To be sad that no one would help

[Parpadew]

Emergency last night and I needed someone to drive a forty minute round trip. That's all. Never asked for this or any favour really before. I offered to pay. No one would help. Not my mum, siblings. One friend would have but she's on holiday. Got a taxi in the end but it was sheer luck one turned up as it's not a well covered part of the country.

Feel really alone right now!

Thanks @SaltyGod exactly. "Oh but won't the train staff offer you a foot massage while you wait??"

No.

The DH could hardly have been in the back end of nowhere if the OP's dsis could have driven to pick him up, drop him home and then drive back to her own house all within a 40min round trip.

I can't quite get my head around how a taxi wasn't an option in such circumstances.

I get Trains all the time and yesterday was awful.

I would have helped if I could and think its good manners.

I guess the thing is, if you could get a taxi, why couldn't he? He's an adult and I would've done everything in my power to solve my problem before I expected my in laws to save the day.

Also, while a 40 min round trip isn't terrible, asking someone to go out in a storm is a big ask, especially if they're a nervous driver etc.

Glad you got him home.

So that leaves great swathes of Wales, and everywhere in Scotland outwith the two largest cities WITH NO SODDING UBER.

No Uber in my part of South Yorkshire either.

*Why couldn't he call a taxi?

@SunnieShine because taxis aren't plentiful outside of towns and cities

I agree that the OP's initial post was rather cryptic and posters have had to drag the details from her, but reading her updates would have given you the picture.

I personally would because I have no dependants and a car so if I was home I’d do it. But MY family live about two hours from me so I wouldn’t expect any of them to help, and MY friends have dependants so I would ask but I would totally accept if they said no because it is their time and their life and they have their own things going on.

God threads like this are annoying.
It's like Chinese Whispers!

OP gives weird, dramatic vague idea about a situation and some possible details are then fleshed out at by a few posters who haven't read it properly and assume the bits we don't know (because the OP wont say) - which are then taken as facts by half the rest of the posters and everyone starts arguing among themselves while the OP has long gone 🙄

and breathe

Have you just deleted your reply to me?

40 minutes found trip, so 20 minutes each way? Assuming you're rural, that's about a 3 hour walk. If they were stranded for 5 hours before you managed to get a taxi, they could have walked home in that time. Not ideal, but it's a bit dramatic to say they'd be stranded overnight when it's only a 20 minute drive from home.
I would go rescue a family member in this situation, but only if they had exhausted all other options and asked nicely, and I hadn't had a drink.

No @Flipdiddle I don't deny anything. Evidently I'm not that important to them! That's why I'm sad. It's only going to get worse as we get older and more vulnerable.

My point is

for absolutely no one amongst your family or friends to want to help you out (and you’re pregnant?) then I’d say - somewhere along the line op, you’ve seriously pissed a LOT of people off

You haven't even said who this bloke is. Why did you need to go get him instead of leaving a space in the taxi for one of the other hundreds to share with him?

The advice was avoid public transport given the weather

did they al beg you to listen to the advice but you ignore?

@Shinyandnew1 actually I was wrong, from p7 updates it was the partner but again, it doesn't really matter does it? It's not a "new boyfriend" as someone said, they live together. It's a general principle of is it reasonable to ask for help. Why does it have to be absolutely life or death before the answer to that is yes?

And yes, it's possible they've had a drink but I think the OP asked lots of family, not just one. I did say "help if they could", not "help regardless of anything".

They take you to the train station, not your front door

This is such a frustrating thread.

The OP gives vague and cryptic details in her first post. Posters than go through the process of asking many questions to get the full picture.

Then other posters don't bother reading the OP's updates, and have no clue about life outside city life.

Is "just get a taxi" the new cancel the cheque?

For what it's worth I think the train company were at fault for not laying on alternative transport, and the OP's relatives were unkind in not offering to help.

It’s a bit of an eye opener who is there for you ,and who’s not in an emergency. DH’s was very close to his dsis until she let him down spectacularly when one of our dc got injured. It’s a very hard thing to come back from. Even after the hurt and anger fades, it changes something fundamental.

At the time, I wondered if it was a side effect of her anti depressants, or maybe symptom of something else - but this thread shows that there’s an awful lot of selfish people out there. It’s completely antithetical to my family culture - we’ve all “rescued” each other from much less over the years. And dh’s dps are great in a pinch too.

I can’t help thinking that it must be much more lonely for those who wouldn’t help out, because they’re missing the sense of inter connectedness and fellowship that we take for granted.

Try not to let it change you op, or cut too deep into your relationships - but cherish people who do have your back and cultivate friendships with kinder folk.

It sounds like you were asking for someone to help you help someone else - can you come out in the dark into flood conditions to help me help someone else. They most probably had been dealing with their own logistics all day. I know I was - one kid's bus stuck in flood water, the other's didn't turn up. Trying to coordinate with other parents to collect stranded kids, school evacuated etc. I think it would be a solid no from me if a friend wanted help for a friend. If it was an adult, was there a local pub they could go and sit in while they called a taxi?

Yes but wasn’t he originally getting to this train station and should have made transport arrangements to his own door?

if the train hadn’t stopped a few stations away it would’ve stopped somewhere eventually where he needed onward travel

The advice was avoid public transport given the weather

We had no weather warnings yesterday in most of Scotland.

I think sometimes in life people give you information about who they really are, and what you mean to them. Sometimes it’s positive, sometimes it’s negative, and this can be upsetting.

If you are the kind of person who, for whatever reason, really never asks for help and does everything for yourself, asking for help is a big deal. It also means that it can yield surprising results.

I find that people give the help they want to give. Not the help that you ask for, nor the help that you need. And this can be very frustrating.

in my own particular experience, the non-helper gave me information I didn’t want about her and where I was in her particular pecking order. Since then, I aim to put her in a similar level in my own pecking order, instead of being such a people pleaser.

Our nearest station is 15-20 minutes by car away and would be in the car before we’d finished the phone conversation for family and friends, even if it was way further. My dh and kids would be exactly the same. My kids have got up in the middle of the night to pick up friends who’ve got stuck without a taxi on a night out more than once.
I don’t know how people can’t understand that buses, taxis, hotels and whatever the heck a ‘ride share’ is, are not readily available in many places.

Eh? Where did I make this about my own choices?

I'm embarrassed for the people who think that there are taxis, even Ubers, and hotels readily available in rural areas at short notice. The lack of knowledge is astounding.

OP you’ve asked if you’re justified to feel as you do, but you won’t tell us what actually happened, who was stranded, what the circumstances were. If you were similarly (and annoyingly) vague to the people who you asked for help, it’s highly likely they didn’t know what you were on about. There’ll be a huge backstory here, there usually is. YABU.

Well that was a bit daft. As the OP’s scenario has proved. IF she is in Scotland

The disruption on the east coast mainline was not weather related - it was a fault with signalling