People Contemplate Their Values In Their "Am I The Jerk?" Stories

“I was let go when my parents sold the business. My performance was always, to my knowledge, well above average. I worked for my parents for 10 years, so this will be long but I will stick to pertinent points and be as brief and as objective as possible in summing up what has happened.

I am now in my late thirties. In my mid-twenties, I was looking for a new job. I had quit my job in commercial maintenance. I had my own car, apartment, and a few months of living expenses saved up at the time. I never asked my parents for anything.

They never paid much attention to me after elementary school and I never expected them to send me to college or anything, and they didn’t, so I was one who didn’t qualify for anything because my parents made plenty of money but wouldn’t pay for it. No big deal, they aren’t required to do it, I am just making it clear that I have never expected much from them.

They just didn’t talk to me much, and I had stopped calling them in my early twenties because my mom would never answer or call me back. She is kind of anti-social and has never had a single friend that I know of, so I think she also didn’t answer a lot of calls, but I don’t really know.

My dad was basically absent for a few years while they had some marital turmoil. At some point, we started doing family holidays (Christmas and thanksgiving) again, though.

So, at this time in my mid-twenties when I was looking for a job, my dad was needing help at his insurance agency.

My mom and dad had lost their entire retirement in the stock market crash, so my dad had started a new business (he had sold his other for all that money they lost). As soon as he bought the business, they lost tons of clients due to taking over right as the company got a big rate hike, and so his revenue was not really enough to pay the bills and properly run the place.

To further compound problems, he didn’t actually know how to do anything anymore, because it’s complicated and there are a ton of changing rules. The one employee and her sister were taking extreme advantage of him, holding him hostage because he couldn’t fire them.

It was a bad situation, and if the business failed, my dad was too old to start another one.

My mom was too old to get hired at a new corporate job. So they both invited me over to talk, and they asked me if I would like to come work for my dad, explaining all of this. So, they asked me what I would need to be paid.

And I told them a very small figure. It’s what I had made the previous year as a general laborer. Pretty much the amount I could get working literally anywhere. No, I didn’t have great prospects, but I was looking at becoming a plumber’s apprentice and eventually a plumber, it’s not like I was totally out of options.

I said, well, I can get this amount doing anything so I need at least this much. They agreed, and so I did it for two reasons:

1. I wanted to do what was right for my family, and I also felt like if I were to make this happen for my parents then it would help to bring our family together and heal old wounds.

2. If this were to work out and we were able to turn the business around, my dad assured me that it would “work out really well for me”.

Now, a lot of people do a lot of things for their children, and I did not press him on what he meant by that, but I trusted him.

I really thought he would help me to become financially stable, maybe start my own business as he retired, even. To be clear, the original goal is to build this business for my parents so they can sell it and retire. But, also I want some things in life.

To be able to see a doctor, fix my car when it breaks, save some money and have a decent place to live. Really, all I am asking for is to be able to work for a living. I don’t think it is unreasonable.

I worked for my parents for ten years, and I never asked for much at all.

After a few years, I wanted to get a retirement account, but that request was rebuffed. The first few years were really rough, but I learned what we needed and we fired the bad employees. With the terrible economy and the financials already screwed up, there were no raises and I got paid the bare minimum, not really enough to live on but you do it anyway.

No benefits at all except for vacation days. My dad constantly made bonus plans and then ‘forgot’ about them halfway through. He was making note payments of 25k per month (with over 13k going towards equity). But he always complained that he ‘didn’t take a paycheck’. He also never did any work.

I worked my butt off. Left the house at 7:15 and got home at 7-8. And I had, I swear, perfect 10 customer service scores as scored by our clientele. This is on the type of survey where people are like, “well, he was wonderful and I have no complaints, but nobody is perfect so I’ll give him a 7!” It is basically unheard of to have such good scores.

I was really good at this job, and I did it for dirt cheap (for reasons outlined above).

We hired a lady that used to work for my dad at his old business, and she is amazing. We are now expanding and dad has made several large yearly bonuses.

They can be up to 50-100k if you make your numbers. So, the situation is improving. Not for me, of course, still no raises or benefits. In year 5, the worst heavy lifting had been done by me.

My mom could no longer find gainful employment, she was previously a marketing executive.

So she joins the business and it goes from bad to terrible. She is not very nice, and no one even felt comfortable having conversations around the office any longer. She joined almost at the year-end, and one of the first things that happens is they sit me and the other lady down and tell us, that even though we blew our numbers out of the water (our goal was 200, we wrote like 450 of the item in question), and yes, they were getting their bonus (65k), they would need to be taking half of our bonuses (5k each) to pay expenses with.

I was pretty mad about this but I did not quit. When the bonus came in, my mom went on a shopping spree, showing up for work with new clothes for like a month. And she bought me five shirts. I am supposed to appreciate it, but she took 2.5k from me and then spent 100 and I am supposed to be happy?

That was more than I had spent on shirts in a long time, and they weren’t work shirts like I needed, either. Plus, I would rather have had the money for unpaid bills.

This was probably one of the worst offenses, but this type of thing happened frequently.

“Hey, do you think your dad remembered to do payroll this week? I have drafts coming though!” Well of course he forgot. That type of thing over and over.

I also happen to know that my mom, who was doing a job that pays 20k/yr plus commission, was making a salary of well over 100k with no experience at all.

And she refused to learn since she had a staff of slaves to do the dirty work. She bent the rules to get the commission and made us fix it later on. She took all of the low-hanging fruit and our poor salespeople who were actually making the 20k plus commission were left with junk leads (they never lasted long).

There are other monies they made but I will stop here, the point is that I know all of the financials. My parents are old and I have to run all of the technology, so I know everything, they cannot hide it. Yet still, they constantly complain about how broke they are.

They are not at all broke. And my dad complains about how he “worked til 12 last night” when he didn’t even come into the office until like 5 pm and I know he was just posting on social media all night.

I stuck it out. I held the line.

I passed up 2 chances to interview for a real corporate insurance job (knew somebody at the time) because I wanted to see this through, for my parents, and for me.

As time goes on my parents and I talked and we planned on letting me take over management of the business for them.

They would pay me a real salary (finally) and I would run the place (finally get a chance to run it right!), and they would make tons of money just being owners. So I gradually took over all of the managerial duties, aside from official stuff like payroll and paying the bills, which is frankly the only thing my dad did.

My mom on the other hand is a workaholic who hates people, and she abused all the staff and treated them like her personal slaves.

Now, becoming manager was never set in stone as a contract, but it was what we were now planning on. Everyone involved in the business knew, all my friends and family knew, they told strangers and acquaintances that was what we were doing when they were talking, and they certainly portrayed that to me.

That is the back story. Now, to what really has got me mad.

We are planning on making the final transition, to be done sometime next year, probably within like six months. I am excited and really confident that I will run the place well with them out of the way.

Everyone at the agency (we have several more employees by now) is like, “ooo he is so serious, things are really going to change around here!”

So my parents and I go and pick out a house for me to live in while I manage the place. I had always lived in a crummy apartment, but now with my new upcoming salary, I would be able to buy a house and not throw my funds away on rent.

My parents knew this is really my big dream, owning a home. So they help me to find a mortgage broker that they know. They have actually bought 8 rental properties for themselves while we have been working together, so they know a little bit about buying houses.

I get approved for a mortgage.

My mom, as my boss, told the bank that I would make a salary that was roughly 50% higher than I had ever made because that was the plan. But, the house has to be close to the office! Now, they just added 20k jobs to the area, so it is a super hot real estate market in this area.

Literally, 20 offers on the first day. And it is already in an expensive area of an expensive city in my state. But we find a house. We craft a good offer, and they accept! My dad actually found the one I bought, and it is at the top of my price range.

But, I love it! I actually love all houses, honestly, but I loved that one too and I loved that I would have a place of my own, so I bought it. And I’m excited about this and my new job coming up, so I get rid of the crummy old used couch that I hated. I gave it away to a young kid and that felt good.

I had never bought real furniture, so I ask my mom to help me pick some out. Very exciting! We go out and I buy $4k worth to furnish the place, 0 down, first payment to be due in 1 month. The house even had a pool (getting a pool was my dad’s idea since I had been talking about hot tubs lately).

I mean, I deserve it after all this time, right? Spent another 2k or so on a pool robot and pool stuff. Spent all the rest of my meager resources getting into this house, moving, etc.

Three weeks after I move into the house, my parents invite me to lunch at the place down the street.

No big deal, probably going to talk about the business, huh? Well, they told me they changed their minds and they sold the place.

But… my stuff is still in boxes!? I haven’t even made the first payment on my furniture!? How am I to pay for all this stuff!?

They intended for me to look for a job somewhere else. Apparently, everyone else at the agency gets to stay, but I was not offered a chance to stay. And now to afford the place where I am currently living, I would need to land a job making 50% higher than I had ever made in my life.

And the place is already sold so I better get it done within 6 months! They offered no severance package. They offered no help to resolve my housing situation. They have literally never once even said or otherwise expressed, “thanks for your service”. They have since helped me in monetary ways, but only ever just enough to keep me from total catastrophe.

At this point, I doubt they will help anymore and I won’t ask, either, because it is not right to live like this.

We had 10 years to plan this. I made a huge commitment, to them, in buying that house. And they pulled the rug right out from under me.

If they had told me just a few months prior, I could have bought a house literally anywhere. I could have an affordable house in a neat, fun part of town. I don’t even like the suburb where I bought it. The one, sole reason I bought there was for work.

I have rented the house out to avoid losing it. I pray that my renters are good ones. I had to throw most of my stuff (it is a 3 bed 2 bath) in the trash and put the rest in storage. I now live in a crummy, dirty old RV in a gravel parking lot full of ants and mice and I have no good job prospects.

I am deeply in debt from my time with them and feeling pretty hopeless about my situation. I’m far from perfect but I feel like I’ve done everything my parents have ever asked of me. They bought a huge mansion estate for cash, but have no pity for me after I dedicated my career and ten years of my life to their success.

Am I the jerk for being mad at my parents for helping me to get into a housing situation where I have no ability to actually pay for the house?”

Another User Comments:

“You’re not a jerk.

Your parents used you so hard. So many ways. Not once did they treat you fairly.

They abused the fact that you were family and proceeded to steal your bonuses, renege on promises, and set you up for financial failure with a house you cannot afford.

You were also really really really naive in letting them do that for 10 years.

File for unemployment. If you really want, you can sue them for damages of a broken promise that caused monetary damages, talk to a lawyer, he would know the exact law and filing to do it under.

I highly suggest you leverage your previous position to find a better job. I would also suggest you don’t talk to your parents again, especially after they finished draining you for everything they could for the past 10 years. But obviously, that choice is complicated.” SalAtWork

Another User Comments:

“Not the jerk. Your parents clearly have a pattern of “huge promise worded just vaguely enough to allow an easy out” followed by “poorly constructed excuse why huge promise is broken”. I feel like, given their pattern, it was probably a red flag to hold off on these expenses.

However, their encouragement along the way really makes them the jerks. You may consider cutting contact (or at least greatly reducing contact), as hard as that may be, to avoid falling into another promise/letdown trap.

If your numbers were good, maybe consider applying at the (now sold) business, making it clear that you don’t expect the new owners to live up to the promises of the old and that you’re willing to conform to their way of doing things instead of focusing on the plans you had made.

It kind of sucks, because you’re basically starting over, but it’s better than giving up entirely. From what I understand, insurance is a difficult and competitive field. If you’ve proven yourself through numbers, use them to your advantage. Good luck, OP.” immadee

Another User Comments:

“Not the jerk, I can see how people could do that to a total stranger but their kid is downright dirty, it’s like the story of a crime drama when the killer is telling the detectives why they killed their parents (no offense and I advise against this).

But I figure you have a few options 1) Tell them to screw themselves and hopefully forge your own way 2) Get a good chunk of money somehow then tell them to screw off 3) Bury the hate and keep things nice and hope that they leave you with a good inheritance when they die.” CombatRam