Anyone work with their spouse? pros/cons?

[AndreaDM]

My husband just started at the company I work at 2 weeks ago, I've been there almost 2.5 years. We are in different departments and have very little interaction (so far), so there haven't been any cons yet. It is weird to chat with him on Teams though lol. We also have different last names so not everyone realizes it (of course HR and our departments do). He is in the office full time for now and I go in 2 days a week and work remote the other 3. We carpooled last week so that was nice, and had lunch together one day, but that's nothing new because he was 100% remote the past 3 years.

My parents always worked together but they owned their own business so a somewhat different scenario.

Just wondered if anyone else was in the same situation and how it's working out? At least I'm getting a $500 referral bonus for recommending the job to him lol!

 

[easyas123]

I work with my husband.
But...I also work with both of my brothers, and one of my SIL's.
My husband only came to work with us a few years ago, and it's worked out. We try to limit a lot of shop talk at home, but in reality it can and does creep in on occasion, however we worked hard to draw a line in the sand so we can somewhat separate home & office.
Some days we see each other many times, other days we may go all day and not see each other! Some of our work overlaps, and each of us also has work - related things to do outside of the physical office.
Our only Con really is that several of us have our eggs in one basket, so if things go south it could end up badly for us. However, we've also been doing this for going on 30 years so we have figured out how to make it work for us. I think it's not a situation that can work for everyone.

 

[barkley]

biggest issue we had was when it came to promotional opportunities into management if it was worth it when it would require one of us to change divisions or at minimum offices b/c of hr regulations.

 

[1420Elexismc]

On the flip side...we have a couple that works together at my job. Different departments, but they have to interact a lot. I don't think it's great for them(or the rest of us lol) but I think that has more to do with their own personal dynamic than the fact that they work together.

 

[QueenIsabella]

Back in the day, DH and I worked together at the same facility of 500 or so employees. He's a mechanical engineer, I was electrical (turned SAHM), so we didn't interact. Sometimes we carpooled, sometimes we had lunch together--it would depend on our schedules, day to day. It was fine. Except for work softball games--the electrical softball team was much wimpier than the beefy mechanicals (there were 4 mech. departments). And then there was the time they pitted the groups against each other for a food drive that ended badly. Long story short, DH's team won (which I was fine with--hey, it was for charity, right?), but there was some sour grapes from the teams that lost out on the pizza party prize. I heard about it from the disgruntled losers, because DH "engineered" the winning method.

Aside from stuff like that, it wasn't an issue at all.

 

[kyton]

We own our own business so we are together pretty much all day every day. Lucky that he is my best friend and I adore him. It can be frosty if we are having a disagreement at home - it can come to work - and vice versa but we’ve been together for 34yrs, married for 19 and worked together for 14yrs so we find a way to move on and clear the air. Plus our business is SMALL - there is only us plus 1 yard man so no hiding anything LOL.

 

[tinkerbellandpeterpan]

My husband and I work together at a small family owned company (not our family that owns the company!). There are 12 employees in addition to the owner, his wife (very part time) and his son. Funny enough, of the 12 employees, there are 2 married couples, a set of twins, and a mother and son! We work in different roles but obviously we see each other a lot throughout the day and we take our breaks and eat lunch together. It works well for us, but I could see other couples driving each other crazy and I'm sure it would be a much different experience with different considerations if we worked for a large company.

DH has been an employee for about 5 or 6 years and I just recently started working there about 6 months ago. We talked about it at great length beforehand because I wanted to make sure he was comfortable with the idea and didn't feel like I was encroaching on his space. I don't work there on Wednesdays so we get a little break from each other during the week LOL. This is probably as close of a working environment we could have unless we owned a business together, but we actually really enjoy it and feel lucky this has worked out so well for us.

 

[mumto3girls]

DH and I own 2 small businesses together. We work together in both, but he is more active in one and I am more active in the other. We work out of the same office, but don’t keep the same hours, plus I am part time and he also has a lot of work that is out of the office and sometimes travels for weeks at a time.

The only downside is really the “all our eggs in one basket” issue someone else mentioned. We had a bit of a downturn a few years ago that might have been easier if we were not both experiencing it at the same time. The plus side is that I feel like we are a team at both home and work with him taking the lead in the business and me taking the lead at home. It’s also nice to talk about any issues we need to discuss that we don’t want/need the kids chiming in on at work. We don’t generally have others working with us. We do have people that do work for us, but no one is full time and mostly they work from home.

 

[bluezy]

My husband and I met at work. I had been with the company several years when he was hired. There were about 500 people at our location but we worked together on a new product team of 7 people. We started dating after he had been there about a year. I will say it was a bit challenging at times when we worked on that team together. He's an electrical/software engineer and I worked in sales. We reported to different supervisors who each had different ideas of what was important for the good of the team and were often conflicted....and put the 2 of us in the middle of everything. Because the product was new, I had to do a lot of troubleshooting with clients and my husband (live-in boyfriend at the time) was the engineer I usually had to call to walk me through things. His boss didn't want him spending so much time troubleshooting but my boss wanted to make sure we were keeping the customer very happy since this was a brand new product and there were kinks to work out. That whole situation got frustrating at times (I think it would have been better if our bosses were more aligned in their thinking). Then a job opened up in the Marketing Dept. and since I was tired of sales *and* I was tired of working with my boyfriend all day and then going home and being with him all evening, I applied for it. It was tough for us to leave work at work some days. I got the Marketing job and after that, our paths rarely crossed at work. We worked for the same company for a total of 5 years (I stopped working outside the home when I was 6 mos. pg with our first child). It worked out fine for us -- mostly because I transferred out of the division before things got too stressful.

ETA: The HUGE advantage to working for the same company is that I understand all of the politics/nuances of the company. That has come in very handy more times than I can count over the last 25 years since DH still works for that company. I think that knowledge has prevented countless arguments and hurt feelings. When he says, "I'm going to be late because so-and-so needs me to do blah, blah, blah", I get it. I know the people and the workings of the company and I know why he works late....and why he needs to drop what he's doing to fly across the country to smooth things out with a client. I would never understand it if I hadn't worked there, too.

 

[tvguy]

My wife and I worked together for 7 years after we got married. 3 of those years we worked the same shift and I was her supervisor. No such thing as HR in those days (1984-1987), but our bosses did go to the company owner to get approval for that to happen. It was the overnight shift (11pm to 7 am) and they were having trouble finding people in my wife's department to work those hours. It was a huge win for our company, other than when we went on vacation they had to cover 2 people instead of one. I think we were apart no more than a few hours each year during that time, and that was when we were doing each other's Christmas shopping. It was the best working situation either of us ever had in our entire careers. And now that we are retired, we are once again together 24/7/365 except for Christmas shopping.
We also worked together for 4 years before we got married.

 

[JLTraveling]

I'm divorced now, but my ex-H and I worked together in residential mental health. It worked out well, because there were different units, and sometimes we were on the same one and sometimes different ones. Usually they were nice enough to give us the same schedule though, since it was an hour from home and we shared a car. We worked really well together, and there was actually a benefit for the residents (teenagers) from seeing a married couple that functioned well. Most of them were from dysfunctional families, so we were super careful to leave any disagreements at home and present a united front at work. If he hadn't realized he was gay, we would still be together, and likely still working together. It was a lot of fun!

 

[ronandannette]

There has been a ton of nepotism in our company over the years and while I don't really know how it goes for all the couples, it's WAY PAST too much trouble for what it's worth to the company. It's always something, and it affects business in ways you'd never even think of. We got a new Vice President about a year ago and he's finally seen enough. He's just enacted a new policy prohibiting all future hires related to current employees AND banning romantic relationships between superiors and their subordinates. PTL - it's about time! Now if I was just allowed to fire one (or maybe both) of each pair I have to supervise...