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?

Oh come off it of course you can unload and load the dishwasher and hang up the washing. You can do that in the time you would have chatted to colleagues at work. I empty my dishwasher while the kettle boils

Yep and they are often underpaid apart from maybe the ones at the very top earning big bucks .

OP are you coming back to comment on why you and your husband have such an unequal division of labour in your house such as you cooking all the dinners despite working longer hours/being in the house far less? Or was this thread just to stir up animosity against WFH/ local government staff?

If you’re actually looking for solutions start with at least telling your husband he needs to do far more in terms of things like cooking dinners.

Nobody seems to have mentioned the fact that OP is earning almost £20k more than her husband. That's a pretty serious perk. More than half his salary.

If her husband would rather earn significantly less but have an extra hour's free time every day I think that's a fair trade off. A lot of people would probs rather have an extra £20k than an hour.

Working time isn't for chores IMO. I'd be mightily pissed off if I worked like a trojan to get my work completed efficiently and free up an hour, only for my partner to tell me I need to do some housework.

The chores should be shared outside of work hours.

Agreed. And while we were on the topic, when I was much younger I worked in a private firm and I remember many of the men would arse about for half the day looking at cars online etc then call their wives and say they had to stay late to get their work done. I actually prefer working in an office and being around people but I hate the growth of the myth that everyone in offices is working hard

Why don’t you just get a cleaner ? Why so many people’s fighting over chores yet many of them waste loads on crap and spend all weekends cleaning

You can never ever get things 100 equal 100 percent of time

i thought exactly the same. Is the posted JR-M on yet another rant to get civil servant back in the office needlessly to prop up local businesses?

You need to be very clear in your communication. I bet you're good at talking to people with regard to your employment but not at speaking to your employers about what you need, including a lot more money and breaks. You deserve breaks. You deserve respect. Money is respect. Ask for it.

I suspect your overwork in the house and lack of breaks at your job and the laissez-faire of your husband is due to your less than stellar communication skills.

What is it that you want from him? I am reading the jealousy and completely understanding why you are jealous, but I don't understand what you want him to do. Here's the important part: if I don't get it, neither does he. Thick as a brick club here, you have to spell it out in small words for me. He seems to be the same.

I am not making a joke, you need to learn to improve your communication skills so you can ask for and receive what you want or need. Find a communications class and learn how to say what you want/need. Learn to be heard. If they can hear you they can probably see you.

If you learned how to communicate more effectively it would change your world and everything in it.

He needs to pick up a larger share of the household jobs if he's wfh AND doesn't have a full workload.

Why don’t you leave him a list of things that you need taken care of ?

Sleeping when you should be working is a form of theft. From your employer.
He should not be asleep for two hours during the day and think it is okay whilst WFH. If he has medical problems he should get them attended to.
It is why WFH gets stopped. Because people cannot be trusted to be actually working.
He is risking problems at work. He doesn’t know they aren’t monitoring him already. And that, you should be cross about.
Work can be boring but you do need to have the self discipline to apply yourself to the task. If you want to continue to be employed that is.
If there is some underlying reason he needs to share it with you and get support.

Some people are not suited to WFH. Some are. To WFH successfully you do need self discipline. You do need to be able to manage yourself. And get the job done without being ‘managed’. It may be your husband is not suited to WFH.

If he is having a full nights sleep and then needs another two hours in the day he needs to be medically checked out.

I was thinking the same.

Ffs

Absolutely this ⬆️

Then you might want to read the thread and see many examples of people explaining that this (potentially fictional) man is not representative of the many incredibly hard working and dedicated public sector workers

The one time I had a shirking person in my team my HR helped me manage him out very swiftly.

I work far harder in the public sector than I ever did in a similar role in the private sector

Sorry, I have only come back to read the comments now. I work for the public sector too, it’s not a bash the public sector job. I know for a fact there are staff in another department at my workplace who get paid the same as me but hardly have any work to do so I wouldn’t be surprised if they hardly done a stroke of work on their WFH days.

We had a conversation last night and I have asked him to make dinners. His cooking isn’t to my taste but I can’t complain about doing it all and not eat his dinners!

Our child is a terrible sleeper (linked to medical issues) and we are both frequently woken up by them in the night (2-3 times). I understand he is tired during the day but so am I. I just cope better than he does

It sounds like he does do odd chores while wfh. Putting a load on/sorting the dishwasher, and i dont think the wfh partner is responsible for chores.

I think the 2 things are different. I have friends that watch full films on their lunchbreak, or I go to the gym and start later after messaging to say I'm in - though I often work in the evening a little if needed to make up for this.

What time do they finish? If they can cook id be asking if they could do a 90 min nap and finish half hr earlier to get started on tea a few times a week.

At the end of the day, wfh doesnt mean youre responsible for all the chores.
Unless hes not doing stuff because he doesnt have time and is then taking a 2 hr nap lol

Oh goody, my taxes are paying someone to stay home and nap. Not that this is unusual for Government employees and their productivity isn't much better when they're awake.

It's a bit much not to mention about the terrible nights when mentioning his day time napping

I worked for four hours for free this afternoon and so did one of my colleagues, so you can comfort yourself with that fact

Yikes yes if there’s time for a kip then there’s time to cook dinner. Have you mentioned it to him?

No wonder we're on hold for ever while someone is asleep, disgusting he paid to work no to sleep