Aunt: I’m going to Walmart, do you need anything?
Me: no thanks, I’m going there later to do some shopping myself
Aunt: But we could combine trips! It’s wasteful to both drive there on the same day! The responsible thing to do—
Me: ok, I give up. Please get me cat litter and cat snacks.
Aunt: Ok!!! :)) Which ones? And what isle? What color is the package—
Me: exasperated Are you serious? I caved and gave you what you wanted. Now you’re asking for more information? I told you I wanted to do my own shopping, and you fought me on it. I’m making a peace offering by giving you two items to buy for me, and you’re saying I need to go find the names and package colors and isle numbers? Please just be satisfied with what I gave you.
The thing that she wants is to feel good about buying me something. But I don’t want that. That’s the disagreement.
I imagine most people would see me as the asshole here: she can’t buy the right item if I don’t tell her what it is. But I clearly don’t care about those details; if I wanted something specific I would have told her that. The only reason I mentioned them was to appease her. I’m giving her something she wanted, something I wanted for myself, and she’s demanding more.
I never said I was going to feed the item to my cat. I said I was giving my aunt an item so she would be satisfied. Does that make sense?
So your plan for satisfying your aunt’s presumed intent to reduce waste is to create more waste? That’s still in the “jerk” zone. Could even be considered petty.
I don’t get to act on presumed intent, I get to act on present behavior. We’d all be a mess if we were obligated to guess what everyone else wanted. And the behavior was, “I want to buy something for you” --> my agreement --> “that’s not enough for me, give me more”. Notice that waste never came into the discussion, even after the conversation ended with me cancelling the purchase of the products, which you could have intuited meant there would be no waste
It’s been a month and you still haven’t answered me.
Your account has been active since then so it’s safe to assume you’ve chosen not to answer. Your refusal to answer me means your position cannot withstand scrutiny. I’m sorry but your credibility is destroyed and there’s nothing valuable here to salvage so I’m going to have to ban you from my instance.
What an absolutely weird thing to be lying about.
I think most of us would just be honest with our aunt about what we need. Or just travel together.
I’m not lying and won’t fall for your bait; you’re trying to put me on the defensive and get me to offer more context by insulting me. Pound sand.