Venting about friends who make dumb choices.

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

My husband Birk’s cousin Lars married one on my bridesmaids, Doreen. I’ll admit, I shouldn’t have asked her to be a bridesmaid, we aren’t that close, but she really wanted to and she did a lot of work for the wedding. We now joke that they are in our lives to serve as bad examples.

 They started out normally. He moved into her apartment. They got a dog. Then they wanted a bigger apartment, and thought they could hide the dog, a black lab. That apartment lasted 2 weeks. Quick stop at her parents, then they moved in with his parents. They started trying to have a baby because they had been married for a year, and so it was time :rolleyes:. Lars was on formal probation for poor quality cable installation at work. Doreen got pregnant. They moved out of his parent's house into a nice big (expensive) apartment. Lars then lost his job for sub-par performance. He got and lost another cable installing job for misrepresentation and poor performance (within 2 weeks). Its now been over a year that he's been out of work. They had a beautiful little boy in January.  They traded in their small car for a newer SUV, for the baby, of course.  They broke their apartment lease because they couldn't get their church to help them pay rent anymore and moved in with her parents.

He won’t apply for jobs that he feels are beneath him, fast food, retail, etc.- only stuff that pays better than his last job. Doreen has started applying for stuff this month.

Last week, he told Birk that he was going to interview for a Kirby vacuum sales job. He was sure it wasn't going to be door-to-door.  I sent some info on what a scam it was to Doreen (he's won't listen to me), but he went to the all-day interview/seminar. It was door-to-door.:rolleyes:

Their newest idea is to look for jobs in Colorado, because housing is really cheap there. Lars said he would apply for a bunch of jobs and arrange for them to interview all around the same time, then drive out and do them all. They have no family there. Doreen has a friend there, but that friend still lives with her parents. His plan sounds ok, right? To arrange interviews before he goes, etc.?

They’re going to Colorado this weekend. All three of them. No interviews lined up. Neither of them are working. Neither of them are getting unemployment.

There is only so much sympathy I can have for people who make consistently bad decisions. We are only “friends” because we are family. I really want them to move away.

Do any of y’all have stories about similar hapless friends or family members? Hopeful stories about how their kids will see and learn and not duplicate their lives? Vague advice for them, because tough love doesn’t work?

2

Well, I’ll start off with a hopeful story about how their kids might do OK. . .my mother was a mess. Though psych evaluations were rare at the time, unless you were really over-the-top, I’d lay money that my mother was at least bipolar, possibly borderline personality. In short-hand, I always tell people “Yeah, my mother was a psycho-bitch”. Manipulative, controlling, laying on the guilt trips. Totally co-dependent on her sisters and brothers, who got a lot of say about how we were raised, because they gave my parents a lot of money, and demanded their votes be counted. My father was an alcoholic. He was a pretty friendly drunk, but I was probably 13 or so before I realized it was not a normal thing to come home from work, drink a case of beer and pass out on the sofa. My mother was never physically abusive (well, there was that one time she threw a coffee cup at me, but I don’t count that), but very much mentally abusive. She would often tell us that she wished she had never had kids (she had five!), that her life would be happier without us, etc. There was also a man renting a room from my parents who sexually molested all three of we younger children, and my mother knew about it, but would not kick him out because we “needed the money”. :eek:

Me? I’m 47YO, happily married for more than 20 years, three kids, two of whom are great. As soon as I found out I was pregnant for the first time, my first thought was “I don’t want to be the kind of mother my mother was”, and I set about recovering from that lifestyle. It was hard, damned hard. But it can be done.

As for ranting? Well, I did have one friend who did some really dumb shit, but I never knew about it when she was alive. She died about eight months ago, and it all came back to bite her widowed husband in the ass!

And stupid choices. . .well, there are people in my life that do stuff that makes me want to shake them, but what are you gonna do? My favorite phrase lately has become “NMP”-Not My Problem.

3

Oh god, I seem to have knack for making idiot friends. It drives me crazy because they start out fine, even with their quirks. Then their boyfriend breaks up with them, and then go down a shame spiral where they start geting DUIs, and smoking pot and then getting caught driving smoking pot and being drunk and end up in jail three separate times. THEN they decide trying meth was a good idea.

This seems to happen to my smart friends. The girl I mentioned above I have known for ten years and she was a math genius in high school. But she has some weird genetic thing from her mom where there is a real psychological problem, so even though she was cheating on said boyfriend, it destroyed her when he found out and dumped her. I don’t talk to her anymore because I got tired of her calling me in three in the morning because she’s in trouble, she needs me to back her up in a fight.

As to your friends above, I don’t know where they are going in Colorado, but if Colorado Springs (where I live) is anything like the rest of Colorado, there are NO jobs. I’m trying to leave my current job because of a mean boss, everywhere I apply to has about 200 people applying for the same job. Usually I apply online, but there was an opening as a bank teller that I could only apply for at the bank. That tiny little bank was filled with hundreds of applicants for that one job. Its pretty depressing here.

4

Um. I’m the idiot friend.

5

Wow, it sounds to me like you have a great case study of the Dunning-Kruger effect happening right before your eyes.
While a slightly smarter, more competent person might have the insight to realize their limitations, he is too incompetent to realize how incompetent he is and actually thinks he can outsmart others - hence the constant spectacular failures.

While he hasn’t done anything as extreme as Lars, I’m frustrated iwth someone I know who also is having trouble finding work but refuses to consider jobs he feels are “beneath” him even though his resume doesn’t look that great even if the economy was not in the crapper. It’s frustrating when someone is that stubborn when it’s not about finding your lifelong passion, just about getting by for now.

6

?

??

???

Say it ain’t so, Joe! I mean, Lars!

7

From that link:

I love this quote. I’m going to frame it and hang it on the wall of my cubicle.

8

Sorry, Boyo Jim, at 12k posts, you’re already too smart to be my “Lars”. Do you have any advice that your friends have given that you listened to? :slight_smile:

No, really, I am amazed at the link that lavenderviolet gave - it fits Lars to a “T”.

Tenner, they are going to Denver. Doreen’s friend there just took 8 months to find a job as a waitress, coming from being a pricey admin assistant. He’s not skilled at anything but installing cable, and has been fired from 2 jobs for being sloppy at it.

Thank you, norine, for the hope. We’re going to make sure that their son always knows he has understanding, um, first cousins once removed? (I usually just call the baby my nephew - its easier than explaining) Anyhow, sensible adult relatives that he can talk to.

9

That should be a big advantage, one that I unfortunately lacked (except for my oldest sister, 13 years my senior, who half-way raised me). My learning to be a (hopefully) pretty good parent is only thanks to observations (watching what my older sisters did, and thinking “that’s good/that’s not so good”) and reading. Thank goodness I was coming up in the Information Age.

The internet is really a blessing for those of us who are looking for information/guidance! Hopefully, it will help to keep you and your ‘nephew’ close, no matter where his squirrel-brained parents may move!

10

That sounds like the line from a recent Bond movie: “Arrogance and self-awareness seldom go hand-in-hand.”

11

I’ve noticed a very large range of common sense in my extended family. I have an aunt who worked her way up in a big firm and managed to marry the CEO, leading to a life of steady prosperity, then a cousin who took three weeks off work to drive from Minnesota to Alaska because “plane tickets are so expensive”. Then there’s my moron slut cousin in Florida whose lifestyle consists of smoking pot, fucking, and signing the offspring over to the state.

I used to have a lot of respect for people solely on the grounds of being old and experienced or having stuck with a particular endeavor for a long time. But recently I’ve come to the realization that a lot of people just aren’t observant enough to learn from their experiences. They don’t pay attention and don’t have the imagination necessary to connect actions to outcomes. As a result, they just keep making the same mistakes over and over, and if anything they get more set in their ways as time goes on. They develop superstitions and just-so stories about why things happen. After a point, you just can’t get through to them.

If it makes you feel any better about your friends’ kids, my parents were pretty obtuse about certain practical matters but I think I came out fairly street-smart after a few hard knocks. Again, it comes down to humility and being willing to learn from your experiences.

12

I didn’t mean Lars, the specific friend in the OP. I meant if my friends were talking about their idiot friend, they would would likely be talking about me.

As an example – see how I muddied the waters here!

13

Or just plain old “being willing to learn”. I have known too, too many people that, in spite of the fact that the ‘way they’ve always done it’ fucks things up righteously again and again, believe that to ‘change’ is an insult to their roots. . .or something.

My husband and I own two rental properties in rural WV. One is a ten-unit apartment building, the other is a six-unit trailer park. Yes, some of our tenants are willing-to-work-hard, down-on-their-luck, not-necessarily-brilliant-but-not-outright-stupid folks. But truly, a majority of them are like cast-offs from Jerry Springer. When we first bought the properties, eight of the ten apartments were unoccupied, and we had the enviable job of cleaning them out, and I cannot tell you the number of garbage bags of Bud Light cans and plastic whiskey bottles we took out of there. :rolleyes:
And most of them are resentful because we have ‘soft, privileged’ lives. :rolleyes::rolleyes:

Like someone handed it to us on a freakin’ platter.

14

Wait, it wasn’t handed to you? When I turned 18 the clouds parted and Jesus, Vishnu, and Allah parachuted down into my yard with a silver platter on which sat a wand that allows me to conjur up money, hot guys, and job opportunities. I always thought that was how people’s lives turned out wonderfully…none of that “work” stuff! :stuck_out_tongue:

15

My two oldest “friends” are dumb as bags of hair.

I’ve often wondered what this says about me…

:rolleyes:

16

Well, OK, it was handed to me. I just meant it wasn’t, like, gift-wrapped or anything.

No, no, we’ll have none of that stuff about ‘getting our hands dirty’. :wink:

17

My brother-in-law had a good professional job in a large company when my sister married him.

After their first kid, he said he wanted to be his own boss.
Did he set up as a consultant in the high-paying profession?
No, he decided to open a newsagent (long hours, small profits).

That didn’t work well, so after the second kid was born, he sold at a small loss and looked for something better.
Did he return to the well-paid profession?
No, he bought another newsagent.

That didn’t work well, so he sold at a small loss and looked for something better.
Did he return to the well-paid profession?
No, he had an affair with a woman two streets away. In a small village. Where everyone knows what’s going on.

That didn’t work well, so my sister hired a divorce lawyer and looked for something better.
Did my brother-in-law hire a divorce lawyer?
No, he represented himself.

That didn’t work well (for him anyway - my sister got the house and maintenance payments for the two kids. :cool: )
Did my brother-in-law return to the well-paid profession?
No, he borrowed £50,000 ($80,000) from a relative (not my sister’s side of the family), and bought a novelty business.

That didn’t work well (because my brother-in-law didn’t include a contract clause that the owner of the novelty business not immediately set up anew and take all the existing customers.)
Did my brother-in-law return the loan?
No, he went bankrupt.

18

My wife works with a gal, Lisa. We’ve been out several times socially with her and her husband Brad. They’re friendly and likeable people… but jesus christ do they make some poor decisions.

A few years ago, after the housing market started its long descent –Brad got laid off from his construction job. After weeks of job searching, he decided that being a pilot was his next calling and enrolled in flight school. Well, flight school’s kinda expensive and he had to drop out when money ran low.

Then he became enthralled with being a cab driver (of all things). The problem was he didn’t realize that he was just a contractor for the company, and that his gas, insurance, licenses, and other expenses came out of his fares first. It wasn’t paying shit, so he quit and went into the real estate game.

They cashed out the $150k equity in their home and began looking. They were planning to move up for their personal home, and then use their existing home as a rental property. Despite warnings from several people, including us, that they were getting into something over their heads and the market was rapidly cooling, they weren’t hearing any of it. Their foolproof plan was to buy a foreclosure for pennies on the dollar, and if it needed fixing up –Brad could do that too.

Within a few weeks, they found a dream home in the foreclosed property listings. Brad went down to the courthouse on auction day and put in a bid of $80k on the property note. Theirs was the winning (and only) bid. They were thrilled with their luck –it was a $400k plus house in a good area.

Right away, Brad went to work on it. He bought all new cabinetry, appliances, and bathroom fixtures to replace the one’s that had been gutted. He had the pool repaired and filled. They had sunk another $24k into it and were making plans to move in.

Then the recorded paperwork came. They had bought the 2nd mortgage on this home! The 1st mortgage for something like $360k was also in default and headed for auction. They ate the loss and walked away.

But they still had almost $50k left, so they blew it on trips to Hawaii, Vegas, and Sedona. On several occasions, they just checked into a local resort for the weekend because they “needed a break”. Brad decided to become a handyman and dropped several thousand $$ on tools and equipment. He’s lucky to get 5 days of work in a month.

They still wanted to move up, but figured the reason their house wasn’t selling was because it didn’t show well with them still living in it (never mind the absolutely dead market). So… last summer, they purchased another home. Their 1st home is in Brad’s name only (they are common law married), and his credit was shot, so Lisa got the new mortgage in her name only. She asked me to review her two loan options and offer recommendations. I suggested she go for the one with the lower rate and pay the 3% down and closing costs out of the funds she had already withdrawn from her 401K. Instead, they opted to go with the almost 1% higher rate, because that rolled the (much higher) closing costs into the loan, and left them with the 401K money to treat themselves to some other frivolous adventure. That was the last time I offered advice.

They still couldn’t sell or rent out their first house, and couldn’t afford two mortgages, so it was only a matter of months before that one went into default. I just checked the county recorder website. That foreclosed property was bought a few months ago by none other than Fannie Mae –no doubt with bailout money.

They’re not entirely dumb. Lisa has been on the phone for months, scheming to qualify for Obama’s loan modification program. She asked me a few months ago if I thought they qualified for the new $7500 1st time homebuyer tax credit. I didn’t help. They figured it out on their own (technically they qualify because on her own she is a 1st buyer). Their response…. “Yay! We can spend a week in San Diego”.

I think my wife mentioned they were considering BK recently…

Wow, on preview this is a long one.

19

Is your brother in law Stanley Zbornak?

20

Some of you got silver platters . . . all I got was this lousy aluminum colander.