, you can set it up to automatically redirect to voice mail in your working hours. If you need it on, then a simple, "I'm really sorry, I'm at work right now but I'd love to catch up later. Speak soon!" Act the way you would as if you were in an office with 20 people and the same situation happened. Because you are, just virtually instead of physically.

You're too worried about coming across as rude or upsetting people, but you're not handling situations where there are two sides and whatever you do is inconvenient to someone. It's about expecting it and preparing for it before it happens. As an employer I wouldn't be impressed with any of these situations and how you handled them, because I'm paying you to work and expect you to set boundaries. We fired someone once, it was for many reasons, but one of them was because she thought nothing of saying to us, "Oh I didn't finish the work because one of my neighbours knocked on the door and I ended up chatting to them on the doorstep for two hours. But I'm being honest with you about it so it's not a problem."

Just book things to happen on your days off, and don't answer the phone.
I've got a friend who works from home and she wouldn't dream of booking a workman while she's working, how unprofessional!!!

My response if you worked in an office out of the home you'd have had to take a holiday to have this plasterer round
I think you need to check your privilege a bit here to be fair that you have this level of flexibility most can only dream of
if you don't want your work from home interrupted then don't arrange things when you are online and take time out to get them done
(from a woman who works full time and does 3 days from home 2 on site !)

Unless it was absolutely essential I would never take a call from my partner during working hours. As for the plasterer, I would have left a note on the door and wouldn’t have answered it.

You probably need a new plasterer OP. Decent tradesman turn up by 8am latest.

This.
You are lucky to be able to do this.
I work outside of the home and cannot do any of the things you have listed. Same for many many people.
Grow a backbone and say no to people or suck it up and stop moaning.