Is AUTHOR wrong in the post ? POST : Ok, so all of this has been unfolding in the past week or so since I’ve been back from school for the holidays. I (22M) go to a school about 3 hours from my hometown, so I’m not home often and would rather not have to work during my time off. I go to school for engineering, which I find really hard and mentally straining, so when I get time off, I just wanna relax, see old friends, not really do much. 

Here’s where my brother and dad come in. We’ll  call them Matt and Stan, respectively. They opened up a restaurant about a month ago. My first day back in town, I decide to go check it out since I haven’t seen it yet. Everything was fine here, I ordered some food, chatted a bit with Matt and went home. A day or so later, Matt (30M) comes to visit (he doesn’t live at home) and he pretty much commands me to come in and help out the next day. He didn’t even ask, it was more of a statement, which I pointed out to him was a rude way of asking for help anyways. It’s like I’m expected to help, even tho I had nothing to do with the business before and never really wanted to anyway. So even after I point this out, he still doesn’t properly ask (effing frustrating) but I say I’ll come in anyway. 

I get there the next day around 11, and he’s FULLY staffed. He’s got a prep guy and girl chopping veggies and making rice and potatoes and what not, and a grill guy to help him out with orders. Plus my dad’s floating around doing misc. things here and there. Around 4 pm, another staff member showed up to work the till , do dishes and wipe tables. So there wasn’t much to do, and he didn’t have any set plan or tasks for me ahead of time. He was like “uhh, okay, peel all the potato’s in this bag.” I felt totally under-utilized, but whatever I didn’t want to be there anyway. 

All together there’s 6 of us in this tiny kitchen, which IMO would run way smoother with like 3 or 4, plus the till girl that showed up later. After I was done peeling potatoes, there was pretty much nothing left for me to do. I spent around 3 hours just wiping stuff down, sweeping, little bit of dishes here and there. I’ve worked in kitchens before and wouldn’t mind helping the business if I could do some of the cooking and order preparing. I think that stuff is fun. But he didn’t want me helping with that because he hired people for it, so I was just loitering around, really. I felt awkward when customers saw me in the back doing nothing. And I felt awkward standing in the back watching the other employees doing work. It was just weird. Also there’s tension between my dad and bro, which I guess is expected for new business owners, but they often bickered with each other in front of staff and customers which made me feel even more awkward. Anyways, I figured they didn’t need my help, so I didn’t go in the next day.

A couple days later, Matt comes over again, and he asks why I’m not showing up to the restaurant to help out. That was literally the first thing he said to me, like I was one of his employees getting in trouble for skipping out on work. I don’t like confrontation at all, and Matt is effing stubborn, won’t matter what I say about how he’s fully staffed, he’ll expect me to come in anyways because of ‘family’. So I give him an excuse about waking up late and how my sleep schedule is off since finals, which it actually was.  

The next day I didn’t go again, I couldn’t sleep that night, I was tired and irritable and didn’t really wanna leave the house. This time my dad tries to guilt me. I had just gotten back from a McDonald’s drive thru trip. Similar to Matt, he doesn’t say hi, he immediately asks “why would you get McDonald’s and not come to the store and get food there? You don’t have to help, you should just be there for family.” He wants me to just go hangout at the store?? I dunno, felt like a trap to get me there to do the little bullshit tasks  again that he’s got employees for. 

No one else is getting this treatment in my family. My little brother (14M) helps out but he’s getting paid and I’m not. My other brother (26M) was smart enough to clearly state he wants nothing to do with this and so he doesn’t get bothered with it and doesn’t live at home so he’s not constantly guilted by my dad like I am. 

AITA here? My dad says I HAVE to go in tomorrow and the next day because I’m being rude and disrespectful to the family. Tomorrow is Friday :/. I don’t wanna work during my break, especially on the weekend. Uhhhhh. 

Any suggestions on how I can deal with this would be greatly appreciated. All of this stresses me out and gives me anxiety, honestly.

I imagine I’ll make an update tomorrow about how ‘work’ went.

