to abandon my “friend” in her deepest hour of need?

[NotSureThisIsWhatIWant]

To cut the story short, we both were academics when young, we both became SAHMs when our children were born, we both split from our exes when our children were young and we both had found it very difficult to get back to our previous careers.

After the split, and due to our low income, we both ended in receipt of tax credits. I saw tax credits as something that I should move on from as quickly as I could, just a bit of help to get back on my feet while I was raising a child alone with a low income. I have worked and continue to work very hard and very often long hours to try to stop this dependance on tax credits.

She saw tax credits as her right, choose to work from home in sporadic jobs and rely on tax credits, child maintenance and house benefit fully as her most important regular income.

Over the years she has been belittling the admin jobs I have taken, saying that she wouldn’t lower herself to do “such kind of shit and bad paid jobs”.

But now, with her children over 18, her tax credits, child maintenance and other benefits have come to an end. Naturally, she is struggling, feels the state took advantage of her by “using her while she was a mother and discarding her as dirt now that her children are adults”. She is still the entitled git that can complain about the lack of money, the unfairness with benefits and other stuff but she still refuses to get a proper job and insists in doing her shopping in Waitrose.

She complains about not being able to get the kind of job she wants, but if you try to offer her jobs she always says that she is too busy, is not convenient or doesn’t like it. She sits at home all day long but won’t pick up or return calls.

Suddenly out of the blue (as usual), she contacted me last week and asked to meet for a coffee. I said yes. She texted me earlier to say that her car has not passed the MOT last week and she has no money to sort the car, so she has no way to get to Waitrose to get food for the week, that she is terrified to be found at home without food as low temperatures are expected and she is afraid it may snow. She says I should pick her up from her house, drive her to Waitrose and we should have a coffee at the Waitrose cafe before I return her to her home. (She doesn’t even live near me).

I have said I’m too busy (I am, I have clocked 50 hrs this week and it is not even Friday!) and suggested she ordered from a supermarket online.

She has replied saying that it is too expensive for her to have her food delivered as she only needs a few fresh vegetables so can I take her to Waitrose please?

I guess I just need a rant (I’m not replying to messages anymore) How can people be so bloody entitled?

Maybe have a proper nitty gritty conversation with your friend, tell her how you feel about all this. If she then gets all huffy and critical of you, you will then have to just walk away from all things. She clearly needs to have a bit more of a sensible approach to her life style

If you feel that you two do have a friendship worth saving, then maybe you can talk to her and tell her that you feel like she’s belittling your job and career and then on top of that she wants you to drive you to the store in a car you’ve paid for with that job. If she is a true friend she will apologize.

Do you think she would listen and be willing to change her behavior?

Agree with ReanimatedSGB.
I worked in a shitty job that did not pay enough to live on after divorce, in the US. The people I worked for owned small businesses, voted Republican, and looked down their noses at people who claimed the meagre benefits you can claim in the US, whom they believed were lazy and improvident. Their language was like something out of Dickens on the subject...

They paid minimum wage and I claimed those benefits on top of what I earned so that my DCs could both eat and have a heated house in winter. The benefits that were paid for by taxpayers (including me in better times) in effect subsidised their bottom line.

The problem with the benefits system is that the wrong people are getting the benefits. Not that the people who receive them are not even trying.

math
Hang on, your employers weren’t paying you enough to live on and yet looked down at you for claiming benefits. I can understand they may not be able to afford paying you a living wage but in that scenario, the only people to look down on is them for scoffing at you whilst not providing you the means to live.

Reanimated
I understand what you’re saying about refusing to work for a pittance. However, my belief is that this woman created a child and has a responsibility to do her best to provide for her child and install a work ethic in them. Instead she has berated others for getting jobs below her whilst happily taking money off the state.

It’s a good job our parents, grandparents and great grandparents didn’t have such ethics and morals as they’d have either starved as there was no welfare state or we’d be living under the 3rd reich.

One day, idk when but the current system will collapse under the weight of people exercising their choice not to work and it won’t be the employers, who loose out. With so many food banks around, we are already starting to feel the strain. I give to them and am very happy to do so. But not to Mme Waitrose and her ilk.

If you only see her once or twice a year, you are not what I would call close friends any more.

In fact, you don't seem to be friends at all.
Do you even like this so called friend?

They didn't know I was claiming benefits (in the form of food stamps). They were horrified at all things European including the NHS and the concept of the welfare state - their attitude toward American and European welfare claimants came up in the context of discussions with me (an actual European - they hadn't met many) about Europe. They really believed people chose not to work and they begrudged the taxes they paid for public services as well as the meagre welfare net that exists in the US. They were happy to take advantage of the infrastructure that government provided, in the form of a school system established by previous generations, the highway system, train network and low fares, paved and well lit streets, parks, playgrounds, rec centres, and much more. They were in their own small way behaving exactly like Walmart, etc., paying minimum wage and letting the state - the taxpayers - cover the difference between minimum wage and the actual cost of living.

People 'choose' not to work for many reasons - transport cost, childcare cost, hours not suitable, children's needs (some children need something other than the example of a parent out working), hidden issues like adult illiteracy, depression, anxiety, lives complicated by stress from all sorts of sources that sucks energy and focus. Women in particular can be affected by PND, by trauma associated with relationships past or present, by undiagnosed learning disorders - they don't tend to act out in classrooms so go under the radar, leave school without academic attainment, and as a result live very 'unproductive' lives, tend to be underemployed or unemployed and suffer from stress and depression.

The idea that there are lots of people simply choosing not to work is simplistic. Also simplistic is the idea that there are more like 'Mme Waitrose'. The reason quite a few people have sniffed a rat on this thread is that specific stereotype.

Lots of people did starve back in the day even with working parents. Children got rickets, and died of measles, asthma, TB and other diseases. If they survived childhood, many were stunted. The average height of a British soldier in 1914 was 5'5", and weight was 8 stone. This is about the same height and weight as VietCong soldiers of the 60s/70s.

Math
Your ex employers sound horrible. I’m quite happy for people to not be able to work for the reasons you’ve cited. I’m chronically ill myself and I really get it as I can’t work. Additionally I don’t claim any benefits I could - or at least definitely could have done before the system was changed. And I know others need the money more. I understand it’s a complex issue and there aren’t that many people like this person, but they are out there, ie the person, who is able to work, has none of the type of issues you describe and still chooses not to.

*I was totally with you until you said she wanted to be home with her children.

Nothing wrong with her doing that. She made different choices than you did. You sound resentful of her choices which tells me that you are unhappy with yours. *

Yes, you are right. There is nothing wrong with wanting to stay at home with your children. If you can afford it (from your own savings, husband’s earning, etc). OP’s friend couldn’t. She had to rely on the taxpayer to put food in front of her children and to give herself a free ride for years to come. Her benefits should have been cut years ago.
I’m not against giving people help when they really need it but I’m against them relying on it long term without making any effort to change the situation they are in.
Most mothers would want to stay at home with their children if you’d asked them, and that’s how it should be. But that doesn’t mean that the taxpayer should be expected to pick up the bill for decades.

I personally would want nothing to do with somebody like her. I find it amusing though that she probably considers herself to be a Waitrose shopper. Deluded fool😂

You clearly don't like or approve of her and haven't for all these years. Why are you friends?

ReanimatedSGB speaks sense. Never gonna happen though. And I say that as someone who has never claimed any benefits before someone leaps in to tell me it’s because I am an entitled scrounger.

Hello all,

We're just hopping on to say that we've zapped a bit of troll-hunting this morning. Though we obviously can't make guarantees, we've no reason at all to doubt the OP here, so can we call a halt to that now, please? If anyone has any worries at all - do feel free to report to us and we will take a look.

Thanks

The idea that 'hard work' is the way out of poverty is dangerous bullshit. If hard work were all it took, then most of us would be rolling in money.

The most important and necessary jobs, which require a lot of physical and mental effort, are often the worst paid (think nursing, care of the elderly etc.) Hundreds and thousands of jobs are completely pointless as well as badly paid. A little careful reading of economic history in the UK will actually prove that, when there is a fairer redistribution of wealth ie a good welfare state, good wages and investment in infrastructure, the economy overall does well - and people, overall, are happier and healthier. The current situation, where more and more wealth is basically being hoarded by fewer and fewer people, is falling to pieces and stupid people screaming that the answer is to make life even harder for the poor and blame them for circumstances which are completely out of their control, don't help at all.

No, I don’t resent her choices, what I resent is that she wants to take advantage of benefits of the choices I have made, while at the same time she is looking down at me by doing shitty jobs.

If she had not been belittling my choice to work even in shitty jobs, this thread wouldn’t exist.

I hear you op!

I can quite see she has royally pissed you off - anybody would be pissed off. She has stretched this beyond.

I do believe I've been projecting - sincere apologies, you must have been despairing that posters just didn't get what a pita she is being.

I think this whole topic has hit a bit of a nerve tbh.

Many people work hard but work dumb. Just saying.

And what is the option? Not working? So you increase your out of work gap to a point that you are not considered for skilled or unskilled professions?

I’ll rather work myself dumb than sitting on my arse waiting for someone to get me out of the hole I am digging for myself.

Having said that, after being raising my child as a single parent for many years I know quite a lot of single parents trying to provide for their families in disadvantaged circumstances. All and each of them are heroes, people who keep trying, make miracles with little resources and in general try their best. Madame Waitrose is the only single parent I know with such a sense of entitlement, she is the kind of single parent that give us all a bad name.

My mum worked full time from when she was 15. Only taking 6 weeks off with after she had me, and 9 weeks after she had my sister. Before she collapsed with a heart attack she was working 10 hour days. What more do people want. She died at 62. Never got to enjoy one day of her retirement. It's not always a case of work work work and you'll be rich.
No fucker is going to criticise my mother and say she deserved to be poor.

Raising children is work, though. It's just not work done for the benefit of an employer who will profit from it.

Are you suggesting we, highly qualified people, should sit at home waiting for the perfect job? Like kept wives of the tax payer? Waiting for the right job to come along. (If you are lucky, it will come, but it is more likely that by the time it comes, it will be the right job but you won’t be right for the job when you lack recent experience).

In theory, it is sounds great to say that you are “working” just by raising your children, but if your child is at school for 5 hours, being there for them for 2-3 hrs a day longer than a working mum doesn’t really amount to much (especially as those extra hours from 3:30 to 5 are very likely to count as a screen time only, as mums who work will also be working with the children doing homework, playing with them and cooking their meals as soon as they get home)

My issue is that although it may sound great to choose to stay at home with your kids until they are 18, you are not going to find an employer who will be happy to employ you, at the high level of responsibility or payment you were at before stopping work, 18 years later. The gap is difficult to bridge after 3 years, after 6, 9, 12, 18 most of your skills will be gone or out of date.

I really find those philosophies of work smarter rather than harder funny. They work in the job, not when choosing a job. Getting a good job is not just a matter of skill or hard work but having the luck of being at the right place and the right time to go for it. A decade long stay at home is neither.

... even if you were forced in that position due to lack of opportunities.

I had to sign on due to a sudden relocation, think of a young me fantasizing of a tale of us being star crossed lovers running away to live happily ever after until I left him because he had a total personality change towards me after isolating me in a totally different environment (to a shithole town in wales - nothing against the welsh, but this town really is the worst place ive ever been, think close to bridgend- from London) and started to pimp me out and beat me bloody if i refused, or didnt give him all of the money i made, or pissed him off in any way but i digress. I had found a day job before they had even paid me my first amount of JSA. I appreciate some people have no choice and are unable to work for a variety of reasons, and equally some people are happy living off the state (quite often rather comfortably as sadly the benefit culture is a way of life in some areas now.. I was 1 of 2 people on the entire street who had a job) but I couldn't hack it. I have always had a job, my first was at 14, and i worked part time all the way though university as well, i am used to a certain way of living and independence, if I want to keep living at that standard then I know i need to be bringing x amount of money in per month, not waiting for handouts and then complaining that it's not enough and demanding favours from friends as she has not budgeted or prioritised for the MOT. And on top of it shopping at Waitrose who can actually afford to shop there even working full time? I'd suggest she shop at the co OP, the fresh veg is just as nice as Waitrose and a much healthier price. With all the money she will save by buying the same damn products for cheaper she can afford to get a taxi there and back! What's the MN phrase, she needs to give her head a wobble and check herself. Also just remembered she suggested you go for coffee at Waitrose, who do you think would have ended up buying that? I'd ditch, you clearly made the best of the hand you were dealt, sounds like unfortunately your friend did not and is one of those victims of society who blames everyone and everything but themselves for their problems and situation in life. Sorry for the essay, but reading your post pissed me right off! Really angry for you as it sounds like she has sponged off you for years.

Forgot to add. I didn't sit around waiting for my perfect job. I interviewed for every position I could find. And I ended up making fairly good money in a call centre. those places are hell in an ideal world I would not be in a situation where I had to take anything that was thrown my way, but I'd do it again if i had to.

She shouldn't belittle you working hard. Neither should you look down on her for claiming tax credits. Many work and claim tax credits and actually being a mum is a full time job in itself.
You should be proud that you have acheived so much but not everyone can juggle like that.. especially as a single mum. They are not morally inferior.
However, sounds like you dint like her so yanbu.

Well, if she hangs on another couple of years, she can live off her children, having sacrificed everything for them, it’s the least they could do.
I’m with you OP, but I suggest you stop engaging with her instead of being irritated. She’s made her choice and you made yours.

If she hangs there for another few years, she can live if pension credits...

We are not close, we are not even friends, she just rings me out of the blue once or twice year when she needs a lift or some help. She obviously dresses it as interest on how I’m doing, let’s meet for a catch up and once that I have said yes, she brings up the favour that she needs. She doesn’t bugger off easily if you say no. I’m not engaging with her but she has sent me another two messages talking about the inclement weather approaching (it is sunny here today) and explaining Waitrose is not that bad having so many offers. She is also sending little videos about the value of friendship and helping each other.

If we didn’t have so many friends in common, I would have tell her to fuck off years ago, but have just ignored/blocked her to avoid the gossip. Having said that... I don’t care so much about the gossip nowadays, so I’m finding it more difficult not to say something really unkind to her.

I just blocked her (again) in WhatsApp.