07/26/25 - He told me that he went through that crate of milk inside and out and could not find where I put the red pocket for the life of him.
”Mom, I don’t want to be your friend.
Sorry, mom, I love you, but sometimes, I also hate you. Why don’t you have any friends? Why don’t you go make some friends? Why do you never care about your feelings? Why do you always say I’m being too sensitive? Like I’m always the one getting hung up, getting upset over little things. Can you just leave me alone? I don’t want to hear about how hard business is right now. I don’t want to listen to your anxiety about my brother’s grades. I don’t want you to come to the store I work at. I don’t want to respond to your messages while I’m working. I don’t want to be your friend or your daughter or your sister…”
OP attaches text screenshots with her mom, which reads:
Mom: “You busy? Talk with me.”
OP: “I’m about to eat.”
Mom: “Great, you got nothing to do, so we can eat and chat.”
OP: “What do you want to talk about?”
Mom: “What are you eating? Anything’s fine. I got nothing to do all day so I’m just bored and zoning out.”
Mom: “Hey, I looked at the subway and I’m just about to pass your station. What is that place over by you? I remember you’re right around [censored], right?”
OP: “Are you coming over to visit me again?”
Mom: “I’m just passing by. Come over and bring me some boba tea.”
OP: “I don’t wanna. It’s raining really hard today.”
Mom: “I wanna. It’ll be fine.”
OP: “I’m kinda unhappy, mom.”
Mom: “Get me Jincheng boba tea.”
OP: “I’m working right now. Please don’t come visit me, mom.”
Mom: “I’m not gonna, relax.”
OP: “I can bring it to you after work.”
Mom: “I was on my way home. I just thought of you when I saw your stop. You think I’m coming over just for you?”
OP: “I know you’re just on your way to work, but I don’t want you visiting me during work hours. Please respect and understand that I need my own space and I need my boundaries. I don’t want to chat with you during work hours just because you’re bored, and I don’t want you to visit me whenever you want just because it’s on your way back to home. Sure, you’re just passing through, you’re just bored, you just want to hang out. But that’s all about you. I don’t want any of that. You never think about how I feel.”
Comments say, “It’s so hard being a parent. When your kids are little, you have to stay with them, and when they grow up, you can’t hang out around them.”
“Why do you need to talk to your kid just when they’re being busy? Would you be in the mood to chat when you’re super busy? Life is hard enough. The best form of love is not making it any harder for people.”
“The people angry at the kid in this is insane. She doesn’t have time to eat until 3PM which means her work is super busy. And didn’t you see she said, “Are you coming over again?” This isn’t the first time this mom has visited when she’s working. Who’s gonna chat with you and hang out with you while they’re working? Are you allowed to do that at your work?”
“This was written in “Officialdom Unmasked” in the Qing Dynasty. In late Qing Dynasty, opium was very popular, not only among peasantry, but among government officials too. It’s just harder to tell, thanks to two secret recipes.
One is that you have to eat lots of duck. Eating duck meat doesn’t make you gain a lot of weight, but it supplies you with a good amount of protein so that you don’t lose the collagen in your face, so you don’t look as gaunt. People who smoke opium tends to stop feeling hunger or appetite once they’re high, and if you smoke too much, it’ll make you nauseous and unable to hold down food. So they’re typically very thin. So long as you maintain a diet of one duck a day, you can stay on top of nutrition. Now do you understand why Peking duck is a thing?
Second is you have to apply a hot towel to your face. Smoking opium tar will stain your skin yellow, and it’s a little bit oily so it’s very hard to get off of your face by just washing it. After a long time, your hands, face, and clothes are going to smell like smoke. And that yellowish-black hue of the skin is what people call the “smoker’s look.”
Qing Dynasty officials get looked down on if they look like they’ve been smoking, and it’s hard to get respect from their underlings. You don’t look authoritative anymore. If you have money, you can just keep a hot towel on your face. It typically takes two or three maids or matrons servicing you with a dozen towel, keeping you clean. It’s like a spa treatment today, so that you can smoke but not look like it.”
Comments say, “It’s just like how everyone has a phone today! It’s mental opium! It all comes from the west!”
“Just take a hot bath. You don’t need a dozen maids with a dozen towels.”
A compilation of out of touch career advice from people’s parents:
“I’m not even joking, true story. My first job out of university, my mom told me to bring a crate of fresh milk to my boss, and I actually did it…then after a while, once I got close to my boss, he told me that he went through that crate of milk inside and out and could not find where I put the red pocket for the life of him.”
“I went on a business trip with my advisor and my grandpa told me to wash my advisor’s underwear for him.”
“My parents: “You can go work in the tobacco bureau. Just tell them that your whole family, you, your dad, your grandpa, are all lifelong smokers.”
“But honestly though. If my parents took out 300K to find me a job, I would get so very mad. That’s 300K, not 30 bucks.”
“My dad told me to get into government work. They were asking for Master’s Degree or higher. And my dad told me, “Ignore the diploma requirements. That’s just there to scare people off. Just apply and see what happens.””
“My first job was when my parents saved 4 million RMB at the bank and they gave me a counter agent job.”
“My mom kept saying that she had a whole bunch of best friends in the government and that she can get a job for me. I don’t know how many times she took them out to dinner, and all they sent her was a link to the official website.”
“My uncle spent 200K to pull connections to find a job for my cousin that only pays 3K a month after tax. I honestly don’t get it.”
“My dad actually told me that it doesn’t matter if I get paid or not so long as I’m learning things.”
“XD Bribing someone 300K to work as front desk. In 2012, in a tiny rural city, my uncle took people out to dinner multiple times and bribed them 150K to get my brother a job related to his major in petroleum refining—fuelling people up at a gas station.”
“It’s true. My uncle spent 200K buying a job for my cousin. She got a desk job at the bank and makes 2300RMB a month. She’s been working for over 10 years and I forget if she’s making 2300 or 2600.”
“I hear from my mom that a neighbour’s son worked in the military for 10K+ a month and she insisted her son come home. Would cry and throw a fit and threaten suicide over it. Her son couldn’t take it anymore and came back, and now he works for 3-4K a month in our small town. She says she doesn’t care if her son is successful or not so long as he’s close to her.”
“My dad heard from someone that they’re hiring at the bank and insisted that I apply on the internet. I was like, “Which bank? Which branch?” And he just kept insisting, “Just get on the internet! I had a deal with the guy! Get on the internet! Get on the internet!” What’s the website? At which bank? My dad just kept screaming at me that I wouldn’t listen to him and get on the internet.”
“My dad told me to take the civil servant exam on the one hand, and get into a Master’s Degree on the other, and get a teaching license on the third hand.”
“My mom told me to quit my 6K a month job and work as a cashier at my small town pharmacy for 2K a month, because she thinks it’s easier to find a date for me if I’m closer to home.”
“Now that I think back on it, everyone who’s ever tried to teach me social skills were cringe as fuck.”
“300K is totally real. My friend’s parents spent 300K finding her a 3K a month job.”
“This is like those parents that send their kids overseas. Spent over a million going to a diploma mill overseas and then come back four years later for a 3K a month job. What’s the point of studying overseas then? Just give them a million in cash.”
“I just graduated. My mom pulled every connection she had and found me a 1500/month job.”
“The first day of my break, my mom saw I had taken 4 steps that day on wechat, and told me, “Even a five-step snake can’t kill you.””
“I make 2 million a year. My mom wants me to marry a shift manager at a factory because he’s stable, he’s got a pension, and I’ll know how good I have it once I’m older.”
“My mom was so afraid I wouldn’t be able to find a job that she had my brother open a factory.”
“My mom once spent 300K on finding me a job—taking toll at a highway entrance. In two years, we had ETC instead.”
“If you know you’re going to be laid off by your company in 4 months, what would you do now?”
A compilation of answers, “What? I would immediately get pregnant!”
“This was exactly my mental journey. I’ve known since February that my company is going to lay me off. At first, I panicked and freaked out and cried, and it took me half a month to accept reality. Then I just honestly finished my work and thought about what I was doing and worked hard on gaining experience. By the start of June, the company announced that everyone was going to take a pay cut, and I updated my resume and started looking for headhunters. In half a month, I had a job offer, and I’m going through the interviews right now. My friends were all shocked that I acted so fast but they have no idea how I spent the last four months.”
“Save all my work info—how many years I’ve worked, in what positions, attendance, pay rate, social security payments, how well I’ve hit my KPT, awards I’ve won, certificates I have. Basically, save all evidence of my work and my pay in case the company tries to fuck you. And the next priority is to look for new work. You can take a break if you want to. If it’s a short break, you can send your resume out now no problem.”
“Oh no, am I the only evil bastard here? I would bury a bug in my code that would only trigger in a couple of years.”