“Lost money making a cake today! I’ve been upset all day and finally decided to post about it. Picture one is what I made. Picture two is what the customer ordered. I didn’t do the same decorations as picture 2, and didn’t put a golden ball on it, since it’s not actually edible. The colour of the cream I used was a little paler. Maybe it’s a problem with the camera. I used actual chocolate whipped cream, not powdered chocolate stuff. Picture 2 had two layers of cake. I put in three layers. And I even put in cherries. In this season, they’re 58 RMB a pound! I can’t even afford to eat them myself! And I put macaroons on it. And I delivered it to the restaurant, just to have the customer upset that I didn’t communicate to her about these changes. Fine, it was my fault. Guess everybody has different tastes. Ended up paying her 50 bucks to settle the issue. Feels like all my effort was wasted. Why did I put all those cherries on? I’d have been better off eating them myself.”
Comments say, “From how upset OP was, I thought they put in a pound of cherries or something. Then I looked and there are, like, three XD”
“As a cake baker myself, I’m totally on the customer’s side. The customer paid money to get a cake they like, not a cake you like.”
“Did you use to work as a hairdresser?”
“All selfish men and women are fundamentally the result of being spoiled by their parents. Let me tell you a funny story about my brother-in-law. He dropped out in middle school, never got himself a job, just lazes around at home all day eating with a bunch of shady friends and drinking a lot. My wife’s family pulled connections to find a 2K a month job where he didn’t have to do anything…
The year before last, when we went over to my in-laws for Chinese New Year, I found that they’d bought my BIL a brand new Land Rover. I looked it up, and it costs over a million RMB. I was just thinking that it’s not easy to save up that much money these days—that was enough to buy an entire house where they live. The gas and maintenance on this car would add up to a lot too. Later on, I chatted with my wife about how her parents are doing, and learned that they were still working odd jobs at their age just to pay for her BIL’s gas (MIL is a street sweeper, FIL unloads stock). I was even feeling a little bit of schadenfreude.
Last night, my BIL’s wife suddenly called my wife, telling her that my BIL had cheated on her. It started with her finding hickies on him sometimes. He insisted they were mosquito bites. Then, she found condoms on his car. She was crying the whole time, and my wife was comforting her the whole time. I was listening next to hear, and heard my BIL’s wife complain to my wife that this was all because my BIL had been spoiled by his family. If it weren’t for this car, nothing would have happened. That my wife shouldn’t have given him the money to buy the car. My face immediately fell at that. So I was the idiot who ended up paying for it.
After she hung up, we both sat in silence for a long time. And I said she’d better have an explanation for me, or else we’d have to get divorced…that’s how I found out that the car cost 800K total. My wife secretly gave him 600K. That was enough combined with the bride price money I’d given them before, and their own savings. I was furious. I told her that I’m never against her sending money to her family, but she has to let me know. If this 600K was put towards an emergency, I wouldn’t have a problem with it. Even if you used it to buy a house for your brother, if you asked nicely, maybe I would’ve agreed too.
I worked hard for that money. I don’t spend it on myself. You don’t spend it on yourself. You can’t bring yourself to buy a handbag that’s has a brand name. Why are you so generous to your brother? The reason I hand over my pay cheque to you is so you have a sense of safety. You pulling this shit behind my back really makes me feel like you don’t think of me as family. It makes me feel unsafe. If I got sick, would you pull money out to help me? If your son has a baby, are you going to keep giving him money? Do you not care about our son?
My wife burst into tears. She said that her parents had begged her. They’d said she only has one brother. And with a nice car, he can have a lot of face in his workplace. He won’t get bullied because he’s a temp worker. It wasn’t like her family couldn’t come up with the money—why can’t she give it to them and just think of it as paying them back for raising her? She was weak for a moment and wired the money over. She knew I’d never have agreed so she never dared to tell me.
After I heard that, I picked up the phone to call my FIL and my wife pounced on me to stop me. I pushed her off and started screaming, “If you won’t let me call, then let’s just get divorced. How the hell can your family be so shameless?” My wife knelt down and started begging me to not call, that she’ll slave away for me for the rest of her life to pay this money back. That if I’m still not happy, she can agree to a divorce and not take anything, and go away somewhere where I’ll never see her again…
My son was crying the whole time, pulling on my hand all like, “Daddy, you can’t make mommy leave.” My heart went soft at that moment again.
I didn’t sleep the whole night, and in the morning, I laid out my terms to my wife. 1. Wire all the money to me and I’ll be in charge of the household finances now. 2. Cut off all ties with her family, and never go home for the holidays again. 3. When her parents are old, they’ll have nothing to do with us either. This money is their retirement money.
She wired the money to me that afternoon, sure, but she’s been crying all day, and she never did give me a reply about the latter two conditions. I feel really bad, but I stayed strong and didn’t comfort her, and just left the house. I don’t really know what to do next. I want to ignore her for a while so she learns her lesson, but I’m worried she’ll do something she regrets…”
Comments say, “You should both get a divorce, and you can marry your BIL’s wife.”
“Sounds like it was made up. If the guy can easily pull out 600K at a moment’s notice and not even notice for this long, then either he makes a lot of money or he’s from a wealthy family. Either way, he’s got to have tons of savings. This kind of people would never marry someone from a lower class family, and the description of the wife’s family sounds like they’re so average. Maybe his wife is pretty impressive herself, but it doesn’t sound like it. So I feel it’s all pretty fake.”
“Tell your son that that 600K was supposed to be his, but his mom dumped it in the gutters.”
“Just got a private message from a friend, complaining about her troubles. She’s pregnant, just like me. Her husband and her are both white collar salarymen in Shanghai. She’s having her first baby at a high age.
They just bought a house in Shanghai this year, so they’re under a lot of financial pressure. Her and her husband are both getting old, so they were tentatively trying, and didn’t think it would happen that fast. Now she’s two months along, and the pregnancy is very unstable because she’s older, so she’s been resting the whole time.
Since she’s not working anymore, the financial burden of the household all landed on her husband. His parents are pretty well-off locally, so she wants to get her in-laws to help out. But her husband feels too embarrassed to ask. So she’s feeling really bad now. She has to go to the hospital every week, get all kinds of tests and prescriptions, plus food and bills and stuff, it all adds up to 1K-2K.
She needs to go through a big round of tests next week, so that’s going to be another big expenses, and she’s so anxious she can’t sleep for whole nights at a time.
She asked me, “How do you communicate with your other half about getting his parents to help out?”
If this was happening to me, I’d sit my husband down and discuss with him whether we have to have this baby. I’d calculate it out exactly how much it would cost to run through all my tests and give birth, how much he earns per month, and what our monthly expenditures and income looks like. Can we solve this problem ourselves? If not, then we have to ask our parents.
But when you’re communicating, talk about facts and reason things out. Don’t get emotional.
Your difficulties are only temporary. If everyone works together, it can totally be solved. If you feel like you’re taking advantage of his parents, then wait until the baby is born, and take better care of them, pay them back, whatever.
I hope she can get through this difficult time.”
Comments say, “It’s really weird for her husband to get embarrassed over something like that. 1. All she needs to do is make it clear to her husband how much this is going to cost. She doesn’t need to go talk to her in-laws for help herself. 2. She just needs to let her in-laws know this baby is coming. If they want to help, then she wouldn’t even have to bring it up. They’ll naturally spend money on the baby. Your parents and your husband’s parents aren’t giving you guys money because you asked for it either. If they don’t want to give anything, then even if you asked, they’d still say no.”
“I mean, what can I say? I feel like this is more of just her anxiety getting in the way of things. She just needs to relax and take care of herself. If their financial situation really got that bad, then her husband wouldn’t be able to just keep insisting on his embarrassment either. He’ll ask for help sooner or later.”
“She’s only starting her pregnancy and she’s already in financial trouble? Then what about after the baby’s here? That the actual beginning. Who’s gonna take care of the baby? They’d have to ask their parents for help with the baby either way, or else she can’t go back to work to make more money. Who the hell dares to get pregnant these days without a lot of savings? Didn’t she think of that at her age?”
A tiktok video of an elderly man splashing water on the porcelain tiles in front of a woman’s door. She posted this section of security camera footage to the internet to complain that the old people who live above her are annoying, and keep splashing water in front of her house. In the video, it’s clear to see that there’s two porcelain tiles in front of her door. After internet commenters saw, they realised what was going on, and told the woman that, “She was asking for it. Her entire doorway is raised. What if someone tripped over it?”
Comments say, “My MIL’s old apartment unit has a family like this too, but at least the apartment managers did their jobs. When they saw, they knocked on their door and told them the stairway is a public space, they can’t do this. The unit owner didn’t listen, so the apartment managers called the cops and had the cops watch while they removed the tiles.”
“Don’t splash water. There’s a liquid called fluorosilicon oi. There’s a solid called Molybdenum disulfide. They’re both much more slippery than water and doesn’t evaporate or dry out nearly as quickly.”
“I mean, you say he’s splashing water, but he’s probably just doing his job of cleaning the stairwell, and splashing water is a part of cleaning. It’s wrong to add porcelain tiles to a public area anyways, much less to stack them up so high. If little kids were coming up or down the stairs, they could easily trip. And as for the janitor, if you don’t clean it, it’ll get covered in dirt. But if you do clean it, people post this shit on the internet. Sigh…”
“My mom want to drive me to uni. I told her that it only costs a little over 1000 RMB to fly there, and she can just mail my luggage to me, but she’s insisting on driving the whole way.”
Comments say, “You mom loves you and wants to see what your school is like.”
“Is it possible that your mom realised she might not see you again for a long time, so she wants to drive you all the way there?”
“It looks exhausting.”
that’s has -> that has