to marvel at how self-centred some people can be?

[HenrySugar]

Just a string of small(ish) happenings recently have made me think this - I'm a pretty assertive person myself but some people are so good at manipulating situations to their own advantage that you almost end up going along with it before you realise how selfishly they are acting.

The first situation: I started swimming lessons a few months ago. There were initially 3 of us who paid a private instructor between us. He would come to a pool near my work and it all worked well for ages. One of the group has now had to leave and another woman has taken her place. After her first week I received a text message from the instructor informing me that they had changed the venue and time - the lessons are now too early and too far away from my work for me to get there in time. I phoned the instructor who was it has to be said a little sheepish but he has basically let this new woman manipulate him into changing everything to suit her! And now he's saying to me that I still need to pay him even if don't turn up. I'm going to have to stop the lessons I think.

Other situation: I also dance as a hobby and several friends/acquaintances have said they would love to do a sort of class together. I am in theory happy to do that and wouldn't want to charge money as I'm not a teacher, I just enjoy it and have been doing it long enough that I'm pretty competent. I let everyone know the times I could manage. I have been utterly amazed at all the complaining and trying to change the times and days to suit themselves! Why would people do that when I'm basically doing it as a favour? Anyway we finally found a time and then only one person showed up!

What goes through these people's heads?! Were they all spoilt children or something?

Great story Kurri. For me, when things are so unreasonable (as in your story) I start to wonder is it actually me that is being unreasonable but I can't see it?

I used to quite like meat paste sandwiches .

It does fascinate me how adults end up like that. And with regards to spoiling dcs, I don't get how the parents don't see what they're doing. The spoilt dd of the non-dancing mum is now suffering a bit at school because of the way she acts. The other children don't want to go to her house "because she always makes you do whatever she wants". Poor kid, not her fault really - she controls her parents so tries to do the same with her friends.

Re. the dancing thing - sometimes people are initially enthusiastic about an idea and think it's great, so you go ahead and set it all up and then the 12 or so people you thought were deadset certs, they'd even bought the gear and everything, just don't show up.

I started a badminton club last year in Jan/Feb - I'd been talking about it in Sep-Oct of 2011, but couldn't get it all together until later, because the place it was going to be was in turmoil (not my fault, and the only available venue).
So only 4 people would come along - and I had to rope DH in as well. It's now dead in the water because the time is no longer convenient - I've texted and FB'd (got its own FB group) about it, "Tell me what day and time would suit you" and got one sodding response.

There are some very odd people in the world - the entitled mums are quite worrying!

YANBU

The thing that annoys me is 'friends' repeatedly inviting themselves to my house, letting their kids trash the house and never inviting me back to theirs. I had a text from one friend wanting to come because she had heard we had a new trampoline

Yep, we've had mums asking if their dcs can come and play with our dog. I used to say yes if it was convenient, but the poor thing has been traumatised by some kids' treatment! Now I tell them the dog is not a toy!

Thumbwitch do you wonder why you bother?

I must be on a roll at the moment. Just gone outside to find the storage cupboard in the garage wide open, and ds' bike has gone! I have a pretty clear idea who has "borrowed" it - a boy down the road who sometimes comes to ask ds if he can use it. I feel like marching over to his house right now and giving him a talking to, but he will be at school so no point, which is probably a good thing as later I will have calmed down a bit!

Good grief, henrysugar

I think the most likely explanation for turning out selfish is probably watching your parents behaving in such a way themselves, rather than being indulged. Selfish adults probably aren't that obliging to their kids if they always put their own needs first in relationships with other adults. Kids see this as the way to behave, kids copy it. There might be a hard-wired pre-disposition to this sort of behaviour, too. Who knows?

This is slightly different as I am not sure I would call my friends manipulative or selfish but I am getting a bit frustrated at the mo.

Dh and I started our family a few years younger than a lot of our friends and for years made sure we still made an effort with meeting for going out, enduring hassle with childcare etc to continue meeting up and for nights out etc where possible.
Now that others have kids no bugger can come out because they have a baby to find a baby sitter for or can't do this as it doesn't fit in with them when DH and I tried to fit things around them when we could.

I also go to an exercise class once a week and out for long walks once a week with a friend -I kept up our arrangement and continued to make the effort to do so even when I was really tired and had the 2 DC'S plus a baby to sort out to make it (Dh obviously a big help).
My friend is now pregnant and understandably cant make the exercise class so I have said that I would be happy to skip them for a bit and we can go out for gentle walks instead to accommodate .
We have yet to make these walks as she keeps cancelling as she is too tired-I do understand that as I remember the tiredness early pregnancy brings but I am now just wondering if when the baby arrives will that be the end of the meet ups as she will have the baby to settle down or have had a long day with the baby, completely forgetting the effort I have made over the last few years sorting out my 3 dc to fit in the meet up with her.
I wouldn't call these friends selfish as they are having family and their lives are changing but a wee bit of awareness to what I did when the shoe was on the other foot would be nice!

Magenat - they are neither manipulative or selfish - your just a bit of a loon if you think friends should make more of an effort now they have kids just because you did! You did things because you wanted to - friends didn't directly benefit by you getting a baby sitter or 'fitting things round' - you did -- it was your social life you kept going, not your friends. You wernt doing great acts of selflessness that your friends should now return.

And if she's too tired - go the class on your own.

Christ where do you get the time for all this?

It depends where your priorities are really. You can make time for anything, in theory.

You could be right narmada. And definitely in the case of the bike-borrowing boy. I've calmed down about that now, but bloody hell, I'm having a right week getting frustrated with other people!

A lovely friend just invited me over for coffee (the one who turns up every week for the dancing!) and listened patiently to my rant. She thinks I should charge for the dance lessons and give the money to charity.

we had a woman in our post natal group who was like this. Unbelievably cheeky. The rest of us would just be like at her cheek. But she seemed mostly to get what she wanted so it obviously worked for.
I was more mean than the others and they used to guffaw silently when i would refuse to lend her toys, DVDs etc that my children had and her children wanted.
Very odd behaviour
(but it does give reasonable people a laugh..... )

I do voluntary work with children (scouting) and the number of parents that 'assume' their child can get a place (we have a huge waiting list) and get really stroppy when I politely say 'we would love to take more children, but we need more volunteer helpers' - then give me 101 reasons why they can't possibly volunteer to help themselves - well, that's fine, but then don't just assume that your child has the right to join in. Equally, how hard it is to say 'thank you' to those leaders who do volunteer (I nearly fell off my chair this week when I did actually receive a thank you email ).

You could do what I did ragwort - I used to run a kids' dance class (don't any more since working) where they would get a sticker at the end but only once they had said thank you for the class! I suspect some of the parents thought I was over-strict, but I always make my dcs do that at the end of clubs and activities, even if it's teachers/instructors who are being paid. Hardly anyone else seems to do that so I suppose it's not expected as such, but still a polite thing to do imo.

That's a good idea HenrySugar - we always make a point of giving the volunteer sports coaches that my DS is involved with a bottle present at the end of each term, they are always embarassingly grateful and it seems not many people thank them unlike all the people who flock to give their teachers end of term gifts.

I agree OP - it is truly staggering how self-absorbed some people are. Two fairly recent examples:

Example 1 - through my work, I come into contact with parents and young children. I sat in a meeting recently and listened to a parent arguing with the headteacher of a school about the start time for the nursery children. The children can't come into nursery before 8.50am, but the junior part of the school starts at 8.40. So he was dropping his older two at the juniors for 8.40am, then bringing youngest one to nursery (just round the corner) for 8.50. He also drives this epic journey of approximately 3 minutes walk. He was pushing for the head teacher to open nursery earlier, because his child 'doesn't like' waiting outside and sometimes, in the winter, 'it gets cold'. Head teacher was having none of it. Everyone else in the room was like this and

Example 2 - my parents have a pretty horrible marriage and when we were teens and living at home, I have vivid memories of them going literally months without speaking to each other, at least not in front of us. The atmosphere around the dinner table was absolutely rancid. Both parents also used my sister and I as sounding boards to carry on endless bitching about the other parent, which was upsetting and stressful and very confusing. This has gone on for years and years.
Anyway, a few years ago, things seemed to have picked up and they were more civil to each other - I told my dad that I was really glad that things were better between them. His response: ' you know, I was thinking just the other day what a privileged position you three (kids) were in - to have been given an understanding of the inner workings of a marriage'. No acknowledgement of how f---ing painful and horrible it had been for us. He's a patronising arse in so many ways and this is the teeny tip of the iceberg but it's one of the worst things he's ever said to me.

YANBU - I set up a mums' group a couple of years back. There was demand for it, so I did all the initial organising, getting contact details, putting everyone in touch, sorting out venue to meet.

One person was hopeless at checking her emails then would text me in a v arsey fashion asking why she hadn't been informed about a meet up. I would go off to venue thinking that as I had set it up I had to be there. People would bail out at the last minute, most not bothering to let me know, couple who did come came v late, so I'd be standing like Norma No-mates in the park.

I would ask for ideas of where to meet, things to do (didn't want to "own" it or seem to be calling all the shots), no-one would volunteer any ideas but would complain when things weren't set up for days or places they wanted. All this off the back of them being totally enthusiastic and up for the idea in the first place!

Am staggered at some of the rudeness on this thread!

My example: we invited an acquaintance and her two teenage children around for lunch for 12pm last Saturday. They turned up at 2pm! No text or anything, and when they arrived there was no apology or acknowledgment that they were late. We had already eaten because toddler DD was hungry and we had planned to eat together.

At 3.30pm I asked them to leave, we had an errand planned and if we didn't do it then we would have had to wait several weeks. DH was very embarrassed and asked me not to, but I felt it might teach them a lesson!

They looked shocked to be hustled out, especially as we don't really speak the same language (literally!) and it must have sounded like "you must go now, we go out. Goodbye."

This acquaintance has now asked me to give her son free English lessons. No thanks!

When DH and I got married, we sent a menu out with the invitations. The choices for main course were beef, salmon or stuffed tomato.
We got a message back from a distant relative saying she didn't fancy any of those, so she'd have chicken, thank you very much.
We were .
She is still known as Chicken Girl.

Exact same thing happened at my wedding! We had a couple of guests with special diets so had arranged for them to have something different, then others heard on the jungle telegraph and started phoning me asking for something different to eat! I don't know how I didn't pop a vein in my head over it all - the menu wasn't my favourite food really but was chosen to suit the majority. If I did it again I would just have what I wanted and stuff them all!

Lottapianos that's truly horrid what your DF said to you. Did you say anything back to him?

BuiltforComfort unfortunately that doesn't surprise me. A woman I know set up a toddler group and she did a clever thing. For the first term she did everything - found a venue, went round friends asking for old toys, set up toys each week, bought and made refreshments etc. The next term she introduced a rota, and after a year she pulled out altogether. She basically said she didn't have time to run it anymore and if they wanted to continue someone else would have to take it on. Maybe quite extreme but someone did take over!

Thanks for sharing in my cranky week - I'm having such a cranky week! DS is also being a monster this week for some reason, doesn't want to do anything I ask, argues with everything, and I'm out of patience. His teacher pulled me aside for "a word" about the quality of his homework yesterday - grrrrrrrr........

Thank you for saying that Henry. I honestly can't remember what I said to him - he's a narcissist so can't accept any questioning or criticism and anyway, what can you say to someone who's so selfish and deluded?

Raspberry Roop-I agree, as I said in my post my friends aren't manipulative or selfish their situations and lives have changed.

Yes DH and I benefited from the nights out too of course we wanted to keep up our social life -it was just an eye opener to us that things we would say yes to so as to continue friendships and accommodate others plans are now the type of things our friends will say no to as 'they have kids and it won't fit in'.
When a friend wanted to meet up because they needed to talk of an evening or wanted me to go as morale support to an exercise class I did so even though it wasn't always the easiest but now it is the other way round the same isn't always applied.
Of course I will just go to the class its not a problem ,everyone is different I just sometimes wonder if I should have been less flexible and trying to please everyone when really I should have just said sorry I can't as I have children.
I don't think I am a loon for hoping for that people would at least try and treat our friendship the same way as I did -maybe just a bit niave!

As soon as I saw self-centred I thought of my boss. When I felt that a colleague was sexually harrasing me, I was speaking on the phone to him about an IT issue and he asked me what I was sucking -cue massive laughs from his fellow IT nob heads workers, other stuff too like calling me 'Spicey' [hmmm]

Anyway, I digress, when I told my boss about this, she said 'Oh honestly Spice, I've had this and my sister who works at an Architects was harrassed terribly, I wouldn't worry about it'.

She also used to try and out do any injury you had, when I was pregnant and had SPD she would moan about her own neck/back/whatever and she would also send me out to get her lunch when I could hardly walk!

Yes, people are self centred but I have learnt to offer people a limited number of choices (i.e. I can do this, this or this time). If people mess me about or let me down it's two strikes and they're out. I'm very nice about it though... just too busy to see them or help them right now... sorry!

If you act like a pushover, people will treat you like one I'm afraid.

Wow some people really are so rude!

I would like to start a book club but don't know enough people around here