LOUIS BURKE | Culture | CONTACT
The workplace ombudsman and family court have both been called in this week as a local ‘work wife’ has filed for a ‘work divorce’ after finding out some weirdo she works with is calling her his ‘work wife’.
A favourite joke amongst people who aren’t funny, work wife or work husband are professionally affectionate terms for coworkers who work closely together which blur the line at being both professional and affectionate.
For Trish Hopstein, a bookkeeper at Betoota Flight Path Fabrications, she found out she was a work wife to her work husband Herbert Brandle when he started referring to her as such despite other people having ears capable of listening.
“He just said ‘there’s my work wife’ during a video chat,” stated Hopstein as she filled out a complicated series of paperwork.
“I asked him not to call me that and he just made various jokes about how he’s in the doghouse now, eating tuna straight from the can.”
Sensing the tension, the head of finance involved HR who arranged a couple’s counselling session for the married work couple, only one of which is OK with the whole arrangement.
It was at this point that Hopstein realised she would need to double down and begin making the formal arrangements for a work divorce citing irrevocable differences.
According to the recently estranged work wife, her desire to file for work divorce is due to a work marriage being about as comforting as a wet plastic bag as well as finding out there was another woman, Brandle’s work mistress, his secretary Chelsea.
