Just had a WhatsApp from my colleagues wife

[BlueMoone]

I work in a freelance creative industry (TV production) where I will be contracted on a project for a finite amount of time. My current role is 16 weeks and I'm 6 weeks in. I'm self employed and very very pleased to have the contract as sometimes I go a couple of months between contracts and have to budget to make the money stretch the whole year. Being self employed I don't get holiday pay or anything like that (just demonstrating how precious the work is to me.)

My role involves being paired with another freelance professional and the two of us work together in an edit suite reporting to senior members of staff but essentially it's just the two of us for the vast majority of the day.

This job was the first time I had met this guy, usually you work with people on the circuit but I hadn't come across him before. We get in great, he's 15 years older than me but seems young in his outlook and we have enjoyed chatting and having a laugh at work.

He told me about how he met his wife online and got her pregnant on their second date and now they're married and their child is about six months old. FWIW I live with my long term partner. He would sometimes tell me how his wife and he would argue but always in a jokey tone, he probably did share too much but not just about his relationship about loads of stuff - mostly just idle chat as we worked.

This evening I have received a WhatsApp from his wife (must have taken my number from his phone) telling me to stop calling him, he's a married man and he has a child and I need to back off and stay away from her husband. I had a missed call from him yesterday evening, called back assuming a work thing and he didn't pick up. Wasn't mentioned at work today I didn't think anything of it.

What do I reply? I don't want things to be awkward at work and don't want to put my job in jeopardy by giving the impression at work we are not being professional. We are doing a good job with good feedback. Should I message my colleague and tell him?

I'm waiting on the twist.

I wonder if its actually just all him, trying to discredit you because you're his competition. Do you know of anyone else who has worked with him in the past?

Another possibility is that it's one of his ex colleagues who is jealous he got the job, trying to mess it up for him.

Or as suggested prior, him, trying to make our his wife is nuts so he can hit on you at a later point (after making u feel you've both had to deal wih her bs so -fostering that closeness) Though OK that is a stretch.

So this couple has only been together for less than 1 1/2 years.
I don't think there is some sort of history repeating itself so there wouldn't be any reason for PM to be aware of similar scenarios.
He must have told PM there is an issue because the wife created such a drama when she took it upon herself to accuse this man of having some affair with OP. I would assume all communication come from her pretending to be him or explaining it is her to demonstrate she has full access and control over his WhatsApp Facebook etc accounts.
He may well be having an affair with someone and for some reason the wife concluded OP is that someone.

OP, you did very well to contact PM on this. You fid absolutely nothing wrong. It is this man's mess. He may or may not be cheating on his wife but that's between them.

The wife is a right nutcase to barge in like this and potentially destroy your career.
It will all be sorted on Monday. Keep all evidence, take screenshots of everything and keep a timeline of events. Tell them it's all professional and you do nit want anyone's outside life to impact your work in any way. You're there to do your job not get harassed and accused of stuff you gave nothing to do with and you do not accept any paranoia and obsessiveness in your work space. You are continuing with the project and if there is no guarantee of 100% professionalism then you'd appreciate a replacement partner to complete the work.

And don't feel sorry for this man or try to accommodate him in any way specific to this problem. After all, you don't know him and you don't need to know in a personal capacity. His problem.

Hopefully not but it would be a good idea to prepare for that @BlueMoone. A timeline of his call, your unanswered return call, the messages, what was said in the phone calls. You can have it with you in the meeting and hand it over if it seems appropriate.

Yes, agree that you should, if you haven't already, write a timeline of all the calls/ messages. Anyone looking will be able to see there was a missed call from him, then presumably you called back but no-one answered, then the batshit messages, then the FB friend request.

It sounds as though Mr&Mrs Batshit have been in touch with the PM already, because I can't see how else she'd be aware otherwise. It's a load of bollocks that someone's partner can make up something like this and it has an innocent person worried about their livelihood.

I am keeping everything possible crossed for your meeting tomorrow. I hope you find some respite today.

The fact that he has sent you a FB friend request has DONE YOU A MASSIVE FAVOUR!

You now have proof the weirdness is coming from him to you and not th eother way around. Use this in the meeting. It is the hinge this thing will turn on for you.

They might not have beaten OP to the punch – the PM could've contacted him in that hour after she emailed to find out what's been going on.

But what's more likely is when batshit crazy wife was going through his phone to get OP's number, she got the PM's too and messaged her bollocks about them at the same time. She was clearly going off on one.

It is nothing to do with GDPR, he is holding OPs phone number in a personal capacity, not a business one. There is no business relationship between them, they have been hired as freelancers by someone else. They have no contract between the 2 of them. GDPR does not apply here, ya'll batshit telling OP to report to the ICO FFS

Op the pm likely is overworked and wants this matter dealt with and over asap
as will the SP
i expect editor has already spoken to pm about you and tomorrow if it goes well
youll have him apologising for his wife and you’ll both move on
or more likely, he’s going to say he can’t work with you. And for ease and to not risk the ep, you’ll be moved into another edit.

decide what you’re going to tell other people too. How will you get ahead of the story.

stay calm when you speak to the pm. Ask around some telly friends about the company/PM if you don’t know what they’re normally like for dealing with issues so you’re a bit more prepared for tomorrow and not blindsided.

whatever happens though, there is a short memory in telly. It will all blow over.

I hope it all gets sorted quickly for you OP.

What’s weird is that the boss has been contacted. How in god’s name would the man’s wife have contact deets for the producer of a show where he was just on contract. Makes no sense 🫤

(spent years working in TV and film)

Also unsure what the relevance of the pregnant second date information is.

How in god’s name would the man’s wife have contact deets for the producer of a show where he was just on contract.

Presumably she could just look on his phone 🤷🏻‍♀️

I hope this gets sorted OP, I somehow think your colleague is making things worse. Sorry you are going through this.

i expect editor has already spoken to pm about you and tomorrow if it goes well
youll have him apologising for his wife and you’ll both move on
or more likely, he’s going to say he can’t work with you. And for ease and to not risk the ep, you’ll be moved into another edit.

If this is the case, please make it clear that it is not you needing to be moved, it is him. Because of his personal situation, he is difficult to work with and cannot work with women. The issue is him being difficult, not you. You shouldn't get a reputation for being difficult to work with when it is him (by proxy of his wife being batshit)

It explains a lot about why she's insecure in their relationship.

How so? Genuine question. Why does getting pregnant and married make a person insecure?

But she wouldn’t know who it was. It doesn’t make sense.

Why wouldn’t she know who it is? He’ll either no doubt have told her, or she’s so suspicious she looks for any new names added to his phone.

Where does it say the boss has been contacted by the wife?

Even if she had presumably she could have got the number from the man's phone or she may already have the number if the man has worked with the boss in the past or it may be publically available.

How can you not think of a way she might have the number but somehow you know that contact has been made?

Why? My DH has two separate jobs and for one of them I am his Admin and so I have access to his contacts and diary. The other role he mentions the people he works with in passing and I can easily fnd contact details for them.
It's not really so hard to understand why his wife knows who he works with how to track down their contact details.

How so? Genuine question. Why does getting pregnant and married make a person insecure?

It's not about them getting pregnant and married. It's about them only getting married because she accidentally got pregnant very early on. They didn't, presumably, get married because they fell in love. They, presumably, did it because they felt it was the 'proper' thing to do, so I would assume her paranoia comes from a place of not knowing whether he'd have picked her long term, and her body, priorities etc changing from having the baby and whether or not he's committed enough for none of that to matter.

I think pregnancy and baby's have a massive impact on good, stable relationships so I can only imagine the impact it has getting pregnant on the second date.

Obviously, it's just as plausible that he's a massive flirt or cheat or whatever else, and that's the reason for her concern but either way I think it's fair to assume their relationship isn't healthy.

Hi, I'm a PM. Make sure you have a conversation with your PM (and possibly exec) tomorrow where you can calmly talk through everything that has happened. Once you've had the conversation you can follow up with an email outlining what was discussed. If you are comfortable sharing your Whatsapp chat then let them know it's available and can prove that the relationship was purely professional.

This is a horrible situation and it seems you have done nothing wrong. You don't know what's going on in the background - the editor may have form for being inappropriate; he may have had work affairs before which the wife knows about and she is now paranoid about his work relationships. Whatever is going on, the problem lies with their relationship and not with your work. Ridiculous as it sounds, I would be considering swapping people about, possibly pairing your editor with a male edit producer so there can't be any more accusations. But based on what you have said, you certainly wouldn't be blamed for any of this.

And that 10.77% is definitely holiday pay!

Presumably because you can never be sure that the only reason for marrying you was to do the right thing by the unplanned baby rather than out of love