Best CF stories part 2

[HepLaurenceLB]

First thread
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/3905995-Best-CF-Stories

Well done @cstaff so many CFs rely on people being too scared to say anything

My work used to lay on free mince pies and nibbles for staff who worked on Christmas Eve, in the on-site social room. Security was an important issue on-site, as there was classified work going and normally visitors were only allowed with the appropriate clearance etc. etc.

I was working that day and looking forward this treat, but us workers could see groups of our non-working colleagues and their families rocking up and being let into the social room by a side door. Our boss refused to let us go in there until midday, and by then the greedy buggers and their kids had eaten absolutely everything.

This happened years ago, and I may have mentioned it on a previous CF thread, but it still rankles!

This is another one about the same asshole. Me and my dp were out for an Italian with them one night. It's usually about 25 quid a head for pizza and wine but he kept ordering extras like side orders and two desserts and expensive wine. We got caught that night but never again. The bill instead of being about 100 for 4 of us was 160. We were well warned and paid our own from there on.

School cfs.

I’d been gradually shafted at my school for over a year. Leadership wanted a smaller department but it was cheaper to force someone out than pay redundancy. Unions involved etc.

So I found a new job. Left at Christmas.

I was not replaced by a trained specialist teacher but by a series of supply teachers. I’d got my exam pupils started on their practical but left before their handing in date.

So I was happy in my next job when I heard from one of my former colleagues. The school had got themselves in a pickle. Normally the subject teacher would GCSE practical coursework. To do this properly takes an hour or two to mark each one and record the results, write justification/explanation for the marks, collate work, fill in mark sheets etc.

A supply teachers’ responsibilities end at the end of the day. They’d no one to mark the work which required specialist knowledge of the subject.

They had a epartmental meeting and it was suggested that they get in touch with me and ask me a favour to do this. A colleague said that I’d probably tell them to f* off.

They decided that it was probably best not to ask me. I think they had to pay quite a bit to get it sorted.

They were right - I probably said have said that.

After my grandfather's wake we went to back to his (second wife's...will not read yet) house and she was selling the microwave to her friends and they were in the hottub. We never thought she loved him she was just waiting for him to die 🤣 boo on her he barely had any money left due to care costs/bad investments.

Many years ago, when I was a student, I did part time cleaning to earn money. I cleaned every week for a couple who had a daughter of my age, who was also a student. They were well off and she lived at home, didn't need to work. One day the woman, Anne, said that her daughter Estelle was getting rid of some clothes and did I want them? I was really pleased and tried them on upstairs, great quality, better than I could afford. I went downstairs and thanked them both, then Anne said "Shall we say £40?". I was embarrassed because I thought they were a give away. I said I couldn't afford that. Anne said, "it's OK, we'll take it out of your wages" (I was getting £5 per day).
I was too young/stupid/embarrassed to say no, so I worked for them for free for weeks.

You were mugged! They must have known what they were doing?!

DH and I live very rurally. We've got a weird long driveway that forks and goes towards our fields where we have a guest house barn conversion we rent out in normal times. We'd gone to our neighbour's BBQ and they had a lot of family visiting but had 2 suprise extra guests they didn't have room for. We got chatting and offered them our guest house for the night, they agreed and even insisted on paying. Lovely couple, very grateful for the place to stay. In the early evening we showed them to the house and let them get settled in. They didn't join the party again and we assumed they'd just decided to stay at the house. DH and I headed back to our house later that night (which we hadn't shown them to) and found the wife rummaging through my underwear drawer and the husband trying on my DH's clothes. (quite a sight considering he was shorter than me at 5'2 and DH is 6'8.) They'd decided the house was too 'poky' for them and they wanted our room instead. To this day we have no idea how they got in because every door was locked, windows shut and no spare keys hidden anywhere. We unlocked the door when we came back and the only other sets of keys we have are kept so seperately even we struggle to find them. We managed to get them to leave after the wife handed me a pair of knickers and said 'These are slutty'. We checked they'd left the morning after and went into the guest house to find they'd left every door open- including cupboards, showers, wardrobes and even the bloody cat flap. They also had taken the fake flowers out of a vase and placed them in a line on the kitchen worktop. Cheeky, and weird, fuckers.

Splendidsuns that’s insane! Did they seen embarrassed when caught in the act?

@SplendidSuns1000 WOAH.. did you ask your neighbour/their friends about them?

@TheOneTheOnlyPedroPony

When we were selling our house the buyer asked if they could come round to measure up various places. What she actually did was walk around telling me all the things she was going to change and generally being derogatory about the decor (I am fully aware everyone has different tastes but she was really quite rude and could have kept her opinions to herself).

She also put me on the spot several times asking if we were leaving various fixtures and fittings when DH and I hadn't had the chance to discuss and decide. But she was most put out when I point blank told her we absolutely were taking the 3 month old freestanding American style fridge freezer. She kept saying but I'll have to buy one if you take it with you, could not comprehend the fact we'd have to buy one if we left it. She didn't even want to pay for it, she just wanted us to leave it for her

Similar experience. We'd agreed a price for our house and the estate agent asked if the buyers could come round a month or so later and measure up. The estate agent told me she wouldn't be coming but, don't worry, the buyers may make you an offer for a few bits. In hindsight, I'd have insisted she came.

The buyer turned up with both sets of parents, adult siblings and kids and went through every room and told me what I needed to leave for them. For free. It totalled about £20,000 by the end - all my appliances, bespoke dining room table, curtains, furniture, garden furniture etc etc.

It was extremely embarrassing as my husband was out so I was on my own with my young kids without another adult for support. They stayed for two hours, were rudely overbearing and aggressive and told me repeatedly how unreasonable I was being. Wouldn't have minded if they'd (a) included any of the items in their offer, (b) politely made an offer for anything they wanted or (c) please let us know if you haven't got room for x y z and plan to leave it as we could give it a home,

In the end after a long process, we ended up with different buyers who are lovely and we're still friendly with now. The estate agent also admitted she'd slightly thrown me under the bus with some vague excuse about them loving a negotiation.

@abc31 that is so rude. Poor you.

My friends daughter sold her house about 4 years ago to someone she knew.

Buyer put estate agents pictures of the rooms on istagramme and also the new decor so a before and after with the title from Drab to Fabulous.

Older owner phoned new owner said how insulting and made her take the estate agent pics down

[quote ColdCottage]@abc31 that is so rude. Poor you. [/quote]
Sorry random name change! Yes it was very rude. I'm no pushover but they thought I'd be too polite to resist their group onslaught, particularly while juggling a baby and young toddler.

Anyway, they were mistaken if they thought I'd capitulate and just chuck in £20k worth of stuff. I didn't and they lost any goodwill with us, which ended up costing them the sale down the line and, in true karma, we ended up getting a higher price for the house as well.

I have several.

Worked abroad with a large consulting firm, it's a great opportunity which not everybody gets, so we brought on some team members that usually have an internal role IT role that's low paid and with 0 company benefits, some of these guys hadn't even been abroad before (too expensive). We stayed in a Marriott hotel and had access to the lounge as part of our project package. Every Thursday before our flight home they would take their empty suitcases into the lounge and empty the place, all the fridges of their glass fizzy drinks, beers, the entire contents of these huge jars of snacks like wasabi peas, mini tobelerones to give to family. Would go around asking us all for our spare mini toiletries and wrap them up to give to family as luxury gifts. Never been so embarrassed, this was every week.

Another friend who is a known tight arse, we were hiking to the top of a large hill to visit the castle at the top. Met his 8 month pregnant wife at the top to which she had purchased a bottle of water. I met her first and when he saw her he stormed over to us and demanded to know where she bought the water from, to which she said in the shop about 5m away, to which he threw a bit of a hissy fit to ask her why she bought it there and not wait until she got back down again to buy it cheaper. Same man said 'ill have some of yours' i.e his wife when we all sat down for a drink instead of ordering his own.

Worked at a restaurant part time when I was 18 and served a table of 14, all couples with split bills. Went to get everybody's change and placed them in separate plates for them to take back, everyone like a couple of quid obviously as a tip. One couple stayed behind on the pretence of finishing their drinks, once last couple had left they were round and pocketed everybody's tips that was meant for me!!!! As in walked around the table and emptied the 6 other plates of money.

Everyone left a couple of quid obviously as a tip*

I had tips stolen right off the bar when I was tending bar while at uni. I never caught anyone in the act but there were times when my attention was taken by one of the wait staff and I couldn't keep a proper eye on everyone.

There are some great CF stories on this thread.

We took a horse to a big agricultural show to take part in the tractors-through-time demonstration. He was playing the part of the ‘first tractor’, standing next to an iron horse, in a long line of tractors that ended with ones whose wheels were taller than me. We weren’t paid for our time and it wasn’t a competition, it was just a bit of fun and the tractor people were thrilled to have a horse in their midst.

This wasn’t the kind of job any old horse could do. You needed one that was totally bombproof and capable of pulling an enormous rattly old farm cart through crowds of people (think 70,000 visitors a day), past brass bands, surrounded by noisy machinery and all the other trappings of a big show. You needed a bloody good horse in short, and we had one, and we’d trained him ourselves.

Our boy did us proud, got tons of attention and praise and by the end of the day a lot of people were asking if we’d break in their horse for them, or asking when our next open day / demo / event was going to be, which threw us a bit because we weren’t professionals, weren’t even trying to be. We had jobs we were happy with and this was just a hobby!

And then we noticed the small pile of business cards from a local ‘professional’ horse person (coincidentally, his services included breaking/training, open days, demos and events) placed carefully at the back of our very long cart... I’m not sure how long our lovely horse had been advertising his services for but let’s just say he received an extremely shitty email from me!

He did me a favour actually because it gave me the confidence to start making a bit of money out of horses on the side. If that hadn’t happened I don’t suppose it would ever have occurred to me that I had knowledge and skills that people were prepared to pay for. Still, peak CF...

I had a bit of a penny drop CF moment today. Next door neighbour, with whom I'd always got on well, passed me on the street and said 'oh, I've just left a parcel for you outside your front door, I thought it was for me.' That doesn't really make sense, as our postman is brilliant & knows us all by name, & never leaves anything for me with a neighbour, he always puts it by my front door instead if it doesn't need signing for.

Get home, and the parcel's by my front door, but it's clearly been opened, not just through the outer sleeve, but also the cardboard box inside, despite both of them having my name and address on. It turns out to be a product test from one of a few online surveys I'm signed up for. It's tampons, so not really of use to my male neighbour in his 50s who lives alone.

And then I suddenly remember that DP has sent me at least three packages in the post during lockdown that I've never received. Nothing major, just nice little things, like coffee, biscuits etc to cheer me up. We both just assumed lockdown had buggered up Royal Mail a bit, and as they weren't sent registered post, we couldn't track them. Why do I now think my neighbour has been drinking MY BLOODY NICE COFFEE that was sent to me? Because you couldn't miss the massive labels on the front of the package that had my name on, but he still opened it TWICE.

Ugh, sounds like it sadeyed! You need to come up with a better hiding spot or get a Ring

Or at the very least, next time you see your CF neighbour ask him if he’s had any trouble with packages going missing, and you’re going to invest in CCTV. That’ll soften his cough!

I was signed off work with severe PND following a stillbirth. A friend asked me if I could look after her toddler for three days, as her DH had been going to do it but now couldn't get those days off. I agreed. She said I'd have to travel to her house, two bus rides away, to do it as "DC will be more comfortable in his own house" Ok, now I'm out of pocket, feeling a bit wobbly still but I think I can manage it for a few days, and she's been a good friend until now, they're getting an au pair at the end of the week. Her DH tells me, sad face, he has bills to pay so can't do it himself.
Guess what - au pair "doesn't get along" with DC - can I come back, they're desperate. I ended up doing full days, 9-5, for six weeks. Several times they came home having been out for coffee or to the pub with friends. The icing on the cake was that I had a toddler myself and I was still paying for him to go to nursery every day, rushing to drop him off before dashing to her house to look after hers, then dashing back at the end of the day to collect him.
I am more assertive these days!

@Noideaatall that is criminal. I hope you billed them for it. If you didn't I would bow. How dreadful to take advantage anyway let alone at a time when you were in so much pain.

I'm not sure if this is CF or just bizarre. My friend used to live near a huge garden centre that had a really nice cafe we often went to for lunch. We were there one day and it was really quiet, loads of spare tables, the cafe part was arranged in 3 sections with planters/trellis dividing them up. We were sat in the far section, just us and there were about 6 other tables occupied in the other sections, everyone well spaced out. All very civilised.

A couple of women came in with 5 kids between them. I would say 4 were primary school age and one of about 3. They plonked the 5 kids down on the table next to ours, bringing an extra seat over for number 5, and put it as the end of the table nearest to us. They then went to a table for two together across the other side of the cafe! they could see the kids table from where they were but there were several tables they could have put the kids on between us and them.

I just don't understand why they sat their kids next to the only other people in the area? my friend thinks they were CF's leaving their kids next to us while they had a nice child free lunch.

As soon our food arrived we packed it all up on trays and moved as far away as possible from the random kids. The look on one of the womans face, furious, like we were unreasonable for not wanting the company of 5 kids......

NC for this as I've told this story in RL

Not me, but my Mum. For the past year or so, my Mum has been taking care of an elderly local man who was very ill and bedbound for the entire period. Having no family, nor finances with which to pay for private carers, he was relying on state carers who weren't very good at their jobs. My Mum was visiting him anyway as someone she'd known for years and liked and so she picked up the slack to make him more comfortable for the time he had left. (Just to clarify, they were buying him food they knew he didn't eat, not bringing enough bedpads etc)

This amounted to going in every day for company, shopping for anything he needed, cleaning up after the carers etc.

Fast forward to Christmas day this year and he died a few minutes after we arrived (we were both there to take him his dinner). It was very stressful for my poor Mum, especially because of the arrangements when someone dies on Christmas day and everything taking longer.

Now the CF part. A couple of weeks later, my mum goes into the local supermarket where a woman who works there announces she's being featured in an article about how much she did for the man who died (which amounted to assisting him in the supermarket when he'd still been able to get out and organising a whip round the staff to get him a new tv when his broke)

Upon reading, there was no mention at all of my Mum and this woman has been proclaimed some sort of local hero for taking care of the man in his last days. Just for context, my Mum would have been mortified by any attention (she did it for him, not for recognition) but to have this woman who had to be begged to go and see him before he died has made me really angry

At the time of writing, my mum is still grieving for the loss of her friend who is yet to be laid to rest because of all the red tape with COVID and no relations. I've had to stop going into that store because I won't be able to resist giving CF a mouthful