I feel like a CF thread...

[Ihatesundays]

Inspired by a bit of reminiscing by DH and I.

DD had a friend. Made the effort to be friendly with her mum even though she was unreliable/bit of a pain (the CF).
Moved back to her home town, after a few months came back for a visit with her DD and DH to stay with FIL, no car with them.
Another parent from school hears they are back and invites her DD to their DDs birthday party, which my DD is going to, so she and DD can catch up with people.
Party is at an awkward location and not really possible by public transportation.

CF asks if she can get a lift, no problem I say. Happen to enquire what her DH is doing ‘oh he’s coming to the party too, he wants to see this venue.’
I point out that I only have a 4 seater car. ‘Oh, don’t you want to leave DD at home and just take us’?
Eer, why would I go to a kids party WITHOUT MY KID?!?

Anyway she actually gets really quite annoyed with me, I still offer to pick her and her DD up.
Later texts me that someone else is giving them a lift. I get to party and hear from lift person that there was a bit of a fuss as she didn’t have room in the car for the DH (and hadn’t asked). CF is having a right moan that her DH really wanted to come etc....

Still glad she moved away...

Tell me yours!

She didn't have our address BTW. She just.. Expected us to wait indefinitely in cold?

An old friend from grad school said she was visiting my town for Christmas. Her family is in another country. I said I'd be delighted to see her.

She asked whether I could pick her up at airport and I said of course. I said I'd prep our guest room.

When it got closer to the time I asked her about plans and it turned out that she would be staying with another family in my town, friends of her parents, people I didn't know.

I said, "Oh right that's fine".

She was still a bit vague about spending time with me. Her flight was due to arrive Christmas eve. She mentioned spending Christmas day with the other family.

I said, "So you'll be at mine Christmas eve?"

She said, "Actually [other family] are doing Christmas eve drinks. I'm sure they wouldn't mind if you stopped in. I could ask them."

I finally realised she had literally expected me to take over two hours from my Christmas eve to be her taxi, so she could spend Christmas somewhere I wasn't invited.

We haven't spoken since.

The biggest CF I have ever known is a friend of mine and the sister of someone very famous. When we met, she was on benefits as she claimed she could not work as she was mentally ill. She was also studying and getting a student loan, but didn't inform the Benefits Office as it would affect her benefits. And she was also working in a nursery, cash in hand.

This continued and she met someone and had two DC. She claimed she was a single parent so got all the benefits that single parents are entitled to, even though her DP lived with her and had a good job in finance.

Worst of all, she claimed Housing Benefit for her very grand house that actually belonged to her father, so she kept all the Housing Benefit. She once told me how much money she had in her current account and I was so disgusted I decided to distance myself from her.

I really don't begrudge people on benefits getting a bit extra, but this was on another level, especially given she was from a very wealthy family and did not need the money.

In the theme of birthday party cfs -
A lovely lady in my church was turning 80. She's not the CF, he comes in later. Anyway one person decided it might be nice to organise something for her and lots of people want to help. She's a lovely lady, everyone loves her.
Main party organiser hears that CF old man is annoyed she's not also organising him a birthday party as he's turning 80 about a month later. So organiser asks him if he'd like her to and he says "Oh no, I don't want a party!"
A week later he confronts organiser publicly and says "I hope you're including ME on lovely lady's party, I'm turning 80 too you know!"
So he muscles in. Organiser initially says she check with lovely lady who says she doesn't mind as she is just so darn lovely.
Come party day he tries to take over. I'd volunteered to put up some decor - lovely lady loves pink and cyclamen flowers so I've got a bit of a theme going. He wants other stuff and I say no.
Then he puts up a large trestle table which takes up a big chunk of the space and lays out lots of photographs of his life. He is asked a) to move the table as it's in everyone's way and b) to leave some room for photographs of lovely lady as it's her party.
He says she's not bringing any and blusters a bit as it becomes clear he's not mentioned it to anyone including lovely lady.
Table is moved (with protest) out of the way and he has a strop, eventually saying dramatically that we can "save the pictures for his funeral and he's now not coming to the party" and storms off with his wife making excuses on the way out.
We all breathed a deep sigh of relief and set about making extra big pink balloon bouquets.
He did turn up. Too much to hope for and I later gathered he was very annoyed we'd not gone chasing after him begging him to come.
Lovely lady is presented with lovely birthday cake and everyone (about 50 of us) all sing. CF wife then.barges in with a small un-iced fruit cake shouting that we mustn't forget Mr CF. Most people now have no idea what's going on and why are people starting to sing happy birthday again?
He then gets up and attempts to sing a bizarre solo. I have never seen so many wtf faces in my life.
None of his relatives came. They were all "busy". I wonder why.
Then he tried to get another party on his actual birthday a month later.

Oof, mine was a taking child to nursery one - I did as a one off ( or so I thought) as the mum said she was sick and I had to walk past the house on my way.
Cue weeks of being asked so cf could have a sleep in. After I put my foot down she tried to move onto dfriend

Bil was getting married abroad. Sil asks her parents to upgrade to a larger villa so her family can stay there as well. She then refused to split the cost as 'they were getting the villa anyway'.

She didn't take any spending money as she assumed her mum would want to pay for everything for them for the week. PIL didn't know this until she passes them her bill at a restaurant on the first night.

Mil snapped. She filled up the kitchen in the villa for them and left them to it. They weren't invited to any meals or trips out unless they paid their share. They stayed at the villa. Then moaned at the wedding to any one who would listen PIL hadn't done any babysitting for them and that the villa wasn't great. Her DH also crashed the parents hire car after borrowing it without checking.

@Winterdaysarehere

Similar story. DH’s best friend had 4 kids under 5. Lived around 150 miles away so didn’t see them often. DH and I very much in DINKY mode. DH gets a text from best friend saying they had put us as legal guardians in their wills. DH told them to change it.

Many years later I fall pregnant and DH tells best friend. Instead of “congratulations” he gets a mouthful about how they’ll have to change their wills because there’s “no way his children would be the priority if we have one of our own”.

I love a CF thread although nothing will ever top the Mexican House Thief. Just saying ;)

@TheHodgeoftheHedge you're absolutely right but gooseberry bush raider came a close second.

Just a small, Marks and Spencer’s one. I was queuing in the baskets only queue last week and it was busy at lunchtime. I was waiting as the queue edged closer and a woman came from the side and started to try to muscle in in front of me. I had my buggy so just kind of gently angled forwards. She began to step directly in front of me so I said: Excuse me, the queue is here (points behind me).

She looks at me, completely affronted and annoyed, and says “Well I only have two items!” She was SO pissed off with me for not allowing her ahead of me that I just replied again that I was in front of her.

Thing is...if she’d just asked politely, id have let her ahead of me! I couldn’t get over her entitlement, I was slightly agog. If she’d said, “Excuse me, it’s busy and I only have two items, do you mind...” and I would have gladly let her ahead of me. I usually do. But she was just so annoyed with ME for challenging her on pushing in. Cheeky fucker.

Plan a girls weekend away, European location chosen as it can be done on a budget. Worked together how much spending money we would need as a minimum based on the activities we wanted to do. One of the group (let's call her Betty) kept wanting to do more expensive activities and I kept having to push back because a) my health wasn't great as I was recovering from some ill health and also they were expensive.

Night before we go she messages the group saying she has only half the spending money (six months notice).

Out she wants to order the more expensive meals, runs out of money half way through so we have to sub her. Last day I'm stressing trying to make sure we have enough money to get to the airport. Looking at the menu I say the front couple of pages are the cheaper meals. Go to the bathroom she had ordered one of the more expensive meals again and another alcoholic drink. Between the rest of us we just about pay the bill.

Get to the airport and she finds a ten euro note in her pocket, I suggest she buys us drinks from the shop as we're all out of money. Nope she is saving it to change back as every little helps. Get home and she bills us for petrol (we had paid for the parking too). I've said never again!

I knew someone who had an allotment, and realised some of her produce was going missing on Sundays. She rocked up one Sunday morning to find a chap helping himself. When she firmly removed the veg from his hands and told him No, he was not going to take it, nor to come back later for anything else, and don't even think about any of the other plots either, he wailed, "But what am I going to have with my Sunday dinner?"

@ThatLibraryMiss many years ago our local town had allotments. Some of the locals were too lazy to work on the allotments but started stealing the produce. They eventually had to put up a locked fence around each plot to keep the CFs out.

Yes, bemine, the whole allotment ended up being locked. A shame because it just hadn't been necessary until then.

I didnt think I had a CF story, but I do!
Years ago I worked with a lady who was a known CF.
Anyway, it was my managers 50th birthday, so the team decided to make a bit of an effort to celebrate. I bought huge 50 birthday balloons. Manager loved it.

We took the manager out for lunch but when we came back the balloons had gone. We all looked around completely bewildered, until another colleague explained that she had seen CF wait till we had gone to lunch, taken the balloons down, carefully untie the knots, let the air out, fold them up neatly and put them in her bag

So, I marched straight over and demanded CF give the balloons back.
Her reason for taking them was astonishing. She said that its "bad luck to have balloons up after lunch time on your birthday" and "the balloons would be useless to manager tomorrow, but she was turning 50 next year, therefore would get more use out of them"

This happened to a teacher that I used to work with rather than me but it is a good CF story. Teacher lived in the same adjacent village to our school as a pupil in our class. Teacher had helped out once in an emergency by giving the child and her siblings a lift home.

The child’s mum approached teacher one morning to say that their grandad, who took them to school in the mornings, was going to have an operation and could teacher bring the children in to school until he could drive again.

So teacher picked the 3 children up at 8:00 each morning and to be fair to them they read nicely on the carpet until school started.

This went on and on and teacher meant to catch up with the mum but before she got chance, she saw the grandad driving along in the opposite direction to her!

Teacher put a stop to it and a few weeks later the mum came to the door to say that she was going to have to move the children to their village school after the summer holidays as “no one would support her to get them to school”. Teacher just said ok and that would be a shame and the children did move, which was a shame as they were all lovely kids.

Two years ago, I was in Waitrose in the run up to Christmas. It was rammed - the tills align with the aisles and people were queued back from the tills and down the aisles. In the queue I'm in, as I worked my way towards the till, it is apparent that there is a gentleman of advancing years in the queue who keeps letting the person behind him go in front. He is keeping station two customers back from the checkout but does not have a trolley or a basket . Eventually two women appear (wife and daughter at a guess), with three trollies of shopping between them. They make a bee-line for the old boy and he has obviously been 'keeping a space' for them at the checkout. They attempt to join the queue and all hell breaks loose from those behind them.
Waitrose staff immediately open another till - usher the three CFs to it and check them through! So the beggars got out even quicker than they had planned too.

There's a local mum who's always on FB asking for people to watch her kids or take them to school etc. She doesn't pay for childminders and she's gone through all her friends. When no one replies she puts up posts along the lines of, "You know who your friends are!" Or makes snidey posts about working and struggling because she gets off her arse to work and no one is willing to help her "despite doing nothing all day.."

A while back she asked another school mum (Let's call her Sandra) if she could take her dc to school. One favour for one day turned into every single day.
Then Sandra's child was poorly so she phoned CFer and said her kid wasn't going to school that day so wouldn't be doing the school run. CFer said, "We'll you're still taking my DC aren't you?" Sandra said no, she couldn't leave her child or take them out of the house. CFer went mad. Had a real go at her.
It was the last time Sandra (or anyone that knew Sandra) did CFer any favours.

Spoke to a colleague who I vaguely knew about holidays, turns out we were both going to be in Florida at the same time. The next day she asks for my number as she thought it would be a great idea to meet up in Florida so she could drop her young son off with me and my family while she went clubbing with her boyfriend. She offered to do the same for me - look after my four kids for the night while I go out drinking. In America. And I barely knew her. It was a very swift no, don't think we spoke again.

So many CFs about taking children to school. How many people don't think about how ongoing parenting works beyond having a baby.

Years ago at uni my housemates and I hosted a bbq. As all guests were cash strapped students we said we would do all the salady bits and our own meat, but everyone needed to bring whatever they wanted to put on the bbq.

Everyone understood this meant meat or veggie equivalent and duly arrived with a pack of sausages or burgers.
Everyone except one girl who arrived with a TINY pack of Haribo- as in one of the mini bags you get in a multipack and a single bag of McCoy’s crisps. As she walked in proudly brandishing her ten little gummy sweets (at a bbq for around 20 people) and bag of crisps she said loudly “well nobody will finish everything they bought with them so I thought I’d save bringing more meat and contribute With the desert!” She honestly expected everyone else to cover her main whilst we all nibbled on half a foam egg each in return....

Moved abroad to somewhere that could be considered a nice holiday destination.

A couple we were good friends with invited themselves over twice in the first six months or so that we lived here (more visits than my close family), didn't offer to pay for anything, ate shitloads of food, kept waking us up really early in the morning as their kid wakes up at the crack of dawn and wakes our kids up in the process, not helping with any washing up etc. generally being quite rubbish guests. Can't help kids behaviour of course, but I already have two kids and I don't really enjoy the chaos of throwing a third one into the mix, it's really disruptive to our routine as well as being a generally noisy and stressful experience.

Now we get messages from them constantly asking to come back and visit again, openly admitting it's because they want a cheap holiday as it's expensive going abroad in the school holidays etc. We said no and they keep asking anyway, every couple of weeks. Feel like it's ruined our friendship. Sometimes cheekiness is endearing and forgivable (if you don't ask you don't get etc) but other times it goes too far.

@CigarsofthePharoahs Love your octogenarian CF story. Can totally imagine the old codger!

Rslys Few years ago in Asda, also at Christmas we were in a huge queue for a baskets only till.

A staff member (obviously just finished her shift, had her coat on over her uniform) waltzed up to the front of the queue with an overflowing trolley and the checkout operator served her! Lots of complaining from others in the queue but they just carried on, having a lovely chat about their Christmas plans.

As we left we noticed another large queue. Of people at the customer service desk demanding to speak to the manager!
I heard from a friend who worked there that they both got a written warning.

I had this a couple of months ago...

I do a hobby one evening a week.
Friend gets in touch to say she has signed her kid up to a an activity that is close by to the place of my hobby so could I drop her child off....but it doesnt start till 7pm so she tells me I will have to miss the first half hour of my hobby....I replied NO.

I get the reply oh no what are we supposed to do,she wont be able to go if you dont take her etc.....I ignored