to think this chap's partner needs to grow a bit of a backbone?

[OrmIrian]

Ops manager at work. Well-paid, responsible position. Has 3 youngish children and partner who is SAHP. But everytime she gets a cold or a headache, or has to deal with any kind of crisis no matter how tiny, he runs off home to sort it out for her.

Today she called him at just after 2pm because the car didn't start at school. They live 30 miles from work. She didn't want to call the RAC so he left work to go and sort it out. He didn't come back that day.

So everyone who works with him was left in the lurch, having to cover his responsibilties. AIBU to think that that sort of feebleness gives women a bad name, and that if you are being paid to do a job of work you shouldn't bugger off to rescue a perfectly capable adult from situations that any perfectly capable adult should be able to deal with? She needs to get a backbone, and so does he!

Feeble women drive me insane too! YANBU.

I suppose it depends on how "flexibly" you work in your organisation. Dh has been "working from home" on a number of occasions recently so he can take me to hospital appointments (no public transport) but for the next 2 weeks he will be working 16 hour days as he has lots of audits to carry out before Christmas. He puts in more hours than he takes thats for sure.

In my last job if I had a delivery and needed to be at home I would leave early but then it wasn't unusual to find me still in the office on a Friday evening at 9pm. Its give and take. I think most organisations are more successful if they take a flexible approach.

Christ how can he just bugger off home whenever he sees fit. Presumably because he is ops manager, can you imagine anyone in a lowly role (such as admin, stores, kitchen worker) being allowed to swan off home at a moment's notice because his SAHP has had a crisis. I know she may be at the end of her tether, but frankly she can't just call her husband and expect him to come home from work at the drop of a hat.

Ops Manager is expecting a lot of his colleagues. I presume it is the kind of work that cannot be just left until he comes back to work.

YANBU.

My DH will always come home early if the children or I really need him too but if I am just having a bad day, he wouldn't. He more than puts the hours in though.

I think also that there is a gender imbalance here. Imagine if ormirian's colleague was woman with a stay at home dad, is she went home a couple of times a week to 'help' something would have been said.

As others have pointed out, this man's career will be at risk if he continues to prioritise his lily-livered wife's pseudo-needs over his job. And it would be doing him a favour to hear that, as it would help him put his foot down to his wife (who needs to learn to stand on her own two feet).

OP - if you want to deal with this, it helps to remember the issue at stake is a work one, not domestic.

Although domestic stuff makes for better mumsnet, of course.

When we lived in the middle of nowhere we were walking the 2 miles home (again) I had ds1&2 with me and newish ds3 was in the pram, the heel on my boot broke it was chucking it down and I just started to cry I rang dh who was delivering plant machinery who was nowhere near me and he couldnt get to me-he rang his boss and said Im delivering nothing else i have to go my wife is upset and shes stranded in this rain......within minutes the boss had picked me up,drove us home then drove to relieve dh who drove the bosses car back to our house and the boss came round later with some flowers for me and said he had no idea id been struggling like this and that either dh or someone else would drive us home after school and he did .

My dh repaid the man with absolute loyalty and would always do anything that needed doingincluding favours for his bosses family.

jollyold - I should hope he did! That is the kind of thing my manager would do too. But part of the problem is that this chap doesn't do give and take - which is why it's particularly hard to accept.

I'm surprised at some of the responses. I'm obviously used to working in very different types of organisations. My boss was always sodding off home to sort out problems, I never asked him what the problems were as it wasn't my concern.

I even allowed my assistant the odd afternoon off to get her hair and nails done when she was out for the evening. As when she wasn't out she would often be in the office with me on a Friday night working, she also went on loads of business trips which involved late night working.

lol at lily-livered wife's pseudo needs

dolls - I have a sick DS atm. He's at home in bed and I pop back at lunch time to see him (he's 12 btw!). So I am taking a longer lunch hour but as I don't usually take a lunch break and always stay late it's fine. And for a few weeks I left work early one day a week to take my DC to visit my dad in hosptial and took a day as compassionate leave. But that was a one-off not a constant stream of late starts and early going-homes. As I said give and take. But there comes a point when it's all take.

dollshouse - there is a big difference to being allowed hom early to get a manicure (planned non-holiday absence is common where I work as well - we all work long hours and although there is not an official time off in lieu policy, there is an informal one), however Orm's colleague has left them in the lurch and is unforeseen absence.

Ops Man being martyr. If he wasn't he wouldn't be giving you all the background info to illustrate what a very good chap he is for dashing off to his wife, he'd just be getting on with it.

Have you met her? I bet she's perfectly capable.

yes, perhaps she is perfectly competent and ops man is just buggering off down the bookies/another woman/off for a kip.

D'you reckon?

Now I'm worried for her! The bastard

I did meet her once wing. She seemed OK to me.

My Dh used to have someone at his work like that - they had their 1st baby about a year before we had ours.

I had PND after DD1 was born, but was still commended once on coping with the day to day things so much better than A's wife had done....she was still phoning up 4-5 times a day for help when the child was about to start school.

My main query is, if YOU were to need to leave work for a similar reason, would that be tolerated?

There are some workplaces where there is a culture of "being able to take time off/leave early for domestic things" and some places where it isn't acceptable. Anywhere I've worked its not been acceptable (in the alst place there was a fair bit of management bullying for any sick days at all never mind sick children or cars not starting)..

If it would be consistant for everyone to behave like him, well, thats just the culture in the place...if however you wouldn't be allowed to behave like that, then it needs looked into by management.

He is a skiver I bet. The amount of things going on. I used to work with someone who buggered off for no apparent reason, someone noticed that a loo cubicle was locked for an age and looked over the top - there he was akip on the loo!

Also, where I work now, there was another bloke who used to go on the missing list. Everyone thought he must be around the (huge massive) site because his bike was there. Little did they know that he had a second bike secreted somewhere and he used to sod off home for a couple of hours per day.

Playstations have also been found rigged up to work projectors in offices on the shop floor. Also a bottle of chardonnay (I pissed myself that it was chardonnay of all things) in a cistern in the gents.

This place is a hotbed for really imaginative skiving. Orm - you're Bristol based aren't you, perhaps your ops bloke used to work here!

Maybe getorf, maybe!

This place is great for allowing flexibility for domestic crises. But that's the problem TBH. If people take the piss royally as I think he is doing, that may well change.

You really don't know the full story of their situation. yabu

Riven, depends if there are deadlines, though, which won't wait for absent colleague to return. Then the other colleagues will have to pick up the slack.
Loads of people don't have set work hours and some times of year are much busier than others.

I reckon this chap will be right at the front of the line (maybe not voluntarily) when a round of redundancies comes up...

I'm with Bonsoir Anna. She sounds like an utter wimp.

I find it really hard to respect women who can't cope with minor crises on their own.

riven - I work in IT. If something goes wrong it can lead to complete chaos if there is no-one there to fix it. And because we are a very small dept there only tends to be one or 2 people who can fix any one thing. That is why the company pay extra for someone to be on call out of hours 7 days a week - but they don't expect to have to need it in normal office hours!

Riven - I think that in most places you have got your own pieces of work to complete, if a colleague is off with deadlines, you will have to complete that work in addition to your own work.