Giving PA people what they "want" (Stories!) UPDATE P27

[jane7166]

[quote author=Yvaine link=topic=123236.msg2840381#msg2840381 date

And with the paper or with internet articles, he'd just launch into reading them at random times, even if I was busy, and if I (for example) said "hey, can you email me the link? I'm trying to write a story," he'd pout! It was the performance he craved.
[/quote]

Just like my mother.  I would be reading the newspaper and she would be reading a different section and she would just start reading an article, word for word, whether I was interested or not.  And if I said anything like I want to read this section, thanks, she would get all huffy.

[Iris]

[quote author=Yvaine link=topic=123236.msg2840381#msg2840381 date

And with the paper or with internet articles, he'd just launch into reading them at random times, even if I was busy, and if I (for example) said "hey, can you email me the link? I'm trying to write a story," he'd pout! It was the performance he craved.

Just like my mother.  I would be reading the newspaper and she would be reading a different section and she would just start reading an article, word for word, whether I was interested or not.  And if I said anything like I want to read this section, thanks, she would get all huffy.
[/quote]

So FIL is not the only one! DH does it occasionally too, but has a bit more of a sense of humour and awareness of it, so if I ostentatiously say "I'm sorry, was my book interrupting your random thought?" he'll just grin and drop it. I think MIL humours FIL because it's easier than dealing with the huffs  He is a good man, really, but has that small child mentality that if he is finding something interesting then so will everyone else, and they'll find it interesting right NOW!

[hermanne]

Nothing to post, except to say that i am loving these stories.

Me too!

[SoCalVal]

So I would take the whole story of the movie day with a grain of salt. I'm not saying it didn't happen at all, but probably not quite so dramatically.

I could see this happening this dramatically because *my* mom tried to do a version of this to my sister and me (and Mom really isn't a mean person so I think this situation was, actually, unintentional).

Mom came up to YS and me and said, "Hey, let's go see a movie later; that would be fun!"  YS and I got excited because, well, our family never went to the movies at that point (not because we couldn't afford it, I think, but because we weren't small children anymore so piling us all into one vehicle to go to the drive-ins wasn't going to work anymore and my parents NEVER took us to a regular movie theater).  Anyway, YS never did the work for anything so I took it upon myself to peruse the movie listings and figure out which movie we wanted to see and when (and I did this all in front of Mom).  YS and I finally determined we wanted to see Back to the Future, and I told Mom.  As it got later and later, I said, "Hey, Mom, when are we going to the movies?" and Mom replies, "Oh, I don't feel like going now."   

I.  WAS.  FURIOUS.  I thought that was the meanest thing ever.  I couldn't believe she'd jerk our chains around like that....and my 14-15 year old self let Mom have it.  Yup, Mom got a "severe" tongue-lashing for suggesting something fun for us to go do with her and letting us happily go about planning for it only to never have had any intention of executing the plan.  Oh, I was so angry with her.

Anyway, I guess my words really got through because, a few minutes later, Mom changed her mind and took us to see the movie (like I said, I don't think she meant to do something so mean; I really think she changed her mind and was just super clueless how mean it was to do that).

[Allyson]

When my brother and I were kids, I remember a couple of times, usually when driving, when we would be acting annoying in some way or other, probably by being too loud. My dad would say 'Well, I was *going* to take you guys to do something nice, but now you've acted like this, so it's not happening.' Of course we'd freak out until he told us he never meant to do it anyway. All that really taught us was not to trust Dad, though. As we got older, my response to things like that would be more and more indifferent.

When I was working at a place with a tip jar, an impossible-to-please customer once said, 'Well, I was going to tip you, but now I'm not because of Thing X.'  I think I said something like, 'that's no problem' which further enraged him'.

[Kaypeep]

My mom was infamous for starting something and never finishing, but leaving "stuff" out from whatever it is that she started.  This included housekeeping. She would take out the vacuum and leave it out forcing us to walk around it.  Now, if any of US left something out she would yell until we put it away.  So one day after leaving the vacuum out for a while she starts screaming at us kids about how we kept walking over and around the vaccum but how none of us could bother to put it away.  My brother then said "Why do WE have to put it away?  YOU took it out.  If one of us took it out to vacuum you'd expect us to put it away. So why should we be expected to put away something YOU took out?"  Mom just stood there silent and then stormed out of the house.

[Shalamar]

SoCalVal, my mum sometimes did that to me.  She'd announce in the morning that she was going to take me somewhere that I loved to go, like the public pool.   Then, in the afternoon, I'd ask when we were leaving, and she'd look miserable and say "Oh - do you REALLY want to go?".  The implication being, of course, that if I said "Yes", I'D be the mean one for dragging my poor mother somewhere she didn't want to be.   I always sullenly said "No", which nicely let her off the hook - after all, if it had been that important to me, surely I would have said "yes".

Many years later, when I had kids of my own, she told me solemnly "it's so important to always keep the promises that you make to your children". I just inwardly rolled my eyes and said nothing.

[Piratelvr1121]

My bff sort of does this, though it makes me laugh, and it usually happens when we're on the phone.

N: So and so ticks me off so MUCH, he did something today that was just so RUDE!!
Me: Oh?
N: Don't get me started, I don't want to get into it!
Me: Okay, I won't.
N: I'm really not in the mood to go over it.
Me: Okay.
N: Oh fine, this is what happened!

Mind you, she laughs when she says the last line.  It's not so much PA for her, and the funny thing is that she ALWAYS ends up telling me what happens one way or another so even if I am very curious and want to hear the story, I don't bother begging her to tell me cause I know it'll come out eventually.  She knows it too, and it's kind of become a joke with us. 

My dad used to expect women to keep a house as immaculate as a model home.  I'd always get comments if my house was less than perfect when I worked 40 hours and the first two boys were rather young.   And at the time DH rarely lifted a finger to help clean and I was not blessed with the best organizational skills.  I could be cleaning for 3 hours and if you came two hours after that, you'd never know it. 

"You have dirt on your baseboards! Your windows aren't wiped" Oh dear, just call CPS on me now. Never mind the kids could eat off the floor and their toys are picked up but for the few they're playing with.  But the baseboards and windows have a bit of dirt! 

[FoxPaws]

"You have dirt on your baseboards! Your windows aren't wiped" Oh dear, just call CPS on me now. Never mind the kids could eat off the floor and their toys are picked up but for the few they're playing with.  But the baseboards and windows have a bit of dirt! 

This was your cue to hand him a rag and a bottle of 409.   

[Piratelvr1121]

Would if not for the fact that I didn't want him to stick around, and knowing him he'd do it while complaining about how much important work he could be doing and showing me how to clean them.  My mother did this too.   She would pick up a rag and 409 but it wouldn't be long before I'd take it away saying "I got it, thanks" and letting her know she was welcome to go attend to her own to-do list...at home.

[Bluenomi]

I have to deal with PA clients at work all the time and they don't like it when I don't fall for it 

We have a limited supply of audio visual equpiment which books out early on busy weeks. A client rings up, askes for something and I give them the bad news that we don't have anything left. Out come the comments 'Oh no, what will my boss (important person) do now?', 'what a disaster, the event will be ruinied', 'are you sure you don't have anything left for me?', 'But it is for really important person, you can't let me tell them I can't have it, I'll get in trouble!' etc, etc. They great really annoyed when I don't magically find them someting after they pout. I think I've had every PA trick in the book thrown at me and it just doesn't work.

[FoxPaws]

^ I get this at my job, too. I love how people think if they just explain their dire circumstances one more time, the clock will slow down, supplies will magically appear, and equipment will begin performing tasks it was never designed to do. 

[platypus109]

In college I had a "friend" that loved to be passive aggressive.  Once PA demanded I go with her to a very expensive restaurant in Los Angeles that I wasn't interested in with food I generally don't like.  I was naive and because she implied she would pay for my meal, I tagged along for the experience. 

I learned the importance of clear plans that night when PA told me: a) she wasn't going to pay for my meal because she'd decided she wanted to sit in the restaurant but didn't want to eat and b) I owed her gas money for the ride from our college to the restaurant.  However, she made a big fuss about encouraging me to get whatever I wanted.    PA ended up sulking for the rest of the night when I ordered the only thing I could afford, a small side salad. She claimed I'd embarrassed her by not ordering a full meal.

Another time we were enrolled in the same class, she'd taken many classes from this professor and claimed he was one of the hardest she'd ever had.  It was my first time with this professor and my first time taking a class in this subject area.  During that particular session, the professor had used my paper as an example of a "superior academic paper" and had rather gone on about the quality of my writing; the PA friend received a D on the same assignment.  As we were leaving I mentioned I had to run to get to my job on campus.  She sighed in that big PA way and said she was glad her parents loved her enough to pay for everything so she could focus on her studies.  As if my parents were evil villains for "making" me work in college 

Ultimately, the only reason why I remained friends with PA is because she'd lived on the same hall with my BFF in our freshman year and the BFF had a pretty stubborn "loyalty code" at the time.   Over the four years of college, the BFF and I'd managed to pull away a bit using various techniques of the semi-direct cut. Unfortunately, we never could quite break away.
   
After we graduated from college PA called me a few times but I was just starting graduate school, and since I've never liked talking on the phone, we didn't spend a long time chatting.  Then, in the fall following our graduation, she called me and as soon as I answered the phone launched into some diatribe about the drama in her life. I managed to extract myself enough to just about hang up when she started in on how I didn't call her.  After a few more minutes of that PA finally stopped and said she wouldn't call me again unless I called her first.  Apparently she said something similar to the BFF around the same time. 

It's been 15 years and counting, I sure hope she didn't wait by the phone for my call 

[PeterM]

^ I get this at my job, too. I love how people think if they just explain their dire circumstances one more time, the clock will slow down, supplies will magically appear, and equipment will begin performing tasks it was never designed to do. 

We get this at the library, too, generally about fines or fees. The people who state outright that they've had a tough time and ask for leniency may or may not get it, depending on circumstances and policies. The people who are clearly distressed but determined to somehow get themselves out of the situation they and/or their circumstances created may or may not be offered a lenient deal, again depending. The people who throw out loud, exaggerated sighs along with comments to no one in particular about how unfair this is, or how it's not their fault, or something similar, they get nothing. Noth. Ing.

I actually had a complaint about me from one patron who does that a lot. He told my supervisor that I had been rude and disrespectful to him. Based on the timing, as best I can tell this was because I didn't drop everything else I was doing when he came in so I could cater to his every need before he even expressed it. It might've also been because when he complained that his holds weren't on the shelf I told him to look on the next shelf down. We put them out alphabetically by last name, see, so if it appears that the M-s end at, say, Miller, maybe you should look on the next shelf down before you tell me that we can't do our jobs right. I swear to Dog I kept my voice as neutral and non-judgmental as possible when telling him to check the next shelf down, but there's only so much you can do in a situation like that.

In any case, my supervisor knows this guy, too, so she basically told me that if he was complaining about me I must be doing something right.

[ica171]

This thread has helped me decide how I'm going to deal with my mom the next time she tries this stuff. I have a 9 month old daughter, and ever since she was about 4-5 months old, she's cried whenever my mom walks into the room. No one knows why, she just does. Now, when my mom does the "woe is me, why don't you love me, you'll have to come stay at my house and I'll make you love me" talk to DD, I ignore her. She knows that's not going to happen and I just don't even feel like it needs to be addressed. But one day a few months ago as she was leaving my house, she held DD, who started crying. I said jokingly, "Wow, what did you do to her?" She started in on "How could you say I'd do something to that little girl, I'd never do anything to hurt her, I love her," etc etc. The first few times I reassured her and said "I know, I know, it was a joke, she's just a baby, she just needs time," on and on.

Then she brought it up at Thanksgiving. I said "You know that was a joke, right?" She said "Yes" and then carried on with her woe is me speech. So next time she says "You said I did something to DD!" I'm just going to say "Yep" and leave it at that.