My wife refuses to take advantage of work from home and it’s so incredibly frustrating
My wife has a work ethic that borders on psychotic. That’s my wife in a nutshell. She’s completely remote and never takes advantage of it.
She never gives herself lunch breaks and she can never make herself available from 9-5 even if she’s doing nothing.
She could be sitting at her desk, twiddling her thumbs, staring at the screen, but refuses to walk away and log off for any amount of time because she has a work ethic that makes zero sense.
She makes a ton of money and has lots of downtime. Despite all the freedom she has I cannot count on her to do anything during the day.
The only thing that might get her to log off is if the house was on fire, but she’d be back online before the rubble stopped smoking.
Maybe it’s really stupid, but it’s frustrating because I make myself available. I also work from home part time and it’s never a problem for me if she asks me to run an errand or pick up some lunch.
Today im slammed and can’t break to eat anything. I asked her to please just run out and get me something since she’s literally doing nothing.
But of course she refuses because it’s on company time. I’ve tried to explain to her numerous times that they aren’t tracking every single thing she does and if they were they’d probably wonder why she spends hours a day with her email client open just moving the mouse back and forth.
It’s so arbitrary and stupid and I hate that she’s a workaholic to a fault.
Netizens’ comments
- Could it not be a work ethic thing, but a fear of getting caught? Anyway, at work, there are official lunch times. Doesn’t she get an official lunch break?
Personally I am with you. I WFH 3 days a week. Some days are slammed. Others I can fold laundry during down times. One of the best things about WFH, is that I get access to the pantry and fridge. So I can quickly get a yogurt or cereal or leftovers to eat. No need to get carry out. - I agree that this could be fear based rather than work ethic. My last job (pre-covid) was lax with wfh but every Friday was wfh days. On those slow days I would be so bored with nothing to do but I wouldn’t leave my laptop because I just KNEW that the moment I did someone would need something (they almost never did). And on the off chance that I would run an errand, I would take my laptop with me just in case.
- I’ve worked from home for 15 years. My employer has keystroke monitoring software that requires that I physically be sitting at my desk typing or moving my mouse at all times. If I don’t, I get counseled for excess “idle time”.