u/fairy_whisperzz46

Im 31m and my sister is 27. Our mum is 68 and not in great health, shes mobile but shes forgetful and needs a fair bit of looking after, and since i work from home my sister decided that basically makes me the default carer for her.

It started small. "Hey can you have mum for an hour while i pop to the shops." Then it turned into "can she stay with you this afternoon while i get my hair done." Then it became "theres this weekend away with the girls, can you have mum." And i said yes a lot, because i love my mum and honestly it felt harder to say no than to just deal with it.

One saturday she dropped mum off at 9am, text me "luv u!!!", and didnt come back until gone midnight, drunk. Id had nothing prepped, none of mums proper medication with me, nothing, just a half empty pill organiser she left on my counter.

I told her more than once that im not set up for this. I dont resent mum at all, thats half the problem, i always made it work, got her fed, sorted her tablets, settled. I think my sister saw that and decided i could just keep making it work forever.

About two weeks ago i had a massive work presentation in the morning. I told her the night before i couldnt help the next day, reminded her again that morning, i was already stressed trying to get ready. Around 6am she rang crying saying she had something on and only needed a couple of hours. I said no. Not maybe, just no.

She came anyway. Left mum sat on my porch, knocked, and drove off before i even got to the door. So i had mum outside confused and no real option but to bring her in. I missed the presentation, my boss tore into me, and i got pulled off a project id worked on for months.

That night i took mum back and told my sister if she ever did that again id be ringing social services. She just gave me this disappointed look and said "fine, ill sort it myself like always," so i was too tired to argue and i left.

Then i changed my locks because she had a spare key.

Next day she turned up with mum again the key didnt work, and she scratched her key right down my front door before leaving. My neighbour text me asking if she should call the police. My sisters now ghosting me everywhere and im just completely burnt out. AIW?

so i was hit by a car coming home from work three weeks ago and came off my bike at a junction, went over the bonnet and landed on the right side of my face, the short version is i fractured my cheekbone and lost a fair bit of skin from my forehead down to my jaw, i also have some road rash patches on my shoulder and upper arm, ill be left with proper scarring on the side of my face for life and ive only just started getting used to looking at myself in the mirror.

my consultant has told me that i need to stop covering the wounds now that the scabs have formed and im supposed to apply a topical cream a couple of times a day and otherwise leave it open to the air, it looks bad if im being honest because parts of it are still red and raw and the cream makes it shiny, but thats what shes told me to do and i trust her.

yesterday i had my follow up appointment back at the hospital, i got there a bit early and signed in and sat down in the outpatient waiting area, i was already not loving being out in public looking like this so i had headphones in and a book i was pretending to read.

about twenty minutes in a bloke whod been sat across with his little boy got up and walked over to me and said "sorry love do you mind covering that up, hes getting upset," i looked at him for a second and said the doctor told me not to cover it and that im actually here for an appointment about it, he said "well its quite graphic, theres no need to be rude, just a scarf or something would do."

i told him this is my face and its going to keep being my face and im not going to apologise for showing it in a hospital waiting room of all places, i said maybe instead of telling a woman half his age to hide hers he could explain to his son that people get hurt and they heal, he didnt like that, he picked up his stuff and went over to reception to ask if they could wait somewhere else and they got moved through a different door a minute later.

my name got called soon after and i held it together through the appointment but i sat in the car park and cried for about half an hour before i could drive myself home. AITA?

i was fully remote at a midsize tech company for almost six years. came in mid level and settled into a niche pretty fast because nobody else wanted to own the international client relationships and the work covered time zones nobody at hq wanted to deal with. by year three i was the only person at the company with deep relationships across about a dozen vendors and clients in three different regions. i was on calls at 6am and 11pm because of those time zones and i was good at it.

after the second time i got passed over for a promotion i finally had the honest conversation with my manager about why. she told me the truth more directly than i expected. she said leadership had a preference for promoting people they saw at the office regularly, that fully remote people were not blocked from advancement but they were definitely on a different track, and that there was nothing she could do about that at her level. she said she had fought for me twice and lost both times.

i started looking. a recruiter i had worked with in a previous job had been pinging me for months about a fully remote role at a smaller company that did similar work. the comp was about 30 percent higher and the title was one step up. i interviewed quietly over about five weeks. they offered. i took it. i gave notice and worked the two weeks like a normal person and that was that.

didnt try to take anyone with me. didnt make a big deal of leaving. just packed up the cardboard box that i didnt actually have to pack up because everything was on my laptop.

three months into the new role i started getting messages from former colleagues telling me the international relationships were getting messy. clients were emailing the general support address asking where i was. vendors were missing the cadences they were used to. nobody had been formally put in to cover what i used to do because nobody at the company really understood it was a role.

last week, six months after i left, the director who never once advocated for me called me on my personal number. asked me to grab coffee. when we did, he basically pitched me on coming back. said the comp was no longer an issue. said he wanted to talk about what the right title would look like this time around.

i told him i was happy where i was. told him the gap between what i was worth there and what i was being paid there had gotten too big to close in one conversation. i didnt say it angrily, i wasnt trying to score a point, i just meant it.

the thing i keep thinking about is how it took six months for them to actually feel my absence in a way that mattered. fully remote work makes you invisible in ways that hurt you until the second you walk away, and then you become very visible very fast, but by then you are already gone.

if you are fully remote and you are reading this and someone has quietly told you youre on a different track than the people who go in, please believe them. they are telling you what they actually think of your career. find the next place before you find out the hard way.

so for context im two years into my first job at a small architecture firm, like 8 people total, and the whole thing is basically structured around one principal who started the place and is pretty well known in our local architecture scene.

when i was finishing school people kept telling me how the industry has a shortage of young architects, how the older generation is retiring and theres tons of opportunity for new people coming in, with the obligatory sprinkle of how kids today dont wanna work hard enough to make it.

so here i am two years in and i think i get exactly why nobody from my graduating class is still in the field.

ive worked directly under the principal pretty much from day one because the firm is small and theres no real middle layer. instead of actually training me on the stuff i dont know yet, which would be a normal thing to do for someone fresh out of school, i mostly just get screamed at for not knowing it already.

when i ask a question i get a look like im personally responsible for the death of the profession, and when i make a mistake on a drawing the rolled up version of that drawing has come at me across the table more than once.

the rant after every mistake is always basically the same. back when he was training under whoever he names that day at whatever famous firm, they used to work 90 hour weeks, sleep under the desk, not eat for two days when a deadline was coming, and that was how you actually became an architect. apparently we just dont have that anymore. he also said once, half joking and half not, that in the old days mentors couldve thrown a junior out of a third floor window for a bad detail and nobody would have batted an eye.

honestly all i wanna do is just learn the trade. i didnt sign up to be his outlet for whatever he didnt process from his own training.

the part that keeps me stuck is the regional thing. there are maybe six firms in my city that hire at my level and the principal here knows every single owner of every single one of them personally. nobody seems to leave his firm with a clean reference, and the people who have left have basically had to relocate to other cities to keep their careers going. im not in a position to do that right now and he knows it.

is this just my firm, my city, the industry as a whole, or am i just really good at picking the wrong place to work twice in a row? has anyone else who started in architecture or design fields actually been through this and figured out a way through?

I have been at my current company for about five years and worked my way up entirely from the bottom. I came in knowing nothing and spent years learning everything I could on my own time, taking on extra responsibilities because nobody else would, and consistently delivering results that made the company look good.

About two years ago I was told a pay review was coming that would better reflect what I was actually contributing. That review never happened. Every time I brought it up I got a version of the same answer, that things were tight, that the timing was not right, that they appreciated everything I was doing.

A few months ago I was sitting in a team meeting where my manager talked about how well the department had been performing and highlighted specific things I had done as reasons for it. I sat there and nodded and went home that evening and sent my CV to three places.

Within a month I had an offer on the table for significantly more money with better benefits than my current company offers at any level.

I booked a meeting with my manager and put the offer letter on the table.

They asked if there was anything they could do to keep me. I told them what it would take. They said they could not get there.

I handed in my notice and walked out feeling lighter than I had in years.

Am I wrong for finding that deeply satisfying?

my partner and i have been together for four years. we generally handle disagreements pretty well but this one has turned into a real standoff and i need some outside perspective

so about three weeks ago her cousin came to stay with us temporarily along with two friends of his. the original plan was a week. its already extended twice and theres no clear end date in sight

within the first few days i noticed some things that made me uncomfortable. items in shared spaces moved or gone through in ways that felt off. one of the friends made a comment that struck me as inappropriate about our home setup. i found one of them in a part of the house they had no reason to be in and they couldnt really give me a straight answer about why

so i installed a small security camera in the hallway outside our bedroom. not hidden, fully visible, clearly a camera. and i told my partner why id done it

she says the camera is making her cousin and his friends feel surveilled and unwelcome and wants me to take it down. i told her ill take it down when they leave.

she says thats an ultimatum and that im creating a hostile environment for her family

i said im creating a secure environment for our home and the camera comes down the day they go

shes upset. she feels like im telling her i dont trust her family. i told her im telling her i observed specific things that made me want a camera in my own hallway and im not gonna remove it while those things are still a concern

AITA?

my partner and I have been together for seven years. we are good together, I know that, I feel it. but today I found out something that hit differently than I expected.

I was talking to one of their old friends while my partner was in the other room. the friend mentioned something specific I had been working on and I asked how they knew about it.

they said my partner talks about me all the time. not in a general way, in a specific way. mentions things I am proud of, things I am working through, small wins I have had. the friend said it was noticeable because my partner is generally pretty dry and guarded with most people and speaks differently about me.

I did not know that.

I knew they were proud of me when I was standing in front of them. I did not know they carried it into other rooms.

seven years in and I think I just fell a little harder.