[-] vestmoria@linux.community 2 points 1 day ago

hi, just wanted to thank you for posting this. Religion is completely secondary to this.

[-] vestmoria@linux.community 2 points 1 day ago

I did mean that the funeral with relatives would still go ahead, but you would only attend something personal, as an extra to the traditional funeral.

this is a great idea.

[-] vestmoria@linux.community 3 points 1 day ago

the optics will be bad and people will talk shit.

no doubt about it, specially in the south.

I’m guessing the people in this thread calling similar feelings “petty” or “insane” just don’t have the same level of trauma.

correct, there is a huge bias on this thread about family, happy family, keeping up appearances... I never expected it to be that strong.

your first paragraph made me laugh.

Good luck to you.

[-] vestmoria@linux.community 2 points 2 days ago

That’s the childish response I was talking about.

then I'm childish. Note I don't say that meaning I should change. What I'm tempted to do is to agree with mother what to do with his corpse after he dies because I have the feeling she also hates some family members pretty strongly and would prefer to be her genuine self during a ceremony like this than having to cater to visitors and see the ones that wronged her, pretending all is fine and dandy.

People are flawed.

absolutely. As you said, I'm childish and don't want to change. My father has the good traits and also the bad ones I mentioned. Why should I only mention his good side? Because we're family? My father cheated on my mother, my mother forgave him. This I'll never understand.

A funeral is a time when everyone who cared for you comes together to create the last impression. You, as his son, have a lot of power to make it a good one.

yes, with the ones I care about, the ones I respect, not with a bunch of rednecks.

As I understand it from your description, you have prioritized avoiding discomfort over attending his funeral (his final wish), and you’ve prioritized avoiding discomfort by telling him that you’re going to skip instead of even softening the blow by shouldering the burden of a white lie. You chose yourself twice over your dying dad’s feelings and final requests.

Because I don't know what's the right call here: do I treat him like the adult he always was, being brutally honest with him when dealing with difficult issues because we all die or do I treat him like a scared child incapable of having sound decisions anymore, a person that only reacts and thinks emotionally?

If you don’t accept and possibly forgive his humanity now, when will you?

this is a very good question. How does forgiving and accepting his humanity look like to you? Because to me, now, accepting his humanity means white lying to him, lying to him to hide an unpleasant reality. But this means I'm treating him like a child, means the father I always knew is gone.

[-] vestmoria@linux.community 1 points 2 days ago

You go to comfort and commiserate with the survivors.

agreed, with the ones I care about

[-] vestmoria@linux.community 2 points 2 days ago

Spending 2-3 hours at the funeral home with his open casket, is a more personal way to say your farewells and honour him.

as said, I wouldn't mind a small Christian funeral where I could vet visitors. I'm all for a personal, even intimate farewell, but he wants the crowd.

Scattering his ashes at an agreed location of shared importance for the both of you, can be a powerful final goodbye.

Things I proposed already:

  • burn his corpse, use the ashes to grow a tree, small ceremony with me, mother and brother. Even with a priest.

  • burn his corpse to scatter his ashes on a river of his choosing, small ceremony with me, mother and brother. Even with a priest.

  • burn his corpse, put the ashes in three small containers so each of us makes his own ritual.

  • not burn the corpse, simply put the corpse in a hole, plant a tree over the corpse.

he wants the Christian cross with the crowd next to his mother. And me there, even if I feel is stupid. This is to be taken literally, he has already bought a place for my corpse to be buried next to him.

I feel he doesn't care about how this makes me feel, which I guess happens to so many families when conflicts like this arise.

[-] vestmoria@linux.community 5 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Are you even ever going to see these people again?

the only ones I care about are my mother and brother.

Ask your mom/siblings if they need the support, if you like them.

this is the best answer so far. With difference.

I can’t fathom why people want you to engage with people who make your life worse for no gain. Yeah, smile for your boss because you need the paycheck, but this?

cannot upvote this enough

[-] vestmoria@linux.community 4 points 2 days ago

yours is an interesting post, I'll try to rebut it.

I don't want to honor an important person by having to deal with people I don't like, that in the past stated very clearly they don't like my mother to the point of calling her a gold digger (and worse).

Something I'll never understand is why my father is so accommodating with people like that for family's sake. To me that makes him weak and lets others walk all over him, even to the point of disrespecting his own wife for 'family'. This I'll never understand.

To me doing what you propose means turning something pure into a show, a theatrical production.

I'll have to talk to my mother about this. If he goes first, she's the one who'll decide.

[-] vestmoria@linux.community 3 points 2 days ago

I agree with you, just wanted to see how unpopular this position is

[-] vestmoria@linux.community 4 points 2 days ago

I agree with you but wanted to see how un-popular my take is

[-] vestmoria@linux.community 7 points 2 days ago

He isn’t going to bar his sisters from attending his funeral

true, but my mother might. There is really that much animosity.

As a matter of fact, on one of my great grandfather's funeral 2 brothers banded together to exclude a third one from the funeral. According to my father, this person had to leave the cemetery but then climbed up a tree next to the wall to watch the ceremony.

So there is already a precedent about excluding unwanted visitors from a funeral in my completely normal family 🤣

41
submitted 2 days ago* (last edited 1 day ago) by vestmoria@linux.community to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

ETA: Thank you all for providing your opinion about this question. I'm contacting my mother and asking her about what she would want, I'll follow her lead and support what she decides. As said I don't believe she wants those toxic family members or her families around on a moment so special like saying your last goodbye to a husband. And neither do I.

I'd prefer a public funeral excluding them or conducting a small Christian ritual for family only where we can mourn him like we want but if she wants them around, so be it.

Funerals are for the living.

Thank you all.


My Christian, old republican southerner father wants me to attend his Christian funeral with all of his surviving relatives present. I don’t believe in any god, he knows that. He needs a religion to give a meaning to his life? Knock yourself out.

Religion is not the main problem here. The main problem is how close minded and fake people are in a southern small town in GA and above all, relatives. 2 aunts love to pretend everything is fine, they excel doing that on funerals and weddings, then stab you in the back as soon as you’re not within ear distance, either need drama to feel important or have way too much free time.

I wouldn’t mind a small Christian ritual with my mother, my brother, a priest and nobody else, but these women and their husbands? They drag everyone down with their stupid grudges about yard sales and business deals made in the early 2020s and seem to be envious of those who left that place and found something better. Last time I saw them, 7 years ago, they complained I don’t call them. What for?

I’m better off without them and don’t have the bandwidth to deal with them.

Family seems to be an identity issue for my father, the idea that his whole family won’t bury him together scares him. I told them I will honor him my way, with luck on the hospital bed where he dies or at home, that mother and brother are welcome to honor him with me, that I won’t attend a funeral with people I don’t like but he is not listening: he is now retorting to manipulate me (it would be so good, wouldn’t it be nice…?)

My father is not cognitively impaired. The easy way out would be to tell him ‘sure, I’ll come to your funeral with all those assholes you care so much about’ and after he dies, ignore it. I suspect my mother would agree, because she wasn’t born in GA and these aunts always felt superior to her, something my father always downplays because ‘we’re family’.

I like treating my father like an adult and want genuine conversations with him. To me, placating him on a thing like this means accepting my father has become a 5 year old who needs to be lied to so he doesn’t start feeling sad or feels I’m attacking him. It doesn’t feel right.

But it feels worse to pretend I respect those lying assholes or to listen to their boring life I don’t care about.

So what do I do?

30

somebody suggested I'm in the middle of an existential crisis. Just read my last post.

Fine, seems to be true.

Do people snap out of this?

32

more than a question, this is just something that popped in my mind after taking a week off work already, a week without work means free time to hate the job you have, but in my case more than that I've been thinking about my childhood, my parents, my extended family, our holidays together, how insignificant we humans are, how fragile and short life is, how fast time goes by and how much I don't want to work.

I guess this is cliche, but when I had to work I didn't question my job this much, didn't think about my childhood or my dreams, I simply wanted to get the job done, go home, eat and disconnect till the next day. I was like a machine, or a moron.

I'll be a moron again when I have to work again. I don't want to work.

It's like I'm a different person when I'm not working.

Is this dangerous? People too busy with work don't think like this.

I want to write poetry, lay on the sun in summer, listen to the cicadas, eat oranges and apples, listen to relaxing music. I want to play the guitar.

35

my father is religious, I'm not and I don't care what happens to my body after I die. Burn me, use me to feed stray cats.

To me, wasting money to buy a plot of land so I may be buried with them when I die is a stupid idea.

It is, however, his money. Who am I to disagree with him?

46

We do exactly the same job.

To me the idea of enjoying a job is an odd one: I don’t want to work, I only work because I need the money. If I had money I wouldn't work.

I don't know if this makes me the oddest person on earth, but where I am my coworkers sometimes make me feel so.

She asked me if I enjoy my job. I looked at her surprised while thinking to answer her with a regular blanket manager answer like ‘it is such a honor to work here, fuck yeah, I’d love to work here for free!’ or being completely sincere.

I was in a good mood, so I chose being sincere: ‘I don’t enjoy working, I work because I need to pay for the rest of my life, I enjoy cooking, writing poetry and walking through a forest.’

She looked at me a bit surprised and replied: ‘but you have to like your job.’ My answer? ‘As long as I earn money all’s good.’

This happened in a big room with like 9 coworkers hearing the convo.

Now I don’t know if I just committed job suicide where I work at, but it was liberating saying out loud at the workplace what I think a job is.

And why the fixation that you must like a job? It’s a job for fucks sake. Why do you have to like it?

To me this only confirms my current job is a cult. Am I exaggerating?

If every workplace is like this I should stick with the devil I know...

25
submitted 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) by vestmoria@linux.community to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

you be the judge: the extra, unpaid hours most people willingly do setting the expectation you do that too, some people coming in 30 minutes before the shift starts and proud of it (what for? Are you going to be paid more?), obsession with presenting a good image to both coworkers and clients, the fake interest in getting to know you, conversations that feel scripted, forcing you to share about you, controlling the way you speak, yelling at the foreign coworkers when they don’t speak English among themselves, taking your breaks together with the whole group, ostracizing you if you want to take your break alone, getting snippy if you state boundaries (“I don’t talk about that with coworkers”), some people ranting openly and loudly in a room full of people about a coworker they don’t like for whatever perceived sling, your manager expecting you to enjoy her stories (no, I don’t really care about you, Andrea), then expecting you to be the one doing the most demanding tasks nobody wants to do.

I even have coworkers complaining I waste too much paper and that’s bad for the company. Who gives a flying fuck about that Karen? I really don’t understand why some people are like this.

Holy shit, I was so naive. I don’t know if every workplace is like this, but I just didn’t question it and went along with it because 2 years ago the workplace seemed good enough and pays better than everyone around afaik. I don’t know if I should look elsewhere.

If I start applying elsewhere, do I even mention this? Because I don’t want this to happen to me again.

There is a chance this also happens elsewhere. Do I stick with the devil I know?

8

I don't understand his strategy, he answers the prosecutor' questions extremely vaguely. I don't know if I could act like that if called as a witness.

Is this something I should imitate when dealing with HR?

I don't understand why how he answers is not lying.

31

On an email with my manager I described a coworker I only worked with once as a small, thin woman that was either born in an East Asian country or has East Asian parents. I don't know this person's name. I don't see a better way to describe her all things considered.

The managers answer: it is disrespectful to describe people according to ethnic background or physical appearance.

My next question for this manager: dear manager, how should I describe this person then?

I don't know if I'm being genuinely disrespectful or this is a very thin skinned manager. Either way, I had to work with another coworker I didn't know either. This conversation with manager B ensued:

manager B: 'today you're working with mike'

me: 'who's mike?'

manager B: 'that fat guy'

make it make sense.

25
submitted 11 months ago by vestmoria@linux.community to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

cross-posted from: https://linux.community/post/3420358

as said previously I'm a nurse, which means the overwhelming majority of employees are women. Gossiping, being unauthentic, cattiness and passive aggressiveness is a daily occurrence.

My current unit: there are 2 men that seem to be completely stoic (I don't know what word would describe them better): they ignore drama and jabs, even if directed at them, they are punctual with their pauses, I mean really, 30 minutes and that's it, and can ignore when other coworkers lazy around, even if it means they have to be the ones doing most of the work, extra work they don't receive any extra money or recognition for.

I am writing in awe, because as much as I'd like to be this thick skinned, I am not. The feeling of being treated unfairly rubs me the wrong way really fast. My strategy so far has been to lazy around so much as my direct coworkers, even if they're part of an established group at the ward I don't belong to. They're the ones supposed to be showing me around and teach me. If they don't work, why should I?

I believe this is a trait of mine, something nearly impossible to change, it would make more sense to change the setting than trying to change me, to change jobs. I don't know how to play this game where I am, in a workplace where most employees are women.

But my question remains to all of you who are this thick skinned: how? I don't understand it. Don't you find it tiring? Doesn't it make you feel like shit when you go back home? Don't you feel taken advantage of?

29
submitted 11 months ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) by vestmoria@linux.community to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

cross-posted from: https://linux.community/post/3347155

and what would be the point of lying?

I applied to 2 positions and got one. On both counts I shadowed for a day and was sincere.

Job 1 offered me a position I took.

Why I think the second job rejected me: I was assigned to 2 coworkers who started prying inquisitively about my job experience and expectations. I told them I don't want to go back home with back or leg pain or feeling broken, I don't mind doing my pause after 7 hours of working and not 4 but I actually NEED my pause, one every day, I also told them I don't live to work but the other way round (this is nursing).

Apparently they told management all this because during my interview with the c suite they mentioned what other coworkers think about me.

I still believe if you need a job, please do lie because you need the money. I was sincere this time because a union member told me to clearly state what you want in the beginning, so there are no uncomfortable situations afterwards.

I'm also a terrible actor, so maybe this was for the better?

This makes me value authenticity even more because one of those suites, a woman, used the strategy of faking being close to you (smiles, modulating her voice...) so you believe she actually cares about you so you let your guard down.

even though I got the other job it still stings because I was rejected for being authentic. Am I wrong?

So, in the future, do I keep being authentic or do I feed management BS? Feeding them BS always worked in the past.

27

cross-posted from: https://linux.community/post/1769411

and, are there specialties that require more dedication than others?

88

I have a job I don't quite like and I'm shooting applications elsewhere. I work full time and I'm also looking for another job in my city that fits my qualifications. I cannot change states or move to another city, it is what it is.

So far I've sent 5 apps for positions that interest me: 2 have answered, one could offer me a different but similar job (position already filled) and the other one, while fitting what I majored in, means constant stress, plans that change constantly, even several times a day, a pay reduction and the last 2 who applied to do this quit in 4 and 6 months respectively.

At least they were honest during the interview, but I now feel depressed. I was hoping to work there and quit my current job.

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vestmoria

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