One thing workplaces often forget is that organization and efficiency aren’t synonymous.
A task can be extremely organized, but terribly inefficient. Or highly efficient, but woefully unorganized.
High organization with low efficiency leads to slow production. High efficiency with low organization leads to mistakes or work stoppages when one piece of the process is removed.
The key is balancing the two. This also applies to running a household.
A husband dealing with his wife’s high organizational skills but low efficiency turned to the “Am I The A**Hole” (AITAH) subReddit for feedback.
Similar to AITA, the AITAH subReddit allows posters to ask for advice and post about ending romantic relationships—both things that are banned on AITA. However there are no required voting acronyms—only suggested ones—and no official final judgment declared.
Dale1046 asked:
“AITAH for ’embarrassing’ my wife in front of our 12-year-old?”
The original poster (OP) explained:
“My wife (42, female) is generally great. One of her positive traits is that she is extremely well-organized.”
“She has all sorts of to-do lists, a meticulously managed calendar, etc… This is usually a good thing as she rarely forgets anything.”
“However, sometimes this leads to somewhat absurd results, as in this example.”
“The other day, my wife and I (41, male) are sitting on the couch watching TV. Our 12-year-old daughter comes in and says she needs a permission slip signed for a school trip the next week—which she has right in her hand, and I see she’s holding a pen as well.”
“My wife pauses the show we’re watching, gets up off the couch… and without her even saying anything, I know exactly what she’s doing. She’s heading to the kitchen to add ‘Permission slip for Katie’ to one of her lists of tasks.”
“I found this ridiculous, because these permission forms take 30 seconds… you fill out your kid’s name in the ‘I give permission for _____ to go to the museum,’ you sign it, and you’re done. Sometimes there is an extra question—such as a check-box for ‘Do you want to pay $5 for your kid to have a school-provided lunch’ or you can decline if you are packing a lunch for your kid.”
“So since Katie was sitting right there with a pen, I filled out the form, handed it back to her, she put it in her backpack, and my wife gets back and plops on the couch and says to Katie, ‘Did you need anything else?’ Katie says no and starts to walk away.”
“I say to my wife, ‘Where did you go just now?’ and my wife says, ‘To add Katie’s permission form to my to-do list.’ I say, ‘Well, you can cross it off because I did it while you were gone’.”
“And she looks at me dumbfounded, and Katie starts laughing hysterically.”
“I told my wife that I appreciated her organizational skills, but sometimes it’s just easier to take care of things in the moment… and this was one of those times.”
“Katie had the form ready. She had a pen. In the time it took my wife to add this task to her list, it was already done.”
“I said that the alternative was, at some point in the future, my wife was going to see this task on her list, yell for Katie, Katie would come running, my wife would tell her to go get the form, Katie would run back to her room to get the form out of her backpack, etc…”
“Why bother with all of that when we can just take care of it right there?”
“My wife agreed with my logic, but was pissed because she said I embarrassed her in front of Katie. I wasn’t trying to embarrass her.”
“If anything, she embarrassed herself by trotting off to another room to add an item to her to-do list that she could have completed in less time by just staying where she was.”
The OP later added:
“Unfortunately because the story was already getting long, I left out some details that may help address some questions raised.”
“First, I said that my wife is very organized and keeps a lot of lists. I did NOT say that she is the main organizer for our house, or anything like that.”
“The fact that she keeps a lot of lists and a calendar, etc… is for her. Not because Katie and I don’t know what’s up or where we’re supposed to be/what we’re supposed to be doing without her.”
“I don’t have to rely on my wife or her calendar to remind me about things. I pay all the bills, do the taxes/money stuff, just finished making the choices for open enrollment for next year (though I did get my wife’s buy in on the choices), etc., which I’m happy to do because my wife hates that stuff.”
“I take Katie to her sports practices, which are every Tuesday and Thursday night, and I don’t need a calendar to remind me, although I’m sure my wife has them on there.”
“If there WASN’T a practice on a given night, I would know, because I listen to the coach’s announcements as he’s dismissing the team every evening, and if they were skipping one for some reason, he’d say so, plus it would be in his weekly team email, which I read.”
“My wife does most of the grocery shopping; cooking is roughly evenly split; I do the dishes because she hates it; she does the laundry because I hate it; etc…”
“Second, the trip was the next week (not in a few weeks); it was the following Thursday. And my daughter is a chatty kid who talks about the stuff going on in her life all the time.”
“This trip would have been mentioned the Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday before at least three times a day. We weren’t going to forget—although (as I point out below) it wouldn’t have mattered even if we DID forget.”
“Third, my wife sleeps in every morning and I get up and make breakfast for Katie and me (my wife doesn’t eat breakfast), then Katie and I pack our lunches together (my wife likes to go out for lunch as a break in the day; I like to eat at my desk to get more done so I don’t have to stay as long), and then I take her to school as it’s sort of on the way to my job.”
“We leave around 7:15. My wife doesn’t need to be in until 9… sometimes she wakes up and says ‘bye’ as we’re going out the door, but more often than not we don’t even see her in the morning.”
“The field trip forms usually—as in this case—have a box to check for a school provided lunch (for $5) or bring your own. Katie is a picky eater who has packed the exact same lunch every day for three years. She ALWAYS chooses the brown-bag option. The form would have indicated if she needed to bring anything special for the trip (this has happened once in six years; in third grade she was asked to bring a poster board for some activity they were doing).”
“I read the form and it said nothing like that. If it had, I would have made a note of it. There are never any special drop-off/pick-up logistics because this school understands how disruptive it is to change people’s routines so they make sure all field trips are to places they can take the kids to and from within the hours of the normal school day.”
“Point being, Katie going on this field trip will have ZERO impact on our approach to the day. We will leave at the same time, with the same lunch packed. If Katie had simply forged my signature we’d have never been the wiser (not that I’m encouraging forgery) and it would have made no difference.”
“I know these things because I am an involved parent who knows how my daughter’s school works, what she does for lunch, etc. The trip didn’t need to be noted on my wife’s calendar because she wasn’t going to need to do anything.”
“If Katie had asked me to sign the form while my wife was in the bathroom, I probably wouldn’t even have mentioned it to my wife—not because I was hiding anything, but simply because it was a non-event in terms of any need for planning.”
“Again, it likely would have come up because my daughter would have mentioned it, but there was nothing we needed to do.”
“I am about 90% sure that if I had said, ‘Here Katie, just give me the form, I’ll just take care of it now’ while my wife was sitting there on the couch, she would have snatched the form from Katie’s hand and gone into the kitchen with it—either to stick in on a pile to do later (after adding it to her to-do list), or to read it immediately herself (she would have had to go to the kitchen because she would need her reading glasses to read it, and she doesn’t keep those in the living room where we were watching TV).”
“It’s just kinda how she is. And no, it’s not because I don’t know how to read, or because I gloss over details…”
“I do not know which of those two things would have happened, but I think there’s only a 10% chance I would have actually been able to complete the form if I had spoken up immediately.”
Some Redditors weighed in by using the AITA voting acronyms:
- NTA – Not The A**hole
- YTA – You’re The A**hole
- NAH – No A**holes Here
- ESH – Everyone Sucks Here
Redditors had mixed reactions to the OP’s situation (NTA, NAH, YTA).
“Sounds like she’s just caught in her routine. I don’t think you were trying to embarrass her. Maybe she felt embarrassed as she didn’t see the easy solution right in front of her. It’s really not a big deal and shouldn’t be cause for upset. NTA.” ~ TheFlashestAsh
“NTA, for what you did—signing the form, but it seems like you and Katie have some shared frustration over your wife’s need to organize sometimes making simple tasks more complicated than they need to be. So your way of doing it came off to your wife as you mocking her and you kind of both were.”
“You knew to wait until she left, then tell her when she got back. You were trying to make a point, but being laughed at by her daughter is what’s going to stick in her mind, not that her need for organization can sometimes be the least efficient way to do something.”
“Apologize for your tactics, then try having an adult conversation about how her inefficiency is frustrating to you and your daughter. If she won’t budge, just do stuff behind her back and just memorize the phrase, ‘Don’t worry about it, it’s already taken care of’.” ~ MohawMais
“I feel like people forget that NAH is an option. You didn’t mean to embarrass her and she’s entitled to her emotions. Sounds like a pretty low urgency situation, but it is a fun read! I think other people are right in mentioning OCD or ADHD with your wife’s behavior, though.”
“I’ve found that it makes things easier to understand when you have some sort of label, so maybe you can see why she was embarrassed, like it’s more to do with how intent she is on the list-making than this specific situation.”
“Especially ADHD can come with rejection sensitivity which, as a person who suffers with that, is an intense feeling. Maybe that’s why she seems to have overreacted.” ~ Avery-Attack
“YTA, not for signing the permission slip, but for asking your wife where she went when you already knew. The purpose was to call her out in front of your daughter.”
“You could have told her you signed the form after your daughter left. Or simply checked it off the to do list. But you chose to make her feel foolish and humiliated in front of your daughter. If you aren’t respecting your wife neither will your daughter.” ~ Evilsquirre1
“This was a valid conversation to have, but not in front of your daughter and not as a joke. You didn’t have to expose her so that your daughter could laugh in her face about it.”
“You could have asked her why she felt a need to put the task on a list instead of just completing the task right then instead of assuming she was just being silly and ridiculing her.”
“You wrote that she’s highly organized and that you benefit from those organizational skills, but you made fun of your wife for it. Your daughter now thinks her mother’s organizational skills are a joke to be laughed at. You did that. If you value your wife, you need to fix it. YTA.” ~ miyuki_m
The OP and his wife should try to find a balance between organization and efficiency.
But if they can’t, there will be future situations exactly like this.
Not laughing in his wife’s face next time will also make life easier for everyone.