Am I the jerk for not taking my brother's kids to Disneyland with me? Long backstory. My brother and I have had a strained relationship our whole lives. We came from a really bad home. Our mum was amazing but we were all horribly treated by our dad and she couldn't or wouldn't leave.
Our relationship was strained because as things got worse in our home as kids, he'd find ways to throw me under the bus so that I was the focus of the anger instead of him. Once he was older, he'd get into it with Aunt Ed and then just leave, leaving me alone with him, now that he was drunk and had been fighting with my brother and was riled up. Our mum just avoided coming home at all costs. The rest of the family sees me as the problem child.
They were all somewhat aware of the stuff going on in our house, but were the, don't rock the boat and shame the family, type. They'd make fun of me about how I lied to CPS for attention, when an investigation was opened when I was in the first grade, after I showed up to school with a pretty bad injury, from where my brother tied a dog leash around my waist and I bungee jumped off a second floor balcony.
Looking back, our dad was likely wasted and not watching me into my brother. When I was 6 and he was 11. When I was 17, I moved out of state and had very little contact with anyone outside my mom. My mom ended up being diagnosed with a metastatic chest cancer and fought really hard for 8 years. I'd fly into visit her every few months as I could. I actually ended up married to a really horrible man with similar bleying habits to my father. He ended up having a heart attack and had to have a quadruple bypass.
He was horrible to care for and just got more and more cruel. Three months after his heart attack, my mum's health turned for the worst and she passed away. Our dad was horrible to us, going as far as to try to sue us for some money that she left us. After the funeral, my husband got more and more nasty and I took the money she had left me and filed for divorce. I know that Mum hated that I married my ex. I think she knew it was a reflection of the life we had with her. I think she'd be happy about how I spent the money.
I decided I needed some me time, so I decided to go spend some time at Disneyland and visit family in the area. Honestly, a good part of the plan was to spend it at the local bars and restaurants that are all conveniently walking distance from the hotel. I got tickets for three of the days and would go to the park and then just kind of cruise around.
My ex-husband was very controlling, and I rarely got to leave the house without him aside from going to work and stuff, so I really just wanted to do whatever the frick I felt like. My brother told me I was stupid for getting a hotel, and I should stay with him and his family. He has two girls, five and eight, that I've only met twice.
I grew up in a very toxic family and I'm still learning how to be a mentally healthy human being, and I'm uncomfortable with kids because I don't want to mess up. I can deal with mistakes with adults, but I don't want to do something wrong with the kids and have no clue how to deal with them. That causes me a ton of stress and I don't want to be in that position. When I got there, I was shocked that he and his wife were planning to go to work and leave the kids with me. I am not good with kids. I don't dislike them, I'm just uncomfortable being responsible for them.
The entire family knows this pretty well. I've been like that since I was a kid. I'm happily child free. I told him I wasn't there just to be daycare for his kids. I hate to say this, but leaving me alone with a 5 and 8 year old is just horrible judgement. I'm not mean or anything, but I'd have no clue what to do. I also don't know how they parent, just that his wife is ultra particular about literally everything.
So like, do I give them all candy? Is soda okay? What should they watch, and how long do they watch it? I don't know what a baby shark is. He got upset because he'd already told her, aren't she didn't need to watch them that week. I was irritated that he hadn't even asked me about this.
I told him that I wasn't planning on being available to sit at his house watching his kids while they worked, and I reminded him that I was planning to spend a few days at the park, which is a few hours away. I may be bad with kids, but I know better than to even mention Disneyland around them. I have a hard time with boundaries and saying no, especially when I'm stressed and anxious, shocking I know. Do I buy them all the ice cream they demand? How do I keep an eye on two at once? What about the rides they're too young for? What about the two person rides?
Later that night he tells me it's stupid to pay for a hotel by the park, I should just drive up for the day and then I can take the girls. Without missing a beat, he asks them if they want to go and spend the day with their aunt at Disneyland. The response is what you'd expect. I'll say in his defense that he likely would have paid for them, he's pretty proud about how his wife and him both have master's degrees and great careers, and likes to mention that I never went to college. I was absolutely stunned.
I told them I had to go home and I couldn't go. I grabbed my staff and drove up and found a hotel close to the park. I spent four days bouncing between parks, ordering room service, going to the pool, spa and bar, and a few times just drowned my sorrows alone in the hotel room. The whole drinking part was a big part of why I was so against bringing the kids.
My ex also didn't like me to drink, so, you know, I kinda just wanted to do that. My phone blew up with family who I haven't been close to in over a decade, telling me how awful I was and how much I'd upset the girls, my brother, and his wife. That they were all grieving too and I was being selfish. I've spent a lot of time in therapy. The family uses it as proof that I have issues. My brother is the normal one who doesn't see a therapist.
Yep, part of me knows that their toxic is all hell. The whole family dynamic is being threatened by anyone stepping out of line. I see them for what they are now, and their response is to attack. It's just hard because basically my mum died and I left my husband and it just sucks because I'm alone in the world now. Like, if crap hits the fan I have literally no one to turn to and no one in my corner, except if you can't. So, am I the jerk for not taking the kids with me?
I feel fairly secure in saying that your brother, and honestly the rest of your family, all sound pretty terrible at the end of this. Your nieces aren't to blame, they're just kids who had the word Disneyland dangled in front of them, which you took very considerate steps to address.
It honestly sounds like you, and yes, your brother, had a very rough time of it, and you should both be commended for getting out of it and making your own lives afterwards. But then for him to invite you under the pretense of familial care when it seems like he only wanted to use you as free babysitter without consulting you first leaves a bad taste in the narrator's mouth. It would have been different if it actually asked first.
At the very least, it seems like he doesn't know you from what you've said about how you feel with kids, and at worst, he knew and tried to take advantage of you anyway. And while we're at it, screw your extended family for having the nerve to criticize you after doing nothing about the way you were treated growing up. I understand that we only have the author's perspective on this, but it's very hard to see how the brother and extended family could justify their viewpoints. Can anyone else see why they might feel that way?
If you like, Am I the Jerk? You're probably going to love, Am I the Genius. Check it out linked below. Also, go to amiethejerk.com slash submit if you would like to submit your own stories.
Today, I messed up by angering a sitting US congressman on Facebook. To the extent that he challenged me to fight him when he comes to my state of Alaska next year. I accepted before giving it any thought. This all started earlier tonight when I replied to one of his posts, calling him out for frequently lying, as so many politicians are wanting to do, and capping it off by calling him a traitor. We then had a brief back and forth and he laid down the challenge.
He wants us to go at it either in a ring or a dojo. I told him to message me before he gets here so he can actually make this happen. I'm not sure if I'm in over my head or not, but I'm not about to back down. I have a service level amount of training from my time in the infantry and in law enforcement, but he has a similar background.
While I highly doubt he'll follow through, I'd better start legitimately training just in case. Never in a million years did I think he'd respond, let alone challenge me to an actual fisticuffs, like we're in the 1800s. But here we are. In short, I teed off a sitting US congressman enough that he challenged me to fight him in 2022, and I accepted.
Oh wow, this got a lot of attention. Thanks for the encouragement, fellow Americans, and random fellow humans from around the world. As usual, Internet sleuths have figured it out. The Congressman is Clay Higgins. Do your thing, Internet. Maybe we can find a way to use this to raise money for charity, even if he backs down. Not sure how to proceed, but I'm willing to train and make this happen for a good cause. Here's a quick update.
I've had a couple of PR folks and trainers reach out to me and we'll see where all of this goes. Realistically, I suspect that Clay will continue to ignore all this, as numerous people mentioned that this is his modus operandi, and apparently this isn't his first time challenging people to fight on social media.
But I'll train anyway as it'll be fun and good for me. For those who are wondering, I was a Republican until around 2012, when I shifted left of centre a bit and became an independent. I joined the Democratic Party in 2020. I do hope that someday the GOP shifts back towards more moderate, but I won't hold my breath. We really need more Adam Kinzingers in that party. Anyway, it's going to take days to read through the comments and reply to some, so bear with me and thanks for the support.
First of all, Congressman Clay Higgins is both the jerk and just a jerk in general, and that's putting things mildly for YouTube. The narrator has done a bit of sleuthing himself, and it seems like as many people in the replies to the story predicted, he never actually turned up for a fight.
There are, however, numerous accounts of him making the same challenges over and over that seem to just trail into nothing. The author mentions that he's a former soldier and had started training, which makes me wish the encounter had actually happened, as people like Clay are usually about as much use in an actual fight as me. That is to say, hilariously worthless. At least some of us don't pretend otherwise.
Although the author is unquestionably not the jerk, it was a bit naive of him to think that a politician would ever follow through on a promise that might negatively impact them. So we'll leave the mental images of a mag-allowed mouth being sucked on the jaw to our wishful thinking, and accept that the many past and future challenges that Higgins makes are all complete bull. Telling my mum move when she's in my home is so delicious.
When we were growing up, my mum would often stand in front of where we were sitting and say, move. This was meant to indicate that she wanted us to move so that she could sit where we were sitting. I always found this really disrespectful, and I remember making that argument to my mum when I was a kid. She told me that when I had my own house, I could tell her to move.
So I do. Whenever there's a gathering of people at my home when my mum is there, I make a point of walking up to her where she's sitting and saying, move, so that other people notice. Of course, somebody usually comments or asks what I'm doing, and I'll playfully explain that this was a thing my mum used to do and that she said I could do it to her when I brought my own house, so it's what I'm doing.
Ah, isn't that hilarious? Aren't I cheeky? I make a joke out of it and everyone loves. But my mum has to wear that crappy tingrine that was constantly plastered on my face growing up whenever my mum decided to insult me around other people and pretend it was a joke. Inside, I know she's absolutely livid, because it's literally the rudest thing I'm willing to do to another person.
Oh my god. Cue the passive-aggressive war that will start to take place whenever you visit your mother at her home. Do I blame you? Absolutely not. Would I do it myself? Same answer. Absolutely not. I value my life. Then again, maybe you and I have different matriarchs in our lives. My mum never abuses her powers like the authors.
I don't think you're a jerk, but I'd question whether it was time to let things like this go. Many of the people who replied to the story were ecstatic that the mum got a taste of her own medicine, so I might be in the minority who think it would be better to just forget the whole thing.
Walk slowly so we can watch, baby. Years ago, I worked as a cocktail bartender and waitress. A group of suits came in and sat down, and I went to take their order. I got a bad vibe off them from the get-go, and after I finished the order and went to leave, this 30-something-year-old sleazy guy said loud enough for everyone to hear, walk away slowly, baby, so we can watch.
I smiled at him and started to do an overdramatic slow motion back away, keeping eye contact with him and smiling the whole time.
I told the other waiters about it and everyone started doing these slow motion walks whenever they walked past their table. The best one was a busboy who deliberately dropped something next to their table and then did a very slow and sexy pick up like the bend and snap from legally blonde. He did his absolute best to maintain eye contact too, and they were all doing their best to ignore him. They left pretty quickly after that.
Ah, classic hospitality resistance right there. Anyone who's ever worked in the industry knows that generally, your boss doesn't care what you're paying customers due to the staff in cases like this. So often, rallying everyone else to be passive-aggressive and weird to them is the best you can do, and it's generally a riot for us. Well done on driving these absolute jerks away. Double points to Busboy for taking the opportunity to shake what his mother gave him.
Am I the jerk for telling a co-worker that if I'm not allowed to wear makeup, then he should also not be allowed to keep as beard? 25-year-old female. I work at a law firm. Just for context, recently graduated, so right now I don't practice law, but I'm basically the receptionist of the office. So I see every single client that comes into the building. I also like wearing makeup.
Not to the point of being completely unrecognizable, but I do like to wear a full face. My office has a very relaxed dress code. We literally have a goth assistant, and most of the people that work there are very nice. So the story you're about to hear was very weird, since there's no such requirement. We recently had a meeting to discuss the dress code of the office, since some of my co-workers are having issues adapting to the in-person modality. At the end, my boss asked if someone had any other concerns.
My co-worker, a 45-year-old man who asked me out when I first started dating, but I'm engaged and I'd never date someone like him. Let's call him Mario, said something along the lines of,
By the way, he's complimented me on my looks before. The comment literally came out of nowhere. Of course, I was shocked when he said that, and I could see that a lot of my co-workers were too, since the comment was so unwarranted. I told him, well, if I'm not allowed to wear makeup, then you shouldn't be allowed to keep your beard given you go from a grown man to a 12 year old boy when you shave. He turned really red and tried to say something, but my boss didn't let him.
I thought that was the end of the situation, but I found out that some of the other employees are making fun of him using the comments I made. I now feel kind of bad for what I said. I told my family, and most of them agreed, that what I said was more hurtful than what he said, but he shouldn't have named me and tried to make an example out of me in the first place.
They, except my mother, have never liked that I wear makeup. I guess they took this opportunity to remind me why I shouldn't wear it. They're a game-stick because they think I'm trying to show off, and I truly have no idea about Mario. My mum is a very strong woman who taught me not to put up with men telling me how to look and act, which is why I was able to defend myself. Maybe I should have said something more professional, it's just that in the heat of the moment, I couldn't think of anything else to defend myself.
The whole office was there, including HR, so that they already knew about the issue. As far as I know, the interaction is documented, but I don't know if they're going to take any action. I couldn't say it's a hostile work environment, but it's definitely uncomfortable, since a lot of the female co-workers stopped talking to him, and males are basically ostracizing Mario. My office is very laid back and not at all sexist or misogynist,
That's why the comment shocked so many people and why he's being bullied over it now. I don't think my makeup is misleading. I'd be deeply concerned if a client thought that I was born with shimmery inner corners and glossy lips.
Mario can go to heck as far as the narrator is concerned. Anyone else who makes unsolicited opinions on other people's appearance can as well. I think the reason most of us, and by us I mean normal well adjusted people, don't just walk up to people and make comments like this about them, but because we understand that A, it will hurt their feelings and empathy is a whole thing we have to live with,
And B, on the more selfish side, we know that engaging in this kind of social interaction means that we're just as liable to being targeted as the other party. Don't dish it out if you can't take it, peeps. I'm not altogether sure that Mario is the absolute worst based on the information we have. I try to keep the principle of Hanlon's razor in mind and remind myself never to ascribe to malice what can be explained by stupidity. And certain people, raised a certain way, can just blurt out stuff like this from time to time.
But that doesn't make it okay, and with all that said, if the author and Mario were weighed on an opposing jerk scale, I'm absolutely sure Mario would be the one to plummet. I'm an educator, educational specialist, and my district has been allowing some people to work from home all this year so that they wouldn't have to take sick days.
Well, this January, my child was sick, so I asked if I could take two work-from-home days instead of sick days because my position would allow for theirs. I was told in no way was that going to be possible, because they're not doing that anymore, and I have to take sick days.
I told him it would be absolutely perfect for me to work from home because I wasn't having classes that week anyway, and I couldn't get all of my paperwork completed over the next two days. We also have our office phone set up on our laptops, so I'd be able to take phone calls from home as well. This would cost my district zero money to allow. Nope, still denied. I maliciously complied. Being that I wasn't allowed to work from home, I set an away message on my email and voicemail that indicated
Since the school no longer allows its employees to work from home, I will be out with a sick child and have taken my own personal sick days to take care of him over the next couple of days. I'll be returning emails and voicemails upon my return. I didn't answer my cell phone from co-workers or bosses.
I ended up being out three days, and there were some major issues at work that could have been cleared up in about 30 seconds if only I was allowed to work from home. On the bright side, not working from home allowed me to get some really great mummy and toddler snuggles. It also allowed me to come to the realization that school districts don't really care that much, and that's why we're all so burnt out.
Well, they told you to take a sick day and you sure did that with all the associated perks. Teachers, the vast majority of you are amazing people who deserve better treatment. As the author says, if they'd just been able to answer their phones and emails at home, then everything would have been great for both school and employee.
As a former manager, who wasn't great at his job, by the way, I can tell you that some of them reacts to even the slightest disruption of their regular plans, like they've been asked to stick their hand into a wasp's nest. Yes, you might have to justify to your superiors why X isn't at their desk, but honestly, sticking up for your employees and giving them a bit of slack when you can should be something you can work in. Especially if it seems like in this case, the employees' physical absence would do nothing to impact the running of the office.
treat your people right, and they might go out of their way to help you in their future. Loyalty is priceless.