One night, not long after getting a new puppy, my gran was visited by her daughter (my aunt) and they were having a chat in my gran’s bedroom whilst the pup played on the floor next to the bed.

At the time, my gran was trying to train the pup that he could only climb on the furniture if he was invited using the command, “Up,” and as my aunt had just sat down on the bed she thought she’d let her invite the pup up for a cuddle. My gran also had a habit of spelling out words to disguise them from the dog. B-A-T-H, V-E-T, P-A-R-K — that kind of thing.

Gran: “[Aunt], why don’t you tell the dog to come U-P?”

Aunt: *Looking puzzled* “Why don’t I tell him to what?”

Gran: “You know, tell him ‘U-P’!”

Aunt: “Okay… [Dog], you pee!”

Fortunately, the dog actually didn’t pee on the bedroom floor, although when she stopped laughing, my gran asked my aunt why she thought that’s what my Gran wanted him to do!

From the time I was about ten until I was about nineteen, I’d walk to the chippy (fish and chip shop) every week and bring home dinner for my family of four. I was given a £20 note every time for the £14.20 order. Over the years, I’ve become a regular to the point that when I enter, they ask if I want my usual.

Today, my aunts are visiting and the oldest has come with me to choose what she wants.

Me: “You have to look at this list first because if you want any of those you need to order them now and not when we get to the front of the queue, but other than that, it’s like normal.”

Aunt: “Okay.”

She looks at the menu until we get to the front of the queue. I’m chatting a little with [Employee #2] who’s cooking as per usual.

Employee #1: “Usual?”

Me: “Yes, please, and also [what Younger Aunt wanted], please, and also… Aunty [Aunt], have you decided yet?”

Aunt: *Still looking at the menu* “Yeah… I’ll have… [item from order early menu].”

Employee #1: “That’s gonna be about a twelve-minute wait for [item]. Is that okay?”

Aunt: “Yeah, yeah, that’s fine.”

She stops getting the rest of the order ready, because it would have gone cold. I’m a little uneasy because the queue is longer than normal today so we’re already going to be late, but my aunt is an adult and I’m still just a teenager so I don’t say anything. After the wait, the food is ready.

Employee #1: “All right, that’s [lists everything], yeah?”

Me: “Uh-huh.”

Employee #1: “Okay, so that’ll be £22.40.”

I look at the £20 note I have taken out of my pocket and am about to give to the employee, which is very much less than £22.40. I’ve never had this situation before and have no clue what I’m supposed to do now. I completely freeze up for a few seconds.

Throughout the following conversation, I’m stuttering, my aunt doesn’t butt in, and [Employee #1] is giving [Employee #2] looks that I don’t know how to interpret.

Employee #2: “That twenty all you have, love?”

Me: “Sorry. I didn’t—”

Employee #2: “Hey, don’t worry about it. Just pay it next week.”

Me: “But I don’t have—”

Employee #2: “No need to panic, love. I’ll explain to you what we’re gonna do, ‘kay?”

Me: “Okay.”

Employee #2: “You’ll give us that twenty and we’ll give you this food, ‘kay?”

Me: “But—”

Employee #2: “Then, you’re gonna go on home and enjoy your dinner, yeah.”

Me: “Yeah…”

Employee #2: “Then, next week, you’ll come here, and you’ll pay that two-forty along with what you get, ‘kay?”

Me: “Okay…”

I come home to a lecture about how late we are and how I should have told my dad I’d need him to give me more money. I vaguely hear my aunt having a conversation with her sister about why she didn’t chip in.

Next week, I take £2.40 in coins along with the £20 note and hand them over first.

Employee #3: “What’s this?”

Me: “Um, they’re for last week.”

Employee #3: “Last week?”

Me: “It’s the two-forty, um, that I owe for last week.”

Employee #3: “I don’t…” *Turns to face the back* “[Employee #2]!”

[Employee #2] comes out of the mysterious room behind the counter.

Employee #2: “Yeah? Oh, hey, love. How you doing?”

He’s too far away for me to pass him the coins, so I very awkwardly wave with them.

Me: “I have the, um, the two-forty.”

Employee #2: “Yeah! I knew you were good for it.” *To the back* “I told you she was good for it!” *To me* “Usual?”

Me: “Please.”

It wasn’t until I discovered this site that I realised how rare this was.

Before I was born, my aunt was married to a guy who considered himself a prankster. He was more like a Schrodinger’s a**hole — the guy who plays it off as “it was just a joke/prank” if you got upset due to his horrible behavior.

Mom got engaged to Dad, and [Aunt’s Husband] got an idea for a “joke.” The plan was to get my father drunk the night before the wedding and buy him a one-way ticket to Hawaii. Naturally, this would have left my mom alone at the altar for a wedding that could not happen, that was barely afforded, with Dad stuck on an island with no money to fly back. I’m guessing it would also be “hilarious” to cost other people money to eventually get Dad home and “hilarious” to have a whole bunch of people furious at [Aunt’s Husband].

Perhaps the greatest blessing of this whole thing was that [Aunt’s Husband] added to the “mirth” by openly threatening to do this prank — several times. My mom repeatedly told him that it wasn’t funny and that he’d better not do that to her. He doubled and even tripled down on it.

Finally, a few days before the wedding, Mom snapped and called my aunt. In an icy fury, she told my aunt that if [Aunt’s Husband] dared to pull off that “prank,” she would commit a felony and go to jail with a smile on her face.

My aunt was completely in the dark and very confused about the whole thing. [Aunt’s Husband] had been making his prank threats when [Aunt] wasn’t in the room. After Mom explained to [Aunt] what her husband had threatened to do, [Aunt] said she would put a stop to it and not to worry.

[Aunt’s Husband] made one more threat of a different “prank”; he threatened to throw my father into the fountain, rented suit and all — because throwing Dad into the fountain would be funny, regardless of how much the suit rental company would charge Dad for the damage caused by the “prank.” This, too, was thankfully stopped.

[Aunt’s Husband] ultimately passed away from a heart attack before I was born, and my aunt married a much kinder man who is my acknowledged uncle.

The most entitled person I have ever met has to be my uncle. He is the oldest son of my grandparents, yet somehow, he was treated like the baby of the family. If he screwed up my grandparents bailed him out. Crashed a car, new car. In trouble at school, no not our angel. Ends up in jail because of a hit and run and he was drunk, they paid all his legal bills and supported him in prison.

He only lived out of my grandparents’ house for a couple of years before he burned every bridge in town and nobody would hire him.

He’s living with his parents and he’s around sixty years old. About eight years prior to this he convinced his father to stop leasing the farmland to a farmer who has consistently paid and leased that land for twenty years so that he could “farm”. He agreed to pay the lease fee for the land but wasn’t allowed to use the pole barns on the property.

He paid one year then stopped paying, and took over the pole barns with junk. I mean literal piles of junk everywhere. He also made it his mission to make everyone uncomfortable during visits to our grandparents. Glaring at people, screaming at everyone over imagined slights, running my dad’s equipment into the ground then not fixing it.

He also refused to help his parents or work with anyone to ensure they were cared for or that the farm didn’t end up in foreclosure.

Five years ago, the family farm went into foreclosure. He didn’t offer a single penny to his parents to try and save it even though he is the reason it was in foreclosure. My dad and I came up with $10,000 cash to save it.

Last year was the last straw. My grandma ended up in a serious accident. I stopped by the house to feed the cats and found an absolutely disgusting mess. The house reeked of urine, food expired by years, mold growing in the fridge, and holes in the floor.

At that point I had it. I threw a fit, I was ready to move my grandparents into my house that week. I calmed down and sat down with my dad and laid it out that either things started to get cleaned up or I was calling adult protective services.

We cleaned up the house, got care services arranged, and then we noticed bills piling up. They shouldn’t be as they received enough money to pay for their needs. We combed through the finances and found huge amounts of money just disappearing. Come to find out my uncle had been asking for money along with my aunt.

They were also forgetting to pay bills or paying them and not writing them down so accounts were over-drafting.

During all this, my uncle never checked on his parents even though he lived with them. We decided they couldn’t handle the farm anymore and it was causing too much strain on them to manage.

We found a buyer for the property and sat down with the entire family to discuss it. My uncle refused to listen and called us greedy. We decided to ignore him and go through with the sale.

During this time my grandpa had a heart attack. My uncle left him lying in bed and didn’t call an ambulance. My dad and I swung by to take them to dinner and found my grandpa in the bed literally dying. My uncle never called to check on him after he left with the ambulance.
We never took my grandparents back to the farm after that.

Unfortunately, the buyer didn’t work out for the farm, so my dad and I pooled our money together to purchase the farm.

We formally evicted my uncle, found an actual leaser for the land, and are building a new house where we will live with my grandparents.

We are also burning down the old farmhouse as my uncle destroyed it. He is claiming we stole the property, that he deserves his inheritance and that we didn’t do this legally. Our lawyer disagrees.

Karma does occasionally show up.

When I was a kid, I HATED shoes — hated buying them, hated wearing them. It was to the point that my shoes would fall off my feet before I’d agree that maybe I should think about getting another pair. When I was about seven or eight, I saw a commercial for the shoes that lit up when you moved and I wanted a pair more than anything. We didn’t have a lot of money when I was a kid, but my mom was just grateful to not have to fight with me about it that she agreed to buy them on the spot.

We went to my grandmother’s house so I could show them off, and so Mom could donate some things to her sister’s garage sale that day. I went inside. The rule was, “No shoes on while in the house,” so I took them off and ran to find my grandmother.

Me: “Nana! Come look at my cool new shoes! They light up when you walk in them, and I love them!”

Grandma: “You got new shoes? That’s great!”

It took her a couple of minutes to finish whatever she’d been doing, and we went into the garage so I could show them off, but I couldn’t find them anywhere. We looked all over for them as I was getting more and more frantic. My mom came to help, but they were nowhere to be seen.

Mom: “Hey, [Aunt], have you seen a pair of kids’ light-up shoes anywhere? [My Name] took them off in the garage and we’ve misplaced them.”

Aunt: “No, I found them. I got $10 for them.”

My aunt had seen my shoes that we had just bought an hour ago and, without checking to make sure they were part of the donations, sold them to someone. They were the only pair of shoes I had that weren’t dressy shoes. I burst into tears. Money was super tight, and I was never just given something I wanted like that, so I figured I would never get to have those super cool shoes now.

Grandma: “You sold them?!”

Aunt: “Well, [My Name] needed new shoes, anyway, right? I figured they fell out of the box [Mom] brought over.”

Mom: “They were brand new! I still have the receipt for them! [Aunt], you know I can’t afford things like this!”

My aunt tried to huff and insist it was just an honest mistake, but my grandmother was having none of it. She forced my aunt to shut the garage sale down right then since she was allowing my aunt to use her home for it, as my aunt lived an hour outside of town. She then told my aunt she would either buy me an identical pair of shoes or she could live with never being invited back for anything.

I had a new pair of identical shoes an hour later, and I proceeded to wear them until I outgrew them about a year later.