The People Who Can’t Stop Calling Their Spouse’s Boss to Chew Them Out

Work

The Pissed-Off Spouses Who Try to Intervene in Their Partners’ Jobs

Don’t let your husband, wife, or parents get involved in your workplace drama.

June 15, 2026 10:00 AM

Photo illustration by Slate. Photo by ian dooley/Unsplash, Julian Hochgesang/Unsplash, and Musemind UX Agency/Unsplash.

Few people are as knee-deep in our work-related anxieties and sticky office politics as Alison Green, who has been fielding workplace questions for a decade now on her website Ask a Manager. In Direct Report , she spotlights themes from her inbox that help explain the modern workplace and how we could be navigating it better.

If you’ve ever listened to a friend or partner complain about their job and thought to yourself, I’d love to give their boss a piece of my mind , you’re in good company. Most people leave it at that, but there’s a small but persistent subset of people who actually do get involved, calling their spouse’s boss to demand a raise, emailing a manager about an unfair performance review, or otherwise inserting themselves into workplace issues that aren’t theirs to handle. If you think this is weird, it is. It’s also more common than you might expect, judging by the letters to my workplace advice column over the years.

I’ve continually been surprised by how many people I hear from who want to contact their loved ones’ managers (or already have) or who were on the receiving end of that kind of contact from an employee’s family. Sometimes, that contact is pretty malicious: In one case, which Slate covered in our Good Job column , an employee’s ex sent details about their adventurous sex life to their employer, trying, and succeeding, to get them fired (horrific). Most of the time, though, people’s spouses have their partner’s best interest in mind.

This person wanted to ask his wife’s boss to give her work that would make her happier:

My wife has been working at her current position for over five years in HR. However, she isn’t trained in this, and she has a master’s degree in an unrelated field that is actually the primary focus of the company. Because she is hardworking and competent, her boss refuses to see her as a fit for positions within the company that she is actually trained in. She has stated her desire to move into this other area, but so far it has been ignored.

As her husband, I want to see her happy, and she is not. She is incredibly intelligent and very gifted, and it bothers me greatly that she isn’t working in the arena that she is trained for. I would like to write a letter to her boss on her behalf, but I don’t want to jeopardize her job. Is this a bad idea?

Yes, it is a bad idea! It’s natural to want to see your spouse happy, but going around her to contact her boss directly will undermine her professionally and make it look as if she can’t advocate for herself. It’s also inappropriate enough to risk blowing up your wife’s reputation at her job.

This person felt that his wife was overworked and wanted not only to contact her manager but to go over her manager’s head to their boss:

Even as I write this at midnight, my wife has gone back to update some work because, at 4 p.m., her manager asked her to complete a piece of work, she finished it at 7 p.m., and she logged off and went downstairs. Then, when I went upstairs at 11 to go to bed, she checked her email—her manager had said it wasn’t what she had asked for and wanted it changed by 9 a.m. … She would kill me if I fought her battles, so I can’t do anything in the open, but I’ve been thinking about sending an anonymous email to the manager’s superiors explaining what a piece of work she is and how she’s effectively bullying my wife by setting unrealistic expectations.

Think that’s bad? This manager gave an employee a glowing performance review but mentioned that people had begun avoiding her because they were frustrated that she brought up her husband and children in every conversation, even entirely work-related ones. Guess who he heard from shortly afterward?

The next day, I received an angry email from her husband. He was upset about me insulting his wife and wanted me to apologize to her, as well as him and their children. He made references to freedom of speech and went on and on. It was a long email. I did not respond since he doesn’t work here and I felt his email was out of line. Now he won’t stop calling. I don’t answer when he does—I just let the call go to voicemail.

For her part, my employee says she agrees with her husband and doesn’t see anything wrong with what he is doing. She has continued to bring up her husband and children in every conversation. … Her husband won’t stop contacting me, even though he doesn’t work here and I’ve never met him.

And lest these accounts make you assume it’s only husbands interfering with their wives’ jobs, it’s wives too:

The wife of one of our employees called me to complain about how often our husband receives work calls after hours. He’s in a job where he’s on call some…