To be p*ssed off DP has a pointless 30m call with a female work colleague every day?

[colachive]

Just this. He has a 30 minute call with the same female work colleague (who he has stated "reminds him" of his ex-wife) every single work day. He's said it started as a project check in and now they just chat.

I don't really know how to bring this up with him but something about it just aggrevates me. It feels off. AIBU??

Another red flag, he told me that during a meet up recently he moved her bag out of the way in a pub in case it got nicked; and she called him. “Gentleman”. Honestly quite puke worthy stuff.

This is such a non event that most people wouldn’t give it a second thought after it happened never mind recalling it at a later date & thinking it “news worthy” enough to tell their DP.

Sounds like a case of mentionitis to me.

Honestly? I think this is a working from home problem, not an issue with this woman. If my husband worked from home, dominated the family space and talked a lot about how busy he was, that would irritate me a lot.

Probably because she expects to know what he's doing with his work time.

I once had a colleague who I’d talk to every day we overlapped in the same office, mostly to vent about office politics as we were both senior and couldn’t vent to others, or to discuss any work items. Not in a trillion years was it any more than colleagues being friendly.
If I was based at home, I’d get why this type of chat would be timetabled.
Sorry but you sound unreasonable to me.

The thing that really pisses me off about the batshit paranoia regarding perfectly normal workplace interactions is that it ultimately harms women trying to build their careers.

Presumably this man's colleague benefits from the calls because presumably it's an outlet for her as well, or he's good at his job and she can collaborate with him well, or - not sure who's senior here - she can either gain mentoring experience or benefit from having a mentor.

There are so many ways in which men in the workplace benefit from informal, social interactions with their male colleagues but the minute a woman does the exact same thing she's a temptress whose only interest is in an emotional affair. Toxic thinking all round.

I can see nothing wrong with it. I think you have issues though OP.

Such good points.

I benefit hugely from my regular meetings with my male colleague, He is more senior than me and has acted as an informal mentor and at one stage was my direct line manager. My career has progressed and developed thanks to this.

There is nothing inappropriate about our relationship or meetings and I'd be pretty pissed off if my husband was questioning these meetings. Thankfully he is the complete opposite and encourages this relationship.

If he had romantic intentions, he wouldn’t sketch the calls into his diary and he most likely would not tell you about them.

I work with a team of men and I’m close to one of them in particular. Nothing romantic, we’re both married but we do have lunch together sometimes and we chat a fair bit. Sometimes men and women can be friends.

100% this

I work with all men, not a single woman in my department that I need to work or interact with. If I can't build relationships or network or trade favours with my colleagues then my career is dead

I'm coming at this from a slightly different perspective in that I've been the wife in this situation and whilst on the surface it looked entirely innocent, it turned out not to be, we almost divorced over it and are still in relationship counseling.

So, whilst it may be the case that they are just chatting as normal work colleagues, if your gut feeling is telling you that something is wrong, then this needs to be explored.

How is your relationship otherwise with your DH?

How frequent is the mentionitus?

Does he hide his phone etc from you?

If your happy with your answers to the above then you probably have nothing to worry about.

Look I'd be more worried if there were other signs

*hiding their hands interactions
*mentionitis eg bringing her up frequently
*exchanging lots of daily messages
*Inappropriate talk/flirting
*Secretly meeting up
*Gift buying
*The colleague has a history of cheating on partners or with attached men

Threads like this blow my mind. If my DH told me he was irritated because I have a check in with a male colleague everyday (which is probably quite chatty as he is my friend!) people on MN would say he was controlling and shouldn't be listening to my calls. It staggers me how weirdly jealous some women are. OP not everyone wants to shag your husband. I bet you are the sort of woman to text your DH all day long and get in a huff when he doesn't immediately reply.

My response has nothing to do with jealously, I don't know OP's DH and I'm not married, what other people do is up to them.

I do know that in 40 years in the workplace, I haven't seen this sort of daily contact except when something was going on.

I worked from home for many years and used to yak on the phone everyday to colleagues. I also met them for coffee or lunch periodically. My work was largely in IT so most of my colleagues were male. DH didn't bat an eyelid; rightly so.

One of the most helpful people in my career wasn't in my company but senior in my industry, and he was bisexual (which I didn't know for about a year after I met him). I am now wondering whether our informal one-on-one drinks should have depended on whether he was dating a man or a woman at the time. (Nothing inappropriate happened of course.)

A (female) friend of mine was seen as a rising star in her company 15 years ago and did have a formal mentor - except he dropped her out of nowhere and never really explained. Much later she worked out that he had a wife who objected to him spending time with a brilliant (and, incidentally, attractive) 24-year-old. She spent several months having a bit of a crisis based on the above but ultimately it worked out worse for him: she was so obviously brilliant that someone else in the company was happy to mentor her. She's very senior in the industry now and the other guy got all the kudos for "discovering" her and was promoted accordingly.

Were you having informal one on one drinks every single day?

Thats the point. Of course it's perfectly normal to have coffee/drinks/lunch/phonecalls with a colleague regularly, but every day?

Did you also block out your work diary for a scheduled 30 minute “yak” with one particular colleague (and no one else) every single work day when there was no work need for it and it was purely just to chat?

He wasn't at my company so it would've been quite hard (and pickled my liver even more than it was in my 20s already).

The friend I mentioned had multiple weekly meetings with her mentor though. Not sure how many. Her company had some sort of specific mentoring process.

I'm off sick at the minute recovering from surgery and my work bff phones me every day on his dinner for a chat. He's thirty years older than me, both married and our relationship is 100% platonic. He's just a really good friend, it is possible.

30 minutes every single day seems excessive to me.

If it was my DH I wouldn’t be suspicious but I would be annoyed because he works long hours and without all these long chats he could be home earlier. What are your DH’s hours like?

No-one's scheduling daily mentoring, who has time for that?

So the situations you've given are nothing like the OP's

Regular yes, fine. Daily is not normal.

Of course my two personal experiences 15 years ago aren't exactly the same. My larger point, that this is paranoid batshittery that harms women's careers, still stands.

It's obvious that the nature and frequency of this kind of work relationship depends on industry, company, role and personality. Yes in some places it wouldn't be normal, but in others it's par for the course.

This is your experience, it is not everyone’s. I get on well with my manager, we work in a busy environment and so perhaps 2/3 times a week stay a half hour after work has ‘finished’ to catch up - on work, life, general chatting. Because we get on well and like the time together. It’s zero difference to me meeting a non work friend after work for a half hour coffee instead. Similarly, because of said busy environment, I do have colleagues I book in lunch/coffee with in my diary, because if we didn’t book it then we’d never chat beyond fire fighting talk at the photocopier about whatever disaster is occurring.

The level of paranoia/control/jealousy from some women on this website blows my mind.

Honestly, I wouldn't interfere in his work. A lot of work talk between colleagues isn't strictly necessary but you build up a rapport with someone over time, by chatting. Me and my (male) boss have a little catch up each day. We'll talk about work but also general chat "How was your evening?", "Did you go and see that film you wanted to see?" etc etc. There's nothing in it. It's very human to want to have a chat rather than only talking about work.
To be honest, I'd be really pissed off if DH told me I shouldn't be having these conversations with my boss. It's none of his business how we work!

Agree with this and my closest male colleague is probably 20 years my junior, we just get on very well, both very chatty, so can talk about work stuff, our families, tv, food, travel etc for ages. We probably only have a decent catch up once a week but I can assure you nothing untoward is going on, for a start we’re both happily married, he’d have rocks in his head to be interested in an overweight, frumpy, 50something, and he wouldn’t be my type anyway.

Platonic work friendships are very healthy.