She Wants A Lift From Work Each Day! Posted May 25th, 2010 in Dr Thatslife Advice

Ray, 33 from Massachusetts writes…

Alright Doc, I’ll keep this simple. I work in a lumber yard in a small town, have a car, and have long 12 hour shifts, and can‘t easily get breaks except lunch and a couple quick cigarette breaks. My girlfriend works in a drug store a few miles from where I work and about a 15-20 minute walk from her house. Each day she expects me to leave work to drive her home after her 7 hour shift and then come back to work. I’m getting in trouble for ducking out to do these drives, and I told me girl I couldn’t do it anymore. She was really pissed and made it seem like I don’t care about her. To make it worse, when in an argument about it I said “Maybe the walk would be good for you.” to her making it out that I thought she could use the exercise. Every day when I come by after work to see her she’s venting because she had to walk home. What the hell do I do to keep the peace?

Dr Thatslife has this to say….

Employment and maintaining your job in a small town is very important, and for you to jeopardize that for your lazy girlfriend would be ludicrous. She would not see it that way as she is so focused on her own needs and comfort. Not only that, but she has no sense or concept of what it is like to work a shift almost double the length of hers in the manual labor conditions of a lumber yard. Often such jobs can be brutally strict about “ducking out” to do personal errands as you‘re probably starting to realize. There are most likely dozens of other local people vying for your job, don’t give them a chance to snatch it from you, as losing your job would most likely be catastrophic.

Besides educating your girlfriend of these facts, she’s going to have to grow up and realize that she’s an adult woman that needs to get HERSELF to and from HER job, just as you have figured out how to do. If her job pay sucks, her commuting options will equally suck. Walk, roller blade or bike. Take your fucking pick, they all suck, that‘s life. Make a little more money? TA-DAAAA, you’ve been upgraded to monthly bus pass. Make even more money? Oh look! The almighty CAR option suddenly appears!

She interpreted your conversation about her “needing the walk” badly because she is conscious of the fact she does need to walk it, and not doing so is lazy. She probably hates her own laziness. This can hopefully serve as inspiration for her to build her career to a point where a car becomes financially feasible for her, if not, oh well! Whether by foot or half a dozen people hanging onto the back of a 50cc moped, billions of other people around the world have figured out how to get their asses to and from work each day. She’s just going to have to suck it up and join those ranks of self sufficient adults, because you giving in to her demands will help nobody.

That is most definitely, life.