Neighbour asking me to take her to hospital appointments

[BecauseNothing]

A neighbour has asked me to drive her to, stay with her and bring her home from 2 upcoming hospital appointments. The first is in 4 weeks time and the second the week after. I have said I can’t because I’m working and she has asked if I can book the time off. I haven’t replied but this seems cheeky to me after I’d said no. AIBU? I need my annual leave for things with my own family. She has people who visit her who I presume are family and friends but apparently has no one to go with her. I work full time at home and have children so with everything that comes with that I’m busy.

Absolutely! Did you reply to this @BecauseNothing?

''I love the elderly' I find that extremely patronising at best

I am sure you would donate a kidney if a neighbour asked but having to take time off work to help is crossing a line

I’ve spent thousands on moving and buying a house close to my mum so I can be on hand to be her carer because I love her.

Why would I sacrifice precious annual leave from my job to make the lives of a neighbour’s children easier so they don’t have to take their own mum to hospital?

The village begins at home, people need to take care of their own mums before looking to neighbours.

I don't think OP is wrong to say no, but we don't have to be nasty about people asking for help. Community is an important thing. My neighbour has his family nearby but they're not on hand to notice everything. I've checked on him and helped when I can. I am hugely grateful to my mum's neighbours who look out for her.

That's wonderful you could do that for your mum @nomas but not everyone can. Life is messy.

My village is very small and I worry about the future. I see society getting increasingly selfish and insular. It's not great.

I love the elderly isn't synonymous with “aww, aren't the little old dears sweet”. I have a particular admiration for older people and enjoy their company. There's no condescension involved in that whatsoever. Calling a perfectly ordinary expression of admiration or affection “extremely patronising” feels like quite a determined effort to find offence where none was intended. But its also reasonable and proper to acknowledge that people have different needs and vulnerabilities at different stages of life.

Also 'at best' made me laugh. What is saying I love the elderly, at worst? A line from my 'oppression of the elderly' manifesto? Behave 😂

'I love the elderly' made me cringe too. 😖 Are the elderly a homogenous mass? In every demographic, religion, class, and race there are lovely people, OK people, and horrible people. Some people are nice sometimes, and less nice other times...

I bet that poster says 'awwww bless' a lot to anyone over 75. And I bet they pat them on the head, and tell them that they need to wrap up or they'll catch their death of cold when the temperature drops below 12C, and they don't have a cardigan on... 😬

Not homogeneous, no. A demographic with shared characteristics, yes. Otherwise the word “elderly” would be doing remarkably little work wouldn't it. There are many 'older people...elder care' services, that's not an assumption that they are all the same but a recognition that there are very obvious shared experiences. I admire old people, I love the elderly.

The head-patting/cardigan fantasy is quite the detour. I suppose it's easier to invent a patronising caricature of me than engage with the rather less comfortable point about selfishness, neighbourliness and civic responsibility.

Not homogeneous, no. A demographic with shared characteristics, yes. Otherwise the word “elderly” would be doing remarkably little work wouldn't it.

So you're saying all the elderly are the same then?!

Just like I said you were saying.

😂Please stop! I'm splitting my sides laughing here!

You don't have to believe me. I think that probably illustrates the difference in outlook rather well. The idea that someone might willingly inconvenience themselves to help an elderly neighbour is apparently so implausible to you that you assume they must be lying. To me, that's just part of living in a community.

No. “Shared characteristics” and “identical” are not synonyms. I'm afraid I can't make that distinction any simpler for

If you read “not homogeneous” and understood “all the same”, I fear we've reached the limits of what I can usefully explain to you.

“Splitting your sides” is quite the reaction! I fear, you really may need to get out more. 😂

🙄 no words to that!

Jeez @Alee36when you're in a hole, stop digging!
The only 'shared characteristics' the elderly have is that they are elderly!

Oh dear. I think are you perhaps misunderstanding the noun? Demographic characteristics are not personality traits — health, mobility, income, isolation, bereavement etc. are shared characteristics.

I think The ONS manages to publish data on the “characteristics of older people” without concluding they're all the same person. Hope that helps with the terminology.

“The only thing they have in common is being elderly” is, ironically, a considerably more reductive description of older people than anything I've said. Spectacular. 😂

Saying age tells us nothing except age, is demonstrably nonsense. If that were true, huge areas of public health, social policy, gerontology and demographic statistics would have nothing to study.

Not quite the hole you think it is, but do keep shouting into the abyss and endorsing calling older people cheeky f's for reaching out for help in their community.

Jesus wept.

So why say 'I love the elderly', as if they do all have similar personalities? The 'shared characteristics' you list, even if they were exclusive to this age group, which they aren't, don't make the elderly more loveable en masse.

I mean, I suppose you could say that older people are more prone to specific health conditions, or more likely to experience loss of a partner due to old age, but that's about it. They are as different in terms of mobility, isolation, general bereavement, income as everyone else.

I still think you're full of shit when you say that you would happily give up your annual leave to ferry old people in your community to their appointments, just because they are old. Irrespective of whether they actually need your help or just don't want to inconvenience their own kids. And I still think OP's neighbour is a cheeky fucker.

It's like pissing into the wind isn't it trying to work out @Alee36 ! 😬

As has been said @Alee36 when you're in a hole stop digging luv!? 😂

.

You've expended a lot of energy arguing with things I haven't said.

I didn't say those characteristics were exclusive to older people,. Older people obviously vary enormously from one another, but saying they're “as different in terms of mobility, isolation, bereavement and income as everyone else” confuses individual variation with population-level differences.

An 80-year-old and a 30-year-old do not, statistically, have the same likelihood of mobility limitations, widowhood, age-related illness, social isolation, etc.
Suggesting an 80-year-old is statistically no more likely than the general population to experience mobility problems, age-related ill health, widowhood or social isolation is plainly absurd.

Individual older people differ enormously; that doesn't mean age ceases to be associated with particular vulnerabilities.

Something doesn't need to happen only to a demographic for that demographic to experience it disproportionately.

That's the data part, painstakingly explained for you. For future, you can refer to the ONS, or other official bodies, and perhaps take up your worries with them?

I never said that being elderly makes people more “loveable”, or that I'd indiscriminately ferry every elderly person to appointments simply because they're old. Behave.

Saying “I love the elderly” no more means I think elderly people have identical personalities than saying “I love children” means I think every child is delightful, or “I love the Irish” means every Irish person is wonderful. Affection for a group does not require universal approval of every individual within it. I'm genuinely baffled that this needs explaining.

And, lest “I love the Irish” provides yet another irresistible opportunity for you to misunderstand and derail the point, I am Irish. 😂

I have affection and absolute respect for older people, and recognise the vulnerabilities disproportionately associated with ageing, and would be willing to inconvenience myself to help an elderly neighbour who asked me. None of that requires them to have similar personalities.

You can think I'm “full of shit” if you like. I find it rather telling that someone being willing to inconvenience themselves for an elderly neighbour strikes you as so implausible that dishonesty seems the likelier explanation!

You can continue to turn a number of posts about a fairly ordinary belief in neighbourliness and civic responsibility into increasingly absurd propositions if you like! My engagement with it ends here.

Ultimately, you see an almost-80-year-old asking a neighbour for help and think “cheeky fucker”. I don't. We've clearly got very different ideas about community, and incredibly different instincts. I'm entirely comfortable with mine.

It's not the enigma code, lovey. It's quite a straightforward position:

Elderly neighbour asks for help → I would be inclined to help

Hope that helps and thank you so much for your thoughtful and intellectual contribution! 😘

yep maybe she's a lovely person who has somehow brought up horrible children who don't ever help her. And doesn't have any other family members or friends in the world. And is so poor she can't afford a taxi or offer OP money to take time off work. And lives so rurally there is no public transport. And despite being technically proficient enough to use her phone to order cinema tickets can't look up whether there is any hospital transport or charity or similar that could help.

When you add all that up doesn't it seem a little unlikely that OP is her only option and slightly more likely that she is a bit of a CF?

Neither of us knows any of that. That's rather the point isnt it. Where information is missing, I'm prepared to extend an almost-80-year-old some benefit of the doubt; you're determined to fill every gap with the least charitable explanation available and conclude she's a cheeky fucker.

What a miserable way to view other people, constantly scanning ordinary human interactions for evidence that somebody is taking advantage of you.

I find it sad and baffling. That said, you are in the majority and already have the overwhelming consensus of the thread, so why the determination to make me concede?!!!!
Not just you, but many on here. How bizzare it is.

There have been great efforts on here to force me to admit that my instinct towards kindness and neighbourliness is somehow naive or dishonest. Bleak.

You're entitled to think what you want, but I'm not obliged to join you!

Derailing the entire thread to talk about how utterly kind generous and sooo much better one is than everyone else and reducing the elderly to cardboard cut outs" I love the elderly" wearing it like a badge, awful

Communal Narcissism

Most people with limited annual leave and young children need all their annual leave to cover school holidays, inset days and their children's illnesses.

I'm assuming that you are not in that position if you would be happy to use your annual leave to help a not particularly close neighbour who has adult children of their own who she doesn't want to inconvience by asking them to take annual leave.

This is me. I literally don’t have enough annual leave already and can barely cover my commitments. Im not going to waste my previous leave on a random person.

I actually made one comment and contribution to this thread expressing a different view and perspective to the OP. I'm not sure if you're new to this, but someone poses a question and people offer their opinions and perspectives. That's how it works.

I was then repeatedly quoted, challenged, called patronising, a liar and “full of shit”, and in turn, responded.

That's not derailing a thread to talk about how wonderful I am 😂; it's responding to people who are talking directly to me.

If we're doing amateur psychology, the inability to accept that someone might simply have different values from you is considerably more interesting to me!

I actually am in that position, I have a young child and limited annual leave, so I completely understand. I would still be willing to use some of it to help an elderly neighbour if she needed me.

That's really been my point throughout. I'm not saying everyone else has to make the same choice, or that OP is obliged to. I'm saying that I would, and I would mostly because I don't think an almost-80-year-old woman is a CF simply for asking. My default position would not be suspicion or irritation, I would assume that she needed the help and considered me a trusted person.

We can have the same constraints and still make different choices about what we're willing to be inconvenienced for. No one need to feel bad either way.

But, I refuse to call an older person a cheeky fucker based on the limited info, and I'm not going to accept being called 'full of shit', just because I don't agree!

Realistically, when a person already has substantial enough caring responsibilities that they're buying extra annual leave, it's a privileged position to be able to afford to add to those costs by taking on even more care. It might be that a lot of people just can't imagine being in that setup.