35 Comments

What the frick is this Joan person? Unbelievable. The entitlement some people have.

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I know just what you mean, and it will only get worse from here.

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No… worse?! I worry for my ‘habituated fictional expectations’, known otherwise in real life as naïve hope, that all comes right in the end and everyone gets what they deserve.

Nevertheless I appreciate the writing and being able to once again marvel at the depths people endeavour to sink. An area where innovation truly never ceases…!

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Worse indeed. She is more of a piece of work that even her niece could have thought possible.

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Just unbelievable! My family had a pretty awful case of elder abuse, which included a forged will, but this is even more outrageous.

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The fact that people are so willing to do that sort of thing tells me that there isn't enough in the way of consequences of doing so currently.

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The perpetrator in my family was a cousin who was the only one left out of the wills by two elderly and very wealthy great-aunts, who had no other heirs besides the cousins. Both ladies despised this particular cousin, whom I never met. However, they were generous with all the rest of us, so they must have had their reasons for excluding her from their wills.

After being left out the first time, the cousin started to frequent (stalk) the living facility where the remaining great-aunt resided. After she died, we discovered that this cousin had forged a will, leaving everything to herself! We had an attorney review the document, confront her, and proceed with executing the great-aunt's authentic will. Somehow, several cousins became convinced that the wayward cousin was being abused by her attorney husband and ended up dividing the inheritance to include her.

I didn't care about the money, but the very idea that such devious and illegal behavior was rewarded outraged me! On top of that, I firmly believe in abiding by the will and the intentions of the deceased. However, everyone caved in to keep the peace, mainly because they're all really devout Catholics and also wanted to avoid a scandal. I didn't want her prosecuted, but I didn't want her to be rewarded, either. No one has heard from her since.

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Agreed. It was their money, and it was theirs to decide what to do with. People who feel entitled to other people's money like that, have incredible hubris.

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Joan has some serious con-artist energy. Not only taking over Leanne’s finances but her health decisions as well? That sounds like a recipe for legally sanctioned murder

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Yeah, I agree with you. It has made me wonder what she did to get her husband back in the day

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Some people are really good at putting up an act. One of my Dad’s previous wives acted nice for years, until his daughter from a previous relationship had to stay with them temporarily. For context, they just had a new baby girl of their own.

She was jealous of the attention he was giving his daughter, and gave him an ultimatum. “It’s either her or us”. That’s when he decided to divorce her.

She has done other things since then that lend to her having a certain reputation so it wasn’t just an emotionally charged one time mistake.

Honestly, while I know logically that people mask and hide their true selves for years on end, emotionally I can’t understand where these people are finding the energy to be able to do this. Masking is exhausting.

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Our family had a situation with a person somewhat like Joan, perhaps. Some people learn many, many detailed aspects of the legal system, with an eye toward gaming it. Unfortunately gaming it is very possible.

In our case, the Joan stole expensive tools from contractors at a family house (my grandmother's, rented out after she passed); the Joan filed so many profitable, fraudulent insurance claims re. "breakins" at the house that the insurance company canceled the insurance; various other things... the Joan also failed to show up at numerous court appointments and was impossible to locate for papers to be served. She did continue to partly live in the property for some time, and was difficult to evict. It cost my father a large amount of money and the house was in bad shape by the end of all this.

There are lots of additional details; another family member was involved, who did not "vet" the Joan well - to say the least; I don't think a normal rental document would have allowed all that. Long story.

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Your Joan sounds like another real piece of work

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Jun 13Edited

Joan is starting to come across as borderline insane at this point - even from the point of view of her own obviously very screwed up and selfish motives, she seems to be acting very erratically and irrationally. Or maybe it's all perfectly rational and we just can't see it yet because we don't have the full picture as of now. Looking forward to part 5...

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I might agree with you if she had ever showed the white side of black and white thinking, but she is this way to everyone.

I misread your comment, I missed the "insane" part, and only saw borderline. Unfortunately, she is just as rational as anyone else, but she also makes evil decisions.

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Haha I did wonder as I typed it if people might read it as BPD... I should prob know better than to use that word in any other context tbh lol.

Yeah I just meant that some of her actions don't even seem like rational ways of achieving her own selfish goals, so she's coming across 50% bad, 50% just pure batshit crazy! But I suspect that's just because we as readers don't have the full story yet...

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More coming next week

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From my point of view, she is likely "rational" but has different motivations from many humans, a different reward system going on in her brain. Perhaps "getting" people she has some grudge against (which could well be much of humanity) is very rewarding to her; she may have logic that is in service to these emotional systems, we'd think "twisted" by them - many people do. When we agree with the emotions, we don't think so much about how our logic is affected by them.

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Holding a grudge seems to be her hobby.

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Jun 14Edited

I agree, I think by the end of the story it will likely become clear that she's more bad than mad.

I like your point about how our emotions affect our logic... that's something I've come to realise as I've got older, that as NTs our subjective experience is often that our emotions are due to our logic (I'm scared of that thing because I know objectively that it's dangerous), but often it's actually the other way around (my background anxiety levels are high right now, and that's making me focus on things that might be dangerous).

I had the experience once of being in a situation that had terrified me only a year before, but because I'd done alot of work on my general anxiety in that year, I suddenly could no longer access that fear at all, even in exactly the same situation. I literally stood there and forced myself to run through the logic of my fear from the previous year, forced myself to think the same thoughts about it, and just could not make myself feel any fear about it. Being scared in that situation just suddenly seemed completely ridiculous. But I had not done any work on that specific fear at all, hadn't even mentioned it to anyone, I had just made some completely unrelated changes that had reduced my general anxiety levels.

It was probably the biggest 'aha' moment I've ever had, the realisation that sometimes our emotions cause our thoughts/logic, rather than the other way around.

And reading Athena's descriptions of how she throws herself into situations that are quite obviously and objectively dangerous, because the emotional aspect of fear is missing, just underlines and proves the point for me, that our emotions drive our logic and our thoughts way more than we realise.

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That is a good way to describe it

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Sorry to be off topic, but I am not sure how many episodes await us and I worry I might forget that I wanted to share this, so I am sharing it now under this article, even though it is unrelated.

That 25 years cut-off for maturty of brain might be actually no cut-off at all. Brains do age past 20 years for sure, but they do not really stop and there is lots of variation so even some younger people can have various parts of their brains more mature than some older people.

https://slate.com/technology/2022/11/brain-development-25-year-old-mature-myth.html

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Yes, indeed they continue to change as we age, but the crucial development that determine whether someone is psychopathic happens by the age of twenty-five, to twenty-six

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I've been thinking about this; do you think this need to wait until that age for diagnosis, is due to the fact that most diagnosis is generally based upon observing behavior by people other than the psychopath themselves? I'd be curious if any scientists/clinicians have ever done some sort of fMRI analysis or some such thing on a number of random young people, and then followed them with some later being diagnosed as psychopaths. (Probably not, those things are expensive.)

With us autistics, there are brain differences in wiring from a very young age, if not in the womb. Since our behavior differences can be more observable when we're young than once we learn masking, these (fMRI or similar) studies have been done.

I'd suspect the same for psychopaths, I bet there are brain differences from birth or before, but there is just no research on it. What do you think?

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There pretty much aren't any studies on psychopaths that take place outside of prisons, so there are definitely not any studies like this. The twenty-five number comes from studies on brain development, studies on the areas of the brain that psychopathy affects, and seeing where the crossover is, which twenty-five.

The differences are coded, they will be able to be seen, but not until the brain finishes developing the front part of the brain, which happens at that twenty-five number. I would never agree with scanning children for psychopathy. It is setting them up for failure in life.

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yet there is some "inexperience" going on both sides:

Amanda calls then writes: "The contractors were another story. Most didn’t bother answering, or returning messages. Amanda was able to book two appointments for an estimate, not the minimum of three she would have preferred. Time was definitely of the essence, and people not calling back were not appreciated."

How thoughtless that of the two contractors she would NOT be giving work to, she is put out by them not being immediately available for "estimates" to meet her needs of mental security of 3.

I was a house guest last week arriving about 5 pm. Loads of bong hits and delicious salads and chicken. About 8 pm, a "Joan" called looking for immediate assistance with a water leak on their property.

Although, I mostly laughed the whole time, and made jokes to amuse myself, we (contractor and myself) arrived at the homeowner's property about 8 30 PM. The leak was down about two feet and needed to be dug, by work light, and we finished the repair four hours later.

Now I was tired and still high and still laughing. But when I got up about 9 am, my friend was attending another job and had left his home at 5 am.

In my experience, contractors work their ass off and have the proper perspective of Amanda's need for immediate call backs and "minimum of three" to relieve her of figuring out if the bid is fair or not.

This story, 4 parts now, presents Joan as super entitled. In this situation, of dealing with contractors, Amanda seems either naive of how the world works or entitled herself.

BTW, people who are available to "give bids" so Amanda can have three ALWAYS pad the bill. By Amanda wanting "ratification of her choices" she MAY have spent a lifetime paying higher prices.

While Joan is indeed nasty, I don't find Amanda particularly attractive either.

Thanks!!

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I wouldn't hire a contractor with terrible communication skills, or lacking them entirely. It tells me everything about them. That may not suit you. That's fine, you wouldn't get the job. For a job of this nature, professional behavior and communication were required.

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Athena, I'm not asking you to hire a contractor with terrible skills or that lack them entirely.

Perhaps I missed critical details of the story. Amanda seems put out people should call her back in the available time she had, that afternoon, not later or the next day. She was in a time crunch yet didn't allow for it.

This upset her. Not for the work, but because she has self imposed necessity of three bids. Even given the circumstance of distance, time, stress, parties? Amazingly poor judgment.

Why does a person need 3 bids, other than essentially "fear" of getting ripped off in past experiences?

For generic services, and clear agreement of what is to be done, what marginal benefit is 3 bids over 2? If 3 is better, why not four?

I find Amanda's attitude, as expressed in the story, self centered and self absorbed.

From the story, I do not like Amanda. I find her hapless and lacking in imagination. She allows herself to be taken advantage of and worse, fails to protect the people around her.

Her fixation on 3 bids may indicate she lacks both priority and focus.

Maybe Joan gets enjoyment winding her up and watching Amanda spin like a warm blooded top. I can hear her taunting her!! Did you get your three bids Amanda!! They ripped you off darling!! Hahaha.

Even as Amanda sweats how "things ought to be" -contractors calling back in groups of three- she appears single minded to do the calling herself. To save 5%?

Amanda seems a n'er do well. She excuses when things "didn't work out" and bores listeners to tears with her tales of woe. (I just KNEW I needed three bids!!")

However, I did enjoy reading and continue to look forward to more!!

Maybe I just enjoy hating on Amanda as she wallows in the flood Joan sends at her.

tim

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It didn't upset her, it was an example of unprofessionalism.

Getting a minimum of three estimates is standard practice.

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Thank you for your kind reply.

I've never done that. But likely you are correct.

Thanks again!! I certainly enjoy the story!

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I would infinitely prefer to pay more for sober, reliable and communicative business partners… Especially at a time like this. You get what you pay for.

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Agreed. Having someone that is lax on communication, who shows up intoxicated, are not the types that have any business in an eighty-year-old woman's house after having people there that made trust next to impossible.

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We have found a few contractors who do good work, communicate well, give quotes, and we try to treat them well.

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Exactly.

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Athena, my friend took the call at 8 20 PM for a leak at the clients home. We told him "our condition". He was in a state of urgency and asked us to come, though after hours. By 8 30, we were on the way and stayed there for four hours to locate a leak, on a mainline buried in the ground. We located and dug it up (over two feet down) and effected repairs. The price was about $2000 less than other people -bc this client basically trusted us to do him right. I assume that part- the trust- was generated by the client and my friend, contractor, communication skills.

I personally didn't help besides holding the light and running parts.

It appears my posts have run amuck of your expectations. Shall I delete them or feel free yourself to delete?

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