My Husband Got Laid Off, His Parents Came to the Rescue. I Seriously Wish They Hadn’t.

Good Job Photo illustration by Slate. Photo by Unsplash and Ljupco/Getty Images Plus. Good Job is Slate’s advice column on work. Have a workplace problem big or small? Send it to Laura Helmuth and Doree Shafrir here. (It’s anonymous!) Dear Good Job, My husband, “Eric,” was having trouble finding a new job after getting laid off, so his parents offered him a position in their company. I had reservations about him taking it, as my in-laws are manipulative control freaks, but we have a toddler, live in a high-cost area, and were desperate. It’s not working out, to put it mildly. My father-in-law has my husband effectively on-call 24 hours a day; it’s not uncommon for Eric to get a text from his dad when he’s at home demanding he come down and take care of something. When my mother-in-law gets angry with me or my husband for something completely unrelated to his job (such as us refusing her suggestions on how to parent our son), she threatens to fire him or withhold his pay. Eric has been searching for another job, but has had no luck, and we can’t survive on my salary alone. What can we do?—Stuck Dear Stuck, I had to avert my eyes from the cascade of HR violations in your letter, not the least of which is your mother-in-law threatening to withhold pay, which is HIGHLY illegal. Yikes yikes yikes! And depending on how Eric is getting paid, being on-call 24 hours a day and being told to come to work and take care of something, his parents could be on the hook for some major overtime pay. If he’s getting paid in cash or as a contractor, even bigger yikes. So Eric needs to be documenting everything—the requests/demands to come in outside of normal business hours, and the threats about getting fired or having pay withheld. I really hope he’ll never have to use it, but he’ll want to have it on hand regardless. And now to the question of what you can do. Eric must start treating his job search as a part-time job. He has to be networking with everyone he’s ever met, sending out resumes, reaching out to friends of friends, and just hustling to try to find something else. I would also start building up your emergency fund so that if Eric does have to leave the job unexpectedly or take a lower-paying job just to get out of this one, it’s a feasible option. Also, is there anything else you can do to try to make more money so that the two of you aren’t as yoked to this job? Finally, Eric needs to set boundaries with his parents, and this needs to come from him, not you. The most important one is to let them know that he’s only available during business hours. He needs to tell them this calmly and be prepared for pushback. Longstanding family dynamics aren’t going to change in a day, but it sounds like he needs to start standing up for himself. Please keep questions short (<150 words), and don’t submit the same question to multiple columns. We are unable to edit or remove questions after publication. Use pseudonyms to maintain anonymity. Your submission may be used in other Slate advice columns and may be edited for publication. Dear Good Job, I’m a 7th grade teacher and I’m catastrophically burnt out. I need to hang on through the end of my contract this spring, when I have an exit plan lined up. My problem is that in my personal life, I’m doing a couple of unavoidable things that introduce me to new people frequently. People politely ask what I do, and then they almost always say some variation of, “Wow I could never do that” or “Our schools are underfunded, but I vote blue!” All of this is meant to be polite or friendly and normal. But I can’t react politely anymore: I also can’t do this job! I also know they’re underfunded and that no party is offering solutions. How do I get out of this loop? I know strangers are always going to ask about work, and I can’t lie about it because these are people I will see again. But the next person who says that is gonna get a description of how I made multiple CPS calls for a student last year, and it wasn’t enough to protect her. Or how more than a few of my “at grade-level” students can’t read. Or how much A.I. misinformation my students are steeped in. Or how I’ve had two meetings with administration because I have kids who handed in no homework and got zeros, and their moms are furious at me, and admin doesn’t back me up. Or my students who are obsessed with the Tate brothers. It’s a nightmare. How do I keep it from spilling over onto strangers? —Get Me Out Dear Get Me Out, This sounds really, really hard. Your despair is just oozing through your letter, and I’m so glad to hear that you have an exit plan lined up. But as you point out, unloading on strangers who are making small talk is not ideal. So my first thought is that if you’re not already in therapy, I would strongly recommend finding a therapist who can help you deal with the trauma of your job, especially the CPS situation. If therapy is not in the cards right now, please reach out to a trusted friend or colleague who can be a support system for you. And then I’d like you to practice diplomatically moving on from these conversations. When someone asks what you do, your response is that you teach middle school. Then immediately pivot to the other person, and ask what they do. Keep it focused on them. You can use a version of this for any of the responses you’ve been getting. When someone says, “Wow I could never do that!”, you can just respond, “Yeah, it’s a lot. Anyway, how do you know [friend who introduced you]?” Keep the conversation moving and don’t dwell on talking about yourself. This isn’t the venue or the audience, and it’s just going to make you feel worse in the end. —Doree More Work Advice From Slate Here’s a new one for you. One of my employees has a hobby writing fan fiction for a certain TV show. She is open about this. It’s on her bio on our company website, for example, and she’ll mention it in team meetings if we’re talking about our weekends. Anyway I’ve always been curious about what she writes and so I started reading some of the fan fiction about this TV show just to get an understanding. Never miss new Slate Advice columns Get the latest from Prudie and our columnists in your inbox each weekday, plus special bonus letters on Saturdays. Advice Family Workplace Jobs