To be fuming that DH has spent the whole day on his laptop?

[MamaOnTheCoast]

DH has spent the whole day on his laptop “working” in his home office and he hasn’t even seen me and the DC all day! He was up at 5am (the kids woke up at 6am) and he is still in his home office “working” now so we haven’t seen him all day! He even refused Christmas dinner as he said he was “too busy working”. DH does a senior office based job and he wasn’t meant to be working at all over Christmas but he is saying he apparently has to work today “because it’s urgent”! It’s Christmas Day and we haven’t seen him all day and DH can’t see the problem with this! The kids are really upset about it too! AIBU to be livid with DH over this? DH literally doesn’t see the problem but I’m fuming and the kids are upset too!

Who on earth has voted that you are not being reasonable?? I mean…what the actual fuck???

Unless he’s in a ‘life or death’ type of scenario, with the company/business about to fold without his immediate and full involvement in saving the day, he is being a MASSIVE TWAT!!

Genuinely, hand on heart, I could not get over this. And even if there IS a huge business problem that he had no choice but to work all day on, he has NO RIGHG AT ALL to be such a fucking arsehole, shouting at you and your children!!

Who does he think he is??? ARSEHOLE!

Turn the internet off.

Tell him to get his arse out of that office now or he can sleep in there tonight.

Definitely something fishy going on there op.

A woman colleague?

What is his actual job? What industry?

Not sure we can fully comment without that background…

That being said I consider myself I bit of a workaholic and work with many of them in senior and mid-senior roles in the City. I’ve never known anyone work on Christmas Day, not even the ones that email at 2am or work most weekends.

OMFG He's not working, I have family and friends who are addicted to working and even they get a few hours break Christmas day, no job involves 16hrs of continuous work, What's he doing for food and loo?

There are plenty of computer based jobs that might require urgent work at odd, long hours, including Christmas Day. You’d have to be pretty daft not to realise that but it seems that is indeed the case for lots of posters. The police example made me laugh - how do people think emergency services know where the emergencies are for them to attend? That’s all academic though - OP, you know what his job is so presumably you know whether it’s plausible that he’d have to work today (which is separate from the fact it’s annoyed you)?

Turn off the internet or the electric from the fuse board

Unless he is Keir Starmer this is ridiculous

He has CHOSEN as in made a choice, to opt out of your family Christmas (and I admit that when nuerodiverse dc were small I opted in to work on some days, to get a bit of a break)

Why is he doing this?

Is it hard for him? Is there some emotional challenge (like did his Dad die on Christmas day when he was 4?) Is it difficult for him to be around excited children? None of these are reasons why he should be separate in his office, but they may add context.

How has he been in others years?

And why are you accepting this? Why are you not calling him out of his office?

Is there any backstory OP? Has he got form for doing this type of thing before? Totally unacceptable, on Christmas Day of all days. I smell BS and this is some very crap excuse to swerve involvement in family life.

Sorry you and your kids have had to put up with this OP, I’d be tempted to show him the door.

There isn't a single job in the world that requires one single person to be working without a break from 5am-9pm on Christmas day. He's not that important that others couldn't have done a few hours in an emergency.

Anyone thinking this is someone simply working is pretty daft.

I would go in there - its Xmas day - of
course he can speak to you

You think it’s possible that OP’s husband has been working remotely as a police dispatcher in their home office since 5am? Now THAT is pretty daft and made me laugh.
You seem gullible.

If I was Mrs Starmer I’d still be unplugging the bloody wifi router! But yes, definitely more of an excuse.

This is awful behaviour OP! I would be livid! Is he avoiding the family?

I’m a workaholic as I’m avoidant and it’s environment I have my confidence in. I wouldn’t dream of working Christmas Day without a specific “I desperately need to do X, because of Y. I will be doing Z with colleagues A&B and finish latest by Cpm”

He either needs to explain what he’s doing or what he’s avoiding. Unless it’s official secrets act stuff preventing atrocities, there’s a 99.99999% chance he isn’t as essential as he likes to think.

I’m a very, very reasonable creature. I hardly ever throw my toys out of the pram or even get irritable or snappy but I would have lost my shit way before now.

And that would be without being left with four foster children.

The first time he told me to not disturb him when I went to speak to him on Christmas Day - basically saying he has such little respect he can’t set aside 5 minutes to explain to you what is happening and why - I’d have turned the internet off and hidden the router until he deigned to tell me what the bloody hell was going on (or would’ve calmly told him that I’d packed a case for him and when he was done working he should go and sleep in the office).

I used to work a senior job in retail, specifically ecommerce and there was not one xmas day in 10 years where I had to spend more than an hour in total online. The only circumstances that would have taken me out for longer would have been major outage/cyber attack.
Does he work in tech/for a Big 4 System Integration/Support service?

He's in there hiding op.

How long have the dc been placed with you? He doesn't seem interested, this isn't normal behaviour.

How is he finding the fostering? Is he fully on board?

He’s checked out of family life.

I have no idea what his job is and nor do you, but I do know it’s entirely possible for someone in a computer-based job to have got up at 5am and had a long/busy day at work, Christmas Day or no.

Affair.

@theodozya the police officer on shift example is because they’re obviously people who have to work Christmas Day either on the streets / in an office 🙄 obviously OP would have mentioned if he was a remote working police dispatcher 😂 he clearly isn’t!

There’s not that many computer based jobs that require 16+ hour days on Christmas Day at all, it’s not daft to assume he isn’t in one of the 99% of regular computer based jobs!