There's a compromise here. It involves using your words.

Re: There's a compromise here. It involves using your words.

• STARMOON44 member

  

  January 2021

  If you take out the strong undercurrent of not caring about his job because you don’t think retail is important or interesting, I think this is easier to tackle. “Hey I feel like we are spending all of our evenings on job talk and I miss connecting out other things. Can we try and make pre-dinner job time and dinner + later for other stuff?”

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• banana468 member

  

  January 2021

  You need to use your words. 
  
  I have to prep DH, "I need to vent about work.  Give me 5 minutes please!" 
  
  He has no interest in hearing about work issues.  They're work.  But if I'm frustrated to the point I can't leave it here in my office I tell him.  

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• mrsconn23 member

  

  January 2021

  STARMOON44 said:

  If you take out the strong undercurrent of not caring about his job because you don’t think retail is important or interesting, I think this is easier to tackle. “Hey I feel like we are spending all of our evenings on job talk and I miss connecting out other things. Can we try and make pre-dinner job time and dinner + later for other stuff?”

  This is very true.  LW seems to feel BF took a job beneath him/them.  
  
  Retail put food on my table all through growing up.  I also learned a lot about people and the world by listening to my mom tell stories about the people she interacted with while making retail her career.  
  
  Also being in customer service my entire career, people are batshit sometimes and give you amazing stories to tell.  
   
  DH and I have both worked at our current jobs for awhile now, so we rarely talk about work unless there's something of note to talk about.  However if one of us got a new job, there would be a lot of work talk for the first few months as we were settling in to our new position/company.  
  
  LW needs a slight chill pill. 

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• ei34 member

  

  January 2021 edited January 2021

  Major props to the bf for getting a retail job when so many people I know who’ve lost their jobs this last year are just sitting around waiting for something “better than Target” to open up.
  
  

  Although I am going to accuse LW of a bit of snobbery here, work talk in general is boring to a lot of people.  H and I both know we have about 5 minutes to vent unless something crazy happened (by the time H’s company arrived at a bad house fire the entire family is deceased, I’ve lost students, etc.). 
  
  

  ETA- added quotes to the target phrase bc originally I feel it sounded like I thought there’s something better than retail, and I meant I know people who are currently unemployed and prefer that to working retail.  Cashiers and shelf stockers kept food on my table while I was working safely from home.

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• charlotte989875 member

  

  January 2021

  It’s all still new- give it a month and it will probably taper off. 

  
  

  The first few weeks H would not shut up about his new job. Cool, but I had nothing really to say about it but I let him talk it out. He has largely stopped now because it’s no longer new & exciting it’s just work. 

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• short+sassy member

  

  January 2021

  STARMOON44 said:

  If you take out the strong undercurrent of not caring about his job because you don’t think retail is important or interesting, I think this is easier to tackle. “Hey I feel like we are spending all of our evenings on job talk and I miss connecting out other things. Can we try and make pre-dinner job time and dinner + later for other stuff?”

  This!  And the LW can also secretly breathe a sigh of relief that it's primarily the newness of the job that is causing the long discussions and many stories.  It will peter down to normal levels in a relatively short period of time.
  
  I talk about work sometimes.  But not every day.  However, I am occasionally amused that my H shows more interest in some aspects than I do.  I work for an engineering company, but am not an engineer.  All day, I encounter words and phrases for things that I don't know what they look like and/or what they are.  But I don't need to know and am rarely interested enough to ask or look it up.
  
  For example, last week I was venting about having to do my Pipe Bridge steel package over because they had to use different beams.  After making the appropriate commiserating words, he enthusiastically asks me, "What's a pipe bridge!?"  Me, like a deer caught in headlights, "Umm.  I think it's a structure they build to hold major piping.  But I'm not totally sure."  He Googled it, lol.  At least I was (mostly) correct. 

  

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• kerbohl member

  

  January 2021

  When my mother worked at Tim Hortons, she would go on and on about her day.  My dad just listened.  He hated it - I worked at Tim Hortons, and even I found it boring - but he would listen.  Now that she's retired, my mom rattles on about the entire plot of movies she just watched.  He watched the movie with her and just quietly listens while she relays it to me without adding anything.  There are ways to find stuff interesting because it's your partner's life and it's important to them.  I think there is more behind LW not wanting to speak about the partner's job.  Are they upset that the boyfriend doesn't work in their field anymore?  Do they hate retail?  Are they stressed about something else?

  
  

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