rSlash - r/AITA for Refusing to Let My Boyfriend Cheat?

Episode Date: May 10, 2024

Note: Today's episode was accidentally an old episode. I've updated it with the correct episode now. 0:00 Intro 1:12 Free pass 5:05 False accusation 10:28 Rot in it 12:26 Debt 14:50 Wedding money Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Go to kraken.com and see what crypto can be. Not investment advice. Crypto trading involves risk of loss. See kraken.com slash legal slash ca dash pru dash disclaimer for info on Kraken's undertaking to register in Canada. Welcome to r slash best of Redditor updates, where OP literally becomes a slave and doesn't even realize it Our next reddit post comes from r slash legal advice. So for context on this next post I think that OP is actually a woman

But I read the post saying he and him and I didn't really realize it until the very very end So I'm gonna keep the original audio that says he and him just because it's not actually clear if OP is a woman. So I just wanted to let you know that I think OP is a woman, but I'm not exactly sure. I wanna get a new job, but my boss owns all my possessions and is going to take everything away if I leave. I don't think this is right,

but I don't know who to call. This is in Dallas, Texas. I'm 19 and I want to leave my job and go find a new one that I can do part time so I can finish school. My boss is okay with me leaving, but the problem is that he won't be able to support me anymore if I do, which means that I'll lose everything I own and I don't really know where to turn. It started when I was 16. A guy I knew got this big suite in a hotel which is one of the nicest ones in Dallas. We had a party there.

We were drinking and it got out of control and people threw up in the room and caused a lot of damage around the hotel and stole a bunch of things. The next morning I woke up to the hotel manager and security yelling at me and my friends were all gone but left me behind sleeping. The manager took me to his office and I was crying and begging him not to call the police. He said that I could start coming in after school and helping them clean rooms and do dishes in the kitchen to work off the money from all the damage and he wouldn't call the cops.

After a few weeks of this, I told him that I couldn't do it anymore because my parents wouldn't drive me since I wasn't making any money and they thought that he was taking advantage of me. But I didn't want to tell my parents that I was working to pay off the debt. So then, the guy bought me a used bike and said that he wanted me there every day until the damage was paid off, plus the bike. Yo what? This sounds like indentured servitude.

Over the next couple of months, he got more and more demanding and every time I asked how much more work I had to do, he always just said that he'll tell me when I'm finished. And if I don't want to, he can just call the cops. So I kept working and doing what he said. He changed my hours to 4pm to midnight every night, which was affecting my school. He's a nice guy and I didn't want my grades to suffer and I always had to bring him my report cards, but he said don't drop out. Yo,

what? When I turned 18, 18? Yo, hold on. Didn't OP say that he started when he was 16? He did this for two years? When I turned 18, I stopped going to school and just slept in during the day. When he found out, he said that I had to be here pretty much all day if I'm not going to be in school, which I hate because then I don't have time for my friends or my girlfriend. To complicate things, my boss house sits for a family that lives in India and they're not here most of the time. And whenever they're away in India, my boss lets me stay in their place. It's not all bad because I live comfortably. My boss lets me take home leftover food from the very upscale restaurant

whenever there's leftovers. Also, the house I live in is really nice and there are books or other things in the gift shop that no one buys sometimes and he lets me take those too. Still, I've told him several times that I want to be paid, but he always says that I owe him and he won't tell me how much the damage was or how much I've worked off. I know the statute of limitation is 3 years and after that he can't press charges against me. So yesterday was 3 years exactly and I told him that I know that he can't have me arrested anymore and that I want to quit.

He said that's okay, but he bought me my bike, all the good looking clothing I have, and all the essentials that I've needed since I was 16. Now he's saying that if I don't work for him anymore, that I can't live in this house and I have to give back all the things that he bought for me during my job. Yeah, he's got me a lot of things, but I seriously have no money, so there's no way that I can leave the job. Whenever I need something, I just ask him and if I'm doing well at work, he'll buy it for me.

So I don't even know where to start to rebuild my life after this place. Are there resources for cases like this? Is there a way to make him let me keep everything until I'm on my own feet? Yo hold on, is this just slavery? Is this actually slavery? Then one day later OP posted an update. Thank you all so much for your advice this weekend. I'm literally in the middle of the craziest day of my life today.

Looking back, I feel like my situation was way over the top, but it took hearing all of you say it and calling it slavery and then going and talking to these lawyers for it to really hit home that what he's put me through over the past three years. Yesterday, I googled the top employment law firms in Dallas and sent them some emails. I got a call from a lawyer saying that he wanted to meet with me first thing in the morning. Before I showed up, I printed out about 50 pages of emails that I have with this guy over the past three years.

I also made notes from some of the voicemails he left me. After about five minutes of talking to the lawyer, the lawyer asked if it would be okay for some of the other lawyers he works with to join us and I spent about two hours answering their questions and talking them through everything. The moment it sank in for how big of a deal this is, is when I saw one of the other lawyers tear up a couple of times when I was talking. Honestly, it never felt like such a big deal to me before, but now I'm seeing it in a whole new light. In the end, they said that they'll take on my case 100% for free and I won't have to pay anything upfront and they just need a few days to do some research before we meet up again and talk about the details, which is going to happen on Friday. Like a bunch of you said, they told me this is a lot more than just a pay issue and that

there's a lot of parts they need to explore about lost wages and also criminal charges that he will 100% face. But they need to talk about strategy first. When we were finishing, the main lawyer I was talking to asked what I was doing for the rest of the day. I told him I thought that I was going to play it cool until we actually sue him and I would just go to work after this. I had called in sick this morning and I said that I'd be in after lunch.

He said, will you excuse us for just a minute? And then they went to another office to talk for a few minutes. When they came back out, they asked me if I want to stop working at this job and get out from under this guy. I said yes, so the guy said to go home and pack my things and they're going to make arrangements for me this afternoon. He said that I'm never going to work there again and I shouldn't answer any calls or messages from him ever again.

So I've been home for a few hours packing and then I got this email from their office. Mr. OP, it was a pleasure meeting you this morning. The other lawyer asked me to get in touch to share the details of the accommodations that we would like to provide as well as some logistical information in advance of our Friday meeting. We've made a 30 day reservation for you at such and such location. I've attached a copy of your reservation confirmation. Please note that this has been paid in full.

Another worker from our office will be in touch around 4 o'clock this afternoon to check in on how things are going and coordinate with you on getting your things out of the house and into the hotel. She'll also provide you with some spending money for any immediate essentials and get you set up with an UberX account to make transportation to our offices a little easier next time. Although we hope to represent you in these matters, we're providing these accommodations at no cost and with no obligation on your part. This is intended to help bring more immediate stability to your living situation so you

can focus on the next steps of your life. Thank you again for getting in touch with us. We look forward to seeing you again soon. So I assume they're willing to do all this for me and spend all this money on me because they think they're going to make a lot more money from this. And maybe I am too if everything goes well. So I'm beyond thrilled with how this is turning out so far and I 100% want to work for them. Then two years later OP posted an update.

The firm I hired was the best thing I could have ever hoped for. They got me out from under my boss's thumb immediately and helped me get back on my own feet without having to be under my boss or my parents or anyone else. After our first meeting, I basically lived in their offices for a few months. We had to go through thousands of emails and voice messages talking about all the context behind these messages. And I also had to make a long timeline of events and tell them everything that had ever happened with him. It was so emotionally draining, but their team was very supportive and they helped me get through the hard times. When it was all laid out in front of me, the guilt over what I did to

my own life really took hold. How could I have been so stupid? It's so obvious what he was doing. Simple math said that none of this made sense, but I just didn't see it. I think part of it was because of my parents and I didn't want to listen to them so much that I decided they had to be wrong when they tried to get me to stop. My lawyer started talking to my boss and his lawyer and the hotel chain's executives and also the police and they said there's also some issues that made this possibly a federal crime. None of that registered with me how serious it was but once that happened and I thought that things were going to be okay my boss came to the hotel that I was staying in. Yes he actually

followed me from my lawyer's office one day and that's how he found out where I was staying. He came to my door yelling at me about how he gave me everything and he did everything for me and that this is going to ruin him and his family. And he was showing me pictures of his kids who he said would starve without him to put food on the table. Telling me that I blew this out of proportion and that my lawyers were going to bankrupt his family and put him in prison for life. My lawyers never said anything to me about that and I didn't want his family to suffer so much

but he was being really mean. He had never yelled at me like this before and even though he never hurt me in the past, this time I was actually scared. I texted my lawyer to see what I should do and they came immediately with the police and they arrested him and got me a restraining order. A few days later, my mom and lawyer came over while I was taking a nap and woke me up and told me that my boss killed himself. I never felt as bad as I did at that moment. It's a feeling that I wouldn't wish on anyone.

It was just a sick feeling in my stomach and my whole body felt numb and I felt like it was a bad dream that I could wake up from, except I couldn't. I had a mental breakdown and I spent two months in the hospital thinking about all the things that he said to me about his family and about me over blowing this and it made me question everything again. My lawyer said they would handle as much as they could without me and they would just come to me whenever they had important details that they needed my input for. My parents also came back into the picture and were very supportive and were helping

me more than I ever expected. I asked my mom to bring a printout of all the comments from my first post and that helped me a lot. I read over them every day just to remind myself that what he did was not okay and that I was right to get help. The most apologetic person was someone from the hotel chain. They said that it was a privately owned and managed hotel, so my boss didn't even work for them, but they still wanted to make sure that I was okay.

In the first comments, you guys were saying that I should be owed at least $30,000. Well, the hotel chain itself paid me more than that just for agreeing that they weren't responsible for what he did. My lawyer said that it was a generous offer that they didn't even have to make and that the person I talked to genuinely felt sick over my situation and wanted to do the right thing. And they told me that I should take it and there would be a lot more coming from the franchisee who actually owns dozens of hotels, but not all from this chain. The franchisee was very defensive at first, but a big turning point was when they realized

that one of the managers who was over at the hotels in Dallas was actually a guy that I saw all the time and who my boss had told the story of me working there and we actually talked about it once. And the- oh my god, and the guy told me that he hoped that I worked off my debt soon and he wished me good luck. But this guy knew that I was there for years and he was also the one who approved our budget so he knew that they weren't paying me.

My lawyers were very smart to find this out and when they did, the franchisee wanted to settle. It was a big settlement My lawyers got a third of the settlement They said that it was one of the biggest that any of them had ever seen for this kind of case But they said that it was fully warranted I have enough to live on for a very long time and I can also finish my education in hotel management And oh wow hotel management OP you're going into ho- sorry whoa okay that completely threw me for a loop well I mean I guess he does

know the hotel business in a way I just never would have imagined he'd want to go back into it sorry I got wow that came out of nowhere and I'll even have enough leftover to start my own hotel if I want to do that it's been a blessing but I also didn't realize how incredibly hard it was. I never told anyone about the settlement, but people did find out. Everyone comes out of the woodwork and suddenly wants to be my friend again. So the hardest thing by far is trying to figure out who I want to be friends with and who I don't.

It's little awkward things, like you go to dinner with a small group and people look at you like they expect you to pay for everyone just because you got a big payout. Guess who even had the balls to call me? The friends I was with all those years ago who left me in that damned room. And my girlfriend, who I tried to protect from her Bible thumper parents so they wouldn't find out that she was bi. It hurt a lot to hear from them after all these years. It was very upsetting.

Pretty much the only people I really trust now are the people who stuck with me before. But I do have a financial manager who makes sure that I'm being smart with my money and tells me how much I should use for the different things I want to do. So that's my story and now I'm going to school part time and also doing a lot of outdoor sports and also got into cooking. Little things like having time for hobbies and fun are a big change for me and I feel like it's a new life that I'm getting used to. I feel like I've lived four lives already in these different little phases, but so far this life is my favorite. I still have nightmares sometimes about my old boss and just remembering him yelling at me that day at the hotel and then me hearing that he died.

I remember all the times that he was nice to me and gave me things and did things for me and gave me dating advice and told me that I was smart, pretty, etc. Sometimes I wonder, even as happy as I am now, if I did the right thing because now he's gone and his family is suffering and has nothing. My therapist says that sometimes the right thing can be hard and hurts and some things bad things happen to good people who don't deserve it but that I did everything right. So that helps me feel a lot better. One day at a time. Man, geez, what a story. Reading the first part of the story, my brain is like,

wait, isn't that illegal? Wait, this kind of sounds like endangered servitude. Wait, this kind of sounds like slavery. Wait, is OP literally a slave? I don't know about you guys, but when the slaver went to OP's hotel and was like, you're ruining my life, what about my family? We're gonna be bankrupt. I'm so like, you're ruining my life, what about my family? We're gonna be bankrupt.

I'm so sad, you're ruining everything. Was I the only person thinking, good, great, fantastic, I hope your life is ruined? Because are we supposed to have sympathy for a literal slaver? That was our slash best of Redditor updates. And if you like this content, be sure to follow my podcast because I put out new Reddit podcast episodes

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