She should leave the room to work.

mrsconn23

Dear Prudence,

My wife has a job that requires her to work on her laptop in the evenings, and she usually does this in front of the TV. The problem is that she insists on doing this in the dark. She says the glare on the TV screen bothers her. Except for a small desk lamp, our house is plunged into darkness. This is especially true in the winter when there’s no natural light. If our daughter or I want to do anything that requires seeing, we have to go to our bedrooms. I’ve told her how much this lack of light bothers me, but she “forgets” and switches the lights off. I turn them on, but the second she passes the switch, off they go again. She’s turned off the lights while our daughter was reading or drawing, forcing her to stop. I don’t want to move a TV into the bedroom, since I’m not looking to banish my wife from the rest of the house. I just feel like I’m living in a coal chute.

—It’s So Dark

banana468

Wife needs a home office space.  Figure out where that can be.

Then use your words.   

missJeanLouise

Why banish yourself and daughter instead of your wife? Just put a TV in the bedroom.

CharmedPam

I am this wife.  Dark dark dark.  H almost always needs lights on.

so naturally I’m going to side with wife.  😊 

mrsconn23

I will say that I am way more sensitive to light than DH.  I will sit in the dark far longer than he ever could.  He also gets on me when I try to show him something on my phone and I have the brightness turned way down. 

But seriously, this is ridiculous.  If she has to work every night and is taking up the common area of the home, that's some bullshit.  This would never fly with DH and me, we'd bicker about it until compromise and then it would become an inside joke.  LOL 

kerbohl

CharmedPam said:

I am this wife.  Dark dark dark.  H almost always needs lights on.

so naturally I’m going to side with wife.  😊 

Same ... except if I was the wife, I'd have my own office space because I would prefer that to people walking up and down and turning on the lights ever once and a while.
The only downside to my liking the dark is that my dog is black and often underfoot.  

charlotte989875

This isn’t hard; arrange a home office and get a TV in the bedroom. A few nights a week she goes in the other room, the other nights you do. I don’t think the wife is being fair by dictating the common house space for the spouse and the daughter, but surely there is a compromise here. 

climbingsingle

I think the wife is being really unfair here. They need to set up an office for her, or at least rotate where she does her work at night. 

levioosa

This is a common space and 2/3 people hate what’s going on. The wife is being selfish. 

short+sassy

I'm on Team Husband/Daughter.  It sounds like she doesn't even want the TV on.  She needs to have her own office space in the house, where she can keep the lighting whatever she wants, even if that is a space carved out for her in the master bedroom.

I get that she would like to still spend time with her family while she is working.  But it is cray-cray to expect them to be sitting in darkness with nothing to do, just so she can have everything her way. 

banana468

Yup.   You cannot be working AND with your family at the same time.   

And no one I know who has a WFH spouse thinks that the spouse should be working in common areas.   It's not functional to the rest of the house.   Get to a space and then let the rest of the household function as a HOUSEHOLD while you plug ahead.