Explain that working from home is WORKING

[wfhorwtf]

I work a desk based job where I'm on my laptop most of the day doing fairly intense analytical work. It's mostly quiet, maybe three or four short calls a day with colleagues, and everything else happens over email or teams. The rest of the time I need proper, uninterrupted concentration to write code, analyse data, read documents and produce updates and reports. I work from what used to be the box room, now repurposed as a home office.

My partner has recently moved in. He's worked manual trades all his life and has never really needed a computer, either for work or leisure. To the point where he doesn't even know how to type on a keyboard (non-phone one I mean). The problem is that he's currently between jobs, gets bored, and feels like I'm ignoring him. He'll call out to me several times an hour to ask my opinion on something, show me a funny video, or give me updates about some friends or political news. It’s all well-natured, but even a quick interruption completely breaks my concentration. Watching a 10 sec video can easily cost me 10 min of getting back into the zone. Maybe that's just how my brain works, or age.

This has been worse over the last few days because of Christmas prep on top of the usual household chores. To be clear, I do my share of the festive slog, though if I'm honest he probably does more. I just tend to do it in the evenings, which is also when he'd rather relax or do something fun together.

We had a heated conversation this morning, and it became clear that he genuinely doesn't understand that I'm actually WORKING. Not out of malice, he simply doesn't have a reference point for this kind of work. Compared me to one of his exes who was constantly scrolling social media on her phone and ignored him. From his perspective, I'm "doing nothing" all day and just staring at a screen, while he's busy with visible and tangible tasks. I'm trying to get everything wrapped up before a mandatory two week Christmas furlough at work.

How do I explain that just because my job doesn't look busy from the outside doesn't mean it isn't?

That's not the issue at all. I write. To do so I have to go into my world, be there, notice things feel things, settle on the exact right feeling that will convey the story, then find the exact combination of words to express that in a way that is both beautiful and easy for a reader to lose themselves in.

There are people who don't write but by virtue of their jobs immediately understand that I need to get into a flow state and stay there. If I come out, I will struggle to get back in. Just as I immediately understand that while you and I have totally different types of work, we both need to get in and stay in. Tiny interruptions can ruin hours of productivity.

There are other people who don't intuitively get it, but once I explain, like I do in my first paragraph, they understand and leave me alone unless they really, really need my attention in a way that genuinely can't wait.

And there are a third group of people who are like your boyfriend. They will interrupt me whenever they want. It's not that they don't understand, it's just that they don't care enough to change their behaviour.

Your partner is in the third group and that's unacceptable for an adult. You need to stop trying to explain yourself and instead tell him that he is not to interrupt you for any non emergency reason. If he continues to do so, it's not actually working for him to live with you. He is disrespecting you massively. Do not change your job unless you really, really want to do that for your own reasons.

If he’s a lorry driver, then the equivalent is asking him to pull over every half an hour to look at a 3 minute video. So his nice stretch of clear road is ruined.

To give him the benefit of the doubt, he’s probably bored because he’s used to being busy working. Also, if you haven’t lived together for long then he is also used to you doing things together when you are in the same place. What is he going to do with his time if he does have to retire? It doesn’t sound like he has the internal resources to deal with that.

God he’s gotten you well-trained hasn’t he?

That's exactly what happened this morning. I got angry (and tbh I regret now getting that angry).

Why regret it? It was justified and necessary. I’m enraged just reading about it, you ought to be fuming. And he ought to be apologising profusely and then demonstrating that he very much now understands the issue that he’s been causing.

Today I'm working with this large set of data that's very dirty but valuable. I use algorithms to clean it, then I have to look carefully at what comes out, adjust how I'm doing it if the results aren't quite right, and sometimes try a few different approaches. A couple of junior colleagues then check the output manually to catch anything the computer might miss, while I document and version-control everything properly so other people can understand and repeat the work if needed.
Once that's done, I feed the cleaned data into a much larger process, which gives me results to interpret. Depending on what those results look like, I might need to change some settings and run it again. That's why I often can't say exactly how long something will take or when I'll be free. Sometimes it’s fairly quick, sometimes it takes most of the day.

You would have lost me at 'algorithms'. I am not thick or dumb or ignorant, as some posters have so charmingly put it. Data processing just isn't my field. Explain it as looking at how efficiently hospitals are managing their waiting lists, or a supermarket comparing sales of different products in different regions, or whatever it is, and I'd have some idea what you were doing.

I recognise this, OP. I'm a teacher so WFH a lot during evenings, weekends and holidays. Like you, my work involves analysing layered data sets and strategic planning, and looking at screens for long periods. DP, who works 'in the field' in social care, does exactly what your DP does -pops in with offers of cups of tea, shopping lists to add to, little 'chats' etc. And just like you, if I'm interrupted, it is effortful to redirect my attention and concentration to the interrupted task again. I just keep on reminding him.

Buy him an X-box for Christmas?! Get a teenager to show him how it works.

OMG THIS!!!

Get a door sign which has a do not disturb option or a free option so it's easy for him to see that way if still interrupting then he's doing it deliberately and that's a whole another level conversation.

FWIW I think some people do not understand the prospect of thinking time being work.

I had a tradesman once say to me that you pen pushers don't know what real work is it's hardly critical work about DH wfh intent on his screen...... he was dealing with a vessel which lost power and was co-ordinating the alerts to other vessels and coastguard for the vessel company.

But it doesn't matter whether he does or does not understand what she's doing

She has asked him repeatedly not to interrupt her when she's working. It doesn't matter whether he understands what that work consists of, he's been asked not too and he's still doing it, that's what the problem is

Good question. I think most of this would either disappear entirely or become more amusing than irritating if he simply had something to occupy his time right now. By doing something I mean productive work, even charitable or something like this - he's read all the books and watched all the series by now. The difficulty is that he's in a kind of limbo, undergoing treatment and hoping things will improve. I suspect, based on the progress so far, that they won't, and I think he's starting to slowly realise that too (but we don't talk about Bruno, no no no). Doing something "else" would mean accepting that his previous life and career might be over, and that's a big thing to face.

You’d know not to come in though if someone says not to. He doesn’t need to know what algorithms are, he’s been asked not to do something and he’s repeatedly doing it because he’s selfish and/or ignorant.

This is a classic example of men belittling women’s jobs. You are just a paper shuffler so your job isn’t “important”.

You need to lay down really clear boundaries OP. Make it clear that you aren’t to be disturbed when you’re working.

As other PPs have said, he doesn’t need to understand what you do or how you do it in order to respect that, during work hours, your time and attention need to be focused on your job.

He’s a grown adult. It’s his responsibility to manage his boredom and frustration in ways that don’t intrude on you while you’re working. If he becomes needy or resentful when your attention is on your work rather than on him, that can quickly slide into a parent/man-child dynamic.

It’s entirely reasonable to be kind and understanding while he’s out of work, but that support can happen outside of your working hours. He should be able to recognise and respect that boundary.

Did he move in after his injury?

Is part of the issue that he moved in because he was bored/lonely at home alone and hadn't thought about the fact that moving in with you didn't actually mean you were available all day every day?

You're making a shitload of excuses OP for behaviour that is both ignorant and rude!

Its intersting on here how often the posted problem is not the actual problem.
Posted problem "I WFH and my partner keeps interrupting me"
Actual problem "My partner is facing a life changing issue and needs more of my attention than I can give"

Absolutely this
@wfhorwtf
He is stamping all over your boundaries
All you needed to do was say " I cant be interrupted, Im working"
Anything other than " of course" is red flag territory.
You don't need to explain to him in detail, just say no

As it is he's having a tantrum because you are prioritising your job and not him
Dreadful behaviour

He has no job
Has moved in
Is already being disrespectful and not respecting no

You should be very concerned that you have a man child cock lodger here

Yeah just ask him to keep pulling onto the hard shoulder (or better, parking up and coming in to the concourse of the next services) to watch a 30 sec video..And see how he fancies that.

It might be worth explaining it to him to outline how it works with his own business.

It's not all manual workers, because we've had builders who've understood and respected WFH boundaries, and ones who've been openly scornful of WFH, sneering about "not real work" whilst spending ages yammering on about some minor detail that could possibly wait, or that isn't to the point.

There's a special place in hell for my husband, who WFH also, and who thinks he can wander by my desk in the open-plan area and waffle on and gets all huffy if I tell him to STFU.

My partner works in IT, sounds like a similar job to you. Occasionally he’ll talk about work stuff, but to be honest it’s fairly meaningless to those not working in it other than I know broadly what he does.

He works hybrid now, entirely at home previously. He is in a home office/ spare room now but worked in shared spaces before my DD moved out. Now I always knock on door if I need to see him. Or message sometimes. In the shared space I would message only. It’s not hard to do. I don’t need to understand what he is doing, why he appears to be doing next to nothing sometimes. He is at work, that’s it.

I think you’re giving your DP far too much slack here. It’s straightforward, you don’t need to spoon feed him, or indeed change your working arrangements. He needs to accept you need to be left to work and not disturbed. It’s pretty easy to understand. I have no idea why he is referencing his ex, or anyone else, or to be honest why you’re even discussing it.

You say he’s intelligent and a great guy so he’ll get it won’t he?

Not straight away. He was actually in hospital for quite a while, and then at home on a stretcher. It was a combination of things, some of which we'd planned for long before the injury, which really threw a spanner in the works. There were other considerations too, like the children leaving home and some assets being released from his (historical) divorce settlement. The injury did become a major factor in the end. He's mobile and quite sel-sufficient now, but on pain relief and unable to drive, lift, or do much in the way of manual work.

Honestly I have people at my work (by which I mean managers) that don't understand that interrupting a knowledge worker is annoying and buggers their productivity.

Worst case it can lead to oversights and mistakes and lower quality output, delivered late.

I have one who I unfortunately work for a lot, who will send me an email, which I see flashing up in my windows notification tray, and I will read it at my convenience, sometime in the next minutes. Then seconds later she will ping me on Teams, (forcing me to break task and interact), basically telling me that she's sent me an email and what it's about. In my head I'm thinking FUCK OFF I KNOW YOU SENT ME AN EMAIL YOU UTTER CONCENTRATION DESTROYING BAM but I mask that perfectly natural inner dialogue (yet more mental work that I am doing that is not me doing actual work tasks)

And relax.

Yeah it's difficult, people have to understand that you're at your work.

I don't think you should regret expressing your anger and annoyance. You should apologise if you insulted him personally of course, but it would appear that he wasn't taking you seriously AT ALL previously, so you had to do something to get the message over.