A husband argues with his wife and complains he is the only breadwinner who works very hard. She challenges him to reverse roles, and he accepts it, assuming it would be child’s play. But the consequences are not what he had imagined.
At some point, every hard-working person is always taken for granted, and Alison was no exception. She was a lovely housewife to her husband Henry, who thought being a ‘housewife’ was very easy, unlike his 9 to 5 job.
Everything was going smoothly until one day Alison, a mother of four kids in her 10th year of marriage, asked a tired Henry, who had just returned from an exhausting day at work, for help with something in the kitchen…
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Henry threw his briefcase on the couch, loosened his tie, and sat down, panting. He grabbed the TV remote and tuned into the news when Alison called out to him. She was unable to reach the tin of flour on the shelf and needed his help to bring it down.
“Henry, honey, can you please come here and get this thing down for me? I’m not able to reach it.”
Henry heard Alison but turned a deaf ear and increased the TV volume instead.
“Darling, can you come here for a second? I need your help…” Alison shouted again. At this point, Henry lost his cool and stormed into the kitchen.
“Honey, I’ve just come home. I’ve been working all day…Can I have a little peaceful rest? You are at home all day doing NOTHING. Look at me…I’m dead tired.”
On the fourth day of their challenge, Alison came home to see something else that left her speechless.
Alison was offended by what Henry said. She started arguing, trying to defend she was not jobless at home but had spent ten years raising their kids and keeping things orderly at home.
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“I do NOTHING? I am so busy at home…I do all the household work, and how could you just say that I do nothing?” Alison argued.
But Henry wouldn’t give up just yet…
“Oh really? I am the only breadwinner of the family. I work hard from morning till evening. I come home tired. But you only look after our kids, cook food, and do some cleaning. You get a lot of rest in between, unlike me, who works hard and comes home tired, only to listen to your annoying chants of ‘honey, bring this down…honey, bring that down…’”
Alison disagreed. She was fuming and offered Henry to swap roles and see whose work was more complex and exhausting.
“Huh?! Are you kidding me? You cannot do my work, honey,” he boasted. “But I can do all your work. It’s child’s play for me. I’m working on a project. Will you be able to do it?!”
Alison stood her ground. She argued that she could pull off Henry’s job without a flaw. After all, they had both pursued the same major in college, where they met and fell in love.
Henry felt his ego was hurt, so he decided to prove Alison wrong. He talked to his boss and arranged to place Alison as his substitute for a few days, assuming she wouldn’t be able to stand working in his shoes even for a day. Confident about winning, he agreed to switch roles, starting the following day.
For illustration purposes only | Source: Pexels
The next morning, Alison was getting ready to go to work when she smelled something like burning garbage. “Eeeew, what is that funky smell?”
She saw smoke in the kitchen and hurried to check, coughing. Henry was standing in front of the stove, staring at the burnt scrambled eggs stuck to the pan like charred popcorn. He had left the toaster on, and the toast was another disaster.
Alison could not control her laughter.
“Get out of my way. I have to send our kids to school,” said Henry, hurrying out to escape her taunts. He got his kids ready clumsily, forgetting what color tie and socks they had to wear for the day. He forgot to pack half their books and gave them $10 each to buy lunch.
