Humans are known to be selfish creatures, but these people definitely take it to a whole new level. Whether it's a family member or complete stranger, these people definitely won't be lending a helping hand to their fellow men. Stories have been edited for clarity.
Their Brother Wasn’t Afraid To Take Advantage Of Strangers OR Family
Jon Schulte/Shutterstock
“My brother, through a mistake, received a free iPod. And this was when they were really blowing up. I offered him $70 for it because that was how much I had saved up so far in order to buy one for myself. He said no because he could get more online. Fine. About a year later, I was saving up for a new digital camera and he offered to sell me his because he got a new one for Christmas. I paid him $200 for it and he mailed it to me (we lived in different states at the time). I got it and it wouldn’t turn on. I call him. He says yeah it’s broken, that’s why I got a new one. Wouldn’t give me my money back. I don’t talk to him much anymore.”
With Friends Like These, Who Needs Enemies?
Antonio Guillem/Shutterstock
“This was about five or so years ago. I showed up to a party where there was a lot of drinking. This tiny girl, who weighed maybe about 95lbs, was killing a fifth of some drink on her own. She disappeared and next thing we knew, her chick friend and boyfriend were carrying her downstairs. They said, ‘We’re taking her to ER, we think she has poisoning from drinking too much.’ They weren’t drinking, so we figured she was good. The party was obviously finished at that point so we start cleaning up and get ready to leave.
Not even ten minutes later and the friend and the wasted girl’s boyfriend walk back in and start drinking together. They said they dropped her off and the ER people told them to leave. It didn’t make sense to us, but at least the girl was in the ER.
Turns out they had pulled up to the ER, pushed her out of the car, and came right back to the party. Luckily, they did it right at the ER’s shift change. Had it not happened right then, who knows how long that poor girl would have been out there, alone, basically dying.
Later, it came out that the friend and boyfriend had planned on getting this girl super wasted so she would have to leave/pass out and they could hook up.”
Their Father Cut Them Off From The Only Family They Knew And Loved
sylv1rob1/Shutterstock
“My Grandmother left me $10,000 when she died. My father proceeded to work with my aunt and convince everyone in my family (who lived on the opposite side of the country) that I didn’t want it and didn’t want anything to do with them.
So, in the end, I didn’t get my money and a few relationships were destroyed on that side of my family because they thought I hated them. I also happened to be in middle school when this happened, so I really had no idea why my grandfather stopped talking to me. I only found out about this recently when my aunt found me on Facebook and proceeded to tell me how my father had convinced her I hated them all and didn’t want anything to do with them.”
There’d Be No Surgery For This Selfish Patient
Focus and Blur/Shutterstock
“I’m an OR nurse and was getting a patient ready for an elective neuro procedure (an ACDF, if you really must know, but it’s not important to the story beyond that it was an ELECTIVE procedure). We were maybe five minutes from rolling him back when we got a trauma activation page: auto vs pedestrian, massive neurotrauma, 10 minutes out, rollback (meaning the patient would come straight to the OR).
We scrambled to convert our neuro setup to a craniotomy setup and while we were waiting for the patient to arrive, I went to tell the scheduled patient that his case was getting bumped due to an incoming emergency. He was visibly miffed (and understandably so), but seemed relatively reasonable at the time and refused an offer to reschedule.
Our trauma patient came in and we got to work. It was even worse than we were led to believe from our initial report. The patient coded twice on the table and we worked on her for close to six hours (she made it through surgery, though I don’t know what her long-term outcome was). Several times throughout the day, surgery nurses called us for progress reports and an ETA for the patient waiting, as he was getting angrier. When we finally got the trauma patient out, the surgeon and I went to day surgery to let the scheduled patient know that we were finally done and would be starting him as soon as we could turn the room over, so about 30 minutes. The gentleman (a term I use loosely here) started yelling at the surgeon about how long he’d been waiting, to which the surgeon replied, ‘Sir, I apologize for your wait, but someone almost died.’
Butthole responded by saying, ‘You should have let ’em. I took off work to be here!’
Now, I don’t know any neurosurgeon that can accurately be described as laid back, but this one was generally super nice and soft-spoken, if a bit intense at times. Until this moment, I’d never seen him actually angry, but he was livid. He turned to me and said in a very quiet and very scary voice, ‘His case is canceled,’ then turned to the patient and said, ‘Find yourself another surgeon.’ Then he turned around and walked out while the patient hemmed and hawed.”
When Times Were Rough, This Father Wanted Nothing To Do With His Son
“I knew this guy whose dad walked out on his wife and his three children when they were all young children/infants. Disappeared from their life. Never gave them a penny or even a birthday card.
Now in his 20’s, the guy managed to track down his dad on Facebook and was determined to build a relationship with him. He didn’t want to burn any bridges, he said. The dad was a total butthole, though. Blamed everyone but himself for walking out on his wife and kids. But you could see the guy was doing his best to ignore that and try to work past it as he was desperate to have a relationship with his dad. They managed to build up a semi-amicable enough relationship over the course of a few months.
I learned that the guy then got in trouble with debt, not from gambling or any addiction or anything. He just started struggling to pay for his education and rent, so he had to sacrifice food to pay for everything. He eventually ran out of food and couldn’t pay for anymore, couldn’t even buy a bag of rice, so he asked his dad if he could help him with rent or food. His dad promised him he would, then he blocked him and deleted him from Facebook.
I’ve seen a lot of selfish things in my time, but nothing beats seeing a father not caring if his son starved to death.”
After His Brother Pulled This Scam On Him, He Was Ready To Throw Punches
PixieMe/Shutterstock
“My brother is 7 years older than me and has been a jerk all my life. He would pick on me, trick me, make me feel like I was an idiot for not knowing things (yes, because 8-year-olds should be as smart as 15-year-olds), and never missed an opportunity to make me unhappy. He would also beat me up when I was a kid, which was particularly unfair given the age difference (what high schooler picks on a freaking elementary schooler?) This ended for the most part when he went to college because he didn’t come home to visit too often.
When I was 19, he tried to sell me an old bass guitar he’d had, but failed to mention that one of the strings had snapped. I knew nothing about repairing guitars, so I told him to get it fixed because I didn’t want to buy a broken bass. He smirked and said, ‘Uh, that sounds like it’s your problem now.’
Without breaking eye contact I said to him very calmly, ‘Either give me back my money or I am going to punch you.’ He thought I was joking because he couldn’t fathom the idea that his ‘little brother’ would ever stand up to him. The problem with that was that I was 6’3″, 230 lbs, and I boxed; he was 5’10” and maybe 170 soaking wet.
He then tried to pull the, ‘That’s really childish of you to resort to violence’ card, to which I said, ‘You thought you could scam me because I’m your brother. I’m just treating you like any other butthole who tried to steal from me.’ He gave me back my money acting like I was cheating him.
We don’t talk much anymore.”
Her Mother Didn’t Care She Had A New Baby, She Was Taking The Money ‘N Runnin’
encierro/Shutterstock
“When I was in the hospital after having our son, we were waiting for him to get out of the nursery. He had to have an IV for low blood sugar so it wasn’t super serious, but it was taking a while. I was lying in the hospital bed, kind of freaking out. I hadn’t gotten to hold him yet because it was a C-section and they whisked him away about five minutes after he was out, so I was very distraught. My mother asked me if I had any money I could give her. (Her needing money from me isn’t anything new) I told her I didn’t. Which was true. All the money we had was spoken for. We needed to buy a certain formula, more diapers, and I had some prescriptions I was going to need. She was disappointed but accepted the answer. After my son was able to come into the room, she left after getting to hold her grandson for a bit because she offered to go clean the house for us and make a few meals to get us by for a couple days after we got home.
Well about a little less than a week after we were home, I went into my closet to get the birthday money my dad had sent me because we already needed formula and our account was empty. I open the card and the $300 that was there was gone. I called my mom and she admitted to stealing it. When I asked her how she could do that to me the day I not only had a major surgery I didn’t plan for, but also how she could do that to her grandson who needed that formula to eat. Her response was, and I will never forget, ‘I told you I needed it and you said you didn’t have it, but you lied. So I took it because if you had it, you should have wanted to help me and gave it to me.’ I had to get my dad to wire us money to get us by for formula and diapers until payday. I will never forget that. She did a lot of messed up stuff to me, but that she did to my son. She took money that was going to feed her grandson who was only hours old and didn’t even warn me. And to her, it was my fault.”
Their Grandfather Would Make Even Mr. Scrooge Shocked At How Stingy He Is
“I want to preface this by saying, I love my grandfather very much. That being said, he is the single stingiest/selectively selfish person I have ever met in my entire 23 years on this Earth.
The last time I was in town, he, his wife and I went to a diner to grab lunch and catch up. While we were there, we had a very kind and attentive waiter. My grandfather is very friendly and loves talking to people, so he struck up a conversation with this young man as he refilled our drinks. My grandfather pointed out the waiter’s accent, and as it turns out, he was from a small island just south of Italy. An old family friend owned the diner and, when our waiter had immigrated here at a few months before, the family friend offered him a job at the restaurant.
My grandfather and this young man (he was only a few years older than me, probably around 25) talked for a very long time. The waiter showed us pictures of his hometown and family from his phone, and my grandfather reciprocated with their own pictures from their travels (that they had originally brought to show me). Overall, it was some of the best service I’ve ever had in my life and the entire lunch was incredibly pleasant.
When it came time to pay the bill, I offered but my grandfather insisted this was HIS treat. The total was roughly $60. As we got up to go to the register to pay, I watched my grandfather place two singles on the table and nothing more. I was shocked that such GREAT service and such a high bill only racked up to a $2 tip.
I thought it couldn’t possibly get any worse, but my grandfather said he was going to run to the bathroom really quick. On his way to the bathroom, he passed our table and I saw him take the $2 he had left for that man and put it back into his wallet. I was absolutely horrified, but kept my mouth shut (I didn’t want to be rude to my grandparents who had just bought me lunch). We hugged and said goodbye in the parking lot, and when they were gone I went into my car for some spare money and went back to the diner to give it to our waiter.
My grandfather isn’t poor, he’s actually fairly well off and lives really comfortably. I told my mom about the tip thing when I got home and she just sighed, told me she’s seen it happen before with him, too. I love my grandfather, but being so stingy that you can’t even spare an already-measly $2 is mindblowing to me.”
Sharing Wasn’t Caring For This Selfish Roommate
Poznyakov/Shutterstock
“My roommate in college and I were across town on campus at a neighboring university. We had been drinking and I said I’d get us a cab when he said he didn’t have enough cash on him. While I was talking to some friends about their plans, he proceeded to buy two large slices from a late-night pizza place. I assumed he got one for me since I would be paying for the cab. He laughed, said get your own pizza, and licked the second piece. I walked away, hailed a cab for myself, and left him there. He ended up walking partway back and then stealing a child’s bike from a yard to make it the last few miles.
He was pretty mad about the whole thing.”
Just Cause Her Child Is Starving Doesn’t Mean She Will
Dean Drobot/Shutterstock
“First thing that comes to mind, a woman was in line at Subway and didn’t have enough money for both her and her child’s sandwich. She chose to pay for her own sandwich and had the worker throw away the child’s. The woman simply told the kid he could eat later.”
Not Even Mothers Give Unconditional Love, Apparently
pathdoc/Shutterstock
“I work at a convenience store and mothers come in all the time and spend $10-$40 on scratch offs/drinks/smokes. When the kid will ask for a $1 candy bar or soda. Then she’ll say, ‘I can’t afford that! That’s too expensive!’
I had one witch who’d sit at the lotto machines and play for a good hour or so while her kid was running around and begging for stuff. I have another regular who I’ve just started noticing. She’s probably in her forties with the face of a 65-year-old, has a young son around 5 or 6, and always get a few scratchers and a pack of Winstons, but never gets anything for the kid. I served her two days ago and she ordered her usual scratchers and smokes. Then the poor kid had the audacity to ask for an ice cream bar ($1.49). The mom refused, gave me a smirk, and said, ‘With a kid like that, I might need two packs of smokes.’ I just gave her a blank stare.”
Their Uncle Playing The Victim Card Was The Last Straw
Kokulina/Shutterstock
“My mom had a hysterectomy done. She has stage 3 chest cancer (hasn’t technically been put in remission by her doctors) and the hysterectomy was the last step in this long and terrible year she’s had which has included a double mastectomy, chemo, and reconstruction.
My uncle (mom’s brother) is going through some crap. He struggles with drinking addiction (doesn’t wanna own up to it), lives in my grandmother’s house who passed away five years ago (struggles to pay all bills including property taxes so the family is at risk of losing the home), and has recently violated an order of protection that was put on him by his ex (twice).
Nothing is his fault. All of his issues are a result of other’s incompetence/failures/coldheartedness. Oh, and he’s a genius.
One day he posted (on Facebook) some crap about my mom having her hysterectomy today and him being disappointed that he couldn’t go because he has court (for violating the order of protection). He also posted that she has stage 3 lymphoma. My mom explicitly said that she didn’t want anyone posting anything online about her condition. She’s a private person and the sole caretaker of my uncle. She feels like she has to take care of him since he threatens to kill himself all of the time (we have had long talks about enabling, trust me).
I asked him to take it down. He got offended. Told me that if it affects him, then it affects everyone. Told me that I was trying to restrict his right to free speech. Oh, the kicker? He said that he wants the judge/DA/whoever to see that he is struggling and that it’s this girl’s fault for putting him through an additional nightmare. He was using my mom’s condition, which she specifically asked not to be put on blast, as a soapbox.
I stayed cordial, wished him luck, didn’t tell my mother, and asked him not to speak with me anymore. This was the crappy conclusion of the essay of selfish stuff he has done while my mother fights cancer. This is worse than when he said that he wished he had cancer instead of going through the heartbreak of a breakup. He was with this girl for three months.”
They Swore They’d Never Treat People Like How Their Selfish Father Treated Their Mom
PR Image Factory/Shutterstock
“When I was like 11, my mum slipped a disc in her back and she was literally in agony. Anyway, she couldn’t get up the stairs but my (incredibly physically strong) dad refused to help her because he’d had ‘a long day’ so he went for a nap on the sofa while my mum literally had to crawl up the stairs to her bed. It’s the only time to this day I’ve seen her cry. That really stuck with me, and from now on I’ll always go out of my way to help someone in pain out (accident or just chronic pain and struggling while out and about) if they want the help, no matter how much it’ll inconvenience my day/how tired I am or whatever.”
Her “Best Friend” Showed Her True Colors On This Nightmarish Road Trip
“My ‘best friend’ and I went on a road trip from Michigan to the very bottom of Texas. We took my car, which involved me paying for a new oil change and a wheel alignment to ensure we were okay to take this huge drive.
My friend refused to fly to Texas because she was afraid of airplanes and I got my flights for free because a family member works for an airline and apparently that’s not fair. So we drove.
I volunteered to drive the entire way there and back (6 days driving total) because she’s an absolute idiot and will drive 60 behind a truck without a care in the world. I also didn’t want something to happen and she’d be driving my car. Instead of being thankful that I drove the entire freaking way, she was a selfish witch the entire time. Let me break it down:
We agreed we would both buy snacks for the ride (our own snacks) which we could trade and/or share. I ended up being the only one who bought anything and she ate my stuff the entire time. Going as far as to open things without asking and grabbing for things to eat without asking. She really did eat about half of everything without mentioning she’d pay me back or pay for the snacks on the way home.
We made a playlist together that consisted of songs that we both could tolerate. I say this because I hate her taste in music, but I agreed to put her music on the playlist, as long as I didn’t hate too much because it was only fair. The playlist consisted of 60% her music. Every time a song of mine would come on, she’d complain that she just absolutely hated the song. She’d usually change it to one of her songs. She didn’t let the playlist just play on shuffle, she just would skip songs the whole time.
She refused to let me even glance at my phone ever, which I sort of understand. But anytime I’d ask her to google something for me that was related to a topic we were discussing or something I really needed to know, she’d say she doesn’t feel like it.
I had a horrible pinched nerve in my neck and at a rest stop I asked her if she could help me get it out thinking it was a knot and she said, ‘I don’t know what you really expect me to do.’
She would act so freaking weird about splitting the gas. I’d pay for one tank, she’d pay for the next and so on. I kept track of it all on my phone. Which she could have too, obviously. We ended up being exactly even at the end of the trip minus a couple bucks. She insisted I pay her $4 to make up the difference.
On the second to last day of driving on the way back to Michigan, it was flash floods all the way to Memphis. I was driving about 45 mph on the highway until 3 am so we could make it to at least Memphis. She told me she wanted to get up early the next morning (like 8-9) because she wanted to see her boyfriend before he had to go to sleep for the night. I said that’s not going to happen, I had never been so exhausted in my life, and I was not going to drive, tired, all day long the next day. The next morning, her alarm went off promptly at 8:00 am and when I got mad about it, she acted like it was a normal thing to do despite the argument we had the night before.
She did all these things despite me giving her the actual bed at the Airbnb we stayed at while I slept on the air mattress.”
They’d Had Enough With Their Mother’s Temper Tantrums
CREATISTA/Shutterstock
“When I was 12 or 13, my mother didn’t get the phone case she wanted for her birthday.
She proceeded to lock herself in her bedroom. From there, she screamed through what were basically threats to kill herself.
I hid in my bedroom, but she kept texting me to tell my father about what a jerk he was, how we were never gonna see her again, how she had lots of pain medication in her bedroom, etc.
I was scared, so I showed my father, and he broke her door down. Luckily, they were just idle threats.
I was the only kid who happened to be home that night and she made me stand there in between them while she screamed at my father. He was just trying to defuse the situation. My siblings knew something happened that night, but they never really learned the extent of it.
The next day, she kept calling and texting me her apologies, telling me about how she’d never do it again, but you know how it goes. People never change.”
He Made Sure To Have Enough Shrimp Even If No One Else Got Any
“I was out to dinner with my then girlfriend, her sister, her sister’s boyfriend (the Jerk), and maybe her mother. It was a Chinese place where you order a few entrees to share and they bring out a giant plate that you serve yourself off of. Anyway, one of the entrees we ordered had shrimp in it. Mostly noodles and veggies, but also some shrimp. Senior Jerk has first go at the shrimp dish. He serves himself out a reasonable portion by the usual method of using a large spoon to dollop it on his plate, but then he switches to his fork and starts picking out shrimp to add to his plate. Not just one or two either, he probably doubled the number of shrimp on his plate.
I don’t even like shrimp, and it’s been at least 8 years and I’ve never seen the guy since, but I still remember how shocked I was that someone could be so selfish and rude.”