Dear Queenie,
My husband's job was reduced from full-time to part-time during a restructuring. It was a financial blow, but after the initial panic we decided there might be an upside. He works mainly from home, so we thought the reduced hours would give us more flexibility as a family. Except nobody seems to have told his employer that part-time means part-time. His salary and official hours were reduced. His responsibilities apparently were not. Some days he works a few hours. Other days something "urgent" comes up and suddenly he's working most of the day. Meetings get scheduled outside his supposed hours. Emails need immediate responses. Projects have deadlines that seem suspiciously designed for someone working five days a week. Worst of all, he never really knows when he's finished. That means neither do we. I'll make plans based on him being available and then hear: "Something came up with work." Again. Because he works from home, I think his employer assumes he's always accessible. My husband says he has to be flexible because jobs aren't easy to come by and he doesn't want to seem difficult. I understand that. But I'm becoming resentful. Not really at him. At an employer that seems to have found an excellent arrangement: Pay for a part-time employee while retaining access to a full-time one. Queenie, when does being flexible at work become simply working for free? —Married to a Part-Time Full-Time Employee
Dear Married to a Part-Time Full-Time Employee,
There is a very useful word in employment. Hours. Employers generally understand it perfectly when calculating salaries. Curiously, some develop difficulty with the concept when allocating work. Your husband's situation illustrates why part-time arrangements can become problematic when the hours are reduced but the role isn't. If someone once had 40 hours to complete a workload and now has 20, something else has to shrink. The responsibilities. The number of projects. The expected availability. Or the amount that can reasonably be accomplished. You cannot simply halve the salary and leave everything else untouched. Well... apparently you can. Your husband is also caught in a very common trap. He wants to demonstrate that he's cooperative. So he responds to the email. Joins the meeting. Finishes the urgent task. Works an extra couple of hours. Each individual request seems small. But repeated often enough, "being flexible" quietly becomes the normal arrangement. And once an employer learns that someone is routinely available outside their contracted hours, those hours begin to look less like a favour and more like part of the service. Your husband needs to look at what is actually happening, not what his contract says is supposed to happen. For a few weeks, he should keep track of his real working hours. Not approximately. Actually record them. If his supposedly part-time position regularly requires near-full-time hours, he has information rather than a feeling. Then he needs a conversation with his supervisor. Not: "My wife says I'm working too much." Please leave yourself completely out of this. Instead: "I'm consistently unable to complete the current workload within my contracted hours. Can we review priorities and expectations?" That's a work conversation. His manager can then decide what genuinely needs to be done within the hours they're paying for. There is also something for you to consider. Working from home does not automatically make your husband available to the family either. If he's scheduled to work, he's working. The problem isn't that he sometimes cannot do something at home. The problem is that nobody, including him, seems to know when his working day begins and ends. That uncertainty is colonising the entire household. So yes, flexibility matters. Sometimes employees stay late. Sometimes part-time workers accommodate an unusual meeting. Sometimes families adjust. But flexibility should bend in both directions. If only one side is constantly bending, eventually something breaks. And your husband might want to remember: A part-time salary should purchase part-time labour. It should not come with complimentary access to the rest of his life. —Queenie
