Family vacations are really fun but they are not cheap. Especially when going to theme parks.
But, as long as people can pitch in everyone gets to have a good time.
Redditor thrwawayvacation encountered this very issue with her sister-in-law. So she turned to the “Am I The A**hole” (AITA) subReddit for moral judgment.
She asked:
“AITA for not taking SIL’s kids on vacation with us?”
The Original Poster (OP) explained:
“My husbands sister has two kids (10 &12). We don’t see them often because they live a few states away and their father has primary custody.”
“My SIL has a habit of imposing on us, she’ll call us while she’s driving to our house and tell us she’ll be staying a week or two, so it wasn’t a huge surprise when she called my husband a couple days ago to say she was sending the kids to our house for 3 weeks once school lets out.”
“Apparently there’s some drama at their dads house so he doesn’t want them exposed to it, but she rents a room so the kids can’t stay the night more than 1-2 nights a week.”
There’s only one problem.
“The only problem is that one of the weeks she plans on sending them to us we’ll be on vacation at Universal. She said ‘great! They’ve never been, they’ll have so much fun!.'”
“My husband explained that isn’t an invitation, he’s letting her know she needs to choose different weeks. She asked why the kids can’t just go with us and we explained we’re driving so there’s no room and our Airbnb has just enough beds for our family.”
“She offered to drive them down herself and have them sleep on the couch. We said that could work and told her the cost of the tickets we bought were $380 each so if she sent us the money we would buy another two.”
OP’s sister-in-law was confused.
“She asked why she would send us the money, and we explained these are her kids, she would need to pay for them to go. She said that was ridiculous, if we have the money for this trip then we’re obviously well off and can afford to pay for her kids too.”
“We told her we saved for years for this trip, we have a strict budget and we cannot afford an extra $800.”
“As it is we’d have to figure out how to add more to our budget for extra food, which we didn’t ask her to pay for.”
“She called us selfish and said we’d get to explain to her kids why they didn’t get to go to Universal and their cousins did.”
“My husband hung up on her and shortly after got a call from his brother saying pretty much the same. He said $800 won’t break us, but their sister would never be able to save that much.”
“He’s not entirely wrong, we could put it on a credit card, but the whole reason it took so long to take this trip is because we are paying exclusively in cash, we just got out of credit card debt a couple years ago and don’t want to go backwards for something that isn’t an emergency.”
“We’ve given both his siblings money before for things like rent and car repairs, but this is different. Are we the a**holes?”
Redditors gave their opinions on the situation by declaring:
- NTA – Not The A**hole
- YTA – You’re The A**hole
- NAH – No A**holes Here
- ESH – Everyone Sucks Here
Most Redditors agreed OP was not the a**hole.
“HUGEEEE NTA. She sounds SO entitled. $800 is a LOT of money to ask for on a whim (seriously, that’s my mortgage payment for the month) and your brother also needs to butt out of it unless he’s going to pony up that change.” ~ TheRestForTheWicked
“My SIL went crazy at my husband and myself because we refused to use the money we had saved for a down-payment on a house to fund her Disney World vacation because she invited us to go along (and watch her kids and our kids while she did her own thing, not to mention we didn’t actually want to go). No idea how she got the idea she was entitled to our savings.” ~ YouCantSeemToForget
“I’m sorry but I wish I could down vote your comment a million times. What do you mean if the kids are forced to stay with them? The only people the kids are ‘forced’ to stay with are their own parents, not OP and her family.”
“And not go anywhere? So you’d cancel your family trip, possibly waste money if you can’t get refunded, and disappoint your own children? And for what? Because you can’t tell an entitled leech that she needs to take care of her own children? Just no, hell no!” ~ jairizza
People shared their own experiences.
“‘Hey so you’re gonna have to pay for your kids'”
“‘I don’t understand, why?'”
“‘Because they’re, ah, your…..kids….'”
“‘That’s ridiculous!!!!'”
“This has got to be one of the best exchanges I’ve ever heard” ~ Neurotic_Bakeder
“That’s like the conversation I had with a customer not that long ago.”
“Customer: ‘I called on Monday but it said you were closed!'”
“Me: ‘Yes, it was a bank holiday.'”
“Customer: ‘So?'”
“Me: ‘….This is a bank.'”
“Customer: ‘What does that have to do with anything?!'”
“Me: ‘We…..we close on bank holidays?'”
“Customer: ‘That’s disgusting that you would do that to your loyal customers! I want to make a complaint about this!'” ~ AttackPoodle94
“It was over the phone.”
“But I did get to explain to my complaints colleague why she was complaining and we had a good laugh.”
“Then my manager and I had a giggle about it because she listened to that call.”
“The saddest part is she’s a business customer. Which means she runs a business.” ~ AttackPoodle94
“I feel you on that. Ages ago I worked at a supermarket help desk. I was given hell by a customer because we closed super early on Christmas Eve and were complete closed on Christmas day.”
“Customer who was losing her mind yelled, ‘So what am I supposed to do if I forgot something for my Christmas dinner?'”
“Me, finally done with this woman’s stupidity, ‘I’m sorry, ma’am, but you’ll have to figure something else out. We do the same hours for the holiday every year and if you can’t plan for it, it’s not our fault.'”
“She wanted my manager of course.”
“I didn’t know the store manager was right behind me until he took the phone and said, ‘My employee said it far nicer than I could. Have a Merry Christmas.’ Then he hung up and giggled like a teen girl. That part was a little creepy.” ~ LadyReika
Universal is not cheap.