In your analogy, it would be more like I'd contacted the housing association to force you to mow your driveway, denying you the time to properly manicure your lawn. I'm not gaining any improvement to my lawn in that case.
The claim is that, instead of you mowing your lawn, you get someone else to do it. What you gain is time, and reduced cognitive load.
It's kind of a childish thing to say about your manager since that is just how the cookie crumbles, but still a real exchange. Managers delegate certain tasks so they have time to focus on other tasks. Some managers delegate almost everything and leave you wondering if they do anything at all.
The person in the article feels their partner is also delegating to them and so they feel as though they have no executive function by the end of the day.
In regards to work though, that is just how some jobs are structured. You get paid to take certain load off of your 2IC or Manager or whoever.
Sure. Relevant to this discussion though, you also don't lose the time it takes to mow it yourself, and are now able to focus on other tasks. We aren't talking about the economics of the situation, it's about the impact of meanial tasks on time and mental capacity.
Perhaps a better example is when a manager delegates tasks, which is what the article is ultimately complaining about. No money changes hands. The manager gains time and room for focus on other tasks, by delegating menial focus sapping tasks to other people. I think the article is a bit silly, because that is the point of the separation of those roles, but they aren't ultimately wront about what is happening.
> the article is ultimately complaining about [when a manager delegates tasks]
I am sorry, but I re-read the article and still cannot understand why you believe this. The author gives three major examples:
1. Customer EFT: "sitting on hold with the company that manages my health flexible spending account"
2. Workplace EFT: "they see a need to be filled or have been asked or tasked with taking on more"
3. Household EFT: "Having a husband creates an extra seven hours a week of housework for women."
You seem to be interpreting the article as primarily about #2, Workplace EFT, and furthermore about one facet of workplace political dynamics, namely command hierarchy.
I'll allow that command hierarchies are nominally the principal aspect of a corporation, but one of the author's goals, I believe, is to shed light on the dynamics surrounding and running obliquely to that aspect. She takes pains to emphasize the gendered and allegedly random way "those tasks so often fall to the same group of people". The tasks about which the author complains are explicitly not those within one's job title and/or line of duty but, rather, the surreptitious assignment of service to which the employee did not explicitly consent when taking the job but now "feel they cannot turn down".
Long story short, I am a little blown away with your assertion that "the article is ultimately complaining about" something which is at the most tangential to the article's subject and possibly even--as in my interpretation--deliberately not being addressed.
In your analogy, it would be more like I'd contacted the housing association to force you to mow your driveway, denying you the time to properly manicure your lawn. I'm not gaining any improvement to my lawn in that case.