Entitled People
The world is full of entitled people that do their best to skate by on the backs of others. There is often nothing preventing these people from supporting themselves aside from their personal belief they are above everyone else. They seek out their own personal satisfaction through victimizing themselves and making the people in their life feel sorry for them. The majority of the negative things that happen to them are entirely self-inflicted; however, they love to frame it as “nothing going their way.”
Our friend, “Max,” knows one of these people quite well. Max was an aspiring writer and actor; however, he worked a low-paying and unfulfilling job to make ends meet while pursuing his dream career. The trouble began when he met a woman named “Marley” through his mentor.
From the get-go, Max knew that Marley did not have the work ethic to make it in acting but for some reason, Marley behaved as if she had already made it. Marley would never hold down a job for long and had the attitude she was too good to be working a nine-to-five job. She would constantly brag about her “twenty years of acting experience” and had a fake, padded resume that highlighted it along with an “obviously heavily edited camera phone photo she tried to pass off as a professional headshot.”
To Max’s surprise, Marley was married.
Apparently, Marley’s husband found the best way of tolerating his wife was accepting out-of-state construction jobs the majority of the year. Her husband traveled all over the country, and even to Canada, for months at a time for work. Unfortunately, the majority of his hard-earned money went directly to his wife, who somehow managed to find herself without a job shortly after he left on every assignment.
Max believed that he purposely took as many out-of-state jobs as possible to avoid having to spend his time outside of work with Marley. Marley would constantly rant about much she hated her husband to anyone who would listen; however, she never even considered divorcing him because he paid for almost everything.
The real trouble began when Marley sought out income outside her poor husband.
~
Leverage
Marley would often emotionally manipulate people for money. She used her son and his half-sister for sympathy to get people to “loan” her money. One of her signature moves was going on entitled rants about how difficult it was to take care of her son and daughter after spending the entire child support payment she had just received from her first husband on herself.
That move had worked on Max a couple of times and he was never paid back. He heard through mutual friends she often bragged about how people would just give her money whenever she asked. Hearing this rightfully infuriated him and he stopped giving her money whenever she “needed help.”
When Max refused to help out, she used the leverage of her kids to have a mutual friend pay the state fees to reinstate her cosmetology license. Of course, that mutual friend never saw the money again. Marley had barely settled into her cosmetology job when the neighbor she had swindled into watching her disaster of a son gave her an ultimatum of either paying for the babysitting or finding someone else. Marley tried to play the “single mom trying to make ends meet” card, but the neighbor responded by calling her husband.
Her husband demanded Marley pay the neighbor for watching their son or leave them alone.
Marley decided to demand a flexible work schedule at the job she had just started, and was unsurprisingly denied. She quit her cosmetology job because “her son needed her.” She never found another babysitter and remained unemployed.
Marley even managed to swindle one of her and Max’s mutual friends out of her old car. As a shock to no one, she had ghosted their mutual friend when it came time to actually pay them back for the car. The only thing she needed the car for was driving her son to school and that was always accompanied by whining to whoever would listen. She even tried to pawn off driving her son to school on her teenage daughter’s friends despite having a car that she paid next to nothing for. Her signature, “See if I remember you when I’m famous,” didn’t seem to work on teenagers.
Around the same time, Max got a call from Marley one afternoon at work. He let it go to voicemail; however, he knew that she would keep calling until he picked up. He had no interest in hearing what unfortunate thing had happened to Marley that was completely her fault. She continued to try to call him throughout the afternoon.
When he got in his car to drive home, Marley tried to call him the entire drive home. As soon as he pulled into his driveway, Marley tried calling him again. That time, Max answered the phone.
~
Speeding Ticket
Max accepted the call and said, “I just got home from work.”
As if she was accommodating, Marley responded, “It’s okay. I don’t mind.”
Max cringed at the sound of her voice and said, “But I do. I’m hanging up now. Don’t call back.”
Marley responded, “Goodness, what crawled up your rear end and died?”
Max snarkily said, “I’m not going through this again. You’re not everyone’s top priority. I really don’t care why you felt like calling me out of the blue. If your life isn’t what you want it to be, then change it. If you can’t change it, then change your attitude. Don’t complain.”
There was silence. Max could tell it made Marley angry and he was glad it did.
Marley cautiously responded, “I got a ticket.”
Max sarcastically asked, “How? When did you get a car? Oh, right. You scammed ‘Cassie’ out of her old one. She’s furious with you, by the way. She wants the rest of her money. I told her not to hold her breath.”
Marley didn’t respond.
Max continued, “So, you got a ticket. So what?”
It was obvious Marley had expected a more sympathetic response.
Marley started to whine, “I was driving to pick my son up from school and I was pulled over for not wearing my seatbelt.”
Max responded, “Well, maybe if he hadn’t been kicked off the bus for fighting, for the third time this year, this might not have happened.”
Max piled on, “Also, you should have had your seatbelt on anyway. It’s the law. Even after nearly dying in a car accident and losing a friend in a fatal crash, where she most likely would have lived had she had her seatbelt on, I still don’t understand why you don’t wear yours.”
Molly tried to dismiss what Max had said and responded, “I know. I know. The ticket is a hundred and fourteen dollars.”
Max asked, “And?”
He could tell his response made Marley panic because she didn’t get her desired response from him.
Marley anxiously responded, “Don’t you think that’s a lot? I don’t know what I’m going to do.”
Max internally laughed at the acting job that Marley was trying to put on him. No wonder she never made it as an actress, he thought.
Max warned her, “Don’t ask me for my opinion unless you really want it.”
Marley was silent, and Max realized she was re-evaluating her strategy again. It finally clicked what was really going on.
~
“Well, If You’re Offering”
Max said, “Wait. You didn’t call me for sympathy. For the record: I don’t care. You’re trying to get me to give you money to pay for your ticket, aren’t you?”
Marley chucked and tried to act surprised, “Well, if you’re offering.”
Max could sense her smirk through the phone.
He snapped back, “I didn’t offer and won’t. After all the times you’ve hit me up, and I’ve blatantly told you no, you’re trying again? What happened to ‘I’ll never bother you again?’”
Marley once again fell silent to re-evaluate her strategy again. She decided to try whining again.
Marley screeched, “But it’s an emergency!”
Max retorted, “You have a lot of those. Poor planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on mine.”
Marley pouted, “Thanks. Kick me while I’m down, why don’t you? I can’t afford this! You have no idea how hard it is being a single mom!”
Max saw red and shouted, “Oh, give me a break! You’re not a single mom! You have a husband. You know, the man you forced into marriage because you let him knock you up, but won’t leave because he pays for the majority of your living expenses? Do you remember that Miss ‘I didn’t think I could get pregnant again?’”
Marley angrily responded, “You don’t know what you’re talking about! He’s never here! I’m all on my own because he’s always working.”
Marley realized what she had said and fell silent.
Max took advantage, “Yeah. Keyword: working. Out of state. Away from you. It never occurred to you he took that job because he can’t stand even being in the same room as you? You ask me, he’s a saint keeping your unemployed rear end around.”
Marley responded, “You’re such a bully. I have to pay rent and my water bill. I don’t have the money for all that and this ticket.”
Max retorted, “Again, that’s not my problem. Perhaps, if you hadn’t quit your job the second your husband left the state for his current work contract, you’d be able to stay afloat. I don’t know where you get off thinking that people are going to part with their hard-earned money just because you think you deserve it. I just don’t.”
Marley sheepishly responded, “I’ll never ask you for help again,” and began to fake cry.
Max said, “That’s what you said last time and the time before that and the time before that.”
He heard the fake crying on the other end stop.
Max continued, “I don’t know if you suffer short-term memory loss or are just plain dumb. I saw through your scam a long time ago. You might get a lot further in life if you treated all of your friends, and the people you meet, like they weren’t just your own personal piggy banks to bleed dry.”
To his surprise, Marley had no response.
Max piled on, “Also, I might have been inclined to help you if I didn’t know, for a fact, that you’ve been laughing behind my back about how you won’t ever return the rest of the money you owe me.”
Max heard a slight gasp from Marley, but that was her only rebuttal.
He continued, “I told you before to watch who you run your mouth to. You’re not the only person I talk to. You can’t talk bad about everyone to anyone who will listen and have people like you. It just doesn’t work that way.”
Max couldn’t believe Marley didn’t try to have the last word.
Max said, “I’m hanging up now and I’m going inside. Don’t call back or text or bother me in any way shape or form. I’ve had it with you.”
~
Beyond Help
Max hung up and turned his phone off. He was proud of himself for not allowing Marley to have the last word. Their relationship had already been rocky, but their interaction just pushed Max over the edge. After their conversation, Max cut off contact with Marley to the point they were only friends on social media that never interacted.
Thankfully for her kids, Marley’s daughter ended up as a registered nurse, got married, and had a family of her own. Her son-in-law doesn’t allow visits with her grandson because they always turned into her guilt-tripping her daughter out of money. Her son eventually grew up, realized that his mother had been using him as an excuse to do nothing his whole life, and enlisted in the military. To Max’s shock, Marley and her husband remained married despite him taking as many long-distance construction jobs as possible.
He heard through mutual friends that the same exact thing had happened with many of her friendships, and she would be highly apologetic and promise any of them still willing to listen that she would change. Unfortunately, it never took long for Marley’s entitlement to show back up.
Some people are just beyond help.
~
Thoughts From The Author
I knew there were entitled people in the world, but that story gave me a completely new idea of how far some people can take it. Marley’s husband being more willing to travel almost all year for construction jobs rather than interact with his wife enough to get divorced would have been enough to show that she was one of the more entitled people on the planet on its own. With that being said, I still don’t understand how that was a better idea than just divorcing Marley. Clearly, one guy was smart enough to accept paying child support and get out while he still could. Maybe her husband sucks just as bad in his own way?
I don’t even know where to begin on Marley. Reading about her antics gave me a headache on behalf of Max, her family, and anyone else that was forced to interact with her. It’s bad enough to ask every friend you have for money and ghost them when it’s time to pay them back, but openly bragging about it to your mutual friends is one of the most entitled moves I’ve ever heard. Either Marley was so out of touch that she saw absolutely nothing wrong with it or she is one of the worst people ever, maybe both.
I’m proud of Max for completely putting Marley in her place. It can be hard to shut down a toxic friend when they have been getting away with it for so long but he did it and did it well. I’m sure he had been wanting to get that off his chest for a long time and I will admit that it was very satisfying to read such an entitled woman get absolutely annihilated by someone she had once taken advantage of.
~
