So sick of spouse WFH

[Anonymous]

PP above, most lunches were expensed. He was spoiled! The cost of groceries for lunch isn’t a big deal, but the difference in how many bags of food we need to buy and available refrigerator space is huge! We have a small fridge and can’t fit a week’s worth of food in it when DH is home and eating lunch. Nevermind the lunch pans and dishes. My DH has conditioned himself to believe that lunch= a delicious hot meal. He takes a long break between London/east coast work and west coast work and makes elaborate hot lunches. Then the meetings start again, always “unexpectedly” and just as he was “about to wash the dishes.”

Can you tell how much I love to end a long day by washing dishes before cooking dinner?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:PP above, most lunches were expensed. He was spoiled! The cost of groceries for lunch isn’t a big deal, but the difference in how many bags of food we need to buy and available refrigerator space is huge! We have a small fridge and can’t fit a week’s worth of food in it when DH is home and eating lunch. Nevermind the lunch pans and dishes. My DH has conditioned himself to believe that lunch= a delicious hot meal. He takes a long break between London/east coast work and west coast work and makes elaborate hot lunches. Then the meetings start again, always “unexpectedly” and just as he was “about to wash the dishes.”

Can you tell how much I love to end a long day by washing dishes before cooking dinner?

OMG. Shut that $hit down. Get a small tub and put them in there. Leave them for him to wash. There’s no way I’d be doing that.

[Anonymous]

My WFH DH is currently cleaning his laptop with one of those cans of compressed air. I asked if he could vacuum up and wipe the counter down after, and he goes “why? I’m cleaning my keyboard!”. He is 40 years old but he believes that all the disgusting dust and crumbs and skin flakes that he just pushed out of his laptop magically dissipated into the atmosphere?

Open. The. Offices.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:DH is still full time WFH. I’m in the office most days, WFH maybe 1x a week. I cannot wait till he has to go back into an office, for a variety of reasons, but mostly because I come home and he’s still working pretty much always and will shush us (me and DD) to tell us to be quiet and we gets so pissy at the smallest interruption. He has an office with a door that is not on our main level so it’s not like we can possibly be annoying him that much. I want my house back!!! Plus he’s alwayssssss here. I feel like a visitor in my own house. I’m beyond over it. It’s 6:30 on a Friday and we are waiting on him to decide what to do for dinner because I can’t ask him without him getting pissy. And he’s shushed our DD for basically existing. Dude we live here too.

And he claims to never want to go into the office again. Luckily it sounds like they are going to go hybrid in September. Can’t happen soon enough.

Anyone else feel this way? I don’t feel like I hear this perspective on WFH often.

1000% OP. But I’m actually home all day so it’s worse! I’m tired of the shushing (I have a 7 yo and a 3 yo, and I get texts all day “I’m on a call and I can hear Larla!!l ). I’m tired of constantly running out of food because filling the refrigerator only lasts 3 days. I’m tired of never being able to run the vacuum, or call the kids, or make a smoothie. I’m tired of the drive-by “suggestions” of what I should be doing any given moment of the day. Go.Back. To. Work!

[Anonymous]

Wow, so many a-hole DH’s. I’m guessing they don’t participate in family life much even when they’re off the clock. But hey, at least they make $$$ right?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I feel you. My DH is wfh in a small guest room on the main level of our very small house. This room also has our only extra closet where we store toilet paper, soap, the vacuum, etc. Not only can I hear his bellowing work voice in every room in the house, but to get anything extra that I might need for our house to function during the day, I need to wait for a break in his video calls or silently commando crawl under the on-camera part of the room.

He works with a west coast team and a London team, so my house feels occupied by his work from early in the morning until the kids’ bedtime except for a long lunch during which he prowls around and makes messes. I hate it. He’s going back 2x/week in the fall but he used to travel 80% and I’m going crazy. I just want one morning where I can do a quick noisy vacuum before I leave for work and come back to a clean house, or one evening alone when I can eat cheese and crackers and watch TV without feeling watched or having to listen to his pounding typing.

I won’t even mention the extra groceries every week for lunch, the abandoned breakfast dishes and coffee mugs that fill the counters, or the way he’s stolen every functioning pen in the house and disappeared them under the stack of random printouts coating his desk.

Is he the best winner?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Wtf. You are enabling this. You’re waiting for his input on what to cook for dinner and are scared to ask? Then don’t ask. Cut whatever you want, eat it, out away he leftovers, and when he comes out of his office, tell him you already ate, that you didn’t want to disturb him, and there are leftovers in the fridge.

Or you and dd go get takeout for yourselves or lead him to fend for himself.

Can you text him to find out what he wants for dinner? I can understand if he is on a call and can't respond when you are placing the takeout order.

[Anonymous]

This thread is cathartic!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Wow, so many a-hole DH’s. I’m guessing they don’t participate in family life much even when they’re off the clock. But hey, at least they make $$$ right?

OP here. In our case, this is not true. Here’s a great and helpful dad. Also we are equal bread winners, make nearly the same amount of money.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Wow, so many a-hole DH’s. I’m guessing they don’t participate in family life much even when they’re off the clock. But hey, at least they make $$$ right?

OP here. In our case, this is not true. Here’s a great and helpful dad. Also we are equal bread winners, make nearly the same amount of money.

Someone who can’t regulate himself enough to avoid shushing his daughter for simply existing in her home isn’t as great a dad as you think he is. That’s just beyond rude.

[Anonymous]

Divorce attorneys are making bank right now.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I feel you. My DH is wfh in a small guest room on the main level of our very small house. This room also has our only extra closet where we store toilet paper, soap, the vacuum, etc. Not only can I hear his bellowing work voice in every room in the house, but to get anything extra that I might need for our house to function during the day, I need to wait for a break in his video calls or silently commando crawl under the on-camera part of the room.

He works with a west coast team and a London team, so my house feels occupied by his work from early in the morning until the kids’ bedtime except for a long lunch during which he prowls around and makes messes. I hate it. He’s going back 2x/week in the fall but he used to travel 80% and I’m going crazy. I just want one morning where I can do a quick noisy vacuum before I leave for work and come back to a clean house, or one evening alone when I can eat cheese and crackers and watch TV without feeling watched or having to listen to his pounding typing.

I won’t even mention the extra groceries every week for lunch, the abandoned breakfast dishes and coffee mugs that fill the counters, or the way he’s stolen every functioning pen in the house and disappeared them under the stack of random printouts coating his desk.

Omg, this sounds horrible.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I feel you. My DH is wfh in a small guest room on the main level of our very small house. This room also has our only extra closet where we store toilet paper, soap, the vacuum, etc. Not only can I hear his bellowing work voice in every room in the house, but to get anything extra that I might need for our house to function during the day, I need to wait for a break in his video calls or silently commando crawl under the on-camera part of the room.

He works with a west coast team and a London team, so my house feels occupied by his work from early in the morning until the kids’ bedtime except for a long lunch during which he prowls around and makes messes. I hate it. He’s going back 2x/week in the fall but he used to travel 80% and I’m going crazy. I just want one morning where I can do a quick noisy vacuum before I leave for work and come back to a clean house, or one evening alone when I can eat cheese and crackers and watch TV without feeling watched or having to listen to his pounding typing.

I won’t even mention the extra groceries every week for lunch, the abandoned breakfast dishes and coffee mugs that fill the counters, or the way he’s stolen every functioning pen in the house and disappeared them under the stack of random printouts coating his desk.

Omg, this sounds horrible.

Seriously.

Women of this thread - liberate yourselves!

This isn't June 2020 when everything was shut down - it was one thing to deal with this stuff when there was no other choice. There is now a choice. I speculated that some employers would dangle permanent or expanded WFH in order to cheap out and pass the cost of office space and equipment on to their employees - and that's exactly what your spouse's employers are doing.

You all need to have a come to Jesus where you just say point blank that your house is not set up to be a place of employment and you're no longer going to be able to treat it that way since pandemic conditions have changed and then put it on your spouse to deal with that. Don't wait to use the cleaning supply closet or vacuum. Don't tiptoe around. Don't wash the lunch dishes. Don't pick up the abandoned coffee mugs. You're being asked to subsidize your husband's employer by hosting their employee in your home. Just refuse to do it anymore and stick to your guns.

[Anonymous]

I could never have married someone like this.

God bless.

[Anonymous]

I'm off for the summer but then in person in the fall. DH is wfh permanently. In some ways I like that's he's around for the everyday stuff. I had limited cell phone access at work, so it was nice to be able to communicate quickly on regular stuff like dinner or appointments. For summer I honestly miss the silence of the empty house. Kids at camp during the day but he's working. It feels a little weird whether I'm being lazy or productive around the house for him to always be there knowing what I'm doing. I deal with it but I miss my summer alone time.