Working from Home with Your Significant Other
I’ll let you in on a secret. My last article contained an easter egg. Every bullet point had a lyric from Metallica’s classic song Sad but True. I tried explaining that to a few folks, and I then realized that the Venn diagram of people who would read these articles vs. the people who would recognize Metallica lyrics has a very slim overlap. If you were in that sliver, congratulations on being one of my friends from college.
Speaking of Venn diagrams, the topic for today is not going to be for everyone. Raise your hand if you are currently working from home with your spouse, significant other, and/or friend with benefits. Keep your hand raised if you enjoy working from home, but you would enjoy it more if that other person started working outside of the house again. If your hand is still up, then this article is for you. If your hand isn’t up, read it anyway. You might get a chuckle out of it.
You’ve learned to co-exist with your significant other and interns at home during COVID. Sure, it was a tough adjustment at first, but you reached an understanding and now things are back to “pretty okay most of the time”. This article is not about how to keep those good feelings going. This article is going to give you some tips to convince your significant other to go back to the office and leave you alone in peace. It might feel like you’ll need a crowbar and dynamite to get them moving, but start slowly and work your way up to some of the more advanced topics. Remember, your goal is to get them out of the house, not out of your marriage. If you sense impending doom, apologize and start back up tomorrow.
Phase 1: You get more annoying
(Yes, I said more annoying). Remember that first month at home where everything you did ticked off your loved ones? Bring back those feelings of nostalgia. Wait, what’s the opposite of the happy kind of nostalgia? PTSD I guess? Here are a few thought starters:
- Heavy breathing. No equipment or prep time needed. If they can hear you breathing, then you’re doing something right. See if you can throw in a nose whistle every once in a while too.
- Start varying the temperature, fan speed, lighting intensity, and background music. Aim for subtle discomfort that they can’t quite identify.
- Eat smelly foods as a snack. I should clarify, foods that they think are smelly. You don’t want them enjoying and then stealing your bleu cheese nachos.
- Inopportune times to clip your toenails. If you hear them start presenting, bust out those nail clippers. Bonus points if you can get shrapnel to land in their work area.
- Solo burping contests. No explanation needed.
- Take the good chair back. I know you said you didn’t mind which chair each of you sat in a year ago, but you didn’t really mean it. Make the chair swap, and then either play dumb when they ask, or make it harder to swap back. Protect your throne.
- Share your thoughts after each conference call about topics and people they don’t know. They may smile and nod politely for the first three sessions, but by call #8 they’ll be faking phone calls to escape.
- Overlap, overlap, overlap. Disrupt their established routine. Schedule your video calls at the same time as theirs. Invest in a speakerphone option and say your headset smells funny when they suggest switching back. Be there for them in a terrible way.
- Accidentally walk by their video calls wearing less-than-work-appropriate attire. Don’t show any skin, but holey jeans and stained T-shirts will be enough to make your better half wonder about their options. As in, I wonder if there’s a way my boss never has to see that again…
- Use more of your internet bandwidth. I wonder which of your devices would be the quickest at downloading all of the Fast & Furious movies? Why not have a race during business hours to find out? Just make sure you don’t need the internet for a few hours first.
Phase 2: Make them want to go back to work
It shouldn’t take very long at this point to make their office seem like the better spot to be.
- Highlight what their office has going for it. Free coffee, no kids running around, other non-you adults to talk to, and restaurants to enjoy that don’t serve chicken nuggets.
- Use the Remember When’s. Remember when post it notes were plentiful and free? Remember when you could find a pen that wasn’t sticky? Remember when no one noticed when you went to the bathroom? The office starts sounding just a little bit better, doesn’t it?
- Break out the positive nostalgia. If you paid attention before, you can bring up a funny work story of theirs. Or remind them of employee happy hours that meant they’d get to go drinking while you stayed home with the interns.
- Make their future commute a little nicer. A clean car and pre-downloaded podcasts? Yes please.
- Help them envision what you would do with that portion of the house back. The kids would have a spot to study. You’d have a place for all of their crafting supplies. This option may end up costing you money in additional crafting supplies, so weigh the pros and cons.
- Casually mention that you read an article about how more and more people are enjoying being back in the office. They will think you are pondering the move yourself, so be sure to follow up your first statement with “Not me though. I’m enjoying being able to clean the house and wash a load of towels during the day”.
- Risky maneuver — you go to your office for a day and then describe how pleasant the experience was. This has a definite potential to backfire, so use this option wisely. You have to strike a balance between it being nice, but somehow not as beneficial as you staying home.
Phase 3 will then be not celebrating out loud when they announce their plan to go back to the office. You’ll have to make good on your spoken (and unspoken) promises, but you’ll get to enjoy the solitude. That is, the solitude in the Fall when the interns go back to school too. Don’t worry, that means you’ve got all summer to perfect your lighting schemes and toenail aiming. And watch all of the Fast & Furious movies again.
-Philip
