Imagine working for your spouse. That could get complicated.

That’s exactly the situation in today’s story where a wife is mad at her husband for not taking her side, and a husband is mad at his wife for acting like she’s in charge.

Is anyone right?

Let’s see how the story plays out…

AITA For telling my wife she’s not the boss?

For starters my(M41) wife(F39) have been together 16 years.

When she met me I was at the height of my business and starting to go up from there, even during the pandemic my business is still booming.

I had my own house (that I lived in by myself), a couple cars and a cottage although that is unrelated.

I own my own factory refurbishing various re-engineered equipment, mostly HVAC stuff.

His wife took a break from working, but eventually she started working for her husband.

About 3 years after we got married she decided she had enough of working odd jobs and making not-so-great money at it so she expressed she wanted to be a SAHW.

I had no problem with this, we don’t have kids and don’t plan on having any so I saw this as a win-win as she got to stay home, and I came home to a nice house.

After 3 years of this she was tired of being a SAHW and wanted to rejoin the workforce.

Since she could really only find odd jobs I suggested she work at my shop. I pretty much created a job for her doing small admin stuff, nothing crazy as I used to do all this myself plus work on the floor but this took a load off my shoulders; obviously she got paid a healthy wage for her work and I hired a cleaner to come in once a week to help us clean and maintain the house.

His wife was more upset about an employee’s mistake than he was.

On to the problem: one of my workers accidentally ordered 20 of one part instead of 2.

This was a bit of a big deal as now instead of being out a few hundred dollars I’m now out thousands.

While I wasn’t royally mad this did put a large dent in my overhead so I had to offload these parts. Barely made my money back but that’s beside the point.

My wife however found out and absolutely BERATED this poor guy.

He thinks highly of the employee, but his wife wants to fire him.

I’ve had this guy work for me for over 10 years and his work is solid; he’s a hard working man, 2 kids, another on the way and he’s become my go-to guy for almost anything.

I didn’t hear any of the situation until I heard screaming from my wife that she was going to fire him and he cost her hours of re-work and budgeting etc…(this is simply not true as 2 phone calls and some editing on our books and everything would be right as rain, tops a 1 hour affair)

She and he finally filled me in and I told her to leave the room so I could talk to him.

He yelled at his wife to leave the room.

She refused.

I asked again and once again she refused.

I asked one more time and my worker was on the verge of tears and I yelled at her and told her, “You’re not the boss, I am. I make these decisions, now LEAVE”.

He wonders if he was wrong to yell at his wife.

I talked it over with him, we made amends as it was an honest mistake and he hasn’t had a screw-up like this since he started so I’m not concerned about it happening again.

My wife was livid and after yelling about his screw-up has refused to talk to me.

I’m clearly in the dog-house here but I refuse to think I did anything wrong as she was, in my opinion, being needlessly unreasonable and on a power trip.

AITA?

It seems like his wife was out of line for refusing to leave the room.

Let’s see how Reddit responded to this story…

This reader points out that working with family isn’t a good idea.

Another reader thinks his wife needs to work somewhere else.

This reader thinks they may end up getting divorced.

Here’s another vote for his wife being in the wrong.

Unlike in marriage, they are not equal partners at work.

The wife doesn’t seem to understand that.