My aunt used to do some embarrassing stuff at restaurants. Her favorite was to order something, eat 90% of it, and then call over the waitstaff.

Aunt: “This was inedible and absolutely awful! I shouldn’t have to pay for it!”

Apparently, back in the day, this worked and she would frequently receive free meals. Until one time when it didn’t.

The waitstaff looked her dead in the eye.

Waitstaff: “You ate it. Therefore, you will pay for it, and I hope you enjoyed it because this will be the last time you are allowed here.”

She got super embarrassed, paid, and rushed out of there. After tucking her tail and running, her “Customer-Is-Always-Right” core recharged and she called the restaurant to complain.

I’m not sure if she got the manager or the owner, but they essentially told her the same thing as the waitstaff. Her husband, who had no issues with her scamming places, got mad and wanted to pursue some sort of legal action. Nothing came of it.

This is one of the many reasons my family and I haven’t seen or talked to her since I was eleven or so. I’m thirty-two now.

My uncle named one of his first sows (bought after his first marriage ended) after his ex-wife.

A bunch of mutual “friends” went to tell her and got her worked up that he was insulting her to people. She called him in tears because their divorce truly was very friendly; they just married much too young and grew apart. (He was even a groomsman at her second marriage, and she was his second and so far only other wife’s matron of honor because she introduced them, although the introduction happened years after the sow incident.)

Uncle: “I didn’t mean it as an insult! I named the other two sows [His Mother] and [His Stepmother]. All three of you are fierce and amazing moms, and I wanted to give my cute little sow piglets someone to live up to.”

Apparently, when [Ex-Wife] met her namesake, she was so charmed (and the sow named after her was a darling) that she forgave him immediately for naming a pig after her.

Oh, and his current wife also has a piggy namesake, chosen for being a golden pig and my auntie being a natural blonde. (She is also a fierce mama in her own right; she once reduced some busybody to tears when they implied to her youngest stepson that she wouldn’t love him once she had “her own” child. She did it without raising her voice, but the TONE was pretty scathing, I’m told.)

I am the author of the Stab Caesar Salad/Drug Grandma stories, and it’s time for another episode of this saga. Buckle up; this one’s a doozy. 

Grandma is almost ninety-four, and she’s sharp as a tack, but she’s an expert at playing stupid. She is super manipulative and really bad at handling her money. When she moved in with us, she was drowning in credit card debt. My dad, realizing he would be responsible for that debt if she died, immediately took control of her debit card, canceled all of her credit cards, and consolidated her debt. He then worked with her and managed to get it paid off.

Grandma was offended when none of the credit card companies sent her a thank-you card after she paid off her debt even though she was a “loyal customer that they know personally.”

Dad uses her debit card to pay for things like her prescriptions, special food she wants, copays on doctor visits, etc. He does not allow her to shop on [TV Shopping Network] anymore, and despite what she tells people, he does let her get a few things she wants — but only after her needs are taken care of.

My uncle is just as bad with money. He retired early, spent a few years traveling around America until he ran out of money, and now resides on his daughter’s couch. 

[Uncle] takes Grandma to her doctor’s appointments while my dad is working. Dad always gives [Uncle] Grandma’s debit card for the expenses. [Uncle] always has my cousin’s dog with him so he doesn’t have to go inside the doctor’s office with Grandma, and he gives her the debit card. She always gives it back when she’s done, and my dad gets it back when they get home. It’s a good system.

One day, we get some packages that are addressed to “Grandma [Last Name].” Only my cousin sends her packages with “Grandma” written on them instead of her first name. They are mega-expensive vitamins that Grandma saw in a commercial on TV claiming to be the best, and since commercials never lie, she had to have them. This wouldn’t be the first time she manipulated my cousin into buying her something either she already had at home or my dad had said no to for whatever reason.

My mom is pissed because Grandma makes her special-order vitamins that aren’t available in stores, and further questioning reveals that Grandma wants to be on both vitamins at the same time. Did she ask us to get her these new vitamins? No. Why?

Grandma: “I knew you would’ve just said no.”

Over the next week, several more packages of various expensive junk arrive addressed to “Grandma [Last Name].” We are confused. My dad calls my cousin, but she says she hasn’t bought Grandma any of that stuff.

Then, my dad gets the statement for Grandma’s debit card. One time, while at the doctor’s office, when my uncle was waiting in the car, she wrote down her debit card number on a scrap piece of paper and hid it. Dad and Grandma get into a huge argument that boils down to:

Grandma: “It’s my money! I should be able to spend it how I want!”

Dad: “Blowing your money on stupid s*** is how you got into debt in the first place!”

Grandma: “Well, I’m going to call my social worker and my lawyer, and they’ll make you give me complete control of my money!”

Dad: “You don’t have a lawyer!”

Grandma: “Then I’ll hire one!”

Dad: “You have no money!”

Grandma: “They’ll do it for free!”

This went on for almost half an hour. I removed the name-calling that was mostly done by my grandmother. She truly believed that she could get a lawyer to take her case for free (or nearly free) and she would win. Surprising no one, we never got a visit from a lawyer about this. Grandma could not understand why we were all mad at her. We were kind of hoping she would make good on her threat and call social services and they would take her away. 

Two or three weeks later, a social worker showed up at our house. (The social worker actually tried to visit earlier, but Dad was in a meeting at work and asked her to come back later.) Grandma actually called them, though she claimed ignorance. No one believed her and she didn’t understand why. The social worker talked to Grandma, and then she talked to my dad and came back with this:

Social Worker: “We can’t get her into a home permanently, but we can get her into one for a two-week period so you and your family can have a break from her.”

For whatever reason, my dad did not take her up on this offer.

Related:
We Should Totally Just Lock Grandma In The Bathroom (Not Really)
We Should Totally Just Drown Our Salads
We Should Totally Just Drug Grandma! (Not Really), Part 2
We Should Totally Just Drug Grandma! (Not Really)
We Should Totally Just Stab Caesar! (Salad), Part 2

The tables at my wedding were decorated with candles in votive cups. When the party was over, my aunt grabbed the box and started placing all of the cups and candles into it.

Sounds nice, right? Well, this person was known for doing things like this and then walking out with what she had collected.

I waited until she had filled the box. Then, I swept over and took the box out of her arms, gushing:

Me: “Thanks so much for collecting these for me. It saved me so much time.”

My aunt left empty-handed.

When my mother was a young adult in the 1950s, in Germany, she only got permission from her family to become a secondary modern school (Realschule) teacher, not a grammar school (Gymnasium) teacher.

It wasn’t even her parents who were the driving factor of this restriction but an aunt of hers. I never found out why that nosey aunt had so much say in the matter. She certainly didn’t pay Mum’s tuition. It was really none of her business in any way. But she represented what “people would be saying”, as it were: Mum would marry anyway, so an expensive advanced education would be wasted on her.

Okay, then. Mother obediently went to University and took teaching classes in French and geography — both subjects that a teacher might well teach in a secondary modern school at that time. However, geography was just a decoy subject; she also took classes in Latin, so she could become a grammar school teacher for French and Latin.

And when that came out at long last, immediately before the final State Exams, things really blew up at home. “You’ve known that all along! You have deceived and betrayed us!”

So, that’s why my mother had to do one and a half times as much work for her studies as her fellow students did. In the end, she was a licensed teacher for three subjects instead of just two as is customary for grammar school teachers in Germany.

And she actually did “marry anyway”; she married another grammar school teacher, and both of them taught in a grammar school after their studies all the way until their retirement age.