‘Calling someone’s mum is the ultimate flex’
No one wants to be a snitch – but sometimes threatening to call a person’s parents is the only card left to play. When at school or around a friend’s house and you misbehaved, the warning of having our parents told could strike the fear of God into some children.
Although you would hope by adulthood most of us would have grown up, it seems the prospect of being ratted out to our mothers can still have the same effect. One woman discovered this, much to her amusement when a friend of the family tried to take advantage of her. Taking to Reddit to share her story, she explained: “I am a seamstress and before getting my current job I did freelance sewing jobs for extra cash and to maintain my skills. Since I’ve been hired, I’m not allowed to side-gig services offered by the shop and I would be immediately fired if my boss found out. This is my dream job, and I will not, under any circumstances, jeopardise this opportunity.”
The woman then revealed that a good friend of hers had asked if she could help her son, who is a grown man, with an alteration. She said that he needed a new zipper on his jacket and the woman responded that she definitely could do it but explained that because she wasn’t freelancing anymore he would have to come by the shop for a price estimate.
The seamstress went on: “He comes in and is told word for word by my boss ‘Like we discussed the other day, this would be $35 (£28) plus $5-8 (£4-6) for the new zipper’. The ‘jacket’ in question is actually a Carhart winter work coat, and replacing that zipper is not the same 20-minute task as turning a pullover hoodie into a zip-up. Also, even if I were still doing sewing jobs from home, I don’t have an industrial machine capable of making that job easy and I would have charged him at least $50 (£40), so $35 (£28) is an extremely reasonable price.”
Unaware that he had already been in a few days before and been given a quote, the woman was mortified when he started mouthing off at her boss. She went on: “When he heard the price wasn’t changing just because I’m friends with his mum, he started in with ‘$35 (£28) for a zipper is outrageous! My mum could do it for so much cheaper! I can’t believe you’d charge that much for just a zipper!’ blah blah blah and other general rudeness.”
As a side note to his tantrum, she revealed that his mum doesn’t even own a sewing machine so would have had to do it by hand, after he’d mailed it to her because they live in different states. She continued: “He storms out and everyone just looks at me and says ‘Well, that was embarrassing’, and we all get back to work but I am seething.
“How dare he come into my job and show his a*** like that after having his mum call me a favour? Oh, hell no! So I called his mother back and explained exactly what he’d been told and how he acted towards us. She said he told her that they’d quoted him $60 for the new zipper so now he’s been caught lying, as well. “She said ‘he will definitely be hearing from me about this. I did not raise him to be such a butthole and that behaviour is unacceptably rude. Don’t even worry about him. I’m going to handle it’. I’ve known them for years, so I know he’s not escaping that come-to-Jesus conversation.”
The snitching seamstress finished her story but saying she hopes he enjoys getting “royally chewed out” by his parents, and still not having a functioning zipper. She added: “I’m looking forward to when he inevitably comes crawling back to apologise.” People on social media loved the sweet revenge and rushed to offer their own thoughts. One person wrote: “When he comes back, insist the quote is $60 per his conversation with his mum.” Another person enthused: “Calling someone’s mum is the ultimate flex.”
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