Growing up, it was very veeeeery clear that my brother was the favorite. He was the only boy and born sick, so from infancy he was the snuggle-bug, the one everyone needed to take care of, the one who got all the leeway and none of the discipline.
I'm clearly not the only one with some experience here. Reddit asked:
What's the most blatant case of favoritism you've ever witnessed?
and holy CRAP all the "less-loved" siblings of internet popped up to air their grievances. It wasn't just them, though. Favoritism happens in families, but it also happens in schools, workplaces and at least one super suspicious raffle.
Sketchiness. Shenanigans. Sibling rivalries. It's all here, it's all infuriating.
Essays
One of my classmates always got better scores on comparable essays in a high school literature class. I suggested it was favoritism so we decided to write each other's papers to see what happened. Our study found that no matter who wrote the paper, if I turned it in I got a worse grade than if she turned it in.
A New Team Member
My nephew's school had two students who won a contest all by themselves. They got a chance to meet the prime minister and show their work. But at the last moment, the principal insisted to add his daughter in the team.
Stepmother
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Growing up, my stepbrother was obviously my stepmother's favorite child. He could get away with anything. I'm fairly certain she's never actually punished him for anything, and he was well aware of this.
The most blatant case of this was when the nanny software on his computer caught him searching for porn, so immediately my stepmother goes after me; accusing me of going onto his computer to search for porn.
He was also definitely her favorite over my stepsister, but she was barely ever around. She lived with her dad full time because it was way closer to the school she went to (it was like an hour commute every day from our house to the schools my step-siblings went to) so it never really came up with her.
My dad acknowledged her bias, but also told me there wasn't really anything he could do about it. It's not like she was treating me abusively. If something wasn't actually my fault the accusation wouldn't stick, and I didn't get particularly harsh punishments when I did do something, it was just that my brother never got any punishments for anything.
Joke's on them though, now I'm her favorite because I'm the only one of her children that isn't an a$$hole.
Bad Grandmas
My grandma always yelled at my cousins, but she always pampered me and bragged about me to others. She didn't even try to hide that difference in treatment and I HATED IT when that happened. Even little-child-me recognized and despised it very much.
Obviously my relationship with my cousins wasn't good - till now.
My grandma always did that to my sister and I, she would tell me I was ugly and tan and how my sister was the lighter skinned, pretty one. I was 11 and she was 17 so, I didn't get why she compared us. It made the relationships with my sister complicated and I hated her for years.
Sister Sister
- When I was 16, my 13-year-old sister got a brand new cellphone. I never had a phone, and I still didn't at the time.
- I worked 3 jobs in college just to survive. My parents paid my sister's tuition, rent, and bills. They also got her a brand new car. I spent my college years working and using public transportation. My sister spent hers partying and going on road trips with her brand new car.
- When I graduated college, I got nothing. My sister got a brand new MacBook, which was stolen a few months later because she left it in her unlocked car.
- My mother constantly told my sister that she loved her growing up. My mother only said it to me once, in the context of "I love you, but I don't like you".
I have plenty more of these stories. And, no, I don't speak with my parents or sister anymore. I went no contact with my entire family a couple years ago. It's been lonely, but so much more peaceful. I'm in therapy to heal from all the abuse my family put me through. (What I posted is only the tip of the tip of the iceberg).
My sister is a mess, honestly. She can't hold down a job, and she's awful with her finances. She's 31 and my mother does everything for her. Pays her bills, raises her kid, and so on. My sister is going nowhere in life, and I think it's partly because my mother enabled her too much growing up and she never learned how to be self-reliant. Not my problem anymore! :)
Out Of Business
At the end of our senior party (that was organized by my school) there was a raffle with a bunch of expensive prizes. Every single parent who "helped organize" the raffle just so happened to have a child who won big.
The main organizer's son won the $2500 grand prize with the not-at-all-suspicious speech of "and of course, the winner of the grand prize is Charlie."
Yeah f*ck that sh*t, I walked out with a five dollar gift card to an ice cream shop that had already gone out of business.
Dad's Competition
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So, for a while, my dad decided that he could get more work out of us if he got us to compete to be named his favorite.
Basically the rules he laid out were that if you did something good enough, you were there favorite until someone else did something, and there was some kind of ill-defined benefit to being the favorite that he hadn't decided on yet.
Fast forward a bit, and he had fucked up his company web site because he was experimenting in the production environment like an idiot. He asked me for help, so I did.
He didn't let me touch anything, and insisted I stand there while he fiddled with random controls in Drupal hoping to stumble across the right one because he's afraid of reading logs. That took a few hours. Then he went to the bathroom and I checked the logs, which led me right to the problem, so I fixed it. It definitely saved him time, probably saved him money, and possibly saved his job. I was named favorite.
10 minutes later, my sister comes in from mowing the lawn and now she's the favorite.
It wasn't really a big deal. The only benefit of being the favorite for my brother and I was that he wouldn't insult you for not being the favorite. When I was favorite though, he still made fun of me for being at his beck and call. My sister got things like hugs and pats on the back when she was the favorite, but fewer when she wasn't.
Shortly after the web site incident, we all decided that the whole thing was stupid and agreed not to do anything special for him in the hopes that he'd forget about the whole thing. Instead he got angry that we weren't climbing over each other to do him favors. At first he just lowered the bar for "good deeds", so we just stopped doing anything for him at all.
He got pissed that we weren't competing, so he announced that my sister was favorite again because I didn't buy him a soda and he wanted me to defend my title. Then he got angry that nobody cared. Then he sat in his chair and grumbled about that for a while, and he's mostly dropped it. Sometimes, he tries to bring it back, but it hasn't worked.
So, lessons learned:
- My sister is, and has always been, the real favorite.
- If you want people to compete, there needs to be something they all want to compete for.
- Something about either collusion or collective bargaining, depending on how you want to spin it. In any case, Apes together strong.
Department Shuffle
There was a woman at my old job. She was an absolute talentless b*tch with no social skills. She would constantly have a falling out with her coworkers because she was an annoying nosy idiot who couldn't keep her mouth shut.
However, her husband was really high up. He was a senior manager and extremely good at his job too. So whenever his wife screwed the pooch and people started complaining to their union representatives, she got hopped from her made-up position to a brand new made-up position.
Bullsh*t job posts like "head quality assurer" (spend all day sorting QA documents into folders), "head delivery expediter" (spend all day sorting invoices into folders), "head of product definition" (spend all day sorting project briefs into folders), and the like.
All jobs which paid management rates, but which could be done by a fresh business administration graduate for $10 an hour.
The only saving grace was that her husband knew his wife was useless, so he never leveraged his position to punish the people who complained. I don't know if he ever ran out of departments to put her in. Pretty much everyone hated her guts.
Ms. V.
My senior year English teacher, I'll call her Ms. V, always had it out for me, I would never get higher than a c+ from her. I would even occasionally have my friend, who was in the same class, go over my work with me, paying special attention to punctuation, and my grade was still low. When I asked Ms. V why I got a D+ on an assignment she said it was a mix of both punctuation and my own stupidity.
One day my friend got an idea and she and I traded essays, neither of us edited the others paper at all except to change the name at the top. When we got our grades back I got a C- on my friends paper and my friend got an A- on my paper.
After getting the grades we waited after school to ask her about our grades. We explained what we had done and why. Ms. V accused me of plagiarism (which I guess technically I was guilty of) and I got a week of after school detention.
My friend got given hot cocoa and was told in soothing tones that if I ever threatened her, my friend, someone who has been my friend for longer than I can remember. like that again she should come straight to the Ms. V and say something. Also my friend was told that keeping company like me was bad for her image.
Apparently Ms. V thought I had swapped the names on my own and threatened my friend into saying she had agreed to the swap.
- mefous
Quit Via Post-It
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Applied for a promotion after 2 years with the company. I was very qualified, experienced, and trained many new employees. Many colleagues even expressed to the manager that I should be chosen. The hiring manager chose someone without a GED/diploma (a requirement for her current position), had none of the qualifications I had, and colleagues couldn't stand being in the same room as her.
She quit soon after in the middle of her shift via post-it note.
Hard To Stomach
I babysit for this woman who has two children: 5 and 3. Her oldest will scream and shout and throw tantrums out the ass. Lasts for 30 minutes to an hour. She just talks to her in the sweetest tone and sometimes open threats but gives her whatever she wants. But her youngest, she will send to her room and hits her with a spoon. The oldest NEVER gets this treatment.
Her excuse? "She's been through a lot. Her dad left when she was 1 and the youngest doesn't know him at all. It's really hit her hard so I have to be patient with her." The youngest is the sweetest child, always has manners and listens wonderfully. But the oldest is a spoiled brat and it drives me nuts that she doesn't see what she's doing to her kids.
One example of three nights ago. I came over to babysit at 12 am. The youngest was sitting in her room refusing to sleep, not crying. When she heard my voice, she ran out to me excited. She immediately grabbed the spoon and threatened her and she cried and went to her room. The oldest was screaming from the moment I walked in and was begging mom not to leave.
"You want milk? You want to sleep in my bed? You want mommy to lay with you for a minute?" Instead of letting me handle it, she was late for work trying to coax her into stopping.
Meanwhile, her youngest is in the other room, silently crying and not screaming like her sister. This is all of the time, the favoritism. One sleeps with her mom every night and the other one sleeps in her room by herself. It's hard for me to stomach every time I see the favoritism.
No Point In Debating
In high school my sister was on the debate team. They would travel around and debate other school's teams. It was all good fun, went out for pizza after no matter if they won or lost etc.
This year it was an exceptionally good team. They were just blazing through the opposition, had never lost. Then they were up against a prestigious private school's team. Normally the contested are judged by representatives from both schools, with disagreements adjudicated by a neutral third part who reviews footage of the debate.
My sister's team absolutely smoked them. Like, there was no question that the public school had won. But the representative from our school couldn't make it at the last minute, so it was only the representative from the prestigious school judging, who announced that their school's team had won. There was no way a school that charged enormous fees could stand the humiliation of being beaten by public school kids. The other team absolutely knew it too. They were all looking at the ground, and the captain actually apologised as he was shaking the hand of our members.
By mutual agreement the entire team disbanded after that match. There didn't seem to be any point in competing any more when the winner was determined by postcode rather than skill.
Research Results
My research group had to answer questions about our paper. I answered almost all of the questions, but not one judge made eye contact with me. I would be answering their question, and they would just look at another member and ask another question.
Even though it may not seem much, I cried about this when I went to sleep for the night. Ever since then, I've questioned my importance in everyone else's lives.
- Rosacom