My wife has a cousin we will call Karen. Karen’s mother and stepfather are both very successful doctors, with forty acres of land and a huge house. Karen has always been a rich, spoiled brat, so it was no surprise that her daughter, Stacy, had become spoiled as well. One day, I had just put my daughter down for a nap when Karen called to ask whether she could bring Stacy over for a playdate.
My daughter was notorious for taking long naps, so I told her it was not a good time. Karen came over anyway. At the door, she announced that they would simply come inside and wait for my daughter to wake up. Before I could refuse, they pushed their way in.
We made light conversation while Stacy occupied herself with my daughter’s toys. I sat through Karen complaining about her latest argument with her husband over whether their next vehicle should be a Porsche or a BMW. After about forty minutes, I finally said, “I don’t think my daughter is waking up anytime soon. Maybe we should do this another day.”
Karen looked at her phone, shrugged, and said, “We’ve been here this long. We might as well wait. I didn’t drive all this way just to go home after talking to you.”
I insisted that my daughter would probably be asleep for much longer. Then Stacy began complaining that she was hungry, and I pushed the issue of them leaving before Karen could ask me to feed her child. Karen finally agreed to go, and that was when the real trouble began.
Stacy had been playing with a set of colorful toy ponies that my daughter loved. When Karen told her to get ready to leave, Stacy kept clutching the toys. Karen guided her toward the door with the ponies still in her hands, so I stopped them.
“Sweetie, could you give me my daughter’s ponies before you go?” I asked.
Stacy squeezed them tighter, turned away from me, and screamed, “No!”
I looked at Karen, who was watching the exchange without any intention of helping. I continued coaxing Stacy as politely as I could, but the more I spoke, the more upset she became. Finally, I straightened up and gestured toward Stacy while looking directly at Karen, silently demanding that she step in.
“But Mommy, I like them,” Stacy whined. “Let me take them home.”
Karen looked at me, shrugged, and said, “Well, I tried. I don’t think she’s going to let them go. Maybe you should just buy new ones for your daughter and let my daughter have these.”
I had to bite my tongue to keep from lashing out. I took hold of the ponies with one hand and gently told Stacy that I would be taking them because they did not belong to her. She threw a tantrum and screamed “No!” repeatedly while trying to pull them away.
I firmly but carefully removed the toys from her arms. I did not yank them; I was still trying to be gentle despite how angry I had become. Stacy immediately began wailing as if I had struck her.
Karen glared at me, swept Stacy into her arms, and shouted, “Great! Look what you did. She’s going to be like this all the way home now. You should have just let her have the ponies.”
At that point, I had had enough. “Then you should probably take her home before she wakes up my daughter. And no, I am not giving your child something that belongs to mine.”
“You should have just let her keep the toys!” Karen screamed again while bouncing Stacy in her arms.
I opened the door and gestured toward it. “They belong to my daughter. You can buy some for Stacy yourself.”
Karen left while grumbling that I was selfish, with Stacy still screaming in her arms. My daughter slept for another hour. During that time, my wife called and asked what had happened because Karen had texted the entire family claiming that I had tortured Stacy and that I was an adult bully.
My wife knew that was not true and wanted the real story. Things eventually smoothed over with the family, but whenever Karen tries the same entitled behavior with anyone else, old arguments flare up again. I am still the only person in the family willing to call her out.
A week ago, a construction company I occasionally work for received a contract to repair a bridge over a highway exit. They asked me to be on site as the first-aid worker. We started on Monday and quickly learned that anyone going for coffee or lunch had to drive three kilometers to the nearest rest stop, where there was a café and a McDonald’s.
Usually, either the foreman or I collected everyone’s orders during the break. One day, it was my turn. We had stopped early because the crew needed to work near a high-voltage pylon and had to wait for the power company.
I took everyone’s order, got into my car, and drove to the rest stop. Out of habit, I was still wearing my reflective vest with “FIRST AID” printed in black letters across the back, and I had my hard hat with me.
While I was waiting in line at McDonald’s, the foreman called to say there had been a paperwork mix-up regarding the temporary power shutoff. The job was being closed down for the day, so the food orders were canceled. I decided to get a coffee and relax before heading home.
I took my coffee toward the outside tables. To reach the patio, I had to pass the indoor dining area. That was when I heard an exaggerated throat-clearing sound behind me, followed by a shrill voice saying, “Excuse me.”
I kept walking. The voice came again, louder this time, and then someone grabbed my arm. I turned around and looked down at the hand gripping me. The woman understood the look and released me.
She appeared to be in her late forties or early fifties. “Where is my order?” she demanded.
“I honestly have no idea,” I replied.
“What? I placed it ten minutes ago. Is nobody going to bring it to me?”
“Sorry, but you should speak to an employee. I’m on my way out.”
I tried to leave, but she grabbed my arm again. I turned back, now visibly irritated.
“Go up there and check my order,” she ordered. “It’s number 190. Then bring it to me.”
“Remove your hand from my arm and stop touching me,” I said.
She released me, and I walked outside. She followed, shouting that this was no way to treat a customer and demanding to see the manager.
The McDonald’s manager came outside to investigate the commotion. At the same moment, my foreman arrived on the patio because he had also decided to stop for coffee. He walked directly over and asked what had happened.
The manager tried to calm the woman, but she kept pointing at me and shouting, “He was rude to me! He refuses to bring me my food. Do something!”
The manager looked at me, then back at her. “Ma’am, I would love to help you, but he does not work for me. He is not required to bring you anything.”
She stared at all of us, then stomped away. My foreman bought his coffee, and we sat outside for a while before heading home. Apparently, she believed that anyone wearing work clothes was an employee who had to obey her, regardless of where that person actually worked.
My house sits on a large plot of land, with the back of the property facing a forest. The front is enclosed by a large gate and a smaller wood-and-wire farm fence that continues along the side facing the road. The side fence extends until it reaches the forested area.
Most of the forest is made up of sugar maples, and I use them to produce maple sugar. In the backyard, I also keep several game traps, mostly for rabbits, as well as a large vegetable garden. I have “No Trespassing” signs posted around the entire boundary of the property.
One day, I was sitting inside when I suddenly heard screaming and laughter coming from the backyard. I went outside and found three children shooting metal balls from slingshots at cans they had propped against my large shed near the garden. Their shots were also striking the shed.
I walked over and told them it was time to leave because they were on private property and were damaging my building. The children reluctantly went away. About an hour later, their father knocked on my door.
He had climbed over my closed fence, walked up the long driveway, and come to my house to yell at me. He said I had no right to make his children leave. According to him, any land they could physically access was public land, and if they could reach it, they were allowed to use it.
I reminded him that his children had climbed over a fence covered with “No Trespassing” signs. That meant they had trespassed. I also pointed out that he had done exactly the same thing to reach my front door.
I told him to leave and warned him that he and his children were fortunate my guard dogs had not been outside, because they were extremely protective of the property. He told me to shut up and demanded to speak to the man of the house.
“My husband is not home,” I said, “but he would give you the same answer.”
The man insisted that his children would use my land whenever they wanted. I decided to show him why returning would be a bad idea. I opened the large wooden door behind me and said, “When my husband is away, these are the men of the house.”
Behind the door sat two 160-pound King Shepherds and a 120-pound Bullmastiff. All three were staring at him and growling. The father immediately looked frightened and decided to leave.
Before going, he insulted me and raised his middle finger. I did not care. I doubted that either he or his children would return.
My girlfriend and I have been together for three years. Ninety-nine percent of the time, our relationship is wonderful. She is funny and intelligent, and we share many interests, but every visit with her family makes me question our future.
Her family is extremely wealthy. Wealth itself is not the problem. The problem is that they are obsessed with money and constantly measure the value of objects and people by their price.
I come from a middle-class background. I have a good education and a career I genuinely enjoy, but I am not rich. Because of that, her parents see me as their daughter’s loser boyfriend.
During one visit, we drove two hours to their house in my Honda sedan. The moment we arrived, her mother ordered me to park behind the house so the neighbors would not see what she called “that piece of junk.” She was furious that we had not brought my girlfriend’s Land Rover, which her parents had bought for her as a birthday gift.
My girlfriend dislikes driving on long trips, and her parents have forbidden me from driving the Land Rover. That left my Honda as the obvious option, but her mother still treated it as a humiliation.
Her father has never spoken directly to me. The first time my girlfriend introduced us, he turned to her and asked, “What does he do? Does he make a lot of money?”
Every time I greet him, he gives me a disinterested glance and says almost nothing. The previous year, I brought a twenty-five-dollar bottle of wine to dinner. That was expensive for me, and I had asked an employee at the wine store to help me choose it.
Her mother told me to leave it in the kitchen, and they did not open it while we were there. Later, she admitted to my girlfriend that they had regifted it to their housekeeper because they did not drink what she called “gas-station hooch.”
We made it through the most recent visit without much drama apart from the car incident, but afterward I could not stop thinking about the situation. My girlfriend and I had discussed marriage more than once, yet I knew her parents would never accept me.
If we married, I would probably have to see them more than once a year. I could not imagine spending the rest of my life around their entitled, superior attitudes. My girlfriend had largely stopped defending me because she had learned to ignore their criticism, but I could tell it still bothered her.
Her parents financed a large part of her lifestyle, and she was afraid they would cut her off if she challenged them too strongly. They had threatened to do that over other issues. I began wondering whether I was wasting my time.
She always said she did not care what her family thought, but I was no longer certain that was true. She constantly minimized how badly they treated me, and I knew I would never be good enough for them, even if I was good enough for her.
A few days later, while I was at work, I received an all-caps message saying, “WE NEED TO TALK.” I assumed the relationship was about to end. Instead, we spoke for a long time that night, and she admitted that she knew her parents treated people terribly and controlled her and her siblings through money.
She explained that part of the issue was cultural. She had been born and raised in the United States, but her parents had grown up wealthy in another country and moved to America many years earlier. According to her, they had struggled to assimilate into upper-class American social circles and flaunted their wealth because they felt insecure.
She also said that her mother had been emotionally and physically abusive. Even as an adult, my girlfriend was still afraid of her. She had received very little affection from either parent while growing up, with material gifts replacing emotional care.
Because of that, losing financial support felt to her like losing the last connection she had with them. Being cut off financially and being cut off emotionally had become almost the same thing in her mind.
She told me that she no longer expected me to visit her parents. She was deeply hurt when I said I might be wasting my time with her, and I apologized. She insisted that her parents’ opinion did not determine whether our relationship could work.
I asked whether she would consider allowing them to cut her off financially and learning to live independently. That would not require her to stop speaking with them, but it would force their relationship to exist without money as the primary tool of control.
We had already discussed moving in together. She suggested leaving the townhouse her parents paid for and moving into my apartment. We had been together for three years, and I believed we would have lived together earlier if her parents had not opposed it.
She was extremely nervous about supporting herself, but she was willing to try. Our initial plan was to divide rent and utilities. She also asked me to help her create a spending budget because she had never learned to manage her own money.
She handed me the credit cards her parents paid for and asked me to hide them. I felt uncomfortable having that much control over another person’s finances, so we agreed to treat the arrangement as temporary and transparent rather than as control.
We planned to test the arrangement until my lease ended in March. If it worked, we would find a new place together. She was not ready to tell her parents immediately, but she promised she would do so before March.
A few days ago, I went to my local supermarket for my usual Sunday shopping. I took a cart from the parking lot and filled it with vegetables, bananas, meat, cereal, and several other items. The cart was about half full, and my purse was inside it.
I left it only a few steps away while choosing a package of hamburger buns. Then I heard the wheels moving. When I turned around, a woman was pushing my cart away with a small child sitting in the seat.
“Sorry, but that is my shopping cart,” I said. “I think there must have been a mix-up.”
“Oh, no, there wasn’t,” she replied.
“If it was in your way, I’m sorry. I can move it.”
“It wasn’t in the way,” she said. “I needed a cart because I’m tired of carrying my child. I was lucky yours was so close.”
I hesitated, then pointed out that the cart contained my groceries and my purse. She handed me the purse, and for a moment I thought the problem had been resolved.
“Okay, you have your purse now,” she said. “Do you have any other personal belongings in the cart? Because I’m going to take it off your hands.”
“No, but I have a problem with you taking it because it contains all my groceries.”
“Listen, you don’t have a baby with you,” she snapped. “Shopping carts are for mothers like me. You need to get a basket.”
“Shopping carts are for people buying more things than they can carry,” I replied. “They are for convenience. Give me back my cart and get your own. There are plenty in the parking lot and near the entrance.”
She shrieked, “Then go get another one yourself! Did you not hear that I’m tired? You try carrying thirty pounds around this store. My baby is heavy.”
She pushed the cart away with all my groceries still inside. I stood there in disbelief. I decided not to chase her because I did not want a confrontation, and I simply wanted to finish shopping and leave.
I returned to the entrance, collected another cart, and found all my items again. I told the security guard near the door about the woman who had taken my first cart. The entire incident added about half an hour to my shopping trip because the deli line was especially long.
Later, I found the original bag of sliced ham abandoned beside the muffins. She had not returned it to the deli or placed it in a refrigerated section. I never saw her again, and I was grateful for that.