To be enraged at my DH’s WFH laziness

[Plydrm]

I work in a very high pressure job and am the breadwinner (£55k) and DH works in a local government job at £36k and is based at home but does do the odd field visit.

I work from the office or ‘out and about’ most days but have the very odd day WFH.

I have compressed my working week and have a Wednesday off with our preschooler. This means the other weekdays I’m working long hours, plus a commute.

For the last 6 months or so I’ve noticed that if I message DH around lunch time I don’t hear from him until at least 3pm. I assumed he was busy dealing with meetings or out seeing clients.

I was WFH yesterday and was absolutely enraged to discover that he actually has a 2 hour nap every day (whilst on the clock).

Im frustrated by this for a number of reasons, including the fact that I don’t stop at work and rarely get a lunch break or any downtime at work. I also need to get dinner ready after work every night after being out the house 6am-5.30pm. He does do the odd laundry and keeps on top of the kitchen but other than this the housework waits until the weekend.

AIBU for being annoyed by this?

Start making him do more. He won't offer. He has more time than you. Let him use it wisely.

This! I’ve struggled to put into words how outrageous this is so borrowing this post!

It’s both that he’s cheating his work and that he’s cheating his family (well you) by putting his nap above getting things done. All whilst you’re compressing your hours to spend a day with little one, and doing various chores after work that he could be doing!

If he does need a power nap, 20-30 mins is absolutely sufficient- as a lunch break. But needing a nap every day is unusual for an adult who isn’t elderly.

Local govt isn’t civil service. It’s completely separate.

It’s not wfh or local govt or anything else that’s the problem though - it’s this individual man!

Get over yourself this is about a lazy arse not government workers

Is he up all night w@@@ing to p@@n?

wow absolutely out of order that you are out the house yet expected to do the bulk of chores and dinner! I WFH permanently and the bread winner currently whereas partner is a tradie but out all day. I will do the chores and the dinner because its fair and I have the time in the day to do it as well as my job. im fine with it this way (also means things get done my way 🤣)

I think the person who should be most enraged here is his employer. It's people like your DH who give those who wfh a bad name, those who have never done it think we all nip to the gym, walk the dog, do housework or even have a nap when we wfh. On my wfh days I have a little more time in the morning and evening with no travel to work to get a bit done and also prepare tea or a bit of housework during my lunch but otherwise my workload and whereabouts are monitored.

He needs to be asking his boss for enough work to fill his day. A 2hr nap while being paid for a days work? This is cheeky f**kery at its finest

Why isn't DH getting dinner ready when he's working from home so much and you're working compressed and long hours?

That would piss me off more than his nap. Who cares what he does at work as long as he pulls his weight around the house and the family properly?

I can't believe it. Men are no longer the main breadwinners but still behaving as if they are. Honestly.

You must be joking. Public sector is a job for life. They can't be sacked.

You’re NBU to be annoyed by the unequal split of chores - he needs to share in the dinner prep. But it sounds like the issue with his nap is just jealousy. If he can take a 2 hour nap every day and still get all his work done, why shouldn’t he? Plenty of jobs are based on deliverables rather than constant availability. I’m a freelance consultant on a high day rate, I charge for 8 hours a day but I don’t work all 8. Sometimes I too have a 3-hour nap. As long as I’m available at agreed times like meetings and deliver the project by the deadline nobody cares or is checking in on what I do with every hour of the day. Absolutely if you have the freedom and flexibility to take the piss out of work and get paid for napping, you should. We spend enough of our lives being fucked over by work as a system it’s fair game to claw back those little victories as far as I’m concerned. You’d never catch me working beyond my contracted hours either.

I don't think its normal to sleep for 2 hours in the middle of the day every day. What does he do on the weekend?

Your right to be annoyed that you are coming home to have to everything each night. Tell him you want the commuting hour to be spent on preparing food or cleaning up.

As for the 2 hour nap. Yeah black and white it is not good. But if he is actually doing all his work tasks needed in the time he spends, then I don't see much difference it makes to bosses than if he was sat there looking at the screen.

I work in private sector and wfh 4 times a week. 2 of those weeks I will often work lage because of deadlines, the other 2 I sometimes have not much to do in the day. This was no different when I worked in an office every day, we would waste those days chatting instead or making spreadsheets extra pretty to keep busy. My last office day 1 woman who is fantastic and achieves great results was saying she was bored and had nothing to do so spend around 2 hours on Facebook. We couldn't not have her as her who else would do her work to her standard. Others we were having around 20 min non work related chats. I actually worked on the next day to catch up as my role is different and I had deadlines that week. Others throughout the last year have had to before covid take themselves to work in a room alone to get work done due to the chat and distraction. I don't think there is much difference between your guy sleeping for the extra hour or the office staff gossiping or non productive time filling which I and others have done a lot of in the past (pretty spead sheets do look good though)

I voted YABU as you have apparently married a lazy bugger. Sorry OP, but he is taking the piss out of work (and being the very example of why local government jobs get bad press), taking the piss out of WFH (and being the very example of why WFH gets bad press), and using spare time to have a nap (and being the very example of why husbands get bad press). And you are putting up with it. Hopefully not for much longer.

He needs a list every day of stuff he needs to do.

I am enraged too, as behaviour like this will spell the end of working from home eventually. Companies are already creeping up the number of required days in the office and it’s because of examples like this.

35k a year is a decent wage I earn less then that not working from home and barely have time to pee

Do you ask for extra work if you have time to chat non work related matters in your working day at the office?

I sometimes have a longer lunch hour. My reasoning is I start early and generally work when unwell (if working from home). I know I do so much more work when doing WFH.
so maybe he is doing the same?
what you’re annoyed about is the responsibility of household chores and him not doing enough - you’re conflating the two.

exactly why WFH has a bad rep. He can blooming well prepare dinner at lunch instead of sleeping. Joke.

We have an agile working policy. As long as you get your work done your and targets met, you could elect to have a nap during the day. I’d not have an issue with this. Where I work (and it’s also local government), the days of being ‘on the clock’ are thankfully long gone. I manage a large team. They could be in the pub for all I know. I don’t care as they are all doing a great job and exceeding their targets.

The division of domestic duties in general is what’s wrong here, OP. Why are you cooking dinner every night if you don’t want to? Sod that.

Wooing a pigeon??

If so LTB

That is complete nonsense and not true.

Why's he not making dinner the nights you are in the office? I'm assuming he's finished early and already home so no commute.

This with knobs on.

I'm enraged on your behalf OP.

A former colleague told me they used to take a nap during work hours. I didn't care, because they got all their work done, and nobody above realised because they got things done according to targets set. Fair play to them.

£36k is a low salary for someone mid-career, given minimum wage now is around £23k a year.

Like him I am not the main breadwinner (for context I’m a woman) and wfh every day of the week. In comparison I work compressed hours 5 days in 4, I have a 16 month old who is in nursery on those days but who I look after on a Friday. My job is client based so I work non stop all day 8am-6pm, no breaks except for 20min dog walk. I also manage to find time to keep the whole house clean, do laundry and make all of the dinners every night.

It’s unfair in a lot of ways that I do everything, but your husband is the total other end of the spectrum to me.

Unless he has a sleep disorder overnight he should be doing lots of housework every single day with nothing for you to do in the evenings or weekends and doesn’t need to nap during the nap as a grown man.