Who's the biggest loser/disaster of a friend or relative you know?

In My Humble Opinion
1

My oldest sister (34) has been in a three year relationship with her live-in boyfriend of roughly the same age. Despite both being in their early 30’s they literally both never progressed socially past high school and are getting drunk almost every single night with friends. At one point my sister decided to quit her good-paying job to embark on a career of just sitting at home watching TV and drinking with friends, and then when money started running tight with only one income in her household she gave up alcohol but continued sitting at home all day watching TV for about a solid year.

Luckily eventually she begged for her own job back and got it, only for then her boyfriend to quit his job for unspecified “injuries” though he isn’t getting any sort of workers comp or disability and is now also just sitting at home all day watching TV. He absolutely picked the worst possible time to leave a good paying job, the month before the covid-10 pandemic and now both of them are feeling a money crunch but the moment restrictions in our state were partially lifted they immediately started going out and drinking at bars like they used to despite the fact neither of them has health insurance anymore due to constantly leaving jobs.

I know all of this because my sister texts me once a week about all her problems. Do you know any real disasters of human beings, almost all of it self-inflicted?

2

They sound like they make bad decisions, but they’re also both able to Get high paying jobs so they can’t be doing too terrible.

The biggest disasters I know are in prison.

The biggest non imprisoned disasters I know have serious mental health issues. Mostly cluster b disorders or substance abuse issues.

3

Bad dietary choices.
Sedentary lifestyle.
Ignoring doctor’s advice/orders.
“Bachelor” degree from a non-accredited Bible college.
“Masters” degree from an online diploma mill - losing at least 2 jobs when employers figured out how bogus the degree is.
Losing a secure job for refusing to follow a very simple requirement, because he knew better…
Currently in need of a transplant that will never come because of the first 3 items on this list.
Expecting his elderly parents to wait on him when he ended up in the hospital due to the first 3 items on this list.
But it’s not his fault. He’s a middle child. Women and minorities always get the breaks that he should get. If only he hadn’t been held back in the 3rd grade.

Yeah, he’s a gem.

4

I should have clarified, they both have jobs that make good money but in the volatile industries, she works as a secretary at a school and he worked as an auto mechanic. They have basically no savings which means (and very surely will happen now) any economic downturn is absolutely going to crush them.

I didn’t want to include people in prison since I’m more interested in people with a long list of bad decisions instead of one major one, but I also have a cousin whom literally murdered a random person in cold blood, got sent to prison for 25 years, but after only 5 years got his case thrown out because the prosecutor had gotten some of his convictions (including my cousins) by padding out the evidence with jail house snitch confession testimony that turns out wasn’t exactly on the up and up. Granted, my cousin 100% did it and had absolutely no defense besides “I wasn’t there!” despite having the murder weapon in his possession when caught which makes the prosecutor needing to sweeten the evidence even more bizarre.

5

Me, maybe…

I have a dear friend who is seriously messed up with anxiety/panic disorder, including obsessive binge eating. But that’s mental illness, and maybe shouldn’t be included in answering the question.

I have a friend who is a neo-Nazi, and that’s about the worst “loser” I know. (It gets worse, because she is m to f trans, without realizing that she’s one of the first who’d be shot if the Nazis actually took over!)

6

Two of my sisters-in-law lead lives of endless drama, although their kids have all seemed to turn out OK in spite of it all.

The woman whose cat I have kept for the past year and a half is absolutely horrible at managing money. She also has a degree from Kaplan, meaning it isn’t worth the paper it was printed on. Her boyfriend is a no-goodnik as well - sporadically employed, hangs around with drug dealers, etc. - and constantly accuses her of cheating on him. (Pot, kettle, black, perhaps?) I’m just glad she’s never had a baby.

7

I am curious, what is meant by “the volatile industries”?

IME, An auto mechanic that is any good at all will not only keep their jobs, but they will be offered paid training and advancements. I personally know many that have retired after over 40 years of service. Money is not an issue for them. There are many more in the pipeline that are on track to match that. The pay can be very good.

As far as school secretaries, the pay is not good but, unless one does something criminal or really, really stupid, they will have a job for life. I have some family members that chose that career.

Keep in mind that for the foreseeable future, cars will need to be repaired. Children will continue to go to school.

TIA for the reply, 48.

8

Certainly won’t win the thread but here’s one example.
I’ll probably be back with a couple more

Person S. He was always going to go to community college. Got in trouble at the grocery store he worked at for selling alcohol to under 21s and then not even bothering to scan it. Got busted by his store and arrested. After a slap on the wrist, he became the ultimate slacker. Could never hold down a job for more than a few months. Thought he could exchange sex for anything and it kinda worked. He’d live with some roommates for a few months until they got sick of his constant excuses for being late and/or short with rent. There was always enough money for the bars, but after two DUIs, he moved back home and is now the ultimate stoner. Looks 20 years older than his age and will probably never hold a legit job.

9

Myself. Things could have been worse; but compared to what might have been – I’ve made a fairly spectacular screw-up of the seven decades so far, of my life.

10

It’s me, unfortunately. I am the disappointment in my family.

11

About 25 years ago, a colleague at work introduced me to a former colleague of his (call him “O”). All three of us were engineers, government employees at one of the intelligence agencies. We were all white males in our mid-30s, with bachelors’ degrees.

O was rabidly right-wing, to the point of starting a political argument over a cup of coffee. If it rained, it was Bill Clinton’s fault. If it got dark at night, it was Hillary’s fault.

Over the years, my colleague and I advanced regularly, eventually reaching GS-15 grade. O did not, partly because he refused to get a master’s degree, partly because he didn’t really do much work, and partly because he refused to complete a simple certification process which was required for promotion beyond GS-12. Why should he? All the promotions went to women and minorities. Besides, the system was going to collapse soon, so what would money matter? O was very vocal about keeping all his savings in gold, and hinted darkly about belonging to a militia.

O spent much of his time posting on the agency’s internal message boards. Among his claims were that Tim McVeigh was framed (it was “the government” who blew up the building) and that the Clinton administration was trying to lower the age of consent to 12.

If you’re amazed that this guy was an employee of this evil “government”, and held a top secret clearance, you’re not the only one. HR did at one point investigate a complaint filed against him, but it was for his hygiene. His management asked him to shower more often.

If I had to pick the best O story, I could narrow it down to these two:

One day, O announced that the government’s conspiracy of hiding aliens was about to get revealed. He had seen an ad in the back of a magazine which claimed to have samples of these aliens, and would soon be receiving in the mail things which were guaranteed to “move, and to not be of this earth”. He eventually was disappointed to receive several lenticular pictures (the kind that move when you view them from different angles) of the planets. Truly, they moved, and were not of this earth. He was advised that it looked like he couldn’t get his money back.

At one point, I was dating a woman who was a single mother. In response to seeing a picture I carried in my wallet of her, her child, and me, O smiled and said, “Fornicator!”

One day in the mid-2000s, I saw O working at a supply task outside of office spaces. This is something done temporarily when a cleared person has had their clearance suspended and things are being adjudicated. Eventually, we learned that O did indeed lose his clearance and his job. During a periodic re-investigation, he had refused to provide documentation related to his finances. It sounded like he had committed the employment version of “suicide by cop”, wanting to be fired so he could complain about how unfair the system was to him.

I haven’t heard anything about O in years. If I ever do, I just hope it isn’t on CNN, and doesn’t involve the word “compound”.

12

I know, right? To me, the worst thing a fuckup can do is reproduce, so they have some innocent kids to drag down with them.

13

My story is tame in comparison to what has been posted. I have two nephews, 27 and 29. Both have college degrees, are pretty “with it,” and have never been a drag on their parents or society. But neither seems interested in finding career employment or even living in one place very long. They kind of bounce around, enjoying whatever seems to be happening.

To each his own of course, but all I see is time slipping away from these two. Are they losers? No. They’re good guys, but I’ll be sad if they are still doing this when they turn 35. I suppose I’m sad already.

14

IMHO, the biggest losers I know, are adult children of wealthy parents. The live extravagant lifestyles. They have college degrees, but don’t use them. They don’t work. They travel extensively. They have allowances from their parents. They use credit cards that their parents payoff monthly. They are married and have kids, and most likely if they didn’t have kids, their parents maybe would have cut them off, but their parents worry about their grandkids. When their parents finally die off, these kids will not know how to manage their inherited wealth, because they have no really useful skills.

And these parents aren’t billionaire wealthy, they are multimillionaire wealthy, and continue to work in the businesses they created, and support their kids from their income, not their assets.

15

I have a relative and her family who never saw a dime they didn’t know how to spend. They always buy brand new cars, go to casinos, and are always in the balls of their asses when it comes to money. They have been evicted about 3 times the last 20 years. They have absolutely zero concept of how to save money.

16

I think at this point, I’m going to have to go with “me”.

17

Depends on what you’re counting as losers. There’s like basic failure to handle adult responsibility types- the people who can’t hold down a job, are total drama queens, and generally are bad news to be around.

Then there are the ones who just fail at some fundamental aspect of “successful” life. I mean, I have a couple of buddies who are professionally quite successful, but one who hasn’t had a relationship that I’m aware of, and the other’s last long-term relationship ended in about 1999. I’m not convinced either of them wants to be single- they’re just kind of set in their ways and aren’t willing to disrupt their lives to the degree that having a long-term relationship would entail, even if they could actually meet interested women who they are interested in as well.
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Another doesn’t really have relationship problems, but is professionally sort of aimless. Like he got out of college, and did a series of nowhere jobs for the County, became an Army officer, and then has done fairly low level IT tech type stuff ever since. He’s just sort of stuck around wherever his mom is, and has been a sort of failure to launch in a lot of ways.

A woman I know has been spectacularly successful professionally, but seems deeply unhappy about her permanent single status- because she’s too picky about who she’ll date.

18

I wouldn’t consider a person who doesn’t seem to have romantic relationships to be a loser. It’s nobody else’s business, and truthfully, some people just aren’t supposed to be partnered. I figured that out about myself a long time ago, and that’s why I don’t waste my time on Tinder, etc.

19

I know a 69-year old virgin who has consistently gotten fired from clerical jobs. One time she quit by walking off at her lunch break without informing anyone. Her longest job lasted six weeks. She always felt she was too good to “pay her dues” at an entry level job, and wanted to hold out for something glamorous. She wouldn’t take a job using a computer because the chemicals in the computer would make her sick. Yet she regularly uses the library computer for email and internet. She never had a relationship: no man was good enough for her.

It took her 10 years to graduate from community college, taking one class a semester. She made the most money suing the city when she tripped over a sidewalk. Her mom supported her partially or completely until her death in 1990. Despite receiving a substantial inheritance and co-owning her deceased parents’ home, she’s been on welfare for decades (her sister took all her assets so she’d be indigent and could qualify for welfare).

She divides her time between using computers at the library, browsing thrift and antique stores, and watching TV.

20

She uses computers for fun only.

Missed the edit window.