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?

Read the post, he’s local not central government

I think you are conflating two things here OP.

My experience of LA workers at your DH pay level is they work their hours and that’s it generally. If you are compressed with a commute, the long days mean that he may well start early and finish as necessary, so a two hour break may be entirely with the agreement of his employer. Core hours typically allow for a two hour break anyway. So that may not be a work issue.

Separately, you are concerned about the split of home duties. Fine. Discuss this with him with a view to a fairer split. I don’t think you can be so controlling of his working days though to require him to do chores at the time of your choosing. Once they are split better with agreement, it’s on him to decide how he discharges them.

I think he needs to see the GP.

The point of working from home is not so you can do your chores!!!! It is little surprise that stats show companies are reversing their WFH policies when people are openly screwing over their employers by spending time taking a nap and doing the housework.

Also, I'd be calling a doctor if I needed a nap during the day (unless I was 8 months or 80).

Talk to the Spaniards about needing a nap in the day 😂

it’s quite normal for some cultures. Dh’s family are all nappers, an hour in the day is fairly normal for them. One dc prefers to have a quick nap after school, and do homework later at night.

having said that his hours need to allow for that. If he’s flexi they may do. But that also means he still has to do his share of the household chores.

What right do you have to police his working hours. Just because you have a higher wage doesn't give you authority over his working day.
Perhaps the nap makes him more productive (I also work better with a lunchtime nap). If his employers have an issue its up to them to pull him up.

Domestic chores are an aside and are not to be done in working hours (including lunch break). Let's face it, if he was in the office instead of home, he wouldn't be doing chores nap or no nap.

You are a complete mug and he knows it.

He is a selfish waster.
For you to come in after that long a day and have to turn around and make dinner and he is napping for two hours means he couldn't give a damn about you.

This is your life if you want to accept it.
I wouldn't want to be married to such a loser, but only you know how much bullshit you are prepared to accept.

ONE of them. As a LA social worker I regularly worked 50 hour weeks for no extra, answered emails and did visits out of hours etc eetc Because I cared about the folk I worked with.
But hey, let's just assume all public servant are lazy arses. Saves actually thinking 🤔

Exactly. But all the usual tropes are being sneeringly trotted out.

If pur jobs get done and one us can get away with a 2 hour nap why would the other be bothered

If he is not doing his job fine deal with that but this 2 hour nap how could he do that to me he has to do what I have decided is plain weird

Thank you! I work in an LA too. I WFH a lot of the week. I log in by 10am and often work till 10pm. I don't earn big money - quite similar to OPs husband. I don't claim overtime for all those extra hours, but I care! So do most of the amazing people I work with... yet we are often tarred with that same brush simply because we work for a public body.

Are you not worried about why a relatively young man is having to nap for two hours a day? Is he not sleeping at night? Not normal behaviour ( and certainly not indicative of council workers up and down the country who are generally overworked and underpaid.

Not unreasonable. You've been picking up the slack whilst he snoozes and giving work from home a bad name. Having said that, I don't think it's normal to need the extra 2 hours of sleep in the day. Is he not sleeping well at night? Got other health issues, or maybe even depressed? If your body is telling you you need a couple hours sleep in the middle of the day, surely there is something else going on? Maybe being lazy and being tired are too different things? Just room for thought.

It's just lazy sloppy thinking.

I know so many ferociously hard working public sector staff . Many who are very talented and very much work in local government because it's a vocation

Why does he need to nap for 2 hours a day? Has he got a health condition that makes him exceptionally tired?

When you say 'it waits for the weekend' re housework do you mean you BOTH do the housework together on weekends or you do it all on the weekend?

Lucky him. I work full time from home and barely get a lunch break, let alone time to prep dinner and clean my house etc.

I wouldn’t really care about the nap from a work perspective, I’m not his manager. I also don’t really subscribe to the view that every spare second needs to be spent on housework etc. However he should be meeting you halfway on chores as a default. That’s what you need to be talking about.

CF indeed, but I would actually be genuinely worried about my DH’s health if he was doing this. It isn’t normal for an adult (unless they have a condition of course) to need a two hour nap each day. Get him to contact the GP.

" It isn’t normal for an adult (unless they have a condition of course) to need a two hour nap each day."

I think it can just be a habit if he sleeps less at night.
There are whole countries that do it (or at least used to).

What, while I’m asleep?

I would run a little calculation- free time you have vs free time partner has. Time caring for a child on Wednesday is not ‘free’ time either. It is childcare. Don’t forget to add in his extra hr sleeping in the day too. I think you will be shocked. You need to move to a place of equal free time which I suspect will mean him picking up a hell of a lot. Unless you really need the
money, I’d be tempted to go down to a four-day normal week rather than compressed hours. That is really hard to carry on over a long period. Also, can he not also do compressed hrs to free up another day from nursery fees? Why should you be the only one working flat out? I’d be making some changes here. Yet another man on mumsnet happy to see his partner worked to the bone for his easy life.

I’m beginning to wonder if this is just another ‘slag off public sector workers’ thread. OP hasn’t engaged much, just lit the taper and gone.

I too,work 12 hour days. In fact my Soulbury contract with the LA states ‘and as many hours as the service demands’ - so no overtime, no refusing.
Often, in my large LA meeting/visits to schools are a two hour drive, in my own time, for a meeting at 8.45.( and of course the same distance home). No funding to stay overnight, mileage only paid from my registered office so much less than the money I spend on fuel, car maintenance etc.

Expectation is of meetings at night, OFSTED feedback sessions, governing board meetings, leading training.
As I said upthread, a laptop set centrally by the LA to show ‘away’ after three minutes.

But let’s just trot out the rubbish about all LA staff.

Taking regular 2 hour naps seems worrying. I think I’d be more annoyed if it was playing computer games.

Agreed. I don't know anyone in my team who doesn't do a stack of unpaid overtime. None of us just work our contracted hours and regularly when I email at evenings or weekends others are working too.
And thats with working effectively and efficiently and doing lots of prioritising. Which means less important things inevitably don't get progressed but some people I guess see those things not moving and think that means we aren't working

But thats not explaining why you do most of the housework?

Why are you putting up with this?