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14-year-old daughter asks her mom to tell her the truth about how she looks, 39-year-old Karen mother does not mince her words: 'I told her she was average-looking'

Sure, honesty may seem like the best policy, but this Karen of a mother took things way too far.

At first, when reading about her seemingly genuine concern over her teenage daughter's body insecurity, one might think that this is an attentive, caring, and decent parent. However, when her daughter asked her to honestly tell her the truth about how she looks, this Karen thought it would be a good idea to tell her that she is, in fact, only average-looking. Her supposed point was to inform her daughter that most people in the world are average-looking, but as one might expect, this "truth-telling" moment did not sit well with a 14-year-old. 

When the mother shared her side of the story on Reddit, people eviscerated her in the comments section, and rightfully so. Keep scrolling below for the full story and for the best reactions from other mothers and daughters. For more, check out this post about a husband and wife's heated argument over money.




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Cousin tries to guilt-trip woman into giving up family heirloom their grandma personally left to her in her will, woman refuses but family is divided: ‘She hoped I’d keep it safe’

When a family member we hold near and dear to our hearts passes on to the next life, everything they leave behind holds astronomically more sentimental value—especially those who had special bonds with this family member. We can only hope that this family member can live on in the life they lived with and without us, and the items they pass down to us stick with us for as long as we are here, too.

That's the thing about passing on—this event really makes certain individuals show their true colors. Family members who have been nice to you all of your life now turn sour. Others creep out of the woodwork and assume they were grandma's favorite (which means they get everything she left in the will, despite her last wishes.) It's baffling that some folks use somber life events like this to gain something instead of grieving, going so far as to try and rip family heirlooms away from those who have the legal right to keep them.

The woman in this story is dealing with an entitled cousin who, despite not having a close, personal relationship with their grandmother, automatically assumes she is entitled to a necklace grandma left behind. Their grandmother personally gave the woman this necklace in hopes that she'd "treasure" it, and also wrote it into her will before she left them. Their family is divided, though it doesn't make sense as to why. Going against someone's last wishes in order to "keep the peace" is an entitlement that knows no bounds.




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'This is the first time I have ever asked to have some time off': 22-year-old babysitter gets denied vacation time for her sister's wedding, boss tries to guilt trip babysitter into skipping it

This kind of boss is just the worst, as this flustered nanny can tell you. 

Taking time off at your job can be awkward at times, especially if you're close friends with your boss. You might feel obligated to tell them everything you're planning to do with this time off. This person certainly did, but they at least had a great reason for requesting a few days off. U/Nannyneedabreak writes that as a babysitter for two kids, ages 6 and 8, she gave her boss a generous warning that she'd be gone for a few days. She gave this boss an incredible seven months of notice that she would be out of town for just four days! That's way more generous than most employees would be. 

This woman shared that she also reminded her boss about that important date at least once per month. Still her, boss insisted she cancel the trip when the date got close. Come on, lady, there are other babysitters in the world! Just ask for a reference to someone else, and let this woman go to her sister's once in a lifetime event. 

Up next, this non-HOA homeowner is refusing to take down their holiday lights, and told the HOA member to "just get off my property… I've just had enough."




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'Boss claims that me quitting will result in the business closing': Worker gives 2-week-notice after basically running the company they work for for their boss, prompting boss's total meltdown

It is truly mind-boggling how some employers will treat the workers who are essential to the success and operation of their business. They gamble that they can pay them below market rates and keep them exactly where they are and that their workers will continue to be milked like the cash cow that they are… After taking on increasing responsibility in their boss's small business, this worker knew it was time to move on to greener pastures. They did what they thought was the right thing and gave their boss their two-week notice, prompting a meltdown that they could not have anticipated. 

As commenters in the original thread noted, this begs so many questions. Like, if they were so important to the business why didn't their boss recognize that and reward them for it? Surely, there were chances and opportunities for their boss to give them a promotion or even a partnership in the business that they were so essential to. Still, their boss's general laissez-faire attitude and seeming reluctance to lift a finger to support their own business has spelled their own doom. It seems that they were totally complacent and happy to let the employee do all the work while they raked in all the profits.




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Man is left jobless when scorned ex-employee refuses to hire him after receiving the same treatment 9 months prior: ‘HE is now redundant’

Nothing feels worse than being "made redundant" at your company after spending years being the best employee you could be. You did everything right! An employee that was always on time, always got tasks done in a timely manner, and never caused a ruckus in the office. Sometimes, there's no rhyme or reason to being made redundant. It's not a reflection of your work ethic, but rather, the very DNA of the corporate machine. Churn in, churn out.

When you finally go to apply for another position, you're surprised to see one of your ex-colleagues at that specific company. Hoping this would work in your favor, you complete the interview with high hopes. Instead of putting in a good word about you, your ex-colleague decides to tell the interviewer that you had "asked too many questions" at your previous workplace. Isn't curiosity what most employers want? Well, 9 months later, you see someone very familiar waiting to be interviewed at your new company. Your mouth turns upward into a small when you realize it's the same ex-colleague who refused to hire you. Sweet karma.




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'McDonalds Karen yells at my kid': Top Karens of the Week (November 10, 2024)

One thing remains true: the Karens of this world will always be lurking around, ready to pounce as soon as they feel entitled to do so.

On one level, how could you not envy the complete lack of a filter and the audacity to start drama without any fear of consequences? But of course, on another level, who wants to carry that much negativity around with them at all times? This week, we have compiled a brand new collection of amusing Karens pulling the same old tricks. We've got the classic Karen who parked her car in the wrong space, a fast-food Karen customer who threw a temper tantrum at a child, and even a Redditor who didn't realize she was a Karen until folks in the comments section gave her a reality check.

Keep scrolling below for the top Karens of the week. For more compilations like this, take a look at this list of employees who got petty with their entitled customers.




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Sneaky landlord enters residence without tenant's approval and steals some items, demands another month's rent after tenants accuse him: ‘What are our rights?’

Just like landlords, tenants have rights. When a conniving landlord decides that they are above the law and impede on your rights as a tenant, there landlord can't expect you to keep quiet.

When something seems fishy, it likely is. Always trust your intuition, but even more so, trust the evidence you have and do something with it. The more power that landlords have, the more they're willing to do whatever it takes to pull a fast one on you and every other tenant they have in the future.

The tenant in this story is moving out of their unit and it is their last month paying rent. They noticed their cleaning supplies were gone from their apartment, in addition to two set of blinds and a shelf they had installed in their closet for storage purposes. They first thought their neighbor might've taken their belongings, but they noticed their landlord posted an advertisement of their unit and they had never approved of him coming in and taking photos to post on apartment-seeking websites. When they confront him, instead of fessing up, he demands they pay another month's rent. Scroll to read.




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30 Memes to Cheer You Up Before the Workday Drags You Down

Hello, fellow employees, it's time for another day of corporate purgatory. It's the same every single day, like we're living in a never-ending Black Mirror episode. We wake up, contemplate whether or not to call in sick, decide not to, stumble in late to work anyway, and end up sitting at our desks getting paid to send emails and watch the grueling minutes tick by until 5 p.m. Then we commute home, spend the rest of the evening dreading another day of work, and repeat. 

If this sounds a little too relatable, you're in desperate need of some meme therapy. Make your morning a little less dreadful by checking out this compilation of memes made for those of us running on fumes. This week has been tough, to say the least, and we're still trying to adjust to the time change that snuck up on us (like it doesn't happen at the same time every year). So, let's take a collective mental reset and grab some much-needed laughs from these memes below.




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18-year-old stepdaughter refuses to accept younger stepdaughter and 39-year-old stepmother, stepmother tells her to move out: 'I told her that if she hates us so much then she can leave'

At 18, you are an adult in every sense of the word. Sure, your frontal lobe hasn't fully developed, and you're going to make a whole lot of bad choices over the next seven or so years, but the difference between 17 and 18 is that you're going to be solely responsible—and accountable—for those decisions. That means the way you engage your personal relationships and the decisions you make for your future are on you, despite your relative inability to properly rationalize them and your lack of experience in making them.

If you're fortunate and privileged, you'll still have the support of parents, guardians, and other mentors who push you in the right direction. If you're even more fortunate, you get to spend these years in a structured simulation environment called "college," where you get to engage with other frontal-lobe-ly challenged "adults" where you can go on adventures and make all kinds of terrible decisions that you'll look fondly on and/or regret for the rest of your life. But regardless of whether or not you attend this life-simulator, you're going to have to start getting your act together and taking responsibility, which is why the behavior of this 18-year-old, despite her tragic background, needs to desperately be adjusted.

This stepmother has been really struggling to develop a closer relationship with her 18-year-old stepdaughter, who has not adjusted well to her blended family, saying horrible things about her stepmother, who she has known as a parental figure for most of her life. This tragically complex situation is probably a signifier of some underlying trauma that the young woman is dealing with, but it prompted the stepmother to turn to this online community to see whether or not she was in the wrong for telling her stepdaughter to leave their home, to which the young woman complied.




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‘I got extra pay, a box of chocolates, [and] an apology': Karen gets fired after screaming for 40 minutes at a customer service rep because they refuse to break company policy

Is it really so difficult to be kind to the customer service person trying to troubleshoot your problem over the phone? I get it, everything's falling to pieces on your end, but it doesn't make any logical sense to be unsavory to the one person who can actually help you.  

This Karen in our next story proved that being aggressive over the phone doesn't get you everything you want, and sometimes it can get you fired…. Or maybe even investigated by the Feds. 

Imagine, this customer service employee was about 15 seconds from clocking out for the day–it was Friday at 4:59:45 PM and they were grabbing their coats on their way out and the blasted phone rang. Seeing that the number was from an internal caller, as in, someone within their company, the employee thought this would be a simple thing to solve and that they could make quick work of their coworker's problem. Except, the woman on the other end of the line wasn't looking for solutions, she was looking for a customer service rep to break the rules for her. 

Keep scrolling to see how a 40-minute IT support call turned into an apology letter, a box of chocolates, and an immediate, dishonorable resignation. 




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'[I] asked for a 15k raise': Hybrid employee pressured to come into the office 5 days a week, employee refuses to give in without his promised promotion

Let this story serve as a friendly reminder to stand up for what you were hired for in the first place. If your boss tries to impose new rules and regulations, new responsibilities, and new expectations that were not expressly written in your initial contract, then you are well within your right to advocate for yourself. That means advocating for a raise or promotion if you feel compelled to do so. It can also mean enforcing what's currently written in your contract if you do not wish to accept the new changes. Be prepared to receive some pushback, of course, but again, you have some leverage here.

This hybrid employee was hired with the expectation that he could spend two days working remotely, which was convenient for his family and young kid. When his boss suddenly decided to adjust those expectations and demand that he come into the office five days a week, the employee stood his ground and said he would only do so if he were granted a 15k raise. This led to a difficult negotiation process, but folks like us are proud of the original poster (OP) for not backing down. For more stories like this, check out this post about a company that tried to steal a job candidate's idea.




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'He was a nightmare': Employee's savage review after quitting exposes entitled boss, leads to their termination

When you're applying for jobs, you're probably checking out every online review you can find to dodge any potential red flags. After all, who wants to go through multiple interviews only to discover that the company's run by an entitled boss who thinks coworkers should act like "family"? Hard pass. Sites that let employees rate companies are a goldmine for honest feedback—sometimes with details that make you grateful for the warning.

Well, after one employee spent six grueling months working under a new VP, they tried to clue in the higher-ups about just how awful the new boss was. When the owner didn't take their concerns seriously, they took things a step further, leaving a brutally honest review that laid everything bare. The best part is it worked. The entitled boss eventually got the boot, and the company's culture finally went back to normal. Unfortunately, the original employee who exposed the mess had already quit—but at least they left with a story of sweet, well-deserved karma.




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Candidate gets rejected from a job they perfectly qualify for, they reapply with a new email account and immediately get moved up in the hiring process: ‘It was even the same recruiter’

Who didn't experience the frustration of getting email after email of rejection from countless jobs you thought you'd be perfect for? If you never experienced that, then congratulations! You are one in a million. If you do know what we're talking about, our question to you is – After how many rejections did you acknowledge that maybe the problem is you and something should change? 50? 100? 1000?  Plus, what does one should change to actually make a difference?

The person in this Reddit story came up with an interesting tactic after getting rejected from a job for which they were perfectly qualified. After several more similar rejections that made no sense to OP (original poster), they decided to open a new email account and reapply for jobs using the same exact resume. This tactic proved successful when they were immediately moved up to the next step in the hiring process for that initial perfect job.

Keep scrolling to read the full story. After you are done, click here for a story of an employee who overheard their boss talking about major workplace changes, and then confronted him about it.




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'I didn't even think it was possible to get fired at orientation': 20+ Employees who were stunned to be fired for their big mistakes

In case you've never considered it before, yes, you can get fired at your job orientation. It probably makes things easier for the hiring team. Why bother hiring a person who can't even make it through the first few days of the gig?

Some people get hired at a job, but they make it clear from day one that they're just utterly uninterested in doing work for even a minute. One guy chose to only work from 10 AM-12 PM each day, which is iconic of him, and I wish him all the best. Another woman became notorious for her habit of refusing to work, and only riding the office tricycle all day! It's pretty startling that some people make it so blatantly obvious how little they want to work. Have some subtlety! Just do what a lot of higher-ups do and work half a day, grab a long lunch with your coworkers, then claim you're taking a phone meeting and leave at 3 PM. How hard could it be to get away with that? Keep scrolling to read some of the funniest stories about coworkers getting fired early on. 

After that, read the tale of the babysitter who ate about $25 of a $90 cake, and the woman she babysat for (her own aunt!) wants to be repaid ASAP. 




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Woman calls out her emotionally manipulative mother for calling her ungrateful during Thanksgiving meltdown: 'Mom, you really need to stop playing the victim'

Hosting family events is no small thing. Letting people into your intimate space who you have a close and (possibly) troubled history with, resulting from problematic relationship dynamics, presents all sorts of problems. It's basically like opening a Pandora's box of sorts of complex family trauma. Usually, the problematic ones will be rogue cousins or uncles who you just don't see eye to eye with, but occasionally, it will be your own problematic parents.

This woman found herself at a breaking point with her emotionally manipulative mother, who she says has a severe victim complex. While she was hosting the family's (Canadian) Thanksgiving, her mother's passive-aggressive jousting prompted her to strike back, countering her mother's monologue about parental sacrifice with her own attacks, calling out her mother's behavior. This, of course, put a damper on festivities, with some members of the family siding with the woman and others siding with her mother.




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'I stopped trying to cover for her': 15-year-old calls out grandmother over concert attendance

This teenager is not going to waste her breath trying to convince her grandmother to watch her end-of-the-year school concert. Instead, she had a quick conversation with Grandma, and then turned off her phone!

In life, you'll learn that a lot of people are flaky. Being the friend who actually shows up to events time and time again isn't easy, but it's so worth it to deepen your relationships with those around you. It's a sign that you care enough about that person to carve some time out of your busy schedule and attend their function. For this kid, all she wanted was to invite her grandmother to one of her events: an annual school concert for the choir she participates in. But this grandmother continually makes up last-minute excuses for why she can't go to the show. Instead of just telling her grandkid that she isn't a fan of live shows or that she's just plain uninterested, she's been letting her down for years. This year, the 15-year-old put her foot down in a sassy yet polite way, and at least one of her parents has her back. 

Up next, the internet was rather critical of this 22-year-old employee's tactic to get their colleagues to reply to their emails, because they "decided to start including the Chairman/CEO…on all emails." 




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Boss contacts former employee asking for forgotten passwords, employee refuses to comply without being paid the $10,000 they were owed before leaving: ‘Pay me first’

When one leaves a job in which they didn't like their boss, there are two things they might hope for any future interaction with said boss – Either no interaction at all and completely severing any connection with that person, or getting to see them one more time and proving to them just how much that boss missed out on by letting them go.

Out of those two options, the best stories obviously come from the latter, much like the story we have here. OP (original poster) was contacted by their former toxic boss and was asked to retrieve old passwords for an email and Instagram account. Considering how OP left that company, they weren't too eager to help their former boss, especially since they were still owed $10k of unpaid commissions. The people in the comments were quick to tell OP to use this opportunity and get that money in exchange for the passwords.

Keep scrolling to read the full story. Up next, check out this story of a job candidate who got a second chance by creating a new email address.




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25 of the Best Test Fails This Week (November 11, 2024)

No one forgets the experience of seeing a question on an exam and realizing you have absolutely no idea what to put down. If you could cough up a decent answer, you would. However, this time, you are completely stumped.

Perhaps you're not used to this phenomenon. Perhaps you were the kind of student who always studied and yet, for whatever reason, the topic presented in this one question was a complete blind spot for you in your preparation. If you're clever, you can find a way to connect the question to an adjacent, related topic that you do know something about. Unfortunately, sometimes, there is no dancing around the reality that you can't smooth talk your way out of this one. A lot of these students had fun with the fact that they were 100% failing their exams. After all, if you're going to fail, you might as well fail gloriously.

Keep scrolling below for this collection of exam fails. For more content like this, check out these employees who got petty with their customers. 




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Mother appoints her brother to be her 3 under 10-year-old children's unpaid personal chef: '[She] expect[s] me to make something every day for the kids'

Meals are undoubtedly one of the most important daily chores, along with sleep. Being properly fed is one of the things that everything else in a successful and happy life stems from. But providing healthy meals for your family isn't cheap… Have you seen the price of groceries these days? And the time it takes to cook and clean for an entire family can't be understated. So, undoubtedly, the combination of those two things, the time and the price of the actual food, would be supremely valuable. 

Of course, you can just trick your sous-chef brother into cooking for your three children instead. Surely, if he's willing to do it once for free, you can just ask him to do it again and again. Even when it comes to family, there's a limit to the favors you're expected to perform, and there's a point where demanding favors just becomes freeloading and entitlement




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Employee refuses to respond to boss's email asking to reconsider their resignation, instead decides to air out everything they think about their boss: ‘[You] are useless’

There is an episode in How I Met Your Mother where Marshall gets yelled at by his terrible boss, and he doesn't know how he should react. His friends all give him different advice, some saying he should ignore it, while others said he should kindly confront his boss and put him in his place. Eventually, Marshall unexpectedly explodes at his boss and screams back at him with everything he thinks of his job and the management, and at the end of this screaming fit, Marshall quits.

While it is just a TV show, many employees encounter moments like these in real life, where they just can't keep everything in, especially regarding their bosses. The employee in this Reddit story had considered doing exactly what Marshall did after they resigned. They sent their notice in an email to their boss, and after the boss asked them to reconsider, they debated whether they should give said terrible boss a piece of their minds.

Keep scrolling to read the full story. After you are done, click here for a story of a feud between a boss and a former employee over forgotten passwords.




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Dad gets back at teenage stepdaughters for making his 16-year-old daughter sleep on the floor of their hotel room: 'I gave my daughter an entire room for herself'

Who knew that evil stepsisters were still a thing? One would think these two teenagers would get a grip and be kind to the Cinderella of this story, rather than lean into the Evil Stepsister caricature. Unfortunately, however, they could not help themselves.

This Redditor was traveling with his family for a memorial service, and his wife booked a hotel room for his daughter Shiloh and two stepdaughters to share. Things went a bit south when the stepdaughters insisted that Shiloh sleep on the floor. When the original poster (OP) discovered that this was going on, he told Shiloh to pack her things and immediately booked her a separate hotel room.

This ultimately backfired as the two stepdaughters went crying and complaining to OP's wife (their mother), accusing OP of playing favorites. The fact that OP's wife had the audacity to not hear and empathize with her husband's side of the story leads us to believe that this second marriage is unlikely to work out. For more stories like this, check out this post about some Thanksgiving drama.




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High school English teacher docks 99 points from a student's grade by cleverly proving they used AI to write their assignment: ‘We both knew what they did’

It seems like the only way to prevent cheating in an age where we all have little computers in our pockets is to completely isolate a person, give them a pencil and some paper, and unleash their class assignment. But since we don't exist in a vacuum and high school classes have upwards of 30+ kids per 45-minute class period, you've got to be like this teacher in our next story, who was far more clever than that. 

Being a teacher in 2024 is probably one of the most challenging jobs. 

Teachers are overworked, under-appreciated, and likely underpaid for their version of professional cat-wrangling. Not only are the kids feral, but they're becoming far more witty to cut corners in class. However, wiley, lazy, and arrogant teenagers make the perfect target for a well-laid trap in the form of a hyper-specific creative writing assignment. 

Keep scrolling to read the satisfying tale of a cheater getting exposed for their lies and thrown to the wolves simply because they were too entitled to attempt their school assignment.




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Stepmother admonishes 16-year-old for taking her necklace away from 1-year-old sister, leading to public meltdown: 'She started lecturing me'

Learning boundaries is important, even if it means being disappointed—not everything is always going to go your way. Sure, when you're one year old, something you were interested in suddenly disappearing might be the worst thing that's ever happened to you, but it's important to learn that lesson now because once you're older, learning that same lesson gets a lot more inappropriate and embarrassing. There's a big difference between a 12-year-old throwing a public tantrum because they didn't get what they wanted and a one-year-old crying for the same reason.

With parenting, there's a delicate balance to be struck between giving kids the best childhood possible and making sure they learn the right lessons. One day, that kid is going to be an adult. Never being disappointed by anything during their development as a kid is going to lead to them becoming a spoilt teen and then a full-grown, entitled person. And at some point, it's going to be too late to set them on the right path without serious self-evaluation. 

As commenters have noted here, the teen is the real parent in this situation… and the stepmother's response hints at a possibly unnecessarily hostile attitude toward her stepdaughter.




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‘I’m not giving you my cat’: Entitled mom asks cat owner to ‘loan’ her their cat for her daughter's birthday party, owner refuses but mom shows up on their doorstep the day of the party

First and foremost, pet owners are very protective of their animals. Rightfully so, as you never know what kind of crazy is lurking around the corner. It's in the owner and their pet's best interest that they don't let just anybody hang around their animals or watch them unsupervised. 

If someone wants to be in an animal's company, they better go adopt their own! It's not up to pet owners to fulfill an entitled person's pet fantasy for a day, especially after they refused to do so on multiple occasions. The pet parent in this story experienced this first-hand.

An entitled neighborhood mom asked the original poster (OP) if they could lend her family their cat for her daughter's upcoming birthday party. Cats are not similar to dogs in the way they interact with humans, and the pet owner politely refused. They didn't want to put their cat in an uncomfortable position. The entitled mother doubles down and exclaims that the pet owner "owes it to the community" to have their cat, Mochi, attend her daughter's birthday party. 

The pet owner thought she got it through the mother's head that no means no, but the mother shows up at their doorstep with her daughter in an attempt to guilt-trip them. Scroll to read.




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Stepsisters hide 18-year-old's passport so she would miss the family vacation and take care of the kids, father retaliates by cancelling the whole trip: 'I was livid'

There is a lot of irresponsible parenting in this story. First, let's start with the stepsisters in question. This is a pair of 25 and 28-year-old single moms who were so reliant on the Redditor's 18-year-old daughter to babysit their kids that they couldn't possibly get a real babysitter to take care of them. So when it came time for a family vacation, the stepsisters tried to convince the Redditor's daughter to stay behind, despite the fact that she wanted to partake in some much-deserved time off as well.

Then, there's the Redditor's wife, who tried to defend her fully-grown daughters for trying to sabotage the 18-year-old's ability to join the family on the trip. These ladies stole her passport, leaving the 18-year-old and her father scrambling just hours before their flight departure. Tension was so high between all the members of the family that the Redditor decided to cancel the entire trip. Looks like his stepdaughters would have to take care of their own kids for a change.

Keep scrolling below for the full story and for the best reactions from folks in the comments section. For more, check out this post about a Thanksgiving meltdown.




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'Had to sit in different seats at the theater because this is what we found': 20+ Movie theater moments that made people want to walk out early

Going to the movie theater is all fun and games until you remember you have to deal with the general populace while there. 

For many people, having a night at the movies is the perfect way to view the newest blockbuster. There's nothing like the feeling of entering the theater and smelling that strong popcorn scent. You get your tickets and snacks, then make your way to your seat to watch a bunch of trailers. (Some people don't like watching trailers, but I think it's a good way to get your money's worth out of your excursion!) Then you settle in to watch the film on the giant screen in total darkness.

Well, that's the ideal situation. But I'm sure you know that the people below had much worse movie dates than that. For example, a shocking amount of people enjoy using multiple screens during the showing. Some pull out their phones at full brightness. Others will shell out $20 for a ticket, only to pull out their laptops and work the whole time (or at least until the manager tells them to knock it off). And that's just one of the numerous issues that these movie-goers encountered… check out a bunch more below. 

Up next, read about the single very silly reason this manager refused to hire a qualified barista, saying that "[It] is just really tacky.




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'What a grinchy thing to do': Woman surprises grandmother with incorrectly labelled gift card after "joking" about it

The entire family is giving this woman the side-eye after she did something strange during a gift exchange. 

Instead of getting an individual present for every member of your family, some families choose to do Secret Santa gift exchanges. It's a good way to add some fun to the typical present exchange. Everyone is assigned a family member to gift a nice present to in secret. Then, when the present is opened, the person usually finds out who gave it to them. It's a sweet tradition that allows each person to be really thoughtful about their present without breaking the bank. After all, it can be way easier to give one $50 present to one person rather than 10 or 15 individual gifts to everyone in the family. 

This person is being called out for acting a bit stingy. If she was having financial trouble, maybe she should've quietly talked to the Secret Santa organizer. Instead, money troubles or not, she's making a bad impression on everyone else, and commenters agreed that what she did was kind of tacky. 

Up next, this neighbor decided that she had an issue with one family's boat: it was in view, so she decided it had to be moved ASAP. 




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'I am not allowed to do anything': Retail worker faces down angry parents after colleague sells parents the wrong computer for kid's gaming ambitions, prevented from helping them by silly company policy

Working retail is a hectic and endless stream of customer interactions that balance on a knife's edge, with any one of them threatening to teeter off into a full-blown customer meltdown with possibly little to no cause. It's a way of living that leaves you emotionally drained and completely exasperated, while weekends end up giving you just enough time to self-isolate and prepare for your next shift.

Meanwhile, despite claiming to have the customer's best interest at heart, upper management makes decisions that only serve to maximize their own bonuses and profit, putting you directly in the firing line for even more hostile interactions with customers. They'll enact some broad-sweeping policy that flies in the face of logical reason and expect you to follow it to the letter, vaguely implying serious consequences should you not blindly obey and refuse to listen to the insistence of everyone that their plan is a bad one. Then, acting like it's the worker's fault when they receive customer complaints about their policy. That's what this retail worker shared experiencing when they recounted this story from their days in retail, facing down belligerent customers whilst handling bizarre directives from their superiors.




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The Leaden Angels




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Bob the AIngry Flower




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The Best Ever Chopsticks Ever




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The Inner Light




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The Evil Business Guy Made of Butter




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News: THE STATE OF THE COMIC: 09/18/2017

Lots of subjects! This is going to be a long one I think!


I’m Behind on Everything! But I’m catching up with a smile on my face!
There’s a lot missing from the site! Defenders content, contact info, Dialogue Search, etc. And things left to automate too! News Headlines, Forums, Comics Posting; all these things are not automated yet. But we’re making progress, a little bit every day.
On a personal note, I’m feeling my way through the way I want everything to happen in this new lifestyle of mine. There’ll be some growing pains as I flex my elbows and shape my schedule. I’m feeling a little overwhelmed right now with the new little details in my life, but every day gets a little more shiny! Give me a month or two and we should have our groove back!

On the Comic Itself: I know it’s been cliffhanger after cliffhanger in the strip. I really appreciate the elbow room to tell the story right instead of trying to crowbar it all in by the 25th of August.  I really was thinking about doing that. Also I was fearing having to just end things. But as all of this has unfolded I am thrilled to have this happy medium. “The Fall” will run as I always intended! That in and of itself is enough reason to sincerely thank each and every one of you Defenders of the Nifty and New Defenders 20+ for allowing this to happen!


The Store will stay closed for a bit! I’m thinking it won’t  open until October! Maybe later! I can’t even think of fulfilling orders until I get Book 17 locked down and figure out how to get all the bookmarks and pawnz out!


Speaking of The Defenders Exclusive Pawn and Bookmark of the Month: Everybody who’s been a Defender 20+ at Level 2 or higher for all of September will get a digital version of the Dark Gwynn Pawnz and the Dark Gwynn bookmark. Level 3 or higher lands you a printed version sent to you.



This monthly reward-printing is new to me, but I’m sure will go smoothly! I’ll keep y’all posted on that! If you want the yet-undesigned Demon-Spear Psyk Pawnz and Bookmark make sure you’re at level 2 or higher for all of October (level 3 or higher for a printed version)! This is a Public Service Announcement.


On to the biggest thing I need to get my tail in gear on:
The Archives- I need to finish my Archives Approving! This is my new top-of-the-list as of today!  We fixed a lot of the bouncing and bandwidth issues on the archives and got some calendar navigation in! And by “we” I meant ‘Team Not Including Me’. I said at site launch that “Chapters 48-64: Haven’t looked at yet! Uncharted Territory! New Readers AVOID these Chapters, rows of many strips may just be GONE! (It’ll take me maybe a week to clear these up!)” Well I haven’t had that time yet. Who knew lightened my workload was so much work? No more excuses, I’m doing it!!!


BONUS BEHIND THE SCENES: How We Remastered The Impossible Archives:  Here’s some insight on how the bigger archives were created. At one point I was doing one hi-res file per comic. (Back when comics were rarely more than 1 row). Theses would be dropped into books. Then, for the more epic stores I started doing larger comic files. These had to be broken down into multiple pages at book time. Then I was like ‘what a pain in the butt! I’ll just lay these out in book form directly and pluck from them the individual comic files. So some comics crossed pages. Some pages held multiple comics. And the patterns varied over the 20 years Sluggy’d been going on.

We have hi-res pdfs of the books, but sometimes books had different layout, comic order (sometimes holiday stories were moved to the back to the book for example), and the pdfs were sometimes missing filler art, guest artist weeks, and the random wacky things that have fallen into the archives into the years.

So with all that mess, how does one create a higher-res archive?

The team turned a computer into the Ultimate Sluggite! It read every comic, breaking it into slices, pouring over every detail, and matched the low res archives to my hi-res various files. For TWENTY YEARS OF almost DALY STRIPS! That’s 6,696 comics made of 8,445 low res files sliced into 12,215 rows matched against 5,511 high res pages to produce 10,050 matching high res files! THAT’S INSANE! And I dig that one of my biggest fans is a robot forced to be a fan against its will! OK I like to think that way at least!


In conclusion: We’ve done so much! So much left to do! Every day is getting better! THANK YOU DEFENDERS! And this was one long news story!


-Pete




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Something you need to know about me is that I’ll do literally anything in the world before I will go to the doctor.

"Oh my god, you guys! I am so excited to start physical therapy, I woke up early! What a great day! See you all at 4pm for dinner, after my nap!"




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Six unelected people forcing their unpopular christian nationalist agenda on a population of three hundred and forty million is not a Democracy. It is tyranny.

America has not been attacked like this since 9/11. Six unelected people forcing their christian nationalist agenda on a population of three hundred and forty million is not a Democracy. It is tyranny.




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The Wedding Crusher

Okay, so. I'm developing this Star Trek Lower Decks fan fiction I call The Wedding Crusher.




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Cartoons from the June 26, 2023, Issue


Cartoons from the June 26, 2023, Issue




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Cartoons from the July 3, 2023, Issue


Cartoons from the July 3, 2023, Issue




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Cartoons from the July 24, 2023, Issue


Cartoons from the July 24, 2023, Issue




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Cartoons from the July 31, 2023, Issue


Cartoons from the July 31, 2023, Issue




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Cartoons from the August 7, 2023, Issue


Cartoons from the August 7, 2023, Issue




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Cartoons from the August 14, 2023, Issue


Cartoons from the August 14, 2023, Issue




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Cartoons from the August 21, 2023, Issue


Cartoons from the August 21, 2023, Issue




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Cartoons from the August 28, 2023, Issue


Cartoons from the August 28, 2023, Issue




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Cartoons from the September 4, 2023, Issue


Cartoons from the September 4, 2023, Issue




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The End…? – Multiplex 10




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Metapost: Today is the day for the comment of the week

Comics Curmudgeon readers! Do you love this blog and yearn for a novel written by its creator? Well, good news: Josh Fruhlinger's The Enthusiast is that novel! It's even about newspaper comic strips, partly. Check it out! It is Friday: the day of the week when I showcase the top comment that were posted on […]




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Blast (?) from the past

Comics Curmudgeon readers! Do you love this blog and yearn for a novel written by its creator? Well, good news: Josh Fruhlinger's The Enthusiast is that novel! It's even about newspaper comic strips, partly. Check it out! Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 11/12/24 As we move inexorably into a post-newspaper world, we do have to […]




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Don’t let small town values decide the fate of women

Republicans seem to be proud of their ‘solution’ for abortion: they’ll just devolve everything to the states and local authorities, so they don’t have their callousness and brutality thrown into their faces on the national level anymore. As far as I’m concerned, this is the worst possible solution. It puts women under the thumb of […]