Karen DEMANDS I COOK ON EASTER... GETS TAUGHT A LESSON! - Reddit Stories - Reddit Stories Podcast - Mr. Redder

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey there, mister Redder here, welcome back to another episode
of Reddit podcast Stories. Our first story we'll be reading today,
Karen demands I cook on Easter. After that, my landlord
asked me to take care of his kids. And after that,
am I the jerk for screwing my fence panels in
so they can't be lifted? Now, for every thumbs up,
this video gets one. Karen doesn't get to make someone

(00:22):
else cook on Easter. But I was really looking forward
to your ham. Reddit boy, you make the best ham.
So please smash that like button and subscribe and turn
on notifications for new stories from ready every single day.
Karen demands I cook on Easter. I thirty female, am
married to my husband, Mike, who's thirty two. Mike usually

(00:44):
does all of the cooking and it works for us.
Sometimes I cook as well, but it's very few and
far between. Mike's family likes to have pot looks where
the women all bring different dishes. I am a good cook,
but I don't enjoy it, so we've always just said
that I can't cook. We've been married for three years
and this hasn't been an issue. Mike and I have

(01:04):
a daughter who's five she mentioned to my sister in
law how mommy makes the best seafood cast role while
trying my sister in laws. My sister in law mentioned
something about the comment to my husband, and he explained
how I just don't enjoy cooking, so I don't do
it often and don't want to cook for family parties.
My sister in law told my mother in law, and
all the women in Mike's family have been texting me

(01:26):
saying I'm selfish for letting them do all of the
work at family parties. So I said, I don't enjoy
cooking and will not be cooking for any family parties.
We all went back and forth a few times, so
I said the next family party Easter this weekend, my
daughter and I will not be attending. Then my mother
in law said I'm the jerk for not allowing my
daughter to attend, saying it's manipulative and that I should

(01:48):
just make the dish and suck it up like everyone else.
My husband said he's staying out of it right now,
but that he understands my position. He said, maybe just
make a dish one time to have peace on Easter,
and I refused, So am I the jerk? For pretending
I couldn't cook for all of these years, and for
not allowing my daughter to attend Easter. Edits for clarification. One,

(02:09):
my daughter will still spend Easter with my family, just
not my husband's. Two he can't take her alone because
he's on call for work that weekend. Three we did
try buying store bought ones and it was never served
on purpose. Four Mike doesn't cook for these events because
it's time consuming making a dish large enough, and he
works a lot. Making a meal for our family doesn't

(02:31):
take nearly as much time since there's only two adults
and one kid. Update. Mike and I have talked about
this weekend. He reached out to his mom and let
her know we will not be attending if I have
to cook anything. I don't know what happened during their
conversation that made him so upset, but his mom has
since retracted her statement and said it's fine. They just
want to see their grandchild. Mike let them know that

(02:53):
since this was the hill they wanted to die on,
that he will also not be attending Easter, and that
we will not be attending as a family unless the
women in his family apologize for attacking me. We will
be spending the full day of Easter with my family,
which my daughter is happy to spend the day with
her cousins. Mike said, we will not be attending another
of his family's parties unless I'm one hundred percent comfortable,

(03:14):
and if any comments or remarks are made, we will
be leaving and not returning. Why can't your husband make
a dish to bring to these potlucks? One dish per
family isn't unusual for a popluck. Why can't your husband
just make and bring something? Is there some curse placed
upon his family that food made not from the hands
of a bee wounded person upon the holy day of

(03:36):
Easter is not allowed or something not the jerk, They
have no right to demand you cook anything. My husband's
family tried to pull the same crap on me, but
I made it clear early on that I wouldn't have it.
Do I know how to cook, sure, but we still
do grubhub and uber eats most nights a week because
I hate cooking. Honestly, I don't blame you for not

(03:57):
attending or letting your daughter attend. If he wants to
attend this crap, tell him to go ahead. But you
won't be there for it or allow your daughter to
be there either. My landlord asked me to take care
of his kids. I twenty five female, live in a
large city and stay in a family's basement for over
thirteen hundred dollars a month. They've been nice, but we

(04:18):
don't really talk at all, which is fine with me.
I moved in around February and I mostly keep to
myself and just go to work. My landlord, fifties male,
told me they would be leaving to go out of
the country because his parent was in a critical condition.
He took his entire family with him, which is his
wife and kids. They asked me to look out for
packages and stuff while they're gone, which is not a

(04:39):
big deal, so I said okay, and to have a
safe flight, et cetera. A week later, today he texts
me and says his kids would be coming back, but
not him. About a week from now. He asked me
to take his kids to school until he gets back.
I don't know what exactly that is. The reason I
think I might be the jerk is because I think
it's an insane request to ask a tenant that just

(05:00):
lives here, and I don't know if they have any
other family here. But I also know we live in
a high cost of living area and this house is
probably worth more than I could ever afford, So I
don't see why it's my responsibility to take care of
my landlord's kids. He could probably pay for a ride
share service or something else. For reference, the kids are
at least seventeen. I believe my mom says I'm a

(05:21):
jerk for not being helpful and that it's selfish. I
have a job that I can work from home and
maybe have time to take them. I start about an
hour after I would take them to school. I haven't
called them about it yet because I feel bad. But
like I said, I have a full time job and
live in a big city. If I want to go
into the office or am required to go for anything,

(05:41):
I had already made plans to go into the office
next week for something I have to do. For example,
I don't have time to take them because it takes
over an hour to get there. I genuinely think it's
an insane thing to ask a random tenant to do
without consideration of my job or my life. He just said,
I won't be coming back, and I need you to
take my kids to school for an undisclosed amount of time.

(06:03):
Granted I have not called him yet to hear more,
and the circumstances are out of his control, so I
don't know if I'm the jerk and I should just
take his kids to school. Not the jerk. Totally weird,
and I wonder if he'd have made this ridiculous request
if you were twenty five mail, I would just say no.
But if you are inclined to do this for him,
don't do it for free. Calculate a daily rate for

(06:25):
this service that you are happy with, then add a
decent additional amount on for the last minute nature of
the request, and make him agree in writing that it
will come off of your next month's rent before you
lift a finger. Not the jerk. That's definitely a ridiculous request.
You're not a house sitter or a nanny. You're paying
them for housing. They are not paying you for childcare.

(06:47):
Looking out for packages is one thing, but being responsible
for someone's kids that's a huge responsibility and not something
a landlord should ask of a tenant at all, honestly,
but especially without offering compensation. He should have called you
to ask and offered compensation in return for you taking
as kids to and from school. Sending a text basically
just telling you that this is happening is super weird.

(07:09):
It's tricky since you live there and you definitely don't
want to get on the family's bad side, but you
are one hundred percent okay to refuse this request and
to think it's a crazy thing to ask. Am I
the jerk for screwing my fence panels in so they
can't be lifted. I've lived in my house for almost
three years. I live on a corner house next to
the road, a back road. A lot of the kids

(07:31):
in the neighborhood play ball games in that area. This
doesn't bother me much, apart from when they kick it
against my fence. One thing that does bug me is
how often they would come to the door because their
ball had gone over into my garden. I know this
seems like such a small thing, but I'm talking about
five or six times a day. I used to work
from home, so I would just go get the ball

(07:52):
and ask them to be more careful. However, I recently
changed jobs and now I work out of the house.
My partner is still home throughout the day, but is
hard of hearing and never hears the kids when they knock.
She actually uses more sign language than anything or reads
lips as she really can't hear well at all without
her hearing aid, which she only really wears when she's
leaving the house. Anyway, since I haven't been home to

(08:14):
answer the door, I found out the kids have actually
been lifting my fence panel and coming into my garden
to get their balls. I hate this. It makes me
feel like my space and privacy is violated. I also
have four dogs who are using outside when the weather
is nice. I have cameras, so I've caught them doing
this and I have evidence, but their parents don't even
seem to care. So I decided to screw all of

(08:37):
my fence panels in so they could no longer be
lifted up. Now, every night I go home, I'm greeted
with a bunch of angry kids telling me their ball
is in my garden and they can't get it. I
just ignore them and throw the ball over without speaking
to them. Yesterday, when I got home, one of the
kids' mothers was at my front door. When I got
out of my car, she instantly started yelling and calling

(08:59):
me a thief for not getting her son's ball. I
told her I was at work, and she started yelling
about how my partner could have sorted it out. I
told her I'd go get the ball, so calm down,
and she said I needed to fix my fence as
it was broken and the kids couldn't get them on
their own anymore. I told her it wasn't broken and
I had done this so that they couldn't get in.

(09:20):
This made her very angry and she started yelling. I
told her I couldn't have them letting my dogs out,
and also mentioned how they almost broke my fence once,
and she threatened to call the police for theft the
next time I don't get the ball immediately. So am
I the jerk for stopping them from getting into my garden?
And could they actually call the police when I'm not
even home to get the ball. Update. After reading through

(09:43):
some of the responses, I decided to take action. I
looked through my camera footage and found all of the
times they had entered my garden or kicked their ball
over in the last few months, and actually found one
from January where they had actually come in and opened
my rabbit cage up to find the rabbit. Luckily, my
rabbit was out there as it was winter. Following this,
I went to the woman's house and met her husband.

(10:05):
I explained what had happened, and although he wasn't yelling
like his wife, he didn't seem to care. So I
explained I had evidence of his son trespassing on my property,
damaging my property, and evidence of potential theft since he
was opening my rabbit cage and pulling on my shed door.
At first, he tried to laugh me off, but then
I pulled up one of the videos on my phone

(10:25):
and told him I was reporting this to the police.
He stopped laughing and started apologizing. Said he would speak
to both his wife and his son, and to please
not involve the police. I politely thanked him and left.
On my way home, I ran into one of the
other parents and filled her in on what was going on.
She immediately apologizes for her son's involvement. Her son had

(10:46):
never entered my property, but he has helped lift the
fence and kick the ball. She assured me he would
be grounded and have his footballs taken away, and told
me that if they ever do it again, I should
pop the balls. I did call the non emergency number
and got it all logged and the videos sent, and the
kind lady on the phone informed me, if it ever
happens again, I can call and press charges. I can

(11:07):
actually press charges now, but she advised me to wait
as they will only get a warning as this is
the first time that it's been logged. This also means
if they do call to complain about the theft, they
will be informed of the logs against them rather than
any action against me. I have also informed my insurance company,
who assured me since it's logged with the police and
I have screwed my fences in that I'm in the clear.

(11:30):
But they also recommend I get a no trespassing sign,
so I will do that this weekend. Thank you so
much for all of your help and advice. I admit
I had absolutely no idea what to do about it
or if I even had to stand legally, so thank
you for all of the info that you provided. Not
the jerk. You should laugh at the mom and tell
her to go ahead and call the police. You will

(11:50):
be very happy to have them stop by to explain
the situation. If they come out and find that you're
being accused of stealing. When kids are throwing or kicking
balls into your yard when you're not home and having
to do without them for a few hours, they're going
to be very upset with her for wasting their time.
He went pikachuw wow face when I asked if he
could read. I used to be a DSD vendor, which

(12:13):
in the US is someone who goes to stores like
supermarkets and stalks a very specific name brand of product
from stock in the back, and then leaves to go
to the next door repeat. We're often employed directly by
the name brand, not by the store itself. So I
have loads of I don't work here, lady stories, but
a few of them are real. Special chances are if

(12:33):
you're someone stalking a name brand of snack cakes, chips, soda, beer,
or whatever, you're actually looking at a DSD vendor. I
was doing my usual things, stalking my brand and went
a part of Walmart's racetrack, which is the main walkway
in front of a department. A dude, I would shortly
discover was as dumb as a bag of hammers. Comes

(12:53):
up to me completely ignoring my hat with a logo,
shirt with logo, cart with logo not a store cart,
literally a my brand cart, thirty odd boxes with the
logo and armloads of logo product, and asks me where
something that's not my brand is that's typically in the
frozen section. Me uh, I think those are usually in

(13:14):
the frozen section, Jerk, which all are those on thene
Me keep going down that way until you get to
the freezer section, and then look there. I pointed to
the area of the store where the freezers are, very
obviously to anyone with half a brain. Jerk walks one
aisle down. Oh, don't sue them. Me. The freezer section
is about seven aisles down. Keep going until you get

(13:36):
to the freezer section. Jerk walks one more aisle down
where me. Keep going a long way down. You'll see
the freezers. Jerk moves one more aisle down. I can't
see it. Keep going, look for the freezers. Jerk then
moves one more aisle down. WHOA Exasperated with his incompetence,

(13:57):
I set my logo stuff down and walk over to fully,
intending to say something to the effect of can you
not see the signs above the aisles? But instead what
came out was a stumbling over slightly yelling me, can
you read. It's now jerk's turn to be exasperated, and
he turns to me and looks at me completely incredulously,
with furrowed brow, mouth hanging open in perfect Pikachu expression,

(14:22):
as if to say, did I hear you literally say
that to me right now using facial expressions alone. I
just turned back towards my cart and mumbled out I
don't work for this store and got back to my stuff.
I really had actually fully intended to say something else
after that, but just the question silliness on its own
gave me pause to laugh internally about what the next

(14:43):
word should be. I didn't see where a jerk ran
off to after that, And on my way out, I
told a manager for the supermarket and how I accidentally
asked him if he could read, and she said not
to worry about it. And she said, I literally want
to say that same thing every single day. I'm glad
at least someone did, and that if it ever came
back around as feedback against me, she would shut it

(15:04):
down good times. Not going to give me a meal
benefit I'll eat at the office. Then some backstory from
a few years back. I was working on healthcare as
an HTA nurse which around here is a nurse which
travels around the city area doing health assessments which don't
require one one to two calls nine one one which

(15:25):
is reserved for emergency and paramedics whom handle those cases.
My job was essentially picking up the jobs which do
not require immediate response and trying to treat the patient
either at home or if not possible, give instructions where
they can get treatment for whatever was the ailment at
the time. It was a job to assist people so
that they wouldn't come to the er with small injuries

(15:46):
or illnesses which can be handled in the regular health
care center next working day. Also, other part was to
go around and treat patients which had for example IV
treatments regularly and administer the fluid treatment, drugs, painkillers, abs, etc.
My issue was that I noticed that as we drove
around large area from one patient to another, we had

(16:06):
to stop for a lunch at some point, and that
we had to pay for lunch from our own pocket
whatever it cost. This is common practice. For example, paramedics
they eat when they can and usually at some gas
station or somewhere where they currently are and have time
to eat. I usually read the contracts pretty carefully, which
came from my previous career as an engineer, where I

(16:27):
had to make fool proof contracts and avoid stepping on traps.
And our healthcare union had negotiated that if your work
requires X amount of traveling, you should be entitled for
a tax free meal benefit. I wasn't completely sure about
it if that particular statement would apply for the job
I was doing, but I decided to ask stupid questions
about it, and eventually forced my supervisor to contact the

(16:48):
management to get a statement for the issue at hand
from the management and went to the legal department and
they began to delve into it, and it lasted for
weeks since they couldn't quite deny it outright, but they
event came to a conclusion that it couldn't be applied
to the job that I had. I was a little
annoyed at this, but decided not to contest it any
more than that. But another statement which union had negotiated

(17:12):
for us was that if we have an office or
a station and social space where you warm up your
meal microwave, coffee maker, et cetera, we are entitled to
have lunch break of thirty minutes per day at the
regular office where I leave every morning, just a normal thing, which,
if backed by law, is well around here. Lunch is
holier than holy, if one can say so. I mentioned

(17:33):
earlier that our area was rather large, so if I
was working on northern parts, for example, it could take
two hours to drive there, spend four hours with patients
around that area, and then drive back to the station
an eight hour shift. So I agreed with the bosses
that I dropped the issue with the meal benefit and
will eat at the office instead, And they agreed on this,
and I got it in writing email that I could

(17:54):
do that. So not every day, but a few times
a week. When I was assigned to some far away area,
I jumped into the car, drove there, did maybe one
patient call, then I had to hurry up back so
I can begin my lunch break, then eat for thirty minutes,
and drive back to another patient and drive back. That's
an awful lot of driving and wasted time. Eventually I

(18:15):
was confronted about this, and I explained that because I
can't afford to eat lunch every day, I just have
to eat my own cooking at the office, and that
as we don't have the meal benefit. I am practically
forced to drive back and forth so that I can
have my prescribed by law lunch break. They were dumbfounded
at first, but they could not squirm out of it
at all. Problem was that the common practice had been

(18:36):
for god knows how long that paramedics and such just
went along and paid their own meals, as they never
knew better. They had always had the possibility to go
back to the station to eat, and I'm quite sure
that we all were entitled for that meal benefit, since
it is prescribed by law and union agreements in a
way that if you can't eat in regular way at
the office, you are entitled for the meal benefit instead.

(18:57):
But no one had really contested it earlier, so they
were dumbfounded and asked me not to do it in
the future. But I responded to that that if they're
going to get the meal benefit running for the department
or not, because if they are not going to do it,
I am entitled to eat at the station. The discussion
went on a while longer on the subject, but eventually
they caved in. They arranged the meal benefit for every

(19:19):
nurse and paramedic on the department, as they couldn't find
a way out otherwise and couldn't have us driving back
and forth and not performing our job. Am I the
jerk for yelling at my husband after he put me
on blast in front of his parents. So I thirty
nine female, just had spinal surgery. I have some pretty
serious restrictions during recovery. The big ones are that I

(19:40):
can't lift anything over ten pounds and I can't bend
over for the next month. My husband, he's in his
forties male, his parents, who are around seventy, came across
country to help us take care of our kids, who
are four and a half and ten months while I'm healing.
We don't have any friends or family nearby, and the
in laws are available and law can be really helpful,

(20:01):
but she's also really spacey and dismissive of our household rules. Typically,
I prefer to have a few days with mother in
law to shore the ropes before handing things over, and
even after initiation, I still find her feeding my son's
cake for breakfast and letting him use permanent markers over
the carpet, so I keep an eye on her. Well,
this time, I'm not able to do that, so I

(20:22):
asked my husband to take off the first few days
post surgery to help me with stuff I need and
to ease his mom into working with the kids. I'm
also really tired of being the bad guy with mother
in law and would really prefer it if he could
do more of the limit setting. He knows this. Today,
day two postop, I'm able to be up a bit more,

(20:42):
and each time I find my husband is nowhere to
be found, while mother in law is doing all the
work with the baby and the four year old is
running wild. Anyway, I went to lay down and rest.
I was down for maybe twenty minutes, and all I
hear is the baby crying, so I get out of
bed to see what's up. Mother in law is trying
to soothe the teething baby by tossing her into the
air and yelling whoo into her face really loudly. And

(21:06):
my husband is playing video games in the basement again.
So I go down and tell him that the baby
has been crying for a while. I reminded him that
he's supposed to be in charge of helping his parents
take care of the kids, that he should be upstairs
with them. He got upset that I was pulling him
away from his video game, and I told him he
could do what he wanted after the baby went to
bed in an hour. So he comes upstairs. Between when

(21:29):
I went down to talk to him and when he
came upstairs, mother in law gave the baby a teething
ring and baby calmed down. My husband turns to me
right in front of his mom and says, well, it
looks like she's calm now. I shoot him dagger eyes,
trying to cut him off, but he continued, and she
doesn't seem like she's been crying for half an hour.
Now I'm upset. I tell him we need to chat

(21:51):
in the bedroom. I lost it. I was yelling at
him pretty loudly, asking him why he would put me
on the spot like that, that I was trying to
beat his and had explained to him what I wanted
from him while we were alone. I yelled that I
was upset because he was taking his anger out on
me because I took him away from his video game
to care for the baby, and he got petty, making

(22:12):
me look like a jerk in front of his mom.
That I'm supposed to be in bed, but I'm having
to micromanage a husband who thinks he's on vacation now
that mom is here to take care of everything. So
am I the jerk? Not the jerk, not even a
little bit. Your husband is behaving like a kid. He
weaponized incompetence and tried to gaslight you into making you

(22:33):
believe you're the unreasonable one. You aren't. This is your
time for healing and recovery. And he had one job
he failed. He's embarrassed and it's all your fault now sarcasm,
not the jerk. Ship the grandparents home and hire a
healthcare aid for you and in nanny for the kids.
Tell hubby to go back to work because he's stressing

(22:53):
you out. Op Ah, a girl can dream. Heck, send
him back to work, them away and hire a babysitter.
Might be a little more work on the front end,
but it's far more likely that work pays off in
someone following basic reason, not the jerk. Big red flag. First,
he's prioritizing video games over your kid, then proceeds to

(23:15):
play the victim and tries to gaslight you into feeling guilty.
Take your kid and leave this man. Not the jerk,
but almost you said it yourself. You are micromanaging. No,
they won't do things like you would, but everyone will survive.
Take care of yourself and let the other adults take
care of the kids in whatever way they will. Your

(23:35):
husband's mother will get him if she needs him. They
both will consult with you when they run out of ideas.
When you get back on your feet, you can get
back to doing everything your way. Different isn't wrong. I
maliciously complied with my boss's absurd demands and got sweet revenge. Background.
I work for a company that has a strict dress

(23:56):
code policy. We're supposed to wear business formal attire at
all times, and that includes wearing a tie. Now I'm
not a big fan of ties. I find them uncomfortable
and unnecessary, but I understand that they're part of the
dress code, so I wear them anyway. One day, my
boss came up to me and told me that he
didn't think my tie was appropriate. Apparently it was a

(24:16):
little too flashy for his taste. He demanded that I
go home and change it immediately. I was a little
taken aback, but I complied. I went home, changed my tie,
and came back to work. The next day. My boss
came up to me again and said that my new
tie wasn't appropriate either. He said it was too plain
and that I needed to wear something more interesting. I

(24:37):
was starting to get frustrated at this point, but I
complied again. I went home, searched through my ties and
found the most obnoxiously loud tie I could find. The
following day, I showed up to work wearing the obnoxious tie.
My boss looked at me and shook his head, clearly annoyed.
He told me it wasn't appropriate either, and demanded that
I go home and change it again. That's when I

(24:58):
decided to engage in some malicious comp cis. I went
home changed my tie again, but this time I came
back wearing a bow tie. Not just any bow tie,
mind you, but a bright, pink, sparkly bow tie. I
strutted into the office feeling like a boss. My boss's
face turned bright red when he saw me. He demanded
that I take off the bow tie and put on

(25:18):
a regular tie, but I just smiled sweetly and reminded
him that he had specifically said that I needed to
wear something more interesting, and there was nothing more interesting
than a bright, pink, sparkly bow tie. To make a
long story short, my boss eventually gave up and let
me wear the bow tie, and you know what, it
became kind of a running joke around the office. People

(25:39):
started complimenting me on my interesting fashion choices, and my
boss just had to grin and bear it. Am I
the jerk for telling my parents that my wife and
I do not want them renaming our kids. My wife
and I welcomed twins in November. We struggled to have
kids for a long time nine years, and had our
twins via IVF. It was a long battle have our babies,

(26:01):
and when we chose their names, it was something we
not only took seriously but poured a lot of love
into because we knew they would be the only kids
we would name. We chose the first names Ezra and
Esme for the twins. Their middle names are more uncommon,
so we won't share. But what I will say is
part of what went into the choice for these names
was the length. Growing up, I had a long last

(26:22):
name ten letters, and my parents gave me very formal
and lengthy first and middle names, Frederick Lawrence, and I
always found my name very stuffy in old fashioned I
go by a nickname derived from my middle name. Now
I also took my wife's much simpler last name when
we got married. So we announced the name of our
twins when they were a day old. And when we

(26:42):
announced the names, we were aware my parents might not
be in love with them, but I stupidly believe the
twins being born would be enough of a deterrent for
a negative comment. About a week after they were born,
my parents asked what kind of names they had and
how could we give them such juvenile and incomplete names.
I told them they were neither of those things and
they needed to be more careful about how they spoke

(27:03):
about their grandchildren's names. I thought they had listened, but
then in January, they started calling them Winifred and Douglas.
At first, we weren't positive they were talking about the twins,
But then we were celebrating my niece's tenth birthday and
my parents directly addressed my daughter as Winifred, and I
knew it was them they were talking to. I told
them those were not their names. They said those were

(27:26):
nicknames they had given them, and everyone has a nickname
that It's not like we gave them names that could
lend themselves to nicknames. I said, Ezzie and Essie if
they really wanted nicknames. They ignored me, and they continued
to use the nicknames, so we decided not to be
around because on top of that, they were telling my
siblings that the names they had chosen were better for

(27:46):
my kids. My siblings thought they were crazy. My parents
tried to see the kids a few times since, and
I always told them no. They asked why, and I
told them they do not get to see our kids
if all they can do is insult their names. My
parents accused me of trying to control them and said
nicknames are a part of life. I told them what
they had done wasn't giving a nickname, it was renaming

(28:08):
my kids in their own heads, and my wife and
I do not want them renaming them. I also said
we will not further encourage the use of the nicknames
they gave them. My parents said if I had stuck
to the family way of naming babies, none of this
would be happening, and they said I was being unfair
to them. Am I the jerk, not the jerk? What
your parents are doing is bizarre. You can't just make

(28:31):
up completely different names for people because you don't like them.
It's disrespectful to you and confusing for the kids. I
wouldn't want to be around them either. Too young to
do my job. Okay, Back in my college days in
the late nineties, I worked in my college alumni communication center.
In reality, it's a call center where college students work
to ask the low giving alumni for money. The college

(28:54):
had professional folks to handle the big, mega donors. I
luckily wasn't a student caller, which seemed all I, a
sophomore was, And this was the actual job title data
entry a quick sidebar. We also had a couple of
call coaches who were seniors who would monitor the callers
and give them feedback on how to do a better
job at asking alumni for money, typically donations in the

(29:17):
one hundred to two hundred and fifty dollars range. When
callers made a call, they recorded the outcome of the
call on a sheet of paper. I would then collect
those sheets and then go to the sole computer and
the call center and record the data. Most of the
results I entered would be no answer or left a
message on a voice machine. Sometimes we got a donation,
so I would enter that caller outcome into the computer

(29:38):
and somewhere else the alumni department would generate a donation
envelope that was mailed to the alumnus, so the alumnus
could then mail a check back to us. Now about
ten percent of the donations would be by credit card.
At the end of the night, after the callers left,
I would spend about thirty minutes processing the credit cards
through this dial up credit card machine. I did this

(29:58):
without issue for two mo months September and October. Now
enters Karen, the new boss lady over the call center.
She finally notices the extra thirty minutes on my timesheet
each day and asks me about it sometime in late October.
I tell her that I process the credit cards after
everyone leaves for the night. That's how I was trained
by the previous data entry person. This upsets Karen, who

(30:21):
says I'm far too young to be handling credit card information.
Makes clear that I am to stick to my job
of only entering the caller's data period. End of story,
data entry only, no handling the money. The money is
to be handled only by the grown ups. To be
perfectly clear, these were credit card numbers handwritten on a
sheet of paper. Absolutely no cash money involved on my end.

(30:45):
So you got it condescending, Karen, I stopped processing the
credit card donations. I set them in a pile at
the end of the night, write by the credit card machine,
and with each passing night, the pile grows and grows.
November ends and this pile is now two hundred fift
fifty pages are so thick. It also wasn't my job
to ask questions like who's processing the credit card sheets?

(31:06):
Since the month ended and no credit cards were processed,
Karen absolutely failed to hit her fundraising goals. She starts
to be rate the call coaches and the callers for
not doing a good enough job. Karen starts spending more
time in the call center, watching everything and everyone like
a hawk. I continue to do exactly what I was
told to. One day she would offer a prize like

(31:28):
a college hat, and then the next a long lecture
about how everyone shouldn't be lazy. Over the course of December,
I keep adding to the pile of unprocessed credit cards.
It's a good five hundred pages thick by now, compared
to the massive piles of sheets of no answer and
left a message. It's not very noticeable. Naturally, someone in
the alumni department has noticed that the donations coming in

(31:49):
are down about twenty five percent over November and December.
This results in me coming back from Christmas break where
I get to meet cool Chad, the new boss dude
over the call center. He asks if my job includes
processing credit cards. I told him Karen told me not to,
but I was trained to process them. In fact, I'm
the only one who has been trained on how to

(32:09):
process them. He says, cool please do process the credit cards.
Cool Chad asks if there are any unprocessed credit card sheets.
Oh yeah, there are. Cool Chad then asks me if
I could get this done over the next couple of weeks. Oh, sure,
no problem. I spent several hours over a couple of
saturdays processing the credit cards. Cool Chad has the absolute

(32:31):
best January ever in the history of the call center.
The quotes are paraphrasing. It's been over twenty five years.
Why is cool Chad? Cool Chad? In February, cool Chad
gave me a raise from eight dollars an hour to
ten dollars an hour. Thanks cool Chad. Support our channel
by joining as a member today and we'll give you
a shout out in our next video or Come watch

(32:53):
this video next. You won't believe what Karen does in
that one

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