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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

Colleague left me stranded in the snow

469 replies

pissedoffnurse101 · 02/03/2018 16:42

Work alongside a colleague, I currently have no car and have been one of the only few people to get into work with all this bad snow. Today, we got the go ahead to go home and she has dropped me off to the closest train station. There is one train showing up as running in the opposite direction, no staff here at the station and no one available to collect me.

AIBU to think she could have driven the 20 minutes to drop me home (she has a 4x4)???

OP posts:
LloydColeandtheCoconuts · 02/03/2018 20:19

I would have driven you home too, OP. Glad you got back ok. It’s bitter out there.

Nikephorus · 02/03/2018 20:22

So your colleague has had to drive around in snow all day (my idea of hell) but you then expect her to add more driving onto that to get you home even though you were under the impression the trains were running?
I hope she's a Mumsnetter too.... Maybe we can have another thread next week saying 'WIBU to throw my pregnant colleague (with one lung & one leg, and a DH dying of anthrax) out of the car into a snowdrift because she's entitled and expects me to drive her everywhere?' (My answer will be Hell Yeah!)

Appuskidu · 02/03/2018 20:22

It honestly wouldn't occur to me not to make sure my colleague got home ok.

All your colleagues or just one? Harsh on the ones you don’t take home.

Would you take them if it’s not snowing? What about torrential rain? Light rain? A touch of fog?! Boiling hot day? What if it was costing you time and money that you could ill-afford on a regular basis?

I’m only being silly really, but there are clearly decisions to be made and different people have their own cut-off points about what they will and will not put up with. Most are considerably lower when people appear ungrateful.

Has OP answered

  1. How she got to work?
  2. How she was intending to get home?
  3. Why she hasn’t been driving?

Or is she’s not bothering to read any of the replies to her post?

plimsolls · 02/03/2018 20:22

If I - like your colleague - had a car crash two weeks ago, I’d be terrified of driving in the snow and definitely wouldn’t want to be making unnecessary extra journeys driving an unfamiliar car.

Your colleague is even more reasonable than I thought she was at the start!

DiseasesOfTheSheep · 02/03/2018 20:22

It's not her fault you're spawning offspring, and you're not her responsibility to get home. As an adult, you're responsible for yourself, and it's pretty feeble to come on here and whine about a piddly little inconvenience of a delay and a short walk, given the chaos which is reigning in some parts of the country and inconveniencing people to far greater degrees.

worldholdon · 02/03/2018 20:27

Gosh, people on this forum seem to take pleasure in being cruel - please understand there is a difference between giving an honest opinion and just sticking the knife in. It's perfectly possible to think someone is being unreasonable but still express it without the nastiness.
Having said that, I wouldn't EXPECT someone to drive me home. I don't drive and although someone in the office offered me a lift today (they were going to the town where I live) I try not to accept offers unless I absolutely need to/am certain it won't put the driver out at all, and so I declined it. Sure, the OP was perhaps being a little melodramatic but this weather is enough to make anyone lose their cool a little!

RoseGoldRosie · 02/03/2018 20:28

I would have driven you. But then I don't drive (keep failing my test from nerves), and nobody ever offers me a lift home from work even if they're going that way, and I've never thought about it from now. I think if I drove, I'd always offer to drive someone - even out of my way. But I don't, so I guess if I did, I might think different

LemonSqueezy0 · 02/03/2018 20:28

OP you do seem very ungrateful and entitled I'm afraid.

I'm going to put your petulance down to the fact that today's been a bit shitty for alot of people and you're probably cold, hungry and tired.

I'm sure you're not normally as twatty as you're coming across right now.....

worldholdon · 02/03/2018 20:30

And yes, it's perfectly fine for the colleague not to have offered for any number of reasons, but it would've been extra nice if she had. Not as an expectation or a right, but just as a kind thing to do given the circumstances.

IfNot · 02/03/2018 20:31

All your colleagues or just one? Harsh on the ones you don’t take home.
There were just two of them.

Would you take them if it’s not snowing?
But it is snowing/icy.

Yeah, I wouldn't transport the entire workplace everyday for free day in day out Hmm. But I would drop home a pregnant colleague 20 mins out if my way on an icy night. Yep.

JaneEyre70 · 02/03/2018 20:34

I made the comment about the other person driving her round all day as I used to work as a domicilliary carer, and when the weather was bad, I became the nominated driver for another carer who refused to drive in it! She lived 20 minutes away from me down rural lanes, meaning it added 80 minutes to my day and although I was paid mileage, I wasn't paid for my time. She had a newer car than me, but was worried about writing it off and my "old banger" meant that I didn't have to worry Hmm. Most days I was ready to dump her in the nearest layby frankly. She took expectation to a whole other level and driving someone else around and adding their miles onto yours can make a stressful day 20 times harder. That's why I commented about she was kind to drop you to the station. Doing alot of miles in poor weather is not an easy task, she may well have been exhausted too.

turnipfarmers · 02/03/2018 20:37

you are an adult not a child, it's not her responsibility and it's unreasonable of you to expect somebody to do 40 minutes extra driving in these conditions.

MissTFied · 02/03/2018 20:38

I had a lovely 1hr 30 mins walk in the snow today with my dog, and I am 41 weeks pregnant.

As you are not yet on maternity leave I presume you are fit enough to work?

It's not her responsibility to get you home.

As others have said, taxi or ask your partner/family to help.

40 mins round trip for your colleague is too much to ask, and as she didn't offer, she obviously wasn't up for it.

YABU.

TrustNaeFuckerEver · 02/03/2018 20:40

Not as an expectation or a right, but just as a kind thing to do given the circumstances.

As far as the colleague was concerned the "circumstances" were that the OP's train would be arriving as normal. It's really really not the colleagues fault that the OP obtained duff information and ended up with a difficult journey.

The drip feed about the colleague crashing a car 2 weeks ago was weird. If anything all it told me was that maybe:

(a) the colleague might be nervous of driving after that experience and definitely wouldn't want to add an extra 40 minutes of travel in bad weather.

or

(b) the colleague is a shit driver in which case there's no way I'd want a lift home from her in bad weather

Either way the OP got home safely.

PrincessScarlett · 02/03/2018 20:40

All of this drip feeding is completely irrelevant. The OP did not ask for a lift home ffs. For all we know colleague may have been perfectly happy to have driven OP home HAD SHE ASKED. Colleague had been driving all day in shitty conditions and it may have completely gone over her head to offer lift home and as far as they were both concerned they thought the trains were running.

OP please let this go. Your colleague is not to blame. The weather and the train company are the ones at fault.

Appuskidu · 02/03/2018 20:41

But I would drop home a pregnant colleague 20 mins out if my way on an icy night. Yep.

20 minutes there plus 20 minutes back-minimum. Maybe double or triple those 40 minute in the snowy weather. Good for you though.

I just couldn’t have done that as I have children to collect by a certain time. We don’t know what other commitments this driver had, so saying that you would have just driven them home, without knowing their circumstances or prior commitments, is hard.

DalekDalekDalek · 02/03/2018 20:41

Only on MN are you an entitled bastard if you don't drive and think it might have been nice for a colleague to offer to take you home in a snowstorm

But OP didn't say any of that at all. Colleague offers to drop OP at train station. OP accepts. Once Colleague has left OP discovers trains aren't running. OP then slags Colleague off on the internet for not knowing this but at no point mentions to Colleague that she was stuck.

starzig · 02/03/2018 20:44

I drove home from work and definately wouldn't have gone out my way. May have offered a bed for the night though rather than drive any further than I had too. It was awful.

DevilTree · 02/03/2018 20:44

Lol. That is all. Grin

SilverySurfer · 02/03/2018 20:46

Wow what a big sense of entitlement. Presumably your colleague is not a mind reader so how would she know the train situation? Why did you not get a taxi? Why don't you learn to drive and drive colleague home in these hellish conditions, not knowing how long it will take you to get home or the conditions on the road which may result in an accident?

Love the drip feeds, assume the flounce will follow shortly.

SpottedOnMN · 02/03/2018 20:46

My kids' school is 15 minutes drive away. Took families a minimum of 50 minutes to get home today. YABU. If you need driving door to door sort out your own car.

PinkSquash · 02/03/2018 20:47

Grin love an entitled thread!

Appuskidu · 02/03/2018 20:49

If you need driving door to door sort out your own car.

I think this quote sums up the thread really!

mojito55 · 02/03/2018 20:55

She would be an absolute saint to turn her 5 minute journey home into a 45 minute one for you! And I think YABVU to expect her to do any more driving than necessary in this weather.

Booboobooboo84 · 02/03/2018 21:15

No she was being ur in not driving you home. Your an adult you can take of yourself. It might of been nice if she offered but she didn’t and that’s her prerogative. If she has been late during the week etc and you consider it dangerous to be out in the cold while pregnant you would have been well within your rights to advise your employer you couldn’t work.