Are you obligated to subsidize your parents' lifestyle?

Every culture has different expectations around helping out your parents as you get older. In some cultures, there's no inherent obligation to help the people who raised you. In others, it's unthinkable to do anything less than your best to help out your parents. We all grow up with different families and different expectations within those, and it can be hard to square those with our own individual realities sometimes. And our own visions about what our own family should look like can change over time. You might grow up thinking a certain way, and then once you branch out on your own, you start to redefine your relationships to the people you're related to. Maybe once you're out there on your own, you realize how precious your independence is to you, and how you would do anything to keep it that way. But maybe your parents have a different idea. The sun and the story were facing that dilemma when his mom was going through a tough financial situation. She was accustomed to a certain kind of lifestyle which her current reality prohibited her from living. She wanted to keep things a certain way, and expected her son to help her out with that. 

If someone makes you aware that something bad is going to happen, you either correct it or follow your gut, but then accept your fate when it in fact happens.

If someone came and told you to your face that the wildlife you are befriending is damaging your house, and you decided not to care, then it's 100% YOUR FAULT that you didn't hear when you were told. Especially if this person not only told you once or twice, but a thousand times. They aren't responsible for the damage that you let happen, knowing the problems that it would cause in the long run. You are the one responsible for the damage that the creatures that you let into your house create. You are the human who opened the door to them. That is the topic of the story below.

Responsibility seems to be the main issue here. Who has to take care of the damage? The answer is actually quite easy to determine. The people who decided to let the animal in. The ones who also ignored the warning of what was going to happen. They need to pay. Nobody else. No matter how much lawyers get involved or how many trials they can get to, it will always be their fault, and so, their responsibility to fix. The daughter is just someone who did their best to warn them, and all for what? Just to get involved in a mess that they expect her money to fix.

Maybe someone sees this differently, or there is another side to this story. But to my understanding, there is nothing that proves that she should be the one wasting money. They were the ones making the decision to let wildlife into the house. I don't really get why they think it is better to take the matter to court instead of accepting that they were wrong and that they should have listened to their daughter. Ruin the family over something like this seems not only incredibly dumb, but also sad. Admit it, you were wrong. Let's end the matter for once and for all. 

Is a former colleague a reference that is as appropriate as a manager?

Switching jobs is often a challenging process on many levels, and even more so when somebody doesn't leave their previous employment on good terms.  Applying and interviewing are a chore no matter how high you get in a career, and usually, companies expect other people to vouch for your credibility as well. 

This means that the ideal conditions for leaving a job are a well-thought-out resignation and maintaining decent working relationships with former colleagues. Nobody wants to get as far as securing a shiny new position and then realizing that their former employer has taken the chance away because of what they have to say about their work ethic.

With all the stress that comes from job searching, it is easy to look at references as an afterthought, just a little something to allow a new workplace to double-check they are making a good decision. However, they are a necessity for many positions, and not being able to produce adequate proof of them can be a problem. Even if somebody aces the interviews and has a glowing resume, they also need to be a trustworthy hire.

 

 

 

Robotic behaviour is not the same as effective behavior

We thought we had to worry about robots becoming more like people, but it turns out we have to worry about people becoming more and more like robots. I will never understand how some people will literally avoid doing anything they weren't specifically told to do, even if that thing would potentially help somebody else and/or avoid a bigger issue.

At our workplaces, we have to be a little more careful about what we say, but that doesn't mean we should avoid getting involved in anything that's not specified in our contracts. This is precisely why we still need to hire people instead of robots; we can trust other humans to have the flexibility to see something is going wrong and step in, even if it's not their job.

This employee could've definitely stopped this issue sooner, but we all make mistakes, and I think he still has the chance to make amends. But do we really think HR should get their way, collect the extra money they wrongfully gave to this person, and leave it at that? Or should they also 'pay the price' somehow for what they did?

Sometimes we do our best, and it's still not enough

We're wired to believe more effort equals better performance, but sadly, it doesn't always work like that. Thankfully, we've got managers who look at us with kindness and think about rewarding our efforts, not only our performance.

This is an interesting moral debate for me. I don't like to imagine a world where our efforts are never taken into consideration. I think being a hard worker is a virtue in and of itself, and it is a virtue that can be valuable to a company. I'm glad there is someone in that company who believes in that as well.And before that, we need to be told that our efforts are not being fruitful; to me, the key is to always give people the chance to get better at something. Maybe this manager wasn't very efective in helping him, and that's why he always ends up doing his employee's work for him.

Evidently, the hard-working employee hasn't realized things aren't going well for him, or maybe he has, and that's why he is making such a big effort. In any case, this situation warrants an urgent conversation.

If every opportunity we got demanded our best output, and our best output only, there would never be any room for improvement; we need many failures before we succeed.

Are we responsible for other people's children?

The short answer is: no. Parents alone are responsible for their children, and that involves education, time, recreation, health and money. Yet, sometimes parents seem to forget that not everybody out there has children, and that no one but them is responsible for those kids, even if they are a bit older. The rest of the people around them can be a big help, especially with younger kids. But even when they do it gladly, they don't replace the parents, nor should they take responsibility for them. 

That can be a source of friction with people, especially between family. Since we're all related, the boundaries between what relatives do out of the goodness of their hearts and what the parents see as an obligation for them can be a bit blurry. Aunts and uncles might be expected to act as substitute parents, or accept their sibling's children as their own. While the bond between nieces and nephews and their aunts and uncles can be beautiful and very close, those aunts and uncles still have lives of their own, outside of those children that are not theirs. They can give gifts, watch them from time to time when their parents have their hands full, be there to support them, take them out, and such, but they are not the parents. They can offer to give as much as they want, but the parents should never expect their siblings to take charge of their kids.

A woman on r/AITH shared that her sister doesn't always understand boundaries. She had organized a weekend trip for both of them, plus two close friends, and split the cost of the stay between the four. On the day of the trip, the sister showed up with a fifth person, her sixteen-year-old daughter. The girl ate most of the food they had bought, and the women spent the whole trip revolving around the girl's schedule. Her mother never told any of them she was planning on bringing her, and just assumed it would be fine. Her sister disagreed and asked her to pay the equivalent for the girl's stay, since she was a fifth person not meant to be there in the first place. Now, the girl and her mother seem to be offended by the aunt and are telling people that "she only cares about money."

What do you think? Was it alright for the aunt to ask for the money for her niece's stay? 

Working hours have an end, which is fixed and cannot be changed just because some boss wants to exploit their employees.

Being an employee is really hard, especially if you have to put up with an annoying boss who takes pride in pushing you over your working hours, micromanaging you, and ignoring your complaints and recommendations. We can use a thousand tips to make the situation better, but the truth is, there is no out till you resign or you change bosses. So really, it isn't particularly in your power how your manager treats you. Of course you could always get the law involved as you are working extra hours for free, but it will most likely just categorize you as a difficult employee, which is worse.

So what can the person in this story do? Nothing? Well, she could try to do a quick checkup at 4:30 so she could leave on time, or maybe she could express the issues to human resources in the hope that they would fix it. But really, nothing guarantees that this toxic workspace will change into a good one, because the toxic part is just the boss. So she can only really hope that her manager lives or that she finds a new job where the environment is different.

There is actually no certain way to be sure that a workspace isn't toxic till you are a part of it. So what do other people do to know that they won't be miserable at their job? Accept their fate? Work remotely? Be your own boss? I'm actually curious how employees manage to know this information beforehand or how they fix the environment once they are already a part of the company. How can we change something like this? Is the toxic aspect really just the manager of this office? Do we just look forward to escalating the career ladder to avoid having bosses? I really don't know how to help this girl. It seems like she's deemed, and she just has to accept it or leave. 

Another story about influencers: of course, they are demanding something for free and throwing a tantrum over nothing.

If we mention influencers, you know that they will appear entitled and demanding something, as if it were their signature. If they complain, you know they are going to post about it on social media, or at least threaten to do so. Do businesses even benefit from them still? It seems as if they have created such a negative image that people are always feeling uncomfortable working with them. But the truth is, they still get work. Some companies trust them, and they do bring clients. But not these unknown local ones. These ones only make messes and scenes.

Should one uncomfortable wedding dinner erase a $5,000 debt that's been ignored for over a year?

Helping an unemployed partner pay rent seemed like the right thing to do, until the relationship ended and the promised repayment never came. Now, with a mutual friend's wedding forcing the exes to share a table, everyone is urging the lender to "be cool" and keep the peace, despite the unresolved $5,000 hanging over the celebration.

Sometimes I don't understand people's behavior. I don't know if it's the money side of it that puts people in weird attitudes since the topic is uncomfortable, or maybe it's that people don't know how to handle money situations. But this story surprised me because a person who owes another a lot of cash asked them to pretend nothing is happening.

I do understand that the OP loaned the money because the situation was tight and his ex needed help. I actually would've done the same thing if it were my boyfriend who needed some assistance. I like how they talked about it not being a gift, so the person was aware that he should give the money back once they were back on their feet. And they absolutely did, although the relationship was over by that time.

It doesn't matter how the bond you have with someone changes when there're money problems involved: the issue here is that they all have to be careful and be mindful when requesting a loan they won't pay back. And the worst part of all is that this person is living their best life, travelling and buying expensive things, knowing they owe their ex $5000. I just cannot cope with the fact that they cannot keep a promise.

Should a company be able to fire someone who hasn't even started to work there?

It is a risky job market out there, and it puts a lot of employees in a position where they don't want to leave a role unless they have something better lined up (or they really, really have to). If the workday is bearable and the salary makes ends meet, there is little tempting about searching for work in a landscape of increasing AI automation, hiring freezes, and ghost job postings.

Still, most would agree that there are times when it is appropriate to give notice, namely when you have signed a contract for a new position that offers you more money. Sometimes career progression can only happen when somebody has the confidence to job hop, and it is fairly normal practice for people to do that while they are still employed elsewhere.

This can be a vulnerable time, as leaving what you know and going on to something different always is. In a part of life that is as fickle as work, it can be even more nerve-wracking, because your livelihood depends on it. You want it to be a step up and not an unfortunate learning experience.

Should you have to express your thanks at every hour?

Gratitude is an important concept. If you don't remember what you're grateful for every now and again, then you might wonder what it's all for. It's a good practice to stop and take stock of all the things that are going right in your life. It's too often that we focus on the things that are going wrong, and we lose sight of the things that matter the most. This is a good practice to do in your personal and private life. It's definitely not something that your employer should mandate that you do. There's no quicker way to erase any feeling of gratitude than to be forced to express it. Especially if it's in a workplace where you feel like you're already being undervalued. This is the kind of gesture that bosses may think helps improve morale, but it actually kills it instantly. The employee in this story was learning that, and had a lot to say about it. Sometimes your employer makes a decision that you don't abide by. You have to take it and stride and pretend like you're enjoying it, or else face the consequences. But if you respect and trust the people that you work with, then it behooves you to speak up when you feel like something is going wrong. Feedback can go both ways. 

"Tree law" is no joke. 

I can't imagine anything worse to come home to after a relaxing vacation. Few things give me as deep a rage as the unjustified and unwarranted removal of a mature tree. It's almost as if you are removing time itself from the property. Plus, the plotting on the neighbor's part to do this when he knew the homeowner was away on vacation is just despicable. 

It's important to remember that, even if we "own" property, in some ways we are merely borrowing the property we "own." The land and even the house on it existed for far longer than we have even been alive. Many people have lived there and owned the land before us. It's a real delight to have mature trees on a property that stand as a representation of this. 

For those who share my sentiments, as I'm sure many of you do reading this, these trees serve as important cornerstones of any property. They serve as a point of pride, a reminder that our own time on the property is fleeting, and a cool bit of shade on hot summer days.

If your parents are doing something nice for your younger sister, it doesn't mean that they are doing something wrong to you for not doing the same thing.

Jealousy between siblings seems not to be something people outgrow. They can be functioning adults with full-time jobs, mortgages, and kids, but they will still complain that one of them is getting favored by their parents. Aren't we a little old for this? We are grown-ups. We have our own issues to manage. We shouldn't be wasting our precious and limited time with childish rivalries that should have been fixed years ago. I really hate when people think that because someone is getting nice things, it means that they deserve the same, and if they aren't receiving it is because they are less favored. They cannot comprehend that one of them really needs it while the other just wants it because of lame insecurities. Is sad that grown adults would do a scene over something as dumb as this.

The story below is just another example of people who seem to have fully grown, but they are actually just as insecure and childish as they always were. Is sad to think that people in their 40s are still obsessed over something that dumb. Your sister needs housing and financial assistance because she's going through a rough patch, and you are more worried about how it affects YOU? That makes you a horrible person who puts their own problems before anyone else's, even when the other person has a far more difficult life.

If you are like that, please take a look at yourself. You can't be giving more importance to a jealousy siblings rivalry over the daily care that you should be providing to your sister. She is going through something. Help her instead of making everything more difficult than it already is. Be kind, put her first, and help. Concentrate on evolving and maturing from that childish feeling that isn't helpful to anyone. 

What drives people to take something that is not theirs?

I live in a rented apartment in a building, so I don't often have interactions with my neighbors. We see each other in the elevator, in the parking lot, and sometimes by our front doors, but we have no reason to say anything to each other, except for a casual "hello". I consider myself lucky that these are all the neighborly interactions I have, because I genuinely don't care for the drama of a neighborhood dispute.

My parents, however, live in a proper house they own, which means that their interactions with their neighbors are a bit more extensive. For some reason, when you're a homeowner who lives next to other homeowners, the property lines tend to blur together, and any change your neighbor makes somehow affects you. That means that if you want to keep the peace, you will have to interact, as annoying as that may be.

The homeowners below truly didn't think much about their next-door neighbor. Each of them was minding their own business, and for a while, it worked out great for all parties. But when the neighbor passed away, and her kids started making changes to her house in order to sell it, things started to get messy between the residents on each side of the fence.

Between the two houses was a fence owned by the homeowners, on which they put a lively grapevine that they loved. For some reason, the elderly neighbors' kids decided to cut down the grapevines in an attempt to "spruce" their yard before they sold the house. When the homeowners discovered what the neighbors did, they were enraged and wanted the neighbors to pay for their trespassing. They had no reason to take something down that wasn't even theirs to begin with.

Scroll down for the rest of the tale…

Is Gen Z being unprofessional by dressing the way they'd dress at the job for the job interview? 

Job interviews are a tough nut to crack. As the interviewee, it feels like the interviewer has all the power, and you have to read their cues and predict what they want to have a shot at the job. You feel like you have to answer every single question, no matter how silly or pointless. "Are you a morning or a night person?" obviously has a right and a wrong answer when you're interviewing for a job that starts at 8 AM. "What is your biggest weakness?" has so many wrong answers, including but not limited to, "I work too hard." When you're in an interviewing stage of life, you have your four STAR method (Situation, Task, Action, Result) stories rolling around in your head, and you have to be incredibly strategic about which answers you give to which behavioral questions.

Some questions in job interviews are actually a trap. They don't want to hire someone who has goals and ambitions beyond working for their company. They don't want to hire people who have hobbies that enrich their lives. They want someone whose only life goal is to work as hard as possible and make their company a lot of money, without caring whether they're making any money themselves. There's a reason companies ask prospective employees about their salary expectations rather than stating the salary range outright. They're trying to manipulate them into thinking they can't ask for more. 

Some job interviewers don't have the highest expectations in the world. They just want an employee who is smart enough to wear a nice outfit, be polite, and ask smart questions at the interview. Unfortunately, that's not always what young professionals do during their first meeting with a prospective employer, and it's costing them the job. 

How should workplaces handle this situation and others like it?

"Your situation is a bit more flexible than mine…"

Two kids look at their mother who is working from home, representing the children in the story.

 

In this story, this employee shared an account of his challenging current predicament at work. He found himself faced with a coworker who believed her status as a parent entitled her to greater consideration when it came to preferred work-from-home days, despite the fact that the existing system already accommodated both of them without issue.

The movies and TV shows we used to watch as kids don't feel the same now. We start questioning them and ourselves for liking them before. But we also rediscover that magical feeling they had on us. 

With the Harry Potter series coming out this year, I have a sense that the franchise has been making it to the news a lot more lately. It seems as if every day we are celebrating the release date of the books or the movies. As someone who has just recently given the movies a chance, I have to say, they are better than I would have expected. I can't imagine how much someone how watch it when they were kids would have thought of them. In the story, we have 11-year-old Harry getting a letter explaining that he has been invited to study at Hogwarts, a school for magic that only some kids have the pleasure of attending. Once he moves to the school, we start to meet his friends and enemies and follow him through his life in his formative years.

When I watched the first movie, I thought it was a little cheesy. After all, it was for children. But when I got to the third one, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, I finally understood what all the fuss was about. I believe that if you didn't get to reading the books or watching the movies as a kid, you probably aren't expecting that this suppose kid's story has the violent dynamic they actually have. We have discrimination, misconduct of power, mortality, and the pursuit of immortality. Which makes all this film far more interesting than I would have ever imagined. The fact that magic wands could create so much damage to people is a great topic of discussion, and I like how it was portrayed.

But it also has another side, the one you expect. Especially during the first film, you get to see a friendship being built, Christmas, love. And these tropes are, in fact, clichés, but it works. Is a nice story for kids to get into reading and is a nostalgic film for a lot of adults out there. It has a place in a lot of people's hearts, and it shows the power of friendship. So, for all the adults who are watching the movies again or rereading the books, maybe you will like the following thread where fans discuss what things they used to think were really cool about Harry Potter's fantasy world but are actually quite weird now. 

Is being nervous a good excuse for treating people badly?

Anyone can have a tough day, or many. Sometimes we do, and we end up saying things we regret to the people we love just because we're feeling on edge. We can behave erratically and mistreast the people around us, leaving them feeling confused and hurt. We try that it doesnt turn into a recurrent type of behavior, since we want to keep our relationships intact, but form time to time it happens. When it does we make a conscious effort to apologize and reassure the person we hurt, and we make the promise of never doing it again. 

We can't always keep that promise, but we certainly do our best to treat our friends and family with kindness. Which is why it's so shocking when other people don't seem to act in the same way or don't give enough importance to their loved ones feelings. 

A niece shared her experience on AITAH with an aunt and her husband who didn't care much about her feelings. She arrived at a family gathering one day, and tripped and fell on the entrance of the house, so she went inside to get cleaned up before saying hi to the family. Whe she went out, the aunt's husband, John, chastised her about her manners an how no matter what had happened at the entrance, she was supposes to say hello to the whole family before anything else. From then on, he started giving her the cold shoulder, and her aut pretty much did the same. They even accused her of playing the victim the one time she brough it up. This went on for months until one day, the aunt started treating her as she had done before, inviting her everywhere and pretending that no one had done or said anything hurtful. Her mother suggested she played along because her aunt was going through a rough moment, but she's not sure she wants to pretend they didn't hurt her. 

What do you think? Should she just play along or is she right in asking for an explanation?

The art of pettiness

I'm going to throw my most superstitious take out there: Life always presents you with an opportunity to perform some degree of petty revenge on someone who wronged you in the past. It works like this: you have a fall out with somebody; at first you're very angry, and as time goes by, you begin to let it go and focus on yourself until one day, out of the blue, life puts you in a position to interfere with that person's life without you actually searching for it.

If you decide to take the petty route and cause an inconvenience in that person's life, as long as said inconvenience is relatively minor, I think it's fair. As I always say: revenge is a dish best served petty; or whatever. The only one who will enjoy this will be you; the other person will never know about it and will think of it as bad luck, and the balance of justice will return to equilibrium.

I'm definitely a petty revenge advocate; I can't see anything wrong with it, and I especially love it when it's anonymous. The only one who needs to know who did the harm is yourself; it's done for your own pleasure. To try to claim your authorship is callous.

This employee not only was presented with the chance to be vindictive, but he also took it, and it was done elegantly:

If you give a mouse a cookie…

Every little kid had that Disney phase where they imagined themselves running off to the woods and living with the wild animals. We would befriend the birds, the chipmunks, and the deer, and live happily ever after with them, without our annoying parents or loud little siblings.

While we don't know anyone who has actually lived up to this fantasy, some people do manage to bring that magical lifestyle into their lives. Even if they can't whistle at their bedroom window until birds come flying in, that doesn't mean they can't be kind to animals and take care of them as much as possible. That Disney life can still happen, within reason…

If you want a taste of this life, a good start would be to install a bird feeder in your backyard. You can feed the birds and befriend them without crossing any boundaries, and you can even get a magical moment out of it if you really try. Just be careful that you don't take it too far, because feeding wildlife in your yard can lead to some trouble, as it did for the family below.

To be fair, these homeowners were warned that they were taking the wild lifestyle a step too far. Their insistence on feeding birds, red squirrels, and chimpunks on their patio led these wonderful yet very wild animals to create huge holes in the foundation of the house. Yet, the homeowners didn't really care and refused to do anything about the damage to their house; all they wanted to do was keep feeding the animals.

It was only when their front porch completely collapsed in on itself that they realized the huge mistake they made. But since they ignored all the warning signs, including the ones from their own kid, they had no one to turn to. Did that stop them from demanding help anyway? You can guess where this is going, or you can keep reading to find out for sure.