Hi There,
I [M26] have been working from home for 4 years now, my company does not have an office I can go into, previously this was fine as my wife [F26] worked an office full time, with occasional wfh days. In the past year she started a job that is heavily phone based, as a hybrid worker (at home 3 times a week). It was fine at the start as my workload was lower. I’ve been promoted since and have been really struggling to deal with the constant background noise of her being on the phone. It is probably worth mentioning I have ADHD and can be incredibly sensitive to sound, finding my focus easy to break.
I’ve been coming up with solutions to try and keep the noise down which just aren’t working and my final suggestion was panels, but she didn’t want to put up any acoustic panels in her office. None of the other solutions have worked. Our offices in our house share a wall and I can hear every single word she says, I can literally hear her right now through my noise cancelling headphones.
I really didn’t want to let it come to this but i have just suggested she goes into the office for an extra day a week, giving me an extra day to have of deep focus on my job and she told me I was being entirely unreasonable and selfish, not considering the impact an extra office day would have on her. It’s difficult because her job is minimum wage, mine is not. I earn a decent salary that could keep us both going, she does not. I don’t wanna boil it down to that but it’s simply the case that I can’t work this job (the job that pays the majority of our bills) in the current environment, so something needs to change.
Im really struggling here, because yes, the reasons are selfish in ways, I need to focus on work and she is causing that to be difficult. The way I see it is she has an office she can work in and i have nowhere else to go for work. I suggested getting an office space at one point but we both ended up agreeing that would just be a cost we’d rather spend on the house..
Anybody able to weigh in here? Am I being selfish requesting she works an extra day in the office?
TL;DR: I’m struggling with the noise levels form my wife’s job and it’s having a lot of impact on my work. I don’t have an office to work from but her company does, am I being unreasonable suggesting she goes into the office an extra day a week.