Karen's Shocking Demand That I Raise Her Kids Since Her Husband Went To Prison! - Reddit Stories

In today’s episode of Reddit Stories Podcast, a wild Karen completely loses it. You won’t believe how this one ends! Sit back, relax, and enjoy this binge-worthy Reddit Stories Podcast, featuring Karen freakouts, entitled people stories, and pro revenge tales.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
My husband went to prison, so you need to raise
my kids. Ash slash somebody's house. Me. Hey there, mister
Rehdder here and the spicy one me. Welcome back to
another episode of Reddit podcast Stories. Our first story we'll
be reading today. My sister expects me to raise her

(00:21):
kids now that her husband went to prison. My sister,
Bethany is twelve years older than me. She went to
college when I was six and stayed in the same
city after graduation, so naturally we've never been close. After college,
Bethany met a guy named Adam. Adam was constantly in
trouble with the law and he could never hold down
a job. Against everyone's advice, Bethany stayed with Adam and

(00:43):
eventually married him because she said that she had a
thing for bad boys and that Adam made her feel
edgy and exciting. Bethany and Adam have four kids, my
seven year old niece Amelia, three year old twin nephews
Jack and Nico, and the youngest niece, Ray, who just
turned two. Well almost immediately after Ray was born. Adam
was charged with a serious crime and he will be

(01:05):
at minimum spending the next six years in prison. My
parents are in their sixties. They said it was easy
to help when Ray and the twins were babies, but
now that they're toddlers and can outrun them, forget it.
For that reason, they're asking me to begin taking care
of my nieces and nephews. Since I work from home.
They said, no one would be anywhere without family, and

(01:25):
because I'm young, I need to give back and help
my family now. I told my parents and Bethany that
their plan isn't even feasible. Working from home still means working.
I have to speak with clients and be active in meetings.
I can't constantly step away to keep an eye on
their kids, especially not ones as young as Ray. Plus
I'm twenty five. I still have college debt to pay back.

(01:47):
Babysitting as a teenager does not mean I'm ready to
essentially become a parent to even one kid, much less four.
I also reminded Bethany that she has never really been
involved in my life other than attending the same occasional
holiday parties. We may share DNA, but we're practically strangers.
I acknowledge the situation with Adam is unfortunate, but he

(02:07):
showed for years that he wouldn't be a stable partner.
She was thirty when they had Amelia. She wasn't a
naive teenager. She chose the excitement of being with a
person like Adam, and she has to deal with the
consequences now. Her choices are not my responsibility. My parents
told me that if I don't step up, they're going
to leave everything to Bethany and the kids when they pass,

(02:28):
and that I will not receive any major financial help
from them. Again, I told them to do whatever they want,
and essentially repeated the same thing I did to Bethany
about not being responsible for her life choices. I explained
the situation to some friends. They agreed that I wasn't
a jerk for refusing to help with my nieces and
nephews because it isn't a feasible option anyway. But I

(02:49):
have a few of my friends who do think I
was the jerk for the way I explain myself to
Bethany and my parents. Because no one gets married expecting
to become a single parent, and what I said about
Adam came off as victim blaming Bethany for her situation.
Two of these friends said that I could at least
agree to look after them during my time off, since
they're still my nieces and nephews. Am I the jerk

(03:11):
not the jerk victim blaming? What exactly is Bethany the
victim of the victim of her own bad decisions? Get
out of here. Your parents are also the jerks for
holding money and inheritance over your head. Your family sounds awful,
quite frankly. If they're so concerned, then they can pay
for a babysitter or something, not the jerk. You should
give the phone numbers of the friends who are saying

(03:32):
that you're victim blaming to your sister and tell them
to expect to be called for babysitting help. Just because
you work from home doesn't mean you can look after kids.
Like you said, work from home is still work. What
if you have to head to the office for a
meeting or in a zoom meeting, you can't be looking
after kids and doing work. Just because you're not in
an office doesn't mean that you can babysit. So your

(03:53):
parents can say no, but not you. And what kind
of parents threaten you financially like that? Tell them if
they go through with that, and you'll go no contact
with them. You don't need those kinds of people in
your life. Am I the jerk for not having sweets
in the house for my niece who's under my care?
I twenty seven female, have been the guardian of my niece, Zoe,
who's nine, for almost a year, since my brother and

(04:15):
sister in law passed. I work full time in a
relatively high stressed job. Ever since I was twenty four,
I've been on a low carb diet. It's obviously not
for everybody, but I feel better not consuming so much
carbs and sugar. It helps with my weight, concentration and
energy levels. My diet consists mostly of meat served with
fruits and vegetables, but if I crave a slice of

(04:36):
pizza or a helping of pad tie every now and then,
I don't beat myself up over it. When Zoe came
to live with me, I made sure to have carbs
for her meals, mostly rice and potatoes. I also take
us out to eat once or twice a week so
that we can explore different cuisines and local offerings. She
has lunch at her school, and I give her a
small allowance so she can buy whatever she likes within

(04:57):
that budget. What I don't have in my home is dessert.
I used to stalk some when Zoe first came to
live with me, and I would give her a small
serving after her meal while I had some fruit. A
few weeks of that and Zoe asked why I didn't
eat any dessert with her, and I told her for me,
fruits are yummier and healthier. Not long after, she stopped
me from buying sweets when I took her to the

(05:18):
grocery store, and she said that she would just have
fruits too like me. I tried to serve her some
dessert we had at her next meal, but she refused
a few more times of that, and I stopped offering
and gave her fruits instead. Zoe and I still enjoyed
dessert when we go out to eat. A few days ago,
a mom from Zoe's after school club called me. She
told me that she brought butterscotch pies to the club

(05:40):
and everyone enjoyed a piece, including Zoe. A lot of
kids left school early that day, so there was a
lot of leftover pie, and she offered to pack it
up for everyone there to take home. All the kids
took some, but Zoe didn't and told her that we
don't really have dessert at home. She was concerned that
I was setting Zoe up for an eating disorder and
that kids deserved to have something sweet in the house.

(06:01):
I told her how it was Zoe's choice to not
have dessert, so I just stopped stalking them. I also
told her I know Zoe occasionally bought sweets at school,
so there's no need to add more sugar content to
her home food. She said it was not right for
me to set a low carb diet lifestyle as an
example for Zoe when she's still so young and should
not be restricted from eating anything. Again. I told her

(06:22):
that Zoe can have anything she wants and I would
gladly provide any food for her, but she argued that
eating is a social thing and by seeing me abstaining
from sweets, Zoe would do the same to feel like
she belongs. I'm quite confused about this. I know from
a rough nutrition estimate that Zoe is getting what she needs.
She's rarely sick, and her martial arts instructor said she's

(06:42):
active and enthusiastic. I also don't think I should compromise
my own chosen diet so my niece can have desert
at home. Am I the jerk? Well, who do you
think is the jerk? OPI or the friend's mom? Please
let us know. Most people don't realize how dangerous sugar
actually is. Constant insulin spikes can do to your body.
Trying to call someone out for not feeding their kid

(07:04):
all of that sugary crap is just stupid. But what
do you expect most people are stupid these days? Am
I the jerk for not letting a family use our
pump for their deflated ball? My boyfriend and I belong
to a local community center with a few basketball courts.
Sometimes on the weekends we like to go there and
just shoot around and have fun. Unfortunately, the balls the
community center has are almost always slightly deflated for some reason.

(07:28):
You can remedy this by either bringing your own ball
or your own pump. Since I already have a pump
for my bike, we usually just bring that and let
other people use it too if they ask nicely. We
had the court to ourselves when a mom with her
two sons arrived. They were between eight and ten. No
big deal, they can use the other side of the court.
The kids started playing and we're having trouble with the

(07:49):
deflated ball. Mom, who was sitting and watching nearby, notice
this and noticed that our ball was pumped. She came
up to us and said we need to let her
kids have a turn with the ball we were using,
since it was the only good one. I told her
that they're all always deflated, and that we actually brought
a pump to fix one so we could use it.
I said she couldn't have our ball, but she was

(08:10):
welcome to use the pump to inflate the one her
kids had. She seemed offended by this, scoffed at me,
I suppose you're not even going to inflate it for us.
I kind of paused before I was taken aback, but
then responded, no, I wasn't, but I've changed my mind.

Speaker 2 (08:26):
Good.

Speaker 1 (08:27):
Yeah, now I don't think I'm going to let you
use it at all. I turned back to my boyfriend
and we started playing again, ignoring her stammering about how
rude we were. The kids were watching the whole time
and didn't say a word. They started playing again too,
until the mom got frustrated with us. Ignoring her, took
them and left. After they left, my boyfriend said I
went too far. He agreed that she was rude, but

(08:50):
said I should have let them use the pump because
in the end, admit, the mom got mad and the
kids couldn't play anymore. Well, I do feel bad for them.
I wasn't going to let their entitled mother's steamroll me.
I think that's just setting a bad precedent for both
her and for her kids, that they will all learn
that they can just bully people into doing everything for them.
So am I the jerk? Not the jerk. You didn't

(09:12):
go too far, and you didn't deny her the ability
to use the pump. She was a jerk and lost
the privilege. It's one hundred percent on her shoulders what
happened to her kids. As a culture, we put the
onus on nice people to be responsible for crappy ones
and making victims smooth out bad situations. Kudos to your
boyfriend for not watching things go down and just suggesting

(09:33):
he'd do it. A partner who can disagree but not
override your ability to make a decision is awesome. This
thought brought to the discussion by my wife. Not the jerk.
You offered her a perfect solution. She was rude. Yeah,
you could have been the bigger person and ended up
giving her the pump. But do we even know if
she would have accepted just the pump if you were polite,

(09:53):
or did you need to pump the ball for them too.
Sounds like at the end of the conversation, she's walking
away mad because, as you said, you wouldn't pump their
ball up. Lady is out of her mind? Am I
the jerk for telling the truth about my eighteenth birthday
and embarrassing my father in front of his university friends
so to be blunt, I twenty mail was an unwanted child,

(10:15):
a whoop's pregnancy that my parents were too religious to
get read off. As a result, I pretty much raised
myself until I was kicked out at eighteen. I won't lie.
It hurt being rejected by the people who are supposed
to love me, but I'm at peace with it now
with the sad backstory out of the way. About six
months ago, my parents reached out and started apologizing profusely.

(10:36):
I wasn't sure about getting back in contact, but they
seemed genuine, so I tentatively went ahead. Things were going
well until they invited me to meet up in person.
I showed up at the restaurant expecting a quiet dinner
and a heart to heart. Instead, I found out that
my father's fraternity had rented out the whole darn place
for a twenty five year reunion. He met me at

(10:56):
the door and told me to act like we're a
happy family in front of his old friend friends. I,
being as hungry as I was at this point, made
a beeline for the buffet. He promised me dinner, and
by god, I was going to have it. I tried
to blend into the background until I got to chatting
with some other folks my age, my father's friends' kids.
I assume. They started talking about their parents and I

(11:18):
nodded and smiled along. Then I was directly asked what
I got for my eighteenth birthday, and I didn't know
what to say, so I defaulted to the truth, So
what did your parents get you for your eighteenth birthday?
I got kicked out Q awkward silence. Oh my god,
are you okay? That sounds awful? Yeah, I'm fine. I

(11:38):
just moved in with my aunt while I go to college.
Where do y'all go? They then started to gossip about
their schools, and I made myself scarce. Shortly afterwards, Later
that night, my father started blowing up my phone, admonishing
me for embarrassing him. Apparently what I said had gotten
back to my father's friends, who are now being very
cold to my father. He was angry with me because

(12:00):
because it wouldn't have been a big deal to just
lie and save face. So now he's in hot water
with his university friends. I mut at him and went
to bed. I was sure that I was in the
right here, but now I'm having doubts. I'm worried that
my parents might not want to keep in contact after
I basically threw a monkey wrench into his relationships with
his university friends. So am I the jerk? Not the jerk?

(12:23):
First and foremost, you will never be the jerk for
telling the truth. I don't mean any offense when I
say this, but it's clear you are not at peace
with what your parents did. Even in that last paragraph,
you're still seeking the approval of the people who never
even cared about you at all. The fact that he told,
not asked, but told you to play happy family for
his friends is telling you that they're not sorry at all.

(12:45):
Even if they do go no contact, don't sweat it.
They don't deserve you. After what they've done, not the jerk.
Your dad tried to use you to look good in
front of his buddies. The joke was on him because
you told the truth. Now think about this very carefully.
Do you honestly whant it be in your parents' life?
If all you are is a prop you deserve to
have people around you who value you for being you.

(13:07):
I had cold parents, and it didn't matter how hard
I tried. Nothing I did was ever good enough. There's
no shame in walking away from emotionally mistreating parents. You
deserve better than that. If I don't cut the line,
you won't eat. I just received the forms for this
year's food festival, and I was reminded of what happened
last year. After the first lockdown. The mayor in my

(13:28):
city decided to organize a food festival in August. Because
it was successful, it has become an annual event. I've
taken part in both of them, and planning to take
part this year. Also. While most participants go with tried
and true recipes, I use it to try new things. Anyways,
onto the story. As a crew, we had the experience
from last year for what to expect. I had gone

(13:50):
with one tweak of a standing recipe, I had pulled
pork sandwiches and one new one. The new one was
a sandwich with smoked sausage, grilled onions, peppers and eggplant,
and feti cheese sauce. Since the opening hours for the
festival wore eleven to twenty three hundred, we planned on
having a three man crew two cooks, won a prentice
on site with enough food to cover the rush hour

(14:12):
of lunch and restock when the crew changed at seventeen hundred.
If they needed anything, they would give us a call
and we would bring it from the shop. We were
about five hundred yards away. That fateful August day, we
received a call from the crew around thirteen hundred that
they were running low on vegetables and cheese sauce. Apparently,
a cruise ship had anchored outside of the city's port

(14:32):
and had debarked most of their passengers for twelve hours
in the city, and most of them hit the food festival.
So I grab a portable fridge, load it with vegetables
and sauce, and I head to the stand. Having a
pass I moved fast through the entrance and I catch
some glares as I stepped inside the food court, I
noticed that almost every stand had a huge line in
front of them. As I moved past our line to

(14:54):
reach the stand's door, I hear people shouting, Hey, where
are you going and get back line. I'm almost to
the door when somebody grabs my shoulder. I turn around
to see a gray headed, older man dressed in a
classic tourist attire, light yellow shirt, khaki shorts, white socks
and sandals and a hat. Tourists still holding my shoulder.

(15:15):
You can't cut the line like this. People are waiting me. First,
remove your hand from me. Second, I need to cut
the line, tourist, No, you need to get back in line.
At that point, one of my cooks is almost hanging
over the counter waiting for the ingredients, and I'm starting
to lose my temper, but I give it one more try.

(15:35):
I need to go in there to tourist, who's now
red in the face and shouting no, you need to
get back in line and wait for your food.

Speaker 2 (15:44):
Young people these days.

Speaker 1 (15:46):
Well that was it for trying. Now for my inner
Neanderthal me forcibly removing his hand from my shoulder. Me
not cut line, you know, eat? He looked at me,
shocked when finally my cook shouted, Hey, Boss, can I
have the stuff now? I handed him the fridge and
told him not to sell to that guy. My cook's reply,

(16:07):
I know better than the feet wild animals. Boss punished
me by reducing my hours, but didn't tell the other boss.
I was working remotely for a staffing agency organizing and
managing events. When I was initially hired on. It was
due to the fact that three employees were quitting. They
all seemed to be leaving amicably to pursue other ventures,
so I didn't think anything of it. They had hired

(16:29):
myself and one other person to replace them, and everything
was going fine. Over time, I started to notice little
things here and there, like issues due to miscommunication between
the owners, a married couple, and a heavy workload. A
few months then, I was assaulted and had been injured
pretty badly. It was really difficult, obviously, but I worked
remotely so I was still able to work. I told

(16:51):
my bosses I had an emergency and was injured and
needed to take time off. Almost immediately, one of the
owners called and left an angry sounding voicemail. I called
him back and ended up having to tell him that
I had been assaulted and went to the hospital and
all of that. He seemed sympathetic, but near the end
of the conversation he noted that I was supposed to
be managing an event that weekend Friday through Sunday, and

(17:12):
that they had no one else to manage it. He
didn't do any of that, but his wife did. However,
we always had at least five events we were organizing
and managing at a time. I was afraid I would
get fired, so I ended up having to work that weekend.
It wasn't so bad, but I was in an incredible
amount of pain, and due to my injuries, the doctor
said they couldn't prescribe me any strong pain medication due

(17:34):
to complications that may arise. I worked that weekend and
pushed through. Shortly after that, they fired another employee and
gave me her workload. Then they chose me to do
a very long running two month plus event taking place
in two different time zones. They initially decided the event
would be split between myself and another employee. She was pregnant.

(17:55):
It matters for context due to the size of the program.
So while I was dealing with the assault and healing,
took one month for my injuries to heal. I was
also doing the majority of the workload of this event.
I was also having to plan a move, put my
stuff in a storage unit, and living in a long
term sublet while I looked for a place. I was
also organizing other events on top of that, so there

(18:16):
were days where I would easily work for ten plus hours. Eventually,
the employee who was helping me win on maternity leave,
so the whole program landed on my shoulders. One day,
I got reprimanded for working overtime. I explained that the
workload was heavy, and since I was managing events in
two time zones, I was having to wake up super
early in the morning four am, work during the day,

(18:38):
take a long lunch, work some more, then wrap up
the other event which ended in the evening ten thirty
to eleven PM. They basically told me I needed to
manage my time better. Well. I was not doing well
mentally or physically, so my cognitive abilities weren't the best.
I was making small, easily fixable mistakes here and there,
but nothing that was damaging or severely detrich mental to

(19:00):
the business. There were days I would just sit there
crying at my desk. It was awful. Another employee had
also been reprimanded for working overtime, and she was as
swamped as I was. Eventually, one of my bosses emailed
me and said I was still working too much over
time and that he wanted me to work only five
hours on days where I wasn't managing the big event.

(19:20):
I was relieved. Honestly, I was looking forward to having
more time for myself so I could heal. I made
sure to email him back to confirm the non show
management days. He wanted me to work five hours for
the following week. Well. He didn't tell his wife, the
other owner, about my new hours, and she had a
tendency to ramble about stuff during meetings, making them last
way longer than they needed to be. One day, we

(19:43):
had a meeting in the morning that lasted three hours,
and it was the first day I was to only
work five hours. I didn't even need to be in
that meeting, but they forced me to stay and would
get irritated if they knew myself or other employees were
quietly working while listening to the meeting. After that meeting,
the wife sends me messages asking the progress of some
things I was working on. She then added more things

(20:04):
for me to do. The back and forth with her
took about twenty minutes. I told her that I knew
I wouldn't have enough time to finish those things that
day because I only had a little over an hour
and a half to complete the other tasks I had
already been assigned. She had no idea what I was
talking about, so I told her that her husband had
reduced my hours on non management days and forwarded her
our email exchange where he confirmed I was only to

(20:26):
work five hours that day. She got an attitude with
me and said, well, these are high priority things and
we need you to work on them. You can go
ahead and work longer today. I told her I couldn't
because I had confirmed a week prior and had made
arrangements and was not going to be able to work.
So once I hit my five hours, I clocked out
and put my phone on do not disturb, ignoring all

(20:49):
of the messages she was sending me. She ended up
having to work on all of the tasks she had
given me late into the night. I continued to follow
the new schedule and they just dumped my workload onto
other employer ployees or had to do it themselves. I
eventually got fired because they said that was basically the
last straw, but I was so relieved and also got
unemployment benefits even though they tried to fight it. Am

(21:12):
I the jerk for telling my stepsister that no one
cares about her wedding after she wouldn't stop comparing it
to mine. I twenty three female. I have a stepsister, Maggie,
who's twenty seven, whose mother, Miranda, is married to my dad.
I grew up mainly with my mother and stepfather, so
didn't see Miranda or Maggie that often. Also, Maggie and
Miranda have a massive chip on their shoulders about my

(21:33):
dad's extended family, so they stopped coming to most group things,
and I spent a lot of time staying with my
grandparents during holidays, so I saw them even less for
various reasons. Most of my dad's family has converged in
the same area over the last couple of years, so
we see each other more often. Maggie got married last
year and I'm getting married this summer. The weddings are

(21:54):
not close together and not comparable in terms of venue size,
esthetic literally anything, but that doesn't stopped Maggie from comparing
them incessantly. She's annoyed that my dad offered to pay
for mine I refused, but didn't for hers. She's mad
that I'm wearing heirloom jewelry for my wedding but she
wasn't offered. She's mad that extended family will be attending

(22:14):
my wedding when they didn't attend to hers. She has
gone so far as to say that she should have
married my fiance since she's closer in age to him
and they skipped her. She believes my marriage was arranged.
It seems to boil down so that she didn't get
the wedding she wanted, and she's still bitter about it.
About a week ago, the family, a bunch of us,
we had dinner together. The subject of a family member

(22:37):
came up and their accommodation for the wedding, and Maggie
chimed in to say how nice it was that they
were able to make it to mine because they were
too busy to come to hers. No one acknowledged what
she had said, so she started to talk about the
excuse they had given at a stupidly loud volume so
that everyone had to listen. I'm not a confrontational person,
but a mix of wine and exhaustion took over, and

(22:58):
I said, no one can cared about your wedding a
year ago, and they're not going to start today, so
just please spare us. There was an awkward silence until
everyone moved on, but Maggie started crying and quietly left
the table and eventually went home. My dad says she's
too humiliated to talk to anyone and probably won't come
to the wedding. My dad is pressuring me to apologize

(23:20):
because Miranda is giving him a hard time, as is Maggie.
He says, I knew how much it hurt Maggie that
a lot of the family was not part of her wedding,
and while she has taken it too far, I went
for the jugular, and I didn't need to because she
wasn't disparaging to me. She was just inappropriately expressing bottled
up feelings. To me. It felt like she was using
my important life event to draw attention to herself, which

(23:42):
felt unfair and mean spirited, which is why I reacted
the way I did. That said, it seems like she's
not rushing off my comment as easily as I did hers.
So I'm wondering if I took it too far. Not
the jerk. I understand why she would be upset if
people did not attend her wedding, but to keep bringing
it up it's just too much. I'm confused about why

(24:02):
she thought it was okay to bring up her wedding
while the family was discussing Ope's wedding. Then she wants
to be shocked when op finally claps back. Not the jerk.
She's angry that her stepfather's extended family wasn't excited about
her wedding. I assume her mother also has a family.
You also said neither of them go to family events
on your dad's side often. Why does she want people

(24:23):
she doesn't have in our life at her special day.
I'm getting married fairly soon and chose to only invite
people who have made an effort to be in my life.
My half sister is demanding to work for my family business.
My mom passed when I was four. I have two
older brothers who were six and seven when she passed.
Our dad remarried just after my ninth birthday and had

(24:44):
two kids with his second wife. My brothers and I
are twenty eight thirty and thirty one now, and my
half sister recently turned fifteen. My brothers and I work
with our mom's parents. She set up a restaurant with
them before she had us, and our grandparents have told
us will be the owner's eventually. As it is, we
make decisions like owners. My half sister is obsessed with

(25:05):
being a chef. She watches all the cooking shows and
wants to be famous. Recently, she started asking if she
can work at the restaurant and start to get to
know the family business. She said she had loved to
take over as head chef one day and her mom
could be head waitress. My brothers told her she was
getting way too carried away, but she got all excited.
She ended up talking to our dad about working for us.

(25:27):
He said he was okay with it as long as
we were. We are not when it comes down to it,
This is a business our mom started with her parents
for us to take over someday for our family, and
none of us believe she would want our dad's second
wife or our half siblings, who are nothing to her,
working there and taking such a huge place in it.
We know our grandparents aren't comfortable with it either, I'm

(25:49):
the most gentle out of us three, so I told
her she couldn't work for us. I encouraged her to
find somewhere else to work instead. She asked me why,
and I told her it was a decision made by
those of us who owned and ran the business. She
asked me how it could be of family business if
we don't allow family to work there, then said how
her mom should have been asked a long time ago.

(26:09):
I told her that wouldn't make sense since her mom
isn't related to my grandparents, the owners, and that ultimately
it's my mom's legacy for her kids, and how we're
trying to honor that. She said it was dumb, and
forget how my mom would feel when she can't even
speak about it. My dad and his wife are so
upset we turned her down. They said she is our
family and that should be what matters. It also brought

(26:31):
some bitterness up about Dad's wife not being offered a
place at the restaurant years ago. Seems there's been some
weirdness because Dad had worked alongside mom and my grandparents
for a while when they were first married. Am I
the jerk Eta. A lot of it revolves around money
and legalities. When my dad got married, his wife approached
my grandparents and told them she wanted to adopt me

(26:53):
and my brothers, and how she and my dad wanted
her to be the one to take control of any
money that was meant to go to us, including save
my mom left my grandparents in control of. She told
them she was going to be our mom now and
that she would be taking over finances for the family,
that she needed to know everything we had and wanted
access to it. When my brothers and I said no
to being adopted, she and Dad approached my grandparents about

(27:16):
having a conversation with us and brought up the fact
that they hadn't done any of the other stuff asked.
She told them she was not comfortable with our photo
being in the restaurant and said they needed to take
it down. It was a photo of us with our
mom and grandparents because they were the parents now. The
tone was set from there, and I suspect they must
have asked to work in the business with the clear

(27:36):
resentment they have that they weren't employed there a long
time ago. Can't confirm it, but it was clearly expected
my grandparents would ask Dad and his wife to work there,
not the jerk. Your grandparents are the owners. You have
no say. If she wants to be a chef grade
your dad and stepmom should help her. McDonald's is a
good place to start for her, and maybe culinary school

(27:58):
first if she wants to become a famous chef, unless
she's Gordon Ramsey in disguise, not the jerk. Not the jerk.
She's family, but not to your grandparents on your mom's side,
that makes sense. Very entitled. The mom and the daughter
are neither one of them deserve to work there, especially
after disregarding and disrespecting your late mom's feelings and legacy.

(28:19):
I'd ban them from the place for life. No one
has owed anything. Sis feels this is something she's entitled to,
and next thing you know, she wants her stake in it.
This isn't her family's business, and neither she or her
mother belong working there in any capacity whatsoever. Grandparents and
siblings all agree. Case closed. I can somewhat see why

(28:39):
your half sister is upset, but also not because of
the entitlement of her, and more so, her mom is
clearly strong OPI. The fact that your maternal grandparents aren't
comfortable could be significant on a number of levels. I
may be grasping in some straws here, but I'm willing
to bet that your stepmom has tried to throw her
weight around with the family business before. Now it sounds

(29:00):
like your dad has no ownership of and little involvement
since your mom passed, so he can buzz off trying
to tell you or your brothers and his late wife's
parents what to do with your restaurant and her legacy.
In response to another comment, the step mom and half
sister don't want to simply work at the restaurant. It
sounds like they want to run the show. The sister
is a teenager. Where do you think she gets all

(29:21):
the agro and defensiveness about her mom not being involved
years ago? It's likely been taught to her by her mom,
not the jerk. Stick with your instincts and dodge these
two bullets and honor your mom's wishes. Am I the
jerk for letting my daughter cry instead of fetching her tablet? Context?
Six years ago, my wife was laid off. She struggled
to find a job in the following months, and we

(29:43):
couldn't afford raising the kids. Two boys and one girl
with my salary. An old client offered me a well
paying job overseas, so I took it. Last month. I
came back after I agreed with the company to work
from home and they made the legal arrangements for it.
When I was overseas, I talked to them every day
and visit once a year. Whenever I was with them,

(30:03):
I could notice that my wife was spoiling our daughter.
I'd talk to her about it, but she'd tell me
she knows what she's doing and that she's the one
raising her every day and that there's no harm in
treating her like a princess. Our daughter is now nine,
and while she's still our daughter and will always be,
she's not exclusively that and will need to start relying
on herself more. When I came back, I found out

(30:24):
that my wife has been doing her homework. My teenagers
told me that my mom bought their sister three iPads
that she smashed when having tantrums in the last year,
and bought her a new one two months ago. If
our daughter asks for something, she will not stop crying
until we get it for her. She'd literally be sitting
on the couch and start screaming water until someone brings
it to her. If she forgot her tablet upstairs, she'll

(30:47):
order her brothers to go get it for her, and
if they refuse, she'll start crying. Yesterday, she tried doing
the same. I ordered my boys to stay still, and
I told her to go fetch it herself. She kept
crying for fifteen minutes. I was hugging her all the
time and comforting her. When she stopped, I told her
that she still has to go get it herself, but
I will follow her if she wants. She was still annoyed,

(31:10):
but replied, saying that she's a big girl and can
fetch it by herself. When my wife came back from
an errand I told her what happened. Instead of supporting me,
she was angry at me for letting her cry and
told me that I was a jerk who preferred to
let his daughter cry for fifteen minutes instead of taking
thirty seconds to help her. I didn't expect that reaction
from her. I told her that she's ruining our daughter,

(31:31):
and if we keep treating her like that, we will
raise a pathetic person who can't rely on themselves for
the simplest thing. I told her that she needs to
stop doing her homework and instead we should guide her
to figure out the answers by herself, and we should
also make her do the chores her brothers did when
they were her age. She replied that I was welcome
to keep being a jerk to our daughter, but she'll

(31:51):
keep treating her nicely. She warned me to not cry
or feel guilty when my daughter grows up and wants
nothing to do with me. The last thing I want
is for my daughter to despise me. But at the
same time, I wanted to grow up to be a strong,
independent woman. We aren't going to be with her for
the rest of her life, and even if we were,
it's important for every adult to be able to fend
for themselves. Hold her and comfort her while she cried

(32:15):
because she couldn't be bothered to go upstairs to retrieve
her iPad at nine years old. Are you serious? This
girl needs a real shift in reality. OP needs to
stop with that immediately. Although he is not the jerk,
as he understands just how bad it is and has
the right idea. Op's wife is a jerk, though she
sure doesn't mind treating her daughter better. Than the boys,

(32:35):
as if that's not going to push them away, like
she called out Op on the way he wants to
treat his daughter. If you can, Op, please intervene get
help something. I honestly don't have any advice on what
to do here other than to encourage your daughter to
do things for herself and not replace things once they're
broken and teach her about actual real life. But that
girl is going to struggle in adulthood and future relationships

(32:58):
if this continues.

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