How’s this for entitled..?

[TheLightSideOfTheMoon]

22 year old colleague/friend, injury, I won’t go into it.

No one to drive her to A&E. My DP drives her there (with me). I sit with her for almost 8 hours waiting to be seen.

Eventually I tell her that I need to go home (I needed medication I’d left behind), I’ll sort out a lift for her in the morning (A&E about 15 miles away), but pretty sure she’ll be admitted.

Roll on early this morning. She’s been discharged.

My DP can’t pick her up so I tell her I will pay for a taxi (probably about £50).

Her mother then contacts me. Absolutely fuming that her daughter is ‘stranded’. I point out that I offered to pay for a taxi but for some reason that doesn’t count.

I tell her to jog on.

Another load of shitty messages from the colleague for telling said mother to jog on.

Seriously?

I spend most of the night in A&E with someone looking after them and there’s no thanks, just a barrage of abuse from their mother.

No good deed goes unpunished.

Is it me? Seriously. Am I in the wrong?

Or are people just like this now?

Ok I’m going to give you some tough love now as you remind me of myself a few years ago, before I had therapy and understood my boundaries.

Taking this colleague to A&E was kind of you and of course they should thank you dearly for it. Their rudeness is their problem and how you react to it is yours.

You need to work on your boundaries and understand why you’re a people pleaser. The colleague has history of taking advantage of you so why are you continuing to allow it? If you and your DH weren’t able to take her to A&E she would’ve found another way, is she really that hard up? Of course she came to you as she knew you were the ‘easy option’.

I had a friend use me all the time, picking up bits of shopping when she knew I was in a supermarket and she’d rarely pay me back. Always claiming she was skint but the same year took the family on an all inclusive 2 week trip to Disney world Florida! I WAS a skint student! I put a stop to it and worked on myself and you know what, people respect and like me better now I assert myself!

So start now, unblock them and send them both a message asking for an apology and thank you for what you did for her. DO NOT engage in unnecessary conversation and certainly no arguments, send it and await a reasonable response. In the meantime get up, get dressed and stop wallowing in self pity as you’re only punishing yourself and feeding your low self esteem. I honestly say this is the nicest possible way.

Please get some therapy, if that’s not an option there’s plenty of great stuff on YouTube and many good books as PP as suggested.

Colleague doesn’t even live at home.

Colleague will message me a lot saying how sad and lonely she is. It’s actually quite exhausting.

She does it late at night when she knows I have work in the morning.

I’ll be glad not to have to listen to it all tonight.

She is a user. I’ve always seen it, but not actually ‘seen’ it.

Former friend now I take it?

Cheeky fuckers employ these kind of tactics when their slaves don’t come to heel - they start showing their claws and hope the nice gentle people pleasers feel so upset and confused by it all that they fall into line.

You didn’t do that, which is brilliant. You should be proud of yourself, not falling into their manipulation and feeling upset. You stood up to them, well done!

I'm struggling to imagine this situation OP, are you a lot older than her?

@TheLightSideOfTheMoon

Colleague doesn’t even live at home.

Colleague will message me a lot saying how sad and lonely she is. It’s actually quite exhausting.

She does it late at night when she knows I have work in the morning.

I’ll be glad not to have to listen to it all tonight.

She is a user. I’ve always seen it, but not actually ‘seen’ it.

Wonder why she is sad and lonely 🤔😆

If you had taken my 22 year old dd to hospital and sat with her for 8 hours, I would be sending you a huge bunch of flowers as a thank you.
I would then collect her myself.
Some people!!!

I spent 9 hours in A&E about 10 days ago - right leg swelled up like a balloon, was so painful I couldn't walk on it. 111 advised me to go to make sure it wasn't a blood clot. This was late at night, about 11.30pm. I don't drive, and live on my own, so was fully prepared to get an Uber...ex H offered to give me a lift - he lives on the other side of the city to me, so I was very grateful for his offer! He picked me up, we got to A&E, he waited until I'd been seen by the triage nurse and was checked into A&E reception and he then went home!

Yes, being on my own for 8 hours in a very busy A&E reception was rubbish, but as a grown adult I didn't expect another grown adult to lose out on a night's sleep just to keep me company!

You are definitely not the unreasonable one.

@armanted

I'm struggling to imagine this situation OP, are you a lot older than her?

Not a lot...

But nearly 20 years older.

@TheLightSideOfTheMoon you really need to see this event in a positive light as your wake up call. With some people it's never the dozens of things you've done for them, it's the single thing you didn't do. This is a life lesson learned.

You were kind, over and above kind and she, plus her ugly mouthed mother, have thrown it back in your face. Let them stay blocked. If she says anything tell her straight that she was ungrateful, unfair and very rude.

For the future, put your phone on do not disturb at a time of your choice through the night, you can exclude family numbers and others who may need to contact you urgently.

Op I do think that you (and probably others) have fed her sense of entitlement but you've blocked her now so make sure you don't allow her to change the truth; they'll come up with a completely different story to justify their behaviour. But I presume you will see her at work at some point?

Do you think you would benefit from counselling or therapy if you are too much of a people pleaser with no healthy boundaries? What does your DP think of it all?

I think what you're feeling here, OP, is anger. Quite right too. Let it burn for a while and, as others have said, accept the life lesson gifts it brings!

You did a good thing, OP, you looked after someone in trouble, you went way beyond what anyone could have expected even from a close friend (let alone a colleague). They repaid you with insults and demands.

Yes, you're a people pleaser, but that's not an offence, quite the opposite. I have the same tendency, and have been abused in the past -- though not as outrageously as you've described here!

I now try to keep the people-pleasing for those I care about, and be a bit tougher with CFs like your colleague. I wouldn't take any home phone calls from your colleague in future. Her mother is obviously worried about her child, but that's no excuse for abusing you.

and for your kindness. Be kind to yourself too.

PS. You've got a lot of sleep to catch up on. Take it easy.

OP you sound like an incredibly nice person. Save your kindness for people who will treat you with respect and kindness in return. Get rid of entitled people who will use you - well done for standing up and doing so on this occasion.

Agree with PP that if someone had done what you had for my daughter I'd be sending you flowers and sorting out a taxi for her to get home myself.

@TheLightSideOfTheMoon

I’m not upset they’re not pleased.

I’m upset that I’m the bad and have done nothing to deserve it.

The thing is, OP, you 'wouldn't have done anything to deserve it' even if you hadn't had a DP who could drive her to A and E, or if you'd seen her safely checked in and then gone home, or if you had limited your 'aftercare' to a text in the morning to see how she was. None of these courses of action would have been wrong, or made you a 'bad guy'.

You can't operate on a day to day basis with the motivation of 'not being seen as the bad guy'.

My mother has such poor boundaries and self-esteem that she has an ingrained horror of anyone having an opportunity to think this of her or her children, so she continually does insane things to avoid it.

For instance, when I was a teenager still living at home, someone I used to babysit for phoned me at short notice to ask if I could babysit her children now, and stay on for that evening. I said sorry, I couldn't, I was already babysitting my own younger siblings later, while my parents went to a concert with my aunt and uncle. I then went out for an hour.

My people-pleasing mother, however, had overheard the conversation (back in the landline only days), and was so horrified I had said no, thereby leaving myself open to being considered 'disobliging and ungrateful', that when I came home again, I discovered the two children I'd said I couldn't babysit trashing my house with my mother dancing attendance on them. My mother, who knew neither the children nor their mother, had actually phoned their mother while I was gone, and told her of course I would babysit, and to just drop off the children at our house, and I would look after them as well as my three younger siblings.

She had absolutely no understanding of the extent to which this was overstepping boundaries, or that it is perfectly possible to say a civil no to someone who asks you to do something you can't or don't want to do.

You're a decent, kind person.
Buck uo now! Enough of this feeling down and doubting yourself.

You just did good for someone in trouble who happened to also be an arsehole, there's no shame in that. The shame is all hers and her, didn't fall far from the tree, mother's.

20 years older ... she's walking all over you.

How is it your problem to solve that she gets to and from the A&E? To the point that you are prepared to fork out 50 quid ... you have to work on your boundaries. She's an adult, I assume, and should be able to sort herself out.

Keep her blocked.

Hence asking Mumsnet who was the batshit crazy one... For a while I really thought it was me.

Well, since you're feeling fragile I won't say you're batshit. But giving her a lift was plenty. There was no need to stay put for 8 hours and the offer to pay for a taxi was above and beyond. I would do those things for a partner or relative. With a close friend I would stay and maybe offer to help with the cost of a taxi. With a whiny, intrusive colleague. No. Once they're at A&E they're in the right place.

Practise working out which things are SEP - somebody else's problem. This was all SEP. Being a decent human being you'd help get her to hospital but after that it really is so far into SEP territory that I would walk away and not bother about it.

Are you mad? She should have paid for her own taxi home or made arrangements for family to collect her.

You had already gone above and beyond ferrying her to the hospital and staying with her when her family should have stepped up.

Don't beat your self up, you're a kind person and both she and her mum are taking the p...ss.
Ask yourself would any of them do the same for you?

Don't do any favours for her anymore. You are too nice, and they don't deserve your kindness.

It's not you.

Your colleague (she is not your friend) and her mother are cheeky fuckers.

Use this situation to your advantage. You've reached breaking point and now you have to work on allowing yourself to say no and also work on that people pleasing element you have as it's not helped you so far.

As a giver, you have to decide and enforce the boundaries because takers have no boundaries.

Using you as mummy substitute. Her real DM may have spoilt her. Alternatively she may be a shallow user type herself and the apple didn't fall far from the tree. You deserve a hug 🤗

Even though this didn’t happen at work, I’m wondering if it’s worth giving your boss an update so the story can’t be twisted later into ‘LightSide abandoned me in hospital and has now blocked me.’

Pretty sure my boss wouldn’t believe it. She knows I wouldn’t do that.

I’m more shocked by the behaviour of the mother, she came off as proper unhinged.