A husband argues with his wife and complains that he is the sole breadwinner and works very hard. She suggests they switch roles, and he assumes it would be a piece of cake. But the consequences are not what he expected.
At some point, every hard-working person is taken for granted, and Alison was no exception. To her husband Henry, she was a wonderful housewife, who, unlike his 9-to-5 job, thought being a homemaker was easy.
Everything was going smoothly until Alison, a mother of four children in her tenth year of marriage, one day asked a tired Henry, who had just returned from a long workday, for help in the kitchen…
Henry threw his briefcase on the couch, loosened his tie, and sat down panting. He grabbed the remote and turned on the news when Alison called out to him. She couldn’t reach the can of flour on the shelf and needed his help to bring it down.
“Henry, honey, can you please come over here and get that thing for me? I can’t reach it.”
Henry heard Alison but pretended not to, turning the TV volume up instead.
“Honey, can you come here for a second? I need your help…” Alison called again, causing Henry to lose his temper and storm into the kitchen.
“Honey, I just got home. I worked all day… Can’t I rest for a bit? You’re at home all day and DO 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 had said. She began arguing, trying to defend that she wasn’t unemployed, but had spent ten years raising the children and keeping the house in order.
“I DO NOTHING? I have so much to do at home… I do all the housework, and how can you just say I do nothing?” Alison argued.
But Henry didn’t want to give up yet…
“Oh really? I’m the only breadwinner in the family. I work hard from morning till night. I come home tired. But you only take care of our kids, cook meals, and clean a little. You can rest in between, unlike me, who works hard and comes home tired, only to hear your annoying remarks: ‘Honey, bring this down… Honey, bring that down…’”
Alison disagreed. She was angry and offered to switch roles and see whose job was more complex and exhausting.
“Hah?! Are you kidding me? You can’t do my job, honey,” he bragged. “But I can do all your work. It’s a piece of cake for me. I’m working on a project. Will you manage?!”
Alison stood firm. She argued that she could handle Henry’s task without fail. After all, they had both studied the same subject at university, met there, and fallen in love.
Henry’s ego was hurt, so he decided to prove Alison wrong. He spoke to his boss and arranged for Alison to cover for him for a few days, assuming she wouldn’t last even one day in his place. Confident, he agreed to the role reversal and began the next day.
The next morning, Alison was about to leave for work when she smelled something that smelled like burnt garbage. “Yuck, what’s that weird 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 couldn’t hold back her laughter.
“Get out of my way. I need to send the kids to school,” Henry said, rushing out to avoid her mocking. He clumsily finished getting the kids ready, forgetting what color the tie and socks should be that they needed to wear that day. He forgot half of their books and gave them each 10 euros for lunch.
“Come on, have a nice lunch today. Daddy had a rough morning, kids!” he said shyly, leading them to the car.
“Can I help? I still have 15 minutes before I leave. I can make a nice breakfast,” Alison offered to help. But Henry, not wanting to show weakness, rejected her offer and left with the kids.
“No need. I can handle it. I just started, and I learn fast. I’ll beat you in this race. Just wait and see.”
Alison sighed and left for work, not imagining the chaos Henry would cause.
After dropping the kids off, Henry came home and started the laundry. He stuffed all the dirty laundry into the washing machine without separating whites from colors.
“Is this even hard work? Just throw the laundry in, add detergent, and voila! The washing machine will take care of everything. Now let me start on dinner. I’ll follow an online recipe, surprise my wife, and prove I’m a better cook than she is!”
Henry went into the kitchen and had no idea where to start. He left the tablet on the counter and watched different cooking videos. He had no clue what to cook since everything seemed so complicated. Finally, he decided to make steak tortillas for dinner and started.
“Almost done! Wooohooo! Almost done, baby!” he shouted, putting the last tortilla in the pan. Suddenly, he remembered he had left the washing machine running. He rushed to check the laundry and found that all his white shirts and vests were dyed in different colors.
“Oh no! I didn’t separate the whites from the colors. What should I do now?” he muttered. He shoved his colored clothes back into the washing machine and added some bleach, hoping it would fix the problem. He sighed in relief and then remembered he had forgotten the tortilla in the pan, sprinting back to the kitchen.
“Oh my God! Not again,” he gasped, running through the smoke and coughing. The tortilla was blackened, and the pan was in flames. He poured a cup of water on the stove and extinguished it. Turning around, he sighed in relief, only to be stared down by a sink overflowing with dirty dishes. But Henry didn’t give up. He wiped the flour off his apron and lay down on the couch to take a break.
He almost dozed off when it suddenly dawned on him that he needed to pick up the kids from school. “Oh no… The kids… I need to go,” he yelled and rushed to his car.
Henry drove as fast as he could, as he was already running late. Luckily, the school bell had just rung when Henry arrived. He rushed home with his kids. But one of them, who was holding his hand, refused to go inside.
“What’s wrong, Sadie?” he asked, turning around when he realized he had brought the wrong child. “Oh my God! Alison is going to kill me. Where’s Sadie? And why didn’t you tell me you’re not SADIE?”
“I was scared and thought you were our new driver,” said the girl named Amanda.
He rushed back to the school with his kids and found Sadie crying at the gate.
“Honey, I’m so sorry. I was in a hurry.”
Meanwhile, Amanda ran to her parents, who panicked, thinking she had disappeared or been kidnapped.
“I’m so sorry. I thought your daughter was mine. They look the same in their uniforms,” he apologized to her parents and fled with his kids to avoid any blame or criticism.
“Phew! It was just one day, and it was a LONG day,” he grumbled.
When Alison came home from work that day, she found Henry fast asleep on the couch. When she checked the kitchen, she was shocked by the mess and decided to have a friendly conversation with Henry.
“Honey, I’m home. Wake up…”
Henry stood up, stretched, and pretended he had spent an equally fantastic day at home. “Hey, honey… How was your day? I just love it. I can rest as well as you used to while I was busy at the office,” he teased.
“Listen, we can still make this work. I can help you. I see you still haven’t swept the floor. You also messed up the laundry,” Alison tried to convince him, but Henry refused.
“I told you, it’s so easy to walk in your shoes! I got this. You don’t have to worry!” he said, grabbing the broom.
Alison had no more words. When she came home in the following days, she found a new mess Henry had made in the kitchen or with the laundry. But on the fourth day of their challenge, she came home and saw something else that left her speechless and amazed.
“What the…?!”, she stared in shock. “This is unbelievable!” Alison could smell the delicious dinner that was perfectly arranged on the table. The kids were well-dressed. The rooms were spotless, and the curtains had been changed. Everything was just perfect and too good to be true.
“Honey, did you do all this? Oh, I’m so proud of you! You’re such a good housewife!” she exclaimed, going up to Henry to hug him. But he startled her with a bouquet of red roses.
“Sweetheart, you’re amazing. I’m so sorry I took advantage of you and your responsibility towards us. I couldn’t handle your tasks, so I hired a maid. She did all this, not me!”
Alison was speechless…
“I didn’t know it takes hard work, understanding, and experience to manage a household well. I give up, and you win!” he praised.
Alison kissed Henry and forgave him. She was happy he had realized his mistake and come to his senses. They hired the maid, and although Alison returned to her role as a housewife, the presence of the maid helped her find time for teaching and entertaining the children.
In the end, Henry happily returned to his work. He never complained again about being tired of his job and never argued when Alison needed his help around the house.
