AIBU to be annoyed at new work colleague who complains of being poor yet gets her lunch from the canteen?

[NoahVale]

bring sarnies woman!

Nobody cares what you have foregone since becoming a parent. It's none of your business how other people live. I'm so sick of people assuming that 21st century peasants should be living like 17th century peasants or else they're just feckless and undeserving. The fact that people no longer routinely die in gutters and get cholera from foul water is supposed to be a good thing.

If you're such a martyr to your parenthood, focus on that rather than telling everyone how 'puzzled' you are by someone else daring not to be poor in a way you find suitably punitive.

When I opened this thread I thought you were going to say Pret / Eat at the very least. Unless your work canteen is very expensive?

YANBU to be annoyed by her whingeing, but YABU to make a big deal of a lunch in a (subsidised?) canteen.

Presumably she has to cook for her children in the evenings, but she might be making them quick, small meals or 'kids' food and not want to cook twice. I grew up eating the same food as my parents, but I know and knew plenty of households where because of commute time / bedtimes / whatever, the kids had a quick dinner earlier and the adult food (took longer) and was eaten later once kids in bed.

I don't think you are BU, OP.

One of my co-workers is a 58-year-old man who doesn't earn much and has a rather precarious financial situation. He worries a lot about money but buys lunch at the sandwich bar nearly every day -- we are in the US and his tab is probably $8-10 a day or nearly $200 per month. That is a lot relative to his salary. He is very open about his finances so I know there is no inheritance or large savings account etc. lurking in the background. His home and car are heavily mortgaged yet ironically he recently squandered a small inheritance on having his kitchen re-done. Yet he doesn't cook!

I have been to his home -- it is small but well-appointed and there certainly are no impediments to batch cooking, or making a packed lunch daily. He lives alone and has flex hours so it's not as though he has no time to do it. He just doesn't want to.

It's none of my business except that he tells us plaintive anecdotes about his financial woes and expectation that he'll "never be able to retire" and I worry about a man his age, with no spouse, children or others to aid him, and precious little savings and a low payout from Social Security, still being in a mortgaged house in his 60s. With a bit of economy including packing lunch and cooking economically he could have paid it down significantly.

But what do you do if you live in a tiny room with no kitchen facilities and no-where to store food?

More and more young, working people are ending up in this sort of accommodation because they can't afford anywhere else - especially in London.