Tell me your CF triumphs please

[Sickofcoughing]

In real life I know I am regarded as calm and assertive. In lots of way I am definitely able to speak up for myself.

However CFs get right under my skin. I am a fairly generous person, I like to treat people and it leaves me feeling good. 99% of the time any financial deficit is negligible in friendships, I certainly never notice it.

Except of course for the one I started the thread about. This friendship spans decades. She is a shameless CF. I genuinely think I love but heavily dislike her. It's exhausting being around her because I always have to be on guard for being scammed into paying for something.

I continue to do nothing about it except carry all the resentment by quietly seething. Pathetic yes, I know.

Inspired by this thread www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/4687359-lift-for-5-years-aibu?utm_source=thread&utm_medium=share can you please share with me your victory stories of how you finally called out the CFs in your lives and came away feeling good about it?

I’ve had to move house and are a fair few times. It has disadvantages but one advantage it is quite a good way to cull CF’s as I just ghost them. I do a sort of audit of who to bin off each move. Then they get blocked and forgotten. Cowards way out for sure!

I will have school mums soon though so I’m gearing up for that. I can’t afford to keep switching house and schools any longer 🙈.

I’m usually ok at saying no unless it is about my tenants. I hate saying no to them for some reason. I think it is landlord guilt. Got to increase rent in Jan so I’m just waiting for that fallout. I reckon if I wasn’t careful I’d end up paying them to live there!

@Tsort I do say this is your half of the bill, I do wait with my hand out now to get money for a coffee or whatever before I go to the counter.

What's incomprehensible if you haven't encountered it is how skilled she is at all this stuff (she lives for free in a really upmarket part of the city in a different friend's house) it becomes so frustrating waiting while she has to answer a text message, will just be back in a sec etc

She will literally spend nothing on a night out and the people around her won't notice unless you happen to be paying attention so you have to be on guard and that ruins the whole evening because you can't relax.

And then the argument would become about that one coffee, that one cinema ticket, that one pint instead of stop manipulating situations.

The married friends that drove her to the party were arguing at the hotel before we left for the party. The husband was saying in the morning they had to get up and leave without heading back to the party, CF had already heard they had plans and weren't going home so couldn't give her a lift back. He was adamant she would be fine getting the bus with me. The wife was agreeing but it was clear this was an ongoing argument and he was forewarning her. The next afternoon I was standing at the bus stop when the car went by everyone waving; CF sitting in the back seat face in her phone.

So funny🙏

What's incomprehensible if you haven't encountered it is how skilled she is at all this stuff (she lives for free in a really upmarket part of the city in a different friend's house) it becomes so frustrating waiting while she has to answer a text message, will just be back in a sec etc

What you're not comprehending is that all these people have a choice. She is not forcing anyone to go along with it. You can opt out. You are choosing this.

Or yes I could have said no to pouring her a drink but really would you do that when you're pouring for the other person sitting at the table and then make them uncomfortable too.

You choose to go along with her request, or you laugh and say, 'no way, you've had half the bottle already, where's your contribution?'

And all this precludes you from doing the things I’ve listed how, exactly?

Nobody is making you tolerate all this. Nobody is stopping you from opening your mouth and clearly articulating that her behaviour is unacceptable and stating why. Nobody is making you continue to associate with this person. You are choosing to.

CF stories are often just stories about people with shitty boundaries and a fear of standing up for themselves. This being a case in point.

All of this.

Theres nothing more disappointing than a CF thread that isnt a CF thread :(

I was hoping for stories from people who called out the CFs they've encountered. My OP links to one where the OP did it brilliant.

@Baconand and @whatwasIgoingtosay please do share specifics.

I was looking for inspiration as I'm fully aware I've brought this on myself. However I'm not alone. I'm Irish and these situations can and do occur because we are big on 'let me get you a drink' and everyone wrestling for the bill at the end of a meal. So if someone is not playing by the same rules it all gets very confusing.

I've had a couple of CF's but I don't put up with it.
One was on a night out and we had to pay into a nightclub, but that covered a bottle of wine between four of us. Three of us paid, but one friend's GF refused, and we had to cover her part between us. When the wine and four glasses came out, she poured herself one. I took it out of her hand and said "You wouldn't pay, so you don't get any". She ran off crying but the other two (including her BF) said I was right, and left her to feel sorry for herself.
The other was a friend who was part of a club I'm in. We'd have everyone over for dinner and drinks quite a lot, and others would also take a turn. He never did as he was lodging in a house. One weekend he was back home with his father, and invited everyone for a barbecue. It's a few hours drive away, but we said we'd go. Then we got the text message with a picture of the meat, and how much we owed him. The others moaned to each other, but nobody refused, except me. I told him he had a nerve after all the times we'd fed him, put him up etc. How I wasn't going to waste petrol money going there to buy lunch etc.

I'm in Ireland too, and luckily most of my arguments with friends are fighting to pay first lol.

Loads of posters acting like dicks in here. Sorry OP. They must be having a bad day.

My ex landlord sent me a letter asking if she and her sister could stay in my house, her old family home, when she visited the area in the summer for two weeks. She suggested i stay with my parents (was a young single mum at the time) and put my stuff in the spare room while they were there.... they would take two weeks off my rent . er... and my bills for the elec you would use etc?!

I sent a letter back saying no, i wouldn't be moving my child out of his home.

Couldn't believe it.

How do you know what it's like in the circles I mix in?

Love it @magicstar1 This is exactly what I need to hear! I bet the rest of them were cheering you on.

Do you ever go to social situations? Because I'm neurodivergent and I have bipolar disorder and I still know not to speak to people like that in social situations without coming off as a giant twat and never being invited to things ever again. I don't think you're describing "direct communication" so much as being acerbic and rude to people.

To be fair, that's not OP's fault. Everyone has become fixated on her story rather than sharing their own.

My siblings are so tight but my stories are short (i.e. asking me what I was planning for them on MY birthday, expecting me to provide everything for cottage stays in the UK - all food, petrol, driving, accommodation . And after providing all that, they then had the cheek to ask me why I hadn't provided swimwear for them all.

Lol @CFLandlordStory if she'd phrased it as "would you be interested in renting us back the property for two weeks" and then offering Airbnb rates. The fact she suggested your flat rent rate and patronised you by saying where you could then go would have made my answer very simple.

That reminds me! I was once a tenant with an older couple along with two other adults in a large house. It was a lovely house actually, very spacious but having guests over wasn't welcomed so there was always going to be a time limit on the arrangement as I was actively looking for a partner.

I had decided I was going on an extended trip for the summer and would be away for ten weeks. I told them this, said I'd pay the rent up front, leave the room spotless and I didn't mind if they have people stay in my room while I was away. I said this as I genuinely didn't mind, none of my things are valuable and it's always nice to have such an impressive guest room to offer visitors (room was huge and amazing). A week or two later the wife asks me to clarify the dates and suggests I put my stuff into storage. Oh no I say, assuming there has been a misunderstanding - I'm going to pay full rent before I leave but you're welcome to have people stay, I don't mind. No misunderstanding she tells me, they are planning to sublet so please remove all of your stuff. I did indeed remove my stuff after I gave notice two weeks later.

Here's one of mine. It's more of a collective group of people standing up to a CF:

I was in A+E yesterday queueing for reception with my youngest and this bloke just walked in and tried to push my pushchair out of the way to step in front of me. I told him the line was here. He looked up at me and pretended he hadn't noticed me, my bright pink pushchair, the screaming baby in it, or the five people behind me. He then walked up to every single person in the queue behind me and went "excuse me are you in the queue" to every last one of them like he couldn't get his head around the fact people were ALL queueing.

Every single one of them told him they were, in fact, in the queue.

He had to go to the back quite sheepishly.

I once had a birthday party for my ds. It was at one of those whacky warehouse indoor adventure things. I'd paid for 20 kids. They got an hours play on the equipment, then a burger and chips or something meal, party games then we'd have the birthday cake which i provided myself. I'd invited my sons friend from scouts. Didn't know his mom very well but she seemed nice. She turns up with her son....and 3 other kids (not hers).I'm puzzled. She asks if it's ok if they join in and i explain that they can't because I've paid per head. She then goes to reception and pays for the other 3 to go play. When it's food time all her kids come bombing in and sit down to eat. My dh has to go find her and ask her to get them. She takes them outside minus her son in an absolute huff.Then reappears at birthday cake time with another birthday cake. Plonks it down and it's got her sons name on!. Asks us to sing happy birthday to her son too as it's his a few days later. And we bloody did it coz we couldnt bare to upset her son.

Fancy hijacking's another kids birthday! Lol

Later that day a mutual friend tells me she's put pics on fb of her sons birthday party. I go look and yep she's took loads of pics of her kid and his friends, his cake, my sons pile of presents. And passed it all off as her sons birthday.

Ah at least it made us laugh!

But yeah I did confront her about it. Told her I'd never known such cheek. She called me a selfish bitch.

Had a good chuckle remembering that

Ok I may have told this before but here goes, I used to work at McDonalds and one day this bloke came up to the counter looking really angry and told me he'd just been to the toilet and the "girl cleaning tables" (aka the hostess) had binned his drink. I apologised on her behalf, asked him what he'd had, and got him a new drink.

Once the lunchtime rush was over I went to talk to the hostess who said she didn't remember binning a hot drink so we decided another customer must have done it.

A few weeks later, the same bloke came to the counter all outraged that the "Polish girl" had binned his drink while he went to the toilet.

I recognised him. He clearly didn't recognise me. I asked him if he'd raised it with the hostess. He replied that he'd tried but she hadn't understood him (sidenote, she was a MSc student at the University of Edinburgh and had better English than a lot of native speakers, she also wasn't Polish, she was Romanian). I was a bit so I decided to keep going. There were only two tills on that day, so I asked him who had served him, as I couldn't remember him coming in.

He said "the one with the blue hair".
I pointed out that employee wasn't working today.

He lost his temper, swore at me, and stormed out.
I never saw him again.

Oh my god @forlornlorna1 that poor child. Mind you he will grow up thinking that's normal - they have loads, we don't, they should give us what they have etc

The disappointment of opening a CF thread with multiple posts only to find out it’s full of posters bitching at the poor OP to woman up and grow a backbone!

The only thing I can think of that I’ve done was when I was at work, I’d finished serving somebody and called out to the next person, they weren’t paying attention because they were on their phone, which is a pretty common occurrence nowadays so it never bothers me really, so I yell a bit louder “excuse me, hello! What can I get you?” The woman looks up and gives me the filthiest look and says “can’t you see I’m on the phone?”
So I say, “yes love, but you’re also in the queue!”
I then skip her completely and served the people behind her.

Exactly one of those was a ‘social situation’. My social life is great, how’s yours? If you think responding clearly to people who are taking the piss is being ‘acerbic and rude’, that’s really your issue.

Please explain how saying it’s nothing to do with being Irish is me being racist. I’m fascinated.