“Empty the dishwasher” is how I phrased it to point out that the title of the thread isn’t what was said first. We don’t know how the request or command was phrased in the first place, only that it lacked a “please.” You quoted the title and said the title looked like a command, but the title is not what was said to garner the “say please.”
I’m going to guess that this means the daughter isn’t scooping the litterbox or feeding the cat.
The OP made is sound like her daughter was being a total layabout and the mom finally hauled off and gave her a chore to do, and the response was, “Say please!” To which my response would be, “Why do I have to TELL you in the first place? You live here. You see what needs to be done. Why not go ahead and DO some of it without being asked? Then I wouldn’t have to say please.” If you get to the point where you’re snapping over something like this, there is a larger issue.
I’m guessing this dishwasher incident was the culmination of frustration on the mom’s part that the daughter is not pulling her weight, which resulted in an order given rather than a request made. If the daughter really is slacking, then she is being a snotbag by giving her mom a hard time about saying please when the much greater rudeness is taking advantage of your mother’s kindness.
kambuckta, I hope your daughter steps up and starts pulling her weight.
I concede your point. If what was said was:
“honey, could you empty the dishwasher?”
“Say please.”
I won’t defend that. If it was:
“Empty the dishwasher.”
“Uh, you know you could say please.”
I don’t think daughter is wrong. Not destined to be a diplomat, but not wrong.
You won’t say she’s wrong, but will you actually say she’s right? Her demand for a “please” for the sake of courtesy seems to belie the much greater discourtesy of her months of neglectful behavior towards her mother’s household. That’s what I think the OP found insulting-- something like, “You’re here demanding I say please, but you are being so incredibly rude every day by not picking up after yourself and your cat. Why do I have to *ask * you in order to get you to pitch in at all? You want please? OK, then-- bitch, please!”
The dishwasher thing could have been the last straw, and the demand for a “please” added insult to injury for a mom that has been putting up with a lazy daughter for too long. Things never go down politely when people feel taken advantage of.
I suppose. Leaves you in the position of accepting the bad with the good. Or rejecting it. Not a happy place to be, I imagine.
Watching a flare-up about it isn’t particularly edifying, either, of course. I’ll butt out, and hope you find some more satisfying way of dealing with it.
Yeah, I do see where you stand too. Sorry bout the mess for your others, for all that.
Wow…what a friggin’ debacle this thread has turned into. 
Let me just re-iterate and clarify stuff that I thought I had covered in the OP, but obviously has been open to nit-picking and debate.
I love my daughter very much. Mostly we get on fabulously well (except in the mornings when she is an obnoxious fucking bitch). We not only live together at the moment but also work at the same place doing the same job except she does work longer hours than me (to save to go o/s again)…thus our daily routines are very similar.
Given all of that, she still has not cooked a meal for the household since her return, she has not (apart from ‘the incident’ washed any dishes), she has not offered to sweep the floor, clean the bathroom nor any other ‘chores’ that go along with being a member of a functioning household. She has not fed the cat or emptied the litter tray (the cat is contained until her stitches are removed in a weeks time). She DOES do her own washing and keeps her stuff mostly from spewing out around the house. She DOES pay $50 pw ‘board’.
For that she gets all food, a room of her own, use of all amenities including computers and phones and the freedom to come and go as she pleases. In any other household that would cost her a minimum of $200 pw.
The main reason this has never come to a head before is that I am home doing the stuff already whilst she is still at work or out on weekends. I get home and make dinner, feed and tend the cat, do the more cumbersome cleaning chores over the weekend. It was only that this past weekend we were home at the same time, and I had been getting down and dirty doing other stuff when I asked her to empty the dishwasher.
And then she got miffed that I didn’t say ‘please’.
Look, I’m not disinheriting her over the incident. As I mentioned, she took ‘the look’ to heart and has been (almost) a model of helpfulness since. I was pissed off and SHE realised WHY I was pissed off, and that’s how things panned out.
Now, if somebody can just give me instruction on how to make a chronic grump more cheerful in the early morning, I’ll be ever so grateful.
Cooooofffffffeeeeeee! (And a couple minutes quiet time un-polluted by cheery morning types, perhaps? No talky, just coffee slurpy.) 
And yes, it IS probably because I brought my kids up badly. I’ll accept that.
I remember now that when they were younger, I always prefaced asking them to do a chore with, “Hey can you do me a favour and take out the rubbish/wipe down the bench/clean that spill up on the floor” etc etc. I appreciate now that they always saw regular household stuff as ‘favours’ to be done for me rather than stuff that just needed to be done regardless.
I was just being naive in thinking that them being young adults now would change their appreciation I guess.
S’not enough.
The night before she asks me to wake her at 6.45am. I knock gently on her door at 6.45am and tell her it’s 6.45am. She yells at me that SHE ALREADY KNOWS THE TIME.
She huffs and puffs and carries on snarling at the radio and the kettle (for being too slow) then we get a lift to the station where she huffs and puffs and carries on at the other commuters until she puts her headphones in.
And then we get to work, where she huffs and puffs and carries on, and our coworkers (who don’t know her so well) ask ME why she is such a fucken’ bitch in the mornings.
She comes good around 10am, thank christ!!
Hmmm, well, maybe she needs to be getting up at 3:45 AM, to give her the three hours in order to be “fit for company”? halo Or, maybe she should just get to bed earlier, so she gets enough sleep, so she can wake up and be civil? My sympathy, I’m not such a morning person myself, but at least I’ll get to bed at a decent hour so I can get up and give myself enough time to stumble around and shake off the “grouchies” before I’m in public, and I do my best not to bite the heads off my family in the mornings, so long as I have my coffee and two minute’s or so of solitude to sip it and get my brain in gear. (I can, when required wake up “cold” and think and be civil, but I prefer to have a little time to myself first thing.) Maybe she’ll figure this out for herself in time? Hope so…
Okay. We’re lots closer together on this than I thought, though I would still say the daughter in the second example is wrong.
Hmmm
I don’t know TOO much about the situation, but I’d say referring to her as an obnoxious fucking bitch might be a start.
Some people’s relationships are such that they can say to each other “Look, you’re being a bitch/asshole, cut it out!” and it won’t wound the loved one to the core, because the loved one knows that the situation is just being called as the speaker sees it, and that they (the speaker) are administering a loving boot to the arse. That isn’t to say that the gruff method is the only way to speak to a loved one regarding behavior correction, mind.
Nah, trust me, I’ve known *kam ** a long time (via the net) and this is just how she is. It means nothing in terms of how she actually treats her kids. She really is a good and loving parent as shown by her actions as opposed to her words.
*She puts on being an obnoxious fucking bitch herself, but she’s really just a big old softie when it comes to her kids. ::d&r very fast::
Damn, Trouble, don’t go telling everyone THAT or I’ll lose all my net-cred REAL quick!
Re: ** fatgail’s** comment: I’ll say it again for the comprehension impaired:
I. Love. My. Daughter. Very. Much. and if anybody else criticised her I would defend her to the end of the earth. But it does not mean that I am blind to her shortcomings, and being her mum, I’m allowed to have a go at her. Putting it bluntly, she is a right bitch in the mornings. Me, I’m a morning person, and wake up somewhat cheerful and ready to face the day (after a coffee at least).
My kid marches to a different circadian beat though, and she snarls and grumps like a rabid vixen every morning. Yes, she is an obnoxious bitch. Yes, sometimes I call her an obnoxious bitch. In the height of her early-morning rabid fervour, she just glares and hisses in reply mostly.
I start getting some simple sentences and then a full conversation by mid-morning…it’s like waiting for a toddler to start talking!!. Never has she apologised for her earlier behaviour, but then I wouldn’t expect her to either…that’s just the way she is, and despite all her grumpiness, I love her to death, and she knows it too.
I WAS pissed off about the ‘please’ request though. That was outta line by all of our mutual standards and family mores. Anyway, as I previously mentioned, she got the hint real quick and has been slightly sweeter since then…not a total metamorphosis just yet, but it’s early days of course!