It’s no secret that the working landscape has changed over the past couple of decades. Nowadays, unemployment is increasing – not because folk are lazy, but because technology is rendering low-skilled employees redundant, with companies replacing them with technology that doesn’t need basic things like lunch breaks or employee benefits. Add to that the state of the global economy and the threat of things only getting worse as conflict and climate change rage on, and you can understand why businesses are reluctant to hire new employees too.

At the same time, though, the kind of jobs that we work (when we do get the chance to) are very different. More and more people are working from home, with remote working enabling a different kind of work-life balance. Oppressive commutes have been minimised for some, but with the trade-off of less social contact with colleagues and less team spirit as a result. It works for some, but for others its a nightmare.

Wherever you work from though, there’s no doubt that you work hard for the (often low) money you earn. However, some older generations see the rise in home working and equate that with slacking off. And while there are undoubtedly those who take advantage of remote positions, those people are in the minority – most likely the folk who would be slacking off in an office-based workplace too. In fact, the idea that home workers do nothing all day likely says more about the people who are accusing of such, than the remote worker themselves.

For the nephew in this story, the ‘slacking off’ attitude is just one of the problems he’s having with his uncle. The problem? The uncle is married to his landlord’s mom – and boy does he like to remind his nephew of that fact.

Read on to find out what happened here.

AITA when I run three companies and I feel my relative is lazy and uses having a forty-hour a week job and working out as an excuse to be lazy?

I work from home and run three small businesses by myself as a sole proprietor (blacksmith and carpentry, IT security firm, and content creation).

I log anywhere from 150 to 200 hours per thirty days per company (approximately eight hours a day each for the blacksmithing/carpentry and IT security firm, and two to four hours a day for the content creation, five days per week).

My uncle (just turned fifty) married the mother (late forties) of the home owner that we all live with.

We have one other roommate, and yet my uncle thinks it is his house because he married the owner’s mom.

Yikes. Let’s understand a little more about this weird family living situation.

The house is in his stepson’s name, and we split utilities three ways, since his wife is fighting for disability for medical issues – but I am the only one who cleans the 3,400 square foot, two floor house and its ten acres of land.

My uncle and and his wife have eleven dogs and nine cats, all who use the bathroom inside the house. I have one cat that is house trained, and who I financially care for.

His wife cleans up after the animals the best she can. I do the trash, the dishes, the counters, the entire upstairs half of the house which is carpeted, and the entirety of the back eight acres by myself.

I told my uncle that having a full time job (fifty to sixty hours a week) and going to the gym is no excuse to be lazy and not help clean up the house.

Let’s see how his uncle replied to this.

He said that him working a full time job is an excuse not to help around the property, and that it’s none of my business what happens on this property.

I asked him to shovel the end of the drive way of snow because it has a sharp decline and its dangerous. His wife got stuck and I had to dig her tires out so she didn’t slide into oncoming traffic.

Normally this would not be so bad to do, but I struggle to breathe in extreme cold or heat due to permanent lung damage (in 2015 I had 87% total organ failure due to hypoxia, both lungs failed completely and partially deflated, and I had a heart attack, all of which was caused by my body not acclimating correctly while hiking in the Rocky Mountains outside of Boulder, Colorado. I nearly died).

It was only 27 degrees F, but it felt like 7 degrees F ( for those not in the USA that is -3C but felt like -13C ), and I had to yell while talking because I had to force the air out of my lungs due to the pressure caused by permanent lung damage.

And that situation just caused things to get worse.

As a result, my uncle’s wife had a panic attack due to her PTSD from a prior abusive relationship. She called him because she was panicking, because I had to raise my voice to talk and give her directions to get her unstuck while I tried to clear the ice and snow away from her tires.

My uncle got upset with me and started yelling at me saying I do nothing but set in my room and “play on the internet” all day, and that this is his house and if I don’t like the way he lives then move.

So I finally snapped after three years and told him to either stop being so freaking lazy or find somewhere else to live, and that this house does not belong to him or his wife – that it is his step son’s house and he has no authority over anything here.

This is a message that both his wife and step son have told him several times too.

AITA?

There seems to be a fundamental lack of understanding – or a lack of willingness to understand – quite how hard this nephew works. He is putting in significantly more work, over longer days than his uncle, all whilst taking care of the home that neither of them actually own.

That’s not a good recipe for a happy life, nor good relationships amongst the housemates. The chores should be shared equally, not all put on one person because he works from home.

More than that though, the way the uncle is claiming authority in the home that he has no right to is completely unacceptable.

If you enjoyed this post, check out this story about a kind man who helped a friend pack up items to donate, then realized she wanted to take back her “payment.”

Let’s see what folks on Reddit made of this.

This person thought that the nephew was in the wrong.

While others wondered why he didn’t just move out.

Sure, he could just move out. But that is a little short sighted, because he runs a blacksmith and carpentry business from home – presumably amongst all those acres of land. It’s not going to be that easy for him to just relocate his business elsewhere (though obviously the IT and content creation could be done from anywhere).

And while living separately would undoubtedly help the situation, the real problem here is that only this nephew and the uncle’s disabled wife seem to be pulling their weight when it comes to the household chores. Sure, that isn’t really his problem, but if he moved out this would seemingly leave the wife with even more to struggle with, since her husband (and her son, by the sounds of it) show little interest in helping clean up after the animals or keep the house and land clean and tidy.

All of this really comes down to the uncle’s bad attitude. The idea that the nephew is just staying home and playing on his computer all day couldn’t be more wrong, and it’s rude of the uncle to suggest that fact. He is working hard, and being undermined at every turn – all whilst his uncle is playing landlord to a house that is not his own. He needs to check his attitude.