BellaOnline Forums Relationships Married No Kids post here if you're childfree and need to vent

Sorry for starting a whole new topic just to vent, but this incident that happened really bothered me, and I just have to let it all out. Feel free to use this thread to vent too!

I do volunteer work every Saturday. It's summertime in the USA and it is very hot where I live; I was working at a farmer's market basically doing hard work / manual labor. There are two other volunteers, a paid manager, and a paid intern, most of whom are childed. Strangely enough, they also leave most the manual labor up to me while they sit around in the shade, chatting.

Now, last weekend, I was working pretty hard and started to look pale. I was just feeling lousy from the heat -- it was hot, sunny and humid, and I hadn't had a drop to drink in a couple hours. I got a lot of comments about being pale but no one offered me water or suggested I get out of the heat. I recovered after taking a break and getting a drink of water.

This weekend, when I dropped by the break room, the intern and the manager's mother were sitting around chatting in the air-conditioning, and started making comments about how pale I was last weekend. I started to say that I was a little heat-sick, but then they started making comments about how they thought I might be "expecting"! I got so angry! I tried to be polite and say no, that's definitely not the case. They said they were disappointed! Then the intern made a comment about bringing my husband over "to fix that." ARGH! They just kept making the most rude comments about it.

It makes me want to scream sometimes. I kind of want to quit this volunteer work, but the thing is, none of the actual farmers or merchants have made any kind of remarks like that, and they're the ones I'm actually helping.

Have any of you had a volunteer or work experience like that? Where your clients are just great, but your coworkers or co-volunteers make rude comments about you?

I just feel like they were looking at me like a piece of meat, like some kind of livestock to be bred. It makes me feel sick to think about it. Regardless of my status as a childfree woman, it's none of their damn business what I do with my body. "Oh gee, Xantres, when are you going to get a tattoo? It is so disappointing that you don't have one." "Oh Xantres, why aren't you going to have plastic surgery? You'll change your mind when you get older." THAT'S how it makes me feel when people make comments about me having/not having kids.

It's nobody's business what I do with my body -- end of story!

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Ugh. How rude. People are just clueless sometimes.

For my rant:
Went to Walmart to do my weekly grocery shopping and, as usual, someone felt compelled to bring their kid with them. The stupid thing screamed the WHOLE TIME!! You know, those ear-splitting screams that toddlers are found of using. I wanted to choke the stupid brat so bad. Why, oh why can't people learn to use a babysitter?

Phew, I feel better now.

Yes, and then instead of addressing the problem they just ignore the kid or yell at them that they're going to get a whoppin'. I never see them follow through.

I often find myself with a look of disgust when kids are around when I'm trying to run errands and especially when they're being obnoxious and the parents aren't doing anything. My husband has often had to tell me to change my facial expression. I don't even realize it!

Oh goody � this should be fun. I have one for you....

Some friends of ours "T" and "R" � also childfree � live on the lake and we went over there this weekend to play with their new boat. T had his sister visiting with her two kids, a four year old � "James" � and his six month old baby sister.

For starters, the sister, "D," kept making comments about my "itty bitty bikini" and how I was corrupting her son. At first I took it as joking but the comments kept getting snarkier. I've never met this woman before. THEN, after acting like such a prude about my choice of swimwear, she whipped out her boob in front of everyone and started nursing the baby. Believe me, it was not a pretty sight; the looks on the men's faces were priceless. I pointed out that at least my bathing suit kept all my private parts covered; she said it wasn�t the same; she was feeding her child. Yeah, I saw that big saggy milk teat...it is NOT the same! Not to mention that her own brother saw her boob....ick, ick, ick.

We hadn't yet taken the boat out, when D told James it was time for his nap. James started to cry because he wanted to go out on the boat. D took the liberty of telling James that his uncle wouldn�t go without him. James had been asleep about an hour when the guys decided it was time to fire up the boat. D said we couldn�t go without James; WE had promised. T said James could go out later�..and D said fine; T could be the one to tell him he�d lied and broke his little heart. When that comment elicited nothing except four sets of eye rolls, D ran up to the house to wake James. A few minutes later James came running out of the house, crying and yelling, "Don�t leave without me!" D came waddling along behind him, carrying the baby who was also screaming at the top of her lungs. T then asked D where James�s life vest was, and D said she didn�t know; it was in the house somewhere. T told her he wouldn�t take James out on the boat without it, and D actually got annoyed!

The day eventually got better; D got seasick and spent the rest of the evening in the house with her kids.

What a hypocrite. She's probaly also the biggest slut out there. She had no right to tell *YOU* what kind of bikini you could or couldn't wear, because *YOU* at least had your breasts hidden. <img src="/images/graemlins/angel.gif" alt="" />

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I took it for jealousy; it's not like I was running around in a thong and pasties, it was just a regular bathing suit. She made me sound like the whore of Babylon (or maybe she actually called me that; I don�t remember:)

I just couldn't believe the way she acted with her kid and the boat...and the fact that she got so irritated at her brother for making her go back up to the house to get James's life vest. He was looking out for James's safety, for crying out loud, not to mention that it's the law. And did it REALLY matter to James whether he went on the maiden voyage of the boat � or would the second trip have sufficed?

Oh, the screaming kids in the grocery stores are enough to make me want to get sterilized!!!!

Yikes... People can be real ignorants sometimes. I'm sorry you all have to bear with that.

The thing that annoys me the most is perhaps people who take their children to the movies, or to a classical concert. Being a Music student, I love to attend concerts. And, you know, classical concerts are not regular concerts. Silence is a MUST. So it's VERY annoying when somebody's baby starts crying in the middle of a movement. It's distracting for the listeners as well as the performers. And most times parents don't do ANYTHING to shut the kids mouth, which is perhaps even MORE annoying than the child itself!

Kids cry sometimes, it's just a fact of life (and one of the myriad of reasons I don't want any) but the defining moment is how the parent(s) react...if your kid starts bawling in the middle of a concert or a play or a movie take him/her out in the lobby - it's as simple as that. Or better yet, if you're attending an event that requires quiet and your child isn't old enough to appreciate that then hire a babysitter.

One of my *favorites* is when I'm meeting with clients and they bring small children with them and then let them run wild in the conference room, crawling under the table, screaming, grabbing papers. I just keep reminding myself that we bill in six minute increments and everytime I have to stop talking or repeat myself, or stop in the middle of a conversation to grab some paper towels because oops! someone spilled their juice all over the table, their bill is just going up and up....