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Well excuse me sirs and ma'ams if all I'd like is a little time with my husband!!
So my husband and I are in the same line of work but at different offices. The current situation has us two hours apart. Its ok that he took a job so far away. We talked about it and decided it was the best career move he could make. However, he was recently turned down for a job that would have put him much closer to me. I asked my supervisor what he would think if my husband applied for a job in my office. He said he has had problems with married people working together before and even though he didn't say the words the message was "No I would not hire your husband while you work here too" I am pretty sure the job my husband was just turned down for was not offered for the same reason. (That office and mine can end up working together often)
Needless to say I am more than frustrated because there is no reason we should not be able to work near each other which would mean we could see eachother more than once or twice a month. Even though it would be very difficult to keep away from a situation where I would be his supervisor if he worked in my office it is still very do-able. My biggest problem is that even though management says they care about family they most certainly are not following through with what they say. THey are more worried about how us working together would be an inconvenience to them. Not to mention that before we were married he had worked at the office that turned him down and they seemed to really enjoy having him work for them. GRRRR!!!
Re: Well excuse me sirs and ma'ams if all I'd like is a little time with my husband!!
Try to look at it from their point of view.
You made the decision to have your DH move 2 hours away for his job. You could have quit yours and moved closer to his current work. This is a decision you made, not your company.
You also mention there's a good possibility that there would be a reporting structure that would cause problems, as you'd be working together in similar capacities and you'd be his supervisor. That has all kinds of ramifications for a company, and they can't be expected to reconfigure their reporting structure just so you two can work closer together.
While I sympathize with your situation, there are times where you have to be the one to make the job decisions to help your work/life balance. Your company can't always be expected to do that for you.
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His career move to an office two hours from here was only supposed to be until this job he was just turned down for opened up. There is not a good reason why he was not offered the job. He is qualified. Worked there before with no problems (in a position lower) Is actually currently acting in a position above the one he was turned down for. The time apart was a short-term sacrifice. So no I didn't have to quit mine and move closer to him. (Plus I've been in my position longer than he has been in his)
A far as reporting structure- if he would have been oferred the job he applied for, supervision would not have been an issue. I was looking to my supervisor to have faith in his current employee and a potential future employee to keep things professional in a place where there is not a policy against a married couple working together so long as one is not supervising another. The supervisory issue could very easily be avoided.
WE have made the appropriate job decisions to help balance our work/llife. Its the "next step" in the plan that hasn't worked out. We need a little help from management and are not getting it. They are letting some previous drama/issue caused by some other couple affect their decision to help out two current and respsonsible employees. In the end it is going to cost them both of us and cost us giving up the place we want to live.
I don't think that's fair at all! My Husband and I work for the same Mortgage company in the same office (different suites). But there are 4 or 5 married couples at my office and the flow is great, in fact everyone works really well together. I mean we are adults we know to leave any personal business at the door, and our customers/borrowers and even investors that come in to the office actually comment on how well our office runs and how great the feeling is, they like that "family" feel in a business, we are constantly told it appeals to people, makes them want to trust us with their mortgages etc..
That is really frustrating to not get to spend time with your husband, I would be crushed! Trey is my best freind we do everything together. People always ask "don't you get sick of each other, you work together, you do ministry together" and so on and our answer is NO WAY! We enjoy each other, of course we can be apart and do our own thing and be fine, we just don't want to.
I would say try again with the boss, he'll never know until he gives it a go!
I totally understand your frustration & to some extent sympathize but I still don't see where it's their problem. While you two may be the exception, it can be very hard on the other employees when family members work together. For that reason many companies adopted anti-nepotism philosophies.
At this point you have to determine if you can live with the way things are or one of you needs to start looking for work at a different company. If you continue to address this issue with management you run the risk of being perceived as not caring about their business needs.
Entitled much? You sound like a spoiled brat in this post. No wonder they don't want to hire your husband. I can imagine that your behavior/talk about this issue in the office has contributed to the decision to NOT hire your husband.
Why should your supervisor have faith in a "potential future employee" that s/he has likely never met? Why do you expect management in your place of employment to be responsible for your work/life balance plan? And the last bolded sentence is killing me--"Oh, that mean management! They're making us not live where we want to!"
Time to start acting like a grown up instead of a petulant child.
Some people have "good reasons" that you're not privy to, not being an employee of that company or in a position to hire and fire anyone there. I know it's a shock, but it's true.
So they have a policy against one employee supervising another employee who is their spouse, that EXACT situation would come up in this case, and you want them to work around it so you guys can have more happy family time? Interesting.
Yeah, I'm in the "not your company's problem" camp. As in, it's not their responsibility to line up the dominoes so you can spend more quality time with your husband. You mention making all the decisions about your work/life balance, and then go on to explain how your whole "plan" depends on the management signing off on your "plan" wholesale - that's not how businesses work; they shouldn't have to (and are under no obligation to, no matter how trustworthy a person they haven't even hired may be) rearrange their own plans to make yours happen.
The crux of the matter is - you guys signed on to this "two hours apart" thing, and now you need to decide how important the quality time you seek really is to you. WITHOUT relying on company management to make something happen for you because just such aw-shucks faithful employees. If that means one or both of you looking elsewhere for a job, so be it - because lots and lots of people do *that* to get work/life balance instead of relying on their bosses to do it for them.
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They're allowed to. It's there company and their the ones who will have to bear the risk of it not working out all dreamy like you have it in your head. They can absolutely be "family focused" without having to be all about solving your personal needs over any risk to them.
It's their prerogative. They may even have a policy about it; many companies have that. If you company doesn't have a pattern of it already occurring and no concerns come up, unless your husband was the ONLY qualified person for the job, and YOU are the ONLY person qualified for your job, there's no compelling reason for the company to introduce the factor that they've already stated their against. Suck it up and get over it. We're not entitled to have it our way.
I feel you are coming off as a little immature and unprofessional here. I realize you may just be venting, but not employing spouses in the same office is extremely common policy, no matter what line of work you are in. At my office, they won't even employ RELATIVES (which I found out when my cousin applied there, for work in a different department. My employment meant she didn't even get an interview).
This is the norm and you should have already known this. Expecting your company to make an exception for you makes you sound entitled. One of you should find employment with a different organization, and move on from there.
I don't think this was the smartest thing you could have done. You aren't involved in the hiring process or anything related to why he didn't receive the position. A better approach would have been for you, or your husband, to ask directly about policy regarding hirings and marital status. And though it very well may not be a well defined policy, a direct query would have been easier to handle than your passive "What do you think...." approach that you used with your supervisor.
And if I knew my supervisor was involved in the actual interviewing / hiring process, I probably wouldn't have asked him.
Agree totally with this. One of the perceived issues of having couples or family members in the same office is the concern that one may try to advocate for or get involved in their partner's situation (job status, compensation, role clarity, etc) in ways that are inappropriate for one coworker to do for another coworker. If anything, you've already demonstrated that you're more involved with your husband IN the work place than you might be with any other qualified candidate. If you're already putting yourself in the position to have questions with management about your husband before he's even hired, they may be imagining all sorts of other questions down the line... "why didn't you promote him? why is he only getting this size raise? how come you've given Jane the opportunity instead of my husband?" etc. It's a slippery slope, and you're already teetering on the edge in that you have expectations of how your company should be treating your husband and he's not even employed there.
I think long-term you and your DH should find a different organization for one of you to work with.
I understand your frustration. But it is a valid and very frequent problem to have spouses working in the same environment when there would be a potential for oversight of one by the other. If they are true equals, that removes some of the potential issues.
Here is a standard policy that my employer has:
The company may employ members of the same family except in the following situations:
-
When one member of a family is responsible for making decisions in personnel
matters such as the hire, promotion, retention, or salary of another member
of the same family.
-
When one family member is responsible for supervising, directing, evaluating
or influencing the evaluation of the work of another member of the same
family.
-
When other situations may exist which place members of the same family
in circumstances of actual or reasonably foreseeable conflict between the
interests of the University and the interests of the family members.
Now if your company does not have a 100% clear policy on this, again, I understand your frustration. But now that you've heard it straight from your boss's mouth and you've experienced it firsthand with your DH not getting the position he wanted, I would have one of you start looking at positions with other companies for the long-term outlook and to be happy so you can live closer together again.