Being A Friend Means Being Supportive… Jerk

I was once hanging out with a friend of mine who I met at my church. I brought up my recent fifth anniversary of working at one particular retail company because I had never spent five years in ONE job and was particularly proud of myself. I moved like twenty-five times in my first twenty years, so being ANYWHERE for a good amount of time was a big milestone for me.

Friend: “When are you going to get a real job?”

This was coming from a guy who attended college but depended on his mom to pay the rent for the house that he and his wife lived in. Being in retail, I was not anywhere close to being rich by any means, but my rent and bills were all being paid on time, I was not starving, and I was able to put a little something away for a rainy day.

Basically, his snide-toned question hurt me deep to the bone, and I realized he was not such a good friend as I thought.

Me: *Sarcastically* “As soon as you become enough of a man that your mom doesn’t have to pay your rent so you can get a real job and start paying it yourself.”

We never talked to each other after that. I haven’t seen him in three years, and I don’t care to do it, either. If a person like that doesn’t seem to appreciate the hard work that another does for a living and can’t even define it as a “real” job, especially when his own life isn’t that much better, there’s no need to be friends with such a person.