My Mother Sabotaged My Local Grocery Store Worker—and Other Advice From the Week
Slate publishes a lot of advice each week, so we’re pulling together a selection of our favorites. Here are a few of the most compelling questions from the week and links to hours of advice reading. This week: grocery workers, helpless husbands, and destroyed wedding dresses.
No Good Deed: I am a single mom struggling to make ends meet. I have two teenage sons who are basically hollow legs. When I go grocery shopping, I always stop to say hi to “Mary.” Mary does the markdowns and will usually point out the great deals or specials for me. Getting a bunch of frozen pizzas for less than a third of the price puts me back in the black. I made the mistake of mentioning Mary to my mother. My mother works full-time and is the primary caregiver for my grandmother. She has little time for herself.
Well, my mother tracked down Mary and Mary helped her find several expensive foods that my grandmother could actually eat that had been reduced in price. She advised my mother about keeping track of when the items get reduced and when the best time is to shop. My mother tried to treat Mary like her own personal shopper. She would call up the store asking for Mary and try to get her to set aside the deals (which is against store policy). Mary was sympathetic and did it a few times—only my mother refused to show up when she said she would. It would be hours after Mary’s shift ended and the food was put back on the floor. So my mother decided to complain to the store manager and got Mary written up!
I didn’t find any of this out until I went grocery shopping again and spoke with Mary. She bitterly explained what happened and I realized it was my mother. I wanted the ground to swallow me whole, I was so embarrassed. When I confronted my mother, she didn’t think she did anything wrong. Her time is apparently more valuable than a retail worker and Mary had offered to help. My outlook on my mother is completely different now. I am just aghast that she thinks this way. I want to make it up to Mary somehow but every gesture feels hollow. What should I do, if anything?
Just Want One Night Away: My husband and I have two kids. I went back to work fulltime about four months ago after staying home since the first was born. My husband travels for work three-to-four times a year for three-to-five days at a time. He recently had his first trip since I returned to work, and it’s definitely a different experience taking care of everyone for five days while also going to work all day every day. Just after he got back, we were talking about my upcoming birthday. I told him I’d like to get a hotel room with a jacuzzi tub for a night one of the weekends around my birthday and just relax by myself. Go get a pedicure and manicure in the afternoon, order every kind of food I want and eat it all while watching whatever movie I want, sleep all night until whatever time I want, then come back recharged. He laughed in what I thought was an amused way because, as a very social person, going somewhere to be alone is most definitely not what he would ever choose to relax. I asked him if one weekend worked better for him than the other and he said “oh, you’re serious?” Yup. I said I don’t travel for work and I spend the great majority of my time outside of work taking care of the kids, I could use a little break. He said he’d check with his mother and see which weekend she was available to come over and help and let me know.
I’m so annoyed right now. He certainly didn’t need to check with his mother (or mine) to see when he could travel for work. I have no issue with him having some help around, but I don’t think my ability to take a true break should depend on his mother’s availability. How do I approach the conversation with my husband that I’m concerned that he doesn’t think he can take care of our kids himself for 24 hours?
It’s Been a Minute Plus Five Years: My current girlfriend and I had a pretty good sex life when we started dating. That said, she said she’d never been able to orgasm with her boyfriends before, and not to expect that from her.
She later had a prolapse, where the wall between the vagina and anus herniated. She had this fixed over 5 years ago, but now says my penis is far too big to “fit” anymore. Yes—it’s been 5 years since we’ve had sex. She says we can do other things, but in practice, this only means me doing things to her. She has plenty of excuses for why she can’t do things to me. If it’s a handjob, she says her wrist or hand hurts. If it’s oral on me, her knees hurt. She says we need to snuggle and be intimate more, but I no longer have interest in her getting me excited and nothing ever being done about it. It just irritates me more!
I’ve tried to get her to return to the doctor that did the surgery and she won’t. I’ve tried to get her to go see a psychiatrist and she refuses. What else can I do?
About the Dress: I bought my wedding dress years ago because it was a designer that I adored and it was pennies on the dollar. My fiancé proposed on Thanksgiving and I was over the moon. I made the mistake of showing off the wedding dress to his mother and sister. His sister made several catty comments about how weird it was to buy my wedding dress before I had even met my fiancé. I said I rather spend our wedding budget on other things and I could never resist a good sale. Later, when my mother and I took the dress to be altered, it was destroyed. There were huge rips in the back and a lot of the embroidery was snapped off.
I was devastated. I had no clue what happened until a friend sent me pictures from my soon-to-be sister-in-law’s social media. She went behind my back and tried on my wedding dress and put it back after she wrecked it! She denied it right up until I showed her the pictures and dared to claim that the dress was already like that when she tried it on. I told her she owed me a new wedding dress and she claimed she didn’t have the thousands of dollars to pay for it. I told her tough luck and that either she pays me back or she will not be invited to the wedding and everyone will know why.
She paid me the money and apparently had to take out a loan on her car to do so. Here is the dilemma. The seamstress told us she might be able to do a minor miracle and salvage my dress. It will be a different style and cost only a fraction of what a new dress would. My fiancé thinks his sister was “out of line” but that we should just fix the dress and give the rest of the money back. His sister doesn’t make a lot. I think maybe it is time she learned a lesson. We are fighting about it. I just want to be happy about our engagement but this has just been stressful. Help!
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