u/pixie-shimmerxx99

Saw the news this morning that one of the big consulting firms just laid off somewhere around two thousand people across a few of their service lines, in a group video call apparently with someone reading names off a list, and it has put me in a properly reflective mood.

Ive been on the wrong side of one of these myself about four years ago and the gut punch of getting added to a meeting at four in the afternoon and being told its over is something i wouldnt wish on anyone. So my heart genuinely goes out to everyone who opened their laptop today and got dropped.

Here is the thing though. No company is your family. Not the one that puts ping pong tables in the breakout room, not the one that does the cute little wellbeing emails on a tuesday, not the one whose manager keeps telling you youre "indispensable." Every single one of them will let you go on a wednesday afternoon over a zoom call when the spreadsheet says they need to and they will not lose a minute of sleep about it.

So please, take the holiday you have been sitting on. Use the full PTO. If your kid is off school sick stay with them and dont apologise for it. Stop replying to slack at half nine on a sunday because nobody will remember you did when the redundancy list gets drawn up. The dedication you are pouring in is being noted exactly nowhere.

Real job security is not loyalty to a company because they have no equivalent loyalty to give back. Its having an emergency fund, having a bit of side income, knowing the recruiters in your industry, and keeping your CV current. The proper Plan B that means a layoff is a setback rather than a crisis.

Because the call always comes from companies you didnt think would do it.

im 38 and i live a couple of hours from my parents who are 62 and 64 and retired three years ago. mom raised me and my sister and ran a tight house while dad worked full time and assumed there was always a meal on the table when he got home, and thats just the arrangement they always had so i never really questioned it growing up.

ive been visiting once a month for the past year and a half and ive watched my mom slowly disappear into the work of running their lives for both of them, cooking every meal, doing every load of laundry, driving him to his appointments, and managing their bills, while he plays golf three days a week, has a poker night, watches tv, and complains if dinner isnt on time. ive brought it up gently with her a few times and she always says thats just how theyve always been.

her birthday was last week and me and my sister pooled money to send her on a four day cruise with my aunt while i came up to help dad with the house. she called me crying the night before saying she was going to cancel because dad had told her he had too much going on that week with his poker tournament and didnt think it was fair for her to be away. i told her to go anyway, drove over the next morning, and personally put her in the car with her bag while my sister drove her to the port.

then i went looking for my dad and found him at his club at his usual table with three of his friends, sat down with them, and asked him in front of all of them whether mom had failed him as a wife or whether he had just woken up one day and decided he was nobodys responsibility anymore. i kept it that calm, the table went silent, one of his friends laughed nervously, and the manager came over within about a minute and asked me to leave.

mom called me from the boat last night to tell me shes not coming home when the trip ends, shes going to my aunts for a couple of weeks to think. dad has been calling me nonstop telling me i had no right to put him on blast in front of his friends

AITA?

I need to say something upfront because I think it changes how this reads. If it was just my mum asking I would have said yes already and worked out the details later. She is my mum and I love her and that would not even be a question.

But it is not just her.

Her boyfriend has been around since I was about eight and the whole time growing up he made it pretty obvious that we were an inconvenience in his life rather than people he genuinely wanted around. He was never cruel or anything dramatic like that, it was more like a slow drip of small things over the years that added up. My mum would plan things and he would find reasons they could not include us. Holidays, weekends, big occasions, there was always something. I found out as an adult that when my younger brother went through a rough patch as a teenager and needed more support, he basically told my mum that taking that on was not something he wanted to deal with, and my brother ended up struggling through it with very little help from that side.

That one I have never fully gotten over if I am honest.

My mum's health has been getting worse lately and she has started talking about moving in with me in a way that feels more like an announcement than a question. She has mentioned which room she likes and made comments about how nice it would be to have the garden. Her boyfriend is fine health wise and would obviously be coming too.

I do not want him in my home. I feel bad saying that but it is true. They have options and it is not like there is nowhere else for them to go.

WIBTA if I said no?

theres a shared space my partner and i are both part of. doesnt matter what kind, just a space where the same group of people are around each other a lot.

and there has been someone in that space for months now who has made it pretty clear shes into him. and not subtle about it. she rearranges where she sits to be near him. she finds reasons to talk to him about things she could have asked anyone else. shes told mutual people she finds him magnetic, intriguing, all the words that get back to you because the people who hear them tell their friends who tell their partners who eventually tell you

and i didnt say anything. for months. genuinely. i was a grown up about it. my partner has not encouraged any of it, hes mentioned to me a few times that he finds it a little uncomfortable, and ive watched him politely create distance every time it happens. he is not the issue. she is the issue, and i was choosing not to make it into one because the people who esclate first usually look worse than the people they're responding to

last week there was a social event. drinks involved. and at some point in the evening she walked over to where my partner and i were standing, looked through me like i was a coat rack, and said some things to him directly. about a moment they had shared at work recently. about feeling something. about whether he had felt the same thing. about sparks. she literally used the word sparks

and i was right there

i snapped. i said what i said. and i need to be honest, what i said was pointed. it was specific. i used some words that i knew would land where she was tender about herself, because i knew what i was aiming at, because ive been listening to her behavior for months. it wasnt screaming. it was sharp and it was loud enough for the small group around us to hear. she went very pale, said one thing back, and left within about ten minutes

her friends have been calling me cruel ever since. they have apparently been telling people that she is insecure, that i knew that, and that i targeted it anyway

heres where i sit with it

ive been quiet for months. i have not been petty in any way that anyone could point to. i have not been cold to her in shared settings. i have not gossiped about her to people in our circle. i have, by every available measure, been the bigger person about a situation that for a long time was not worth turning into something. she chose to do what she did standing right next to me, after the kind of evening where you can see exactly how aware of her surroundings someone is, and she did it anyway

did i pick the most generous possible words. no. probably not. the part of me that is honest with itself knows that i had a less sharp version of what i said available to me and i picked the sharper one. probably because i had been carrying months of it and her friends are correct that it landed where it landed for a reason

but i also did not start anything. she did. in front of me. while drinking. while my partner was visibly trying to step away from her

her friends were not in the room for any of the previous months. they only saw the part where i finally said something. and they have been describing that part as the whole story

im fine with the snap. im just unsure about the exact phrasing

am i wrong

AIW