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?

Bloody hell, she's so bad she's good lol

Do some people not take in the relevant parts of the OP?

OP isn’t disrespecting people who need help as she had help when needed but realised that doing all she could to reduce the need for help was going to do her better in the long run than simply sitting back and claiming and allowing her CV to turn to dust.

Peekaboo clearly glossed over those parts and went straight on the defence.

Do some people not take in the relevant parts of the OP?

Oh they do, they just like to have a pop at the OP, so choose to ignore those bits.

OP, I think you should just ignore her from now on. You know that when she contacts you, it's because she wants something, not because she values the friendship. So just block her means of contacting you.

What you should be angry about is that “highly qualified people” (not people, by the way - women) are constrained by sexism and stagnant wages so that you are only able to eke out a living with tax credits keeping you out of poverty.

It is a fucking disgrace that you both have phds but your children grew up in poverty.

And yes, MN women hate to hear it but your wages are shit. Average female wages are shit and if there is no second income (earning a penis bonus) life is shit with shit choices for most of you.

Be angry about that FFS. That’s what’s fucked your life up and that’s what’s fucked your children’s future opportunities.

You have no idea how badly off you are compared to more equal societies. And it is so depressing to see thread after thread where intelligent women earning pittances talk about how lucky they are to have the little they do.

It will never change while your expectations are so low.

Low expectations? Me? Ha! I am a very ambitious person but, as I have mentioned before, it is not only about your skills set or your want to get a highly paid job. The element of “luck” cannot be ignored.

At this time I have a job that doesn’t pay much but comes with a lot of recognition. I love it. But I’m always prepared to jump into the next role as soon as there is an opportunity.

It is true that women face many disadvantages and ageism is absolutely wrong. But they do exist, and they are not going to disappear any time soon so I cannot expect for fairness to arrive, get me a well paid job and ensure equality because I will be dead by then.

I can't believe some of the posters looking for ways to have a pop at the OP. This woman has belittled her for being prepared to do shitty jobs that she considers beneath her. And she is behaving in an entitled way towards the OP, which would annoy me too. (Though I wouldn't post a thread on Mumsnet about it.)

She could get a job in Waitrose.

I love playing with ideas for replies when it comes to CFs. I'd be tempted to message her: "Sorry, I'm not able to help at the moment. If you manage to find someone to take you, do you think you could get me some of those XXX (whatever you fancy) and bring them round here? I'll give you the cash when I see you. Thanks."

She could get a job in Waitrose

As I mentioned up thread, at some point I had a job re stocking shelves in a shop. When the money dried up, she called me to ask about the rubbish jobs I do, and said she would get one in a shop in extreme circumstances. So I said, “it is a very physical job, you need to be carrying heavy stuff and be on your feet all the time” her answer: “well, I suffer from back pain, so they will assign someone to help me lift carry things around, surely???”

When I said they woukdn’t, she said my former employer was discriminating against people with disabilities as a person should be put in place to assist.

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

?????? So your low,paid job that has seen you also rely on tax credits to get by has paid enough into a pension that you won’t need pension credits? How would that make you any different to your friend?

You know all the people supporting you here would just as quickly slag you off for your single parent status and reliance on the state regardless of your qualifications and work ethic? Still more will call you lazy and entitled. Others will scream that you should never have had children if you weren’t able to support them yourself. You have just set yourself up a thread in such a way that you are congratulated for working - the thing that by far the majority of us get on and do without giving a second thought as to whether that makes us better than the next person.

What kind of friend are you that you need to be ‘better’? To be seen to be ‘better’?

People who get tax credits (rather than JSA) are working. it's just that their employers pay them far too little for them to live on.

I think you did your friend a disservice there. There are jobs in shops that don't require heavy lifting. No need to put her off.

Cut her off you don't need the

The likes of a person like that

...but realised that doing all she could to reduce the need for help was going to do her better in the long run than simply sitting back and claiming and allowing her CV to turn to dust.

And it has done her very, very little good apart from boosting her sense of superiority and enabling her to run a car. Her CV has turned to dust - she is not in academia any more and her chances of returning to work in academia are slim to none. She is competing for jobs that teenagers and retirees work at. She has as good a chance at getting a job as a cashier or shelf stacker as anyone else who can demonstrate the ability to life 50lbs and show up when scheduled. People are hired for the jobs she does by pulling applications out of a hat.

It's the fate of many women with the economy set up the way it is.

What this boils down to is two women who have made different choices, both dead ends. One is not superior to the other just because her choice has involved work. Apart from the annoying comments about working in low status and low wage jobs, and seemingly getting in touch only to ask favours, the other woman's only crime seems to be that she did not make the same choices as the OP.

There is no mention of the fathers of the children of the women as far as I can see, no questions about where they are, how much child support they pay, or how/if their careers were affected by parenthood. I suspect we can all guess they took no hit, and that they are not now stacking shelves.

Both women seem to have been shafted by their industry and by the way the system works to let men avoid paying meaningful financial support for their children and former partners whose careers take a hit because of maternity leave.

Instead of getting angry that two women with the qualifications to have careers as academics are just about scraping by, the OP is resigned to her fate. Worse, she is choosing to criticise another woman on a public forum for not gratefully licking the scraps that are thrown to those like her who are cast aside because they chose to be mothers, and who had the supreme misfortune of seeing their relationships break down.

The OP is being very smug about making your own luck, being in the right place at the right time, etc, when it is patently obvious that 'luck' has nothing to do with anything in a country where a woman with a child and a solid record of academic achievement and an exH stacks shelves for a living.

She lives in a fantasy world and needs a rude awakening. Nothing demeaning in honest work.

I can't get my head around why we accept the taxpayer topping up the wage bill of private, profit making companies, in the form of tax credits. It is outrageous that emoloyers are not made to fund their own wage bill.
Until that happens I can't see the point in women doing dead end jobs for the sake of just working - they are not supporting their kids, the higher rate taxpayer is!

I do agree with the OP in the sense that there is no longer any genuine friendship here and so you don't owe it to her to do her favours.

If I could make my own luck, I would be a millionaire...🤔

I’m not smug. Smug I was when I was a young academic, with a fantastic salary, a high flyer husband and even a nice lovely place in the Mediterranean. Now I am smug when I find something fantastic in the charity shop.

Don’t worry about me asking the state for a pension. My main mistake in life was becoming a SAHM as that’s what wiped off my financial independence, the ability to provide singlehandedly for my child and my pension pot. So do not worry about I straining the system. I’m going to work until I am kicked out of work (sorry to annoy you further but my idea of hell is not having a job). I don’t plan to be old, refusing antibiotics should take care of me a short time after I retire. I don’t plan this to avoid poverty, I just simply do not believe life is worth living when there is no longer quality of life and I don’t want to become a burden to my child.

So to close the thread... thanks to those who read my first post enough to realise that I wrote I just needed a rant and that my annoyance comes from being contacted out of the blue to act as a taxi and guiltrip me if I say no, when there is not an active friendship in place.

That is terribly sad, NotSure. What happened to you to make you feel so strongly that you have to justify your existence?

And where is your high flyer exH, who also chose to be a parent?

OP, it's not you or the choices you have made that some people are disagreeing with. It's not your fault, at all. The fact is that the economic system is set up in such a way that both you and your friend are struggling and broke. It's a shame that she is directing her energies towards sniping at and taking advantage of you, and some people are always going to be inclined to try and exploit those who are struggling just as much as they are, but the idea of working for the sake of working - in the sense of 'seeling your time and effort to an employer' rather than 'performing necessary tasks' (even when it costs you money, benefits no one except maybe some random shareholders, and is completely ppointless) is one that people need to get over.

What are tax credits ?
I'm not in the UK.
Thank you.

@NotSureThisIsWhatIWant.
You don't have to justify yourself or your life. Not on here, Not anywhere.

((((((((Hugs))))

Why can't she get a taxi to Aldi or Lidl with the money she saved not shopping at Waitrose?