Working for wealthy folks can be endlessly frustrating. People may think The White Lotus and Triangle of Sadness are heightened exaggerations of what it's like, but based on these stories, it's quite clear that those films may be leaning closer to nonfiction territory than anyone wants to believe. Although I have never worked as a full-time nanny , I have worked in education, specifically for wealthy families. I have seen the entitlement, the distorted view of reality, and the unrealistic expec…

Kids are something else. Imagine you're a parent (you probably are if you clicked on this post). It's 6:00 AM, and your kids are already battling each other outside their shared bathroom. They refuse to get ready together and lock one another out, causing chaos, as usual. You shuffle around, getting things ready, making breakfast, and occasionally pulling them apart. One kid hates their outfit, the other one hates you. It's just a typical morning. Their expressions are storm clouds of teenage r…

Siblings should always tease one another, that is pretty much the most basic rule in the siblings' rule book. One of the common ways to tease your younger siblings is by telling them they are actually adopted, and coming up with the most elaborate story for what happened with their actual birth parents, hiding their baby pictures, and sometimes even asking your parents to go along with it. The girl in this Reddit story discovered that her life is not far from being a big adoption prank, except…

People are strange as it is, and when we grow up and get our own homes and have our own kids in what is effectively our own world in which we can set our own rules things can get very strange indeed. Of course, this “strangeness” ranges from delightully weird takes on common household rules to things that are downright mistreatment of the people who are being forced to follow them.

Trying to teach a technologically incompetent parent how to do something with their phone and/or computer can feel like a Sisyphean task. Personally speaking, I would rather endure a day at the Department of Motor Vehicles. For me, the most upsetting part about watching my technologically incompetent family members try to do anything remotely tech-heavy is the way they behave when they can't get something to work. Everyone starts shouting at one another, or someone just starts pressing random b…

Rarely has favoritism been so blatantly obvious. This father can try to rationalize his logic as much as he wants, but the truth of the matter is that he does not value his artistic daughter's talents and sensibilities as much as he values his more STEM-leaning daughter's gifts. In the case of the latter, he and his wife made sure to invest in their eldest's academic prospects by sending her to a private school. Meanwhile, their younger daughter had been secretly hoping that she could attend th…

This might have been a situation where the higher road was worth taking. As tempting as it is to twist the knife and be your fullest, pettiest self, there is a limit to how far one should go. It's easy to roll your eyes at the concept, but happiness is the best form of revenge at the end of the day. This mother of a now toddler realized that her ex-husband's 30th birthday was approaching. They hadn't seen each other in two years since their divorce was officially finalized. Their marriage fell…

When I was in middle school our school had an unfortunate naming convention for our school usernames that consisted of the first five letters of your last name followed by the first four letters of your first name. Naturally, my username was thus “DicksBra” and you can imagine how much fun we, being a group of 11-year-old boys had with that. Any time my username was required it was gleefully announced or entered to the tune of stifled laughter

Taking responsibility for your own actions is important and one of the first major lessons that a young kid should learn from their parents. Unfortunately, a bunch of kids were never taught this lesson—or if the seeds were planted… they never took root. When these kids grow up and have kids of their own, predictably the new parents are not the most reliable at teaching their own children a lesson that they themselves never learned, leading to a new generation of entitled people in a vicious sel…

Parents can get oddly competitive about their kids, and they have some backhanded compliments to dole out to parents they're intimidated by. They say it's not productive to compare your kid to others, but it's hard not to. If all the other babies are walking but your kid is still crawling, you might worry that they're behind. Other babies start talking very early on, while others don't speak in full sentences until they're two or three years old. It's understandable why parents would be concern…

Sure, it's true that kids will do and say crazy things, but let's take a look at all the crazy things parents and teachers say to them. Perhaps craziness begets craziness. After all, and this will annoy all the anti-musical theater folks out there, but it was Stephen Sondheim who said “children will listen.” If you tell an impressionable eight year old that toilets are evil creatures trying to swallow you whole, that eight year old may very well believe you. And what happens when they believe y…

The shenanigans our classmates orchestrated under the supervision of unfortunately unaware substitute teachers are something that we're likely to remember many years afterward. It's one of those things that are such a universal experience that long ago worked its way from real life over into becoming a trope in popular culture. The greatest example I had of this was in 8th grade when my Advanced Geometry teacher had a few weeks off work, and we, of course, were to be taught instead by a substit…

Money is never an easy subject to bring up within a family. No matter how close you are to your parents or siblings, talking about salaries, inheritances, or wills will always be awkward. That is why I think as parents, you have to be sensible and honest if you end up in a spot where you have to bring these subjects up. Do not try to sugarcoat anything, but talk to your kids like the adults they probably are. That is the advice I would personally give this person who turned to Reddit for advice…

This must've been the craziest day on the job for one group of construction workers . At every job, there will come a day that is so outrageous that it turns into a legend. Maybe someone gets in a public screaming match with the boss and tells them off in front of everyone. Or perhaps the serial food thief finally gets caught. Or maybe one employee flips out on a client. Days like these don't happen all the time, and when they do, it certainly breaks up the monotony. One group of construction w…

There's this growing sentiment in modern parenting that we should never lie to our children, that, if we do, they may one day grow up to resent us for giving them an unrealistic view of the world. Maybe, just maybe, that desire for a more realistic and grounded approach stems from the fact that we were raised being told that we could be whatever, whoever, and wherever we wanted to be when the reality is that all of those things cost money and if you don't have enough money to go, be and do ever…

Not everyone is good at giving gifts. Obviously, for some people out there, it's their bread and butter. Their love language, if you will. If that's you, congratulations. However, the rest of us (myself included) were not born with the “good gift-giver” gene. As someone who was once gifted a dictionary and a pencil case holder for my 15th birthday, not to mention a DVD of Inside Out for my 21st birthday, I was not raised to be good at this. That's why when this time of year rolls around, I get…