No one likes people who act as if they are entitled to everything. It's the cringiest, most frustrating thing to witness and it can ruin so many good things! Take these folks, for example. They shared the worst act of entitlement they've witnessed. Content has been edited for clarity.
And The Worst Mom Award Goes To…
“A friend of mine married a physically beautiful woman. The first time we all had dinner together, I remember thinking how lucky he was. She was very quiet, but she really seemed to be in love with him. They had a baby soon after they got married. That’s when everything changed.
My friend loved being a father. He got up with the baby (a little girl), he took her to all of her check ups and posted constant pictures and updates to share her little life with all of us online. When their daughter was six months old, his wife cheated on him with one of his employees. When he confronted her, she said that he would have to decide who would be first in his life, their daughter or her. She said she couldn’t be with someone who didn’t put her first. He pretty much sold his soul to her.
From that point on, she was first in everything. She didn’t like having relatives around, so she cut off her family contact and had him do the same. He had a very close family and a huge group of friends, but he distanced himself from everyone. His family was devastated. We would see his life via Facebook. One day he posted that their daughter (now eleven years old) had been invited to join her classmates on a trip to Disneyland. He was excited for her and shared memories of his own experiences at Disneyland when he was her age.
His wife chimed in and wrote a comment that stays with me to this day, ‘I haven’t been to Disneyland! She doesn’t get to see it before I do!’
Their daughter didn’t go to Disneyland and I never forgot her message. No child of hers would be allowed to do anything that she hadn’t done herself. It summed up her selfishness. The message translated this way in my mind, ‘You won’t have anything in life that I don’t have first. Who cares what you want. Only my happiness matters.'”
He Was Too Shy To Say Anything
“I had a friend who had moved to the United States from Japan in the third grade. We didn’t know it then, but his parents were here on a five-year work visa. He, nor his parents, spoke any English. Though in the years to come, he’d eventually become quite fluent.
I and my other friend took the same route walking home, so for about a week we watched him enter his new home about halfway between ours and the school.
As spring was arriving, it was time to break out our old bikes and spend hours upon hours exploring the outdoors. Then it had occurred to us to ask the new kid if he would like to join.
Nervously, we rode up to his house and parked our bikes in his driveway. We rang the door way and a surprised woman answered with our classmate shyly behind her. We tried to speak English, but they had yet to learn more the hello. We pointed to our bikes and everything clicked. She took our picture with our new friend, sweaty with bike helmets and all, and he got his bike and thus began a lifelong friendship. That picture is still on my desk today.
The act of selfishness took place in the fourth grade however. Ah this was the year weird fads hit, among them being cool erasers. Everyone loved ‘Japanese Erasers’ which came in anything from sushi to hamsters to cars, you name it.
One day my friend had returned from a long visit to Japan to see family and friends. When he came back, excited to have some Japanese Erasers to remind him of home. He hid them in his desk after showing them to me and continued on with class.
It wasn’t until one kid came up in admiration of his new erasers until the whole class was drawn to them. Everyone was boggled over the fact that they had actually come from Japan.
Now my friend was rather reserved, not only was it his personality, but it was emphasized by him only speaking English for a year now. He talked a lot with me and our other friend, but otherwise he was silent unless he had to talk and thus became rather passive.
The one kid said those magic words that come out of every little kids mouth at some point, whether it’s for food or a toy. ‘Can I have one?’ someone asked. Soon a huge group of people were lined up begging for one. ‘Pleaseee, pleaasee,’ they prodded.
He, being as shy as he was, leniently handed over each one until there laid no more. His confused and worried face sticks in my memory.
While, yes, this on a scale probably means nothing in comparison to the other stories, as they were just erasers. But children lacking the ability to put themselves in other’s shoes really stuck out to me. Nobody saw his face, nobody understood his wants, nobody saw the value of these to him. They saw their wants and they saw what he had. They solely communicated by words and not by emotions.
To this day, I still think about it from time to time, obviously I don’t completely blame them, as children mature at different rates. Though, collectively, this stood out as one of the most important lessons I keep in mind on a day-to-day basis and hope to one day share with my future children.
As for what happened, he moved back in the eighth grade, though I went to an alternative middle school, so we got split up anyways. We still texted every night though until he moved away and that became impossible. He’s been gone for almost two years now. I pass his house almost daily to get to school and think of him. We lost touch due to his phone number and skype getting jumbled up in his move back to Japan. My other friend (the one who came with me to knock on his door that first time, we stuck together) moved two months ago a few states away. Due to this, I started checking Skype again. Out of nowhere, our Japanese friend logged in randomly and we completely lost it. We got to hear his voice for the first time in years. Now we skype almost daily again.”
Addiction Is Real
“It makes me sad to write this.
Over the past few years, my family has experienced several financial hardships. Yet, last year I witnessed the most selfish act that I’ve ever known.
My father is a smoker (although he doesn’t like to admit this in any respect). We were living off food parcels from the Food Bank, despite my Mum working her hardest, and my Dad desperately applying for employment.
My Mum had £7 or so left in her purse. That was all that was left until her next payday four days away. That money would have provided just enough to buy food for these days (to go alongside her copious amounts of pasta and potatoes). The day my Mum was due to go shopping, she woke up to find her purse empty. No one had any idea as to where the money had gone and all three of us searched everywhere. We were resigned it was gone.
Later that evening, I saw my Dad return from the shops and asked him where he’d been. He brushed me off and went outside in the garden. I went up to my bedroom. I’m an asthmatic, so whenever I smell smoke, I start coughing. I went downstairs to investigate…and that’s when it all came out.
You see, my Dad, so desperate for smokes and too embarrassed to go to the GP to ask for more patches or to call the NHS helpline for smokers, decided to steal the final £7 that we had to feed our family (myself, my Mum, my Dad, my Nan, and our dog) for four days, and took the entirety of the money for himself. I lost all respect for him that day and am devastated that this has happened at least four times since.
In the end, he really enjoyed his smokes, even though we didn’t enjoy the plain pasta.”
No One Is In THAT Much Of A Hurry
“I lived in an area of the city that had a lot of shopping malls and outlet stores. There were several large apartment complexes in the area that were landscaped really nice with lakes.
The traffic was pretty heavy at predictable times, so anyone that lived around there knew when it was bad.
There were a lot of ducks that lived year round in the lakes and they were very much a part of life there. It was common to see a mom duck with her baby ducks single file walking behind her. It was the cutest thing you ever seen.
Everybody stopped to let the ducks cross the street. They would just waddle on across the busy street like they owned the place. Most people who lived there, especially me, loved the ducks. Everybody let the ducks cross the street. It didn’t matter if the traffic was heavy or if the light was green. Everybody stopped for the ducks.
One day I was on my way to work and traffic was bad and there was a mom duck with four baby ducks leisurely walking across the street, looking cuter than heck, and the light turned green.
The woman on the car next to me was obviously too busy to be bothered with appreciating the ducks cuteness and kept letting off and on her brake and trying to scare the ducks into hurrying up.
The babies were already going as fast as they could as they were really little, but this rotten woman kept lunging forward and stopping, trying to rush them.
I was getting mad. Really mad. I figured she would realize it wasn’t working and just accept the fact that she might be a minute or two late and just let them go.
The final lunge forward put her car right over the mother duck which meant the ducklings were pretty much right there in front of her tire. One more lurch forward and 1 or more was going to get squashed.
I started yelling at her asking her if she lost her freaking mind. I wasn’t out of my car or anything but I suppose she could have been worried about what I was going to do but I wasn’t threatening her but the witch took off killing one of the babies. The mom duck was quacking the other babies were kinda freaked out it was awful.
A guy who had been going the opposite way had seen everything and got her tag number. We made sure the ducks were safe and got the little dead guy off the road then went to the Wendy’s I was working at and called the police.
We didn’t think they were going to do anything about it, but we called them anyway and they came. I mean we had to do something and hunting her down and running over her with a car wouldn’t have been justified even though that’s what she deserved.
The cop came and took a report. There were ‘duck crossing’ signs all over the place so he was able to charge her for something. Just a misdemeanor but at least she got a cop knocking on her door and a ticket or something.
I could not believe she actually killed the little guy.”
Think Before You Speak
“I’ve seen lots of selfish acts, but none that shocked me like this one.
My wife found out that her best friend of 34 years was in stage 4 ovarian cancer for the second time. Her numbers indicated she had only months to live and there was going to be no chemo this time around.
My mother-in-law, who had been sharing a family cell phone plan with my wife’s friend to save money was in the room when we found out the horrible news. The first words out of her mouth were ‘What does this mean for my cell phone plan?’
I knew my mother-in-law had been a selfish, neglectful, narcissistic parent, but this was by far the most callously selfish response to the news of someone’s impending death I had ever imagined from a family member.”
One Bad Dad.
“My mother was in a coma and dying from cancer. My father asked my sister and me to designate him my mother’s guardian. This he said would give him access to her money for paying for our maternal grandmother’s sitter. We agreed. We shouldn’t have.
When I arrived at the lawyer office, there was a second paragraph on the contract I didn’t understand. I ruminated over whether to sign it for around a half hour. I was afraid that if I didn’t sign it, I would have to deal with an angry father and sister. I really didn’t expect my father to perpetrate fraud, so I decided to trust my dad and signed it.
A couple of months after my mom died, my sister and I started talking about the contract. She mentioned that she didn’t understand the second paragraph either. She went to city hall and took a look at the contract. She and I had signed away our rights to the money my mom had left us. This was over $20,000 each.
We hired an attorney and threatened my father with a lawsuit. Since he didn’t want people to know that he was being sued by his children, he agreed to pay us what he owed us.”
He Ruined It For Everyone
“A toothache compelled me to visit a random rural dentist. I was an emergency appointment and his office graciously slipped me in between scheduled patients, but warned me to expect a significant wait.
I slunk into the stuffy waiting room, miserable. The room was hot, and too brightly lit by summer sun. Patients came and went while my jaw throbbed and I cast about desperately for a diversion.
I was staring down the barrel of two hours’ wait. I did not want to be alone with my thoughts, since they were mostly about my tooth. So I turned to the only entertainment provided, a stack of worn ‘Where’s Waldo?’ books.
This was the first one. I was relieved to find an outlet for my frustration and pain. The pages were tattered, the spine ripped, and I was obviously not the first person to try finding our professional perennial missing person.
Waldo was circled…on every page.
In every puzzle, someone had circled Waldo in pen. The next book too. All three books had been turned from ‘Where’s Waldo?’ into ‘Here’s Waldo!’
Could the person before me maybe just tap Waldo with a fingertip? Smile at their personal achievement, maybe crow a little later to their friends? Circling it with pen had no point except to turn the book into a personal trophy and take it away from anyone who followed.
I’ve seen hugely selfish acts; life-ruining stuff, harrowing stories and the law or public opinion used as a raw bludgeon to benefit one person and harm others. But this was breathtaking in its casualness. What was there to gain?
I spent the next couple of hours seeing if I could predict where a housefly would land next.”
They Weren’t Allowed To Grieve
“When I was twelve, my dad died. I have five siblings and we ranged at the time from seven years old to eighteen. The eldest was leaving for college that week, but came back and spent the year at home at my mom’s request.
Before Dad had been dead a whole month, my mom started sort-of dating a sort-of homeless guy (he had been homeless and then was living in an RV on someone’s property as their caretaker) my family had helped before (we volunteered for years prior to this at the local homeless shelter).
A month. Our father had died of unexpected of complications from heart attacks just a month prior.
We four youngest didn’t know what was going on at first and she didn’t let our older two siblings know. All we knew was that almost every night mom would have us get in the van. She’d be in her pajamas and robe and we’d drive down to his place. She’d send us to go play in the yard while she ‘said goodnight’ and ‘ministered’ to him.
Eventually, she’d come out with a crud-eating smirk, load us up in the van, and drive back home.
Less than two months after that, she moved him into the house and started claiming they were married to everyone. (They weren’t.)
Why was this so incredibly selfish? Because we weren’t allowed to grieve anymore after that. We all had to be happy because mom had a new boyfriend-then-husband and we all felt like we couldn’t even talk about Dad anymore. Mom still talked about him but only to force our good behavior. For example, ‘You are all such terrible children! Your father wanted you to be raised this way and I’ve sacrificed so much for you…!’
He wasn’t even a good stepdad. He could have been worse, sure, but he’d fight with mom then storm out of the house and she’d blame it on us.
Less than six months after my dad died he and my mom went on a drive and left me to change a curtain rod. I was still twelve and very small for my age. I couldn’t reach the curtain rod. I tried, hard, but I kept falling off the back of the couch. They got back and saw that I hadn’t done it, so the step-dad kept saying to me ‘Hah, I knew you were useless.’ while laughing and repeating it over and over like it was hilarious.
I lost my temper and said ‘You’re just a fat old man!’ (he was 13 years older than my mom, so he seemed quite elderly to me). He, in front of my mother who had been laughing at his denigration of my handyman attempts, grabbed me, shook me hard, and screamed in my face ‘You stupid little brat!’ and stormed out of the house.
Mom then spanked me for trying to ruin her marriage.
I just wanted my dad back, but I couldn’t even say that because what if it made the step-dad feel bad?”
Doctors Aren’t Alway Selfless
“It was 4am at my aunt’s house and I couldn’t sleep. My uncle was seriously sick and was so weak that he was unable to even stand. He hadn’t eaten enough as his stomach was not well and he also has a kidney problems. He was so sick that he couldn’t control his stools and didn’t have the strength to clean himself. My mom and I had gone there to help my aunt. My aunt was cleaning the mess he had made in the bathroom and he was standing outside, leaning on the door waiting for her to finish so she can clean him up.
Unable to sleep, I was reading a book and heard a loud thud. In a jiffy, I ran to the opposite room and find my uncle slipping down and his head banging on the edge of the door making him unconscious. I grab him and call him out, patting on his cheeks and shaking him but there was no response. I try splashing water on his face and it seemed no good.
My aunt is wailing and asking me to do something as I was the only one who could help. I quickly call an ambulance as I knew something was wrong and meanwhile tried checking for signs of breathing. As I have no prior experience of such things, I call my cousin who lives in another town asking for help. He asked me to look at uncle’s stomach for signs of breathing. I checked for heart beat and couldn’t hear anything, but my own heart pounding in stress and fear. I look for pulse and have no idea if he is alive or dead.
I take the scooter and drive looking for a doctor or a hospital. It was too early for any clinic to be open and I had to do something. I frantically drive to a hospital I know will be open at this hour and manage to get there within minutes. Banging on the door, there was a compounder who listened to the situation and called the doctor on duty who was sleeping in a room. The doctor comes out casually and I explain the situation to him and ask him to come with me.
The first thing he does is ask me to pay him $2,000 if my uncle is dead. His point was, if my uncle was already dead then he wouldn’t get any money for paying the visit and he can’t be demanding money later at a moment when everyone is grieving. I agreed to everything as I had hopes of saving my uncle who I thought was unconscious. The doctor now says that he needs a car to come as it was drizzling. I was baffled at such lethargic attitude and begged him to come with me in my two-wheeler. With no regard to one’s life, he argues with me that he doesn’t like getting wet. I again drive around the locality looking for a taxi. After 10 minutes, I found a taxi with the driver asleep inside. I woke him up and explained the emergency. He agrees to come for a sum of $500. Usually I would argue and bargain to pay such a huge amount for a distance of less than a mile, but I was in an emergency and agreed.
I accompany the doctor home and find the ambulance arriving just after us. The doctor at the ambulance declares my uncle dead. I didn’t know if he was dead by the minute he fell down or died later waiting for medical assistance while these pricks were bargaining for money. I couldn’t imagine a doctor saying such things. I felt so bad that I couldn’t save him and cursed the doctor and the taxi driver for being so selfish at a time when someone was dying. Maybe, just maybe, he was clinging on to his life and if he had got the medical attention on time, he wouldn’t be dead today.
My dad usually tells me that the world is cruel and I won’t know it until I experience it. Whenever he told me stories of such people, I thought he was exaggerating and argued that no one would be so cruel. That was the day I knew that such people existed in the same street with me, in the same community waiting for their opportunity to make the best profit out of it.”