By: Revanche

My sibling, my nightmare

October 18, 2017

Othalafehu’s old post about a problematic sibling surfaced on my radar recently, reminding me of a memory that struck me a few weeks ago.

I think I was 18 at the time this happened. I had been working at my post-high school job for over a year and had become one of the most reliable staff. The power of youth, by the way, is one of the few reasons I could power through my chronic pain. It’s heady stuff!

The office manager sat me down one day, asking me to weigh in on an application. This being totally out of the norm, I was puzzled. Then I was horrified. She revealed that it was my brother who had applied, and would I have a problem working with my sibling?

He was a difficult human. Older but aimless, he’d never held down a job for longer than a couple of months, None of them were glamorous enough for His Nibs, he of the mighty dreams of glory. He wanted to be the overnight success, the billionaire entrepreneur. Some of this delusion was his own making, some of it was inherited from Dad’s entrepreneurial streak. He definitely inherited the family streak of charm, that manipulative skill which let him talk his way in and right back out of trouble. That mix was toxic and part of why he got himself in deep with an MLM and took my parents in with him.

His ego was almost all there was to him. He had incredible artistic talents but they were wasted because he had zero work ethic and was a nightmare to work with. Even as a younger sibling asking for his help with homework, he would never help me in a way that was truly helpful. He always insisted on doing it entirely his way, insisting he knew best even though he’d never listened to a word of the requirements, wasting time and making more work for me every time I had the misfortune of needing his help.

Can you imagine having to work alongside someone like that? Our dynamic was worse because, as my older sibling, he naturally thought he was superior to me.

Back to the job – I had run my butt off proving myself, taking care of animals, clients, paperwork. I worked overtime every week to cover shifts, to make sure the job was done right, and to earn the money I needed to pay off our parents’ debts.

Without telling me that he was thinking of it – we lived in the same house! – he applied to my place of employment. My gag reflex almost got the better of me at the horrific suggestion that he might be brought in on an interview, on the strength of his relationship to me.

Almost dizzy with the horror of the embarrassment to come, of being painted with the same brush once his carelessness caused harm to someone once he lied one lie too many, I almost whispered that I didn’t think it would be a good idea, and to my distinct relief, the office manager closed the discussion without asking more questions.

***

Looking back many years later, I am the only person he even pretends to listen to. That’s not saying much. More accurately, he holds a moderate amount of fear/respect for me that he doesn’t hold for anyone else because I have always been hard on him, expected more from him, insisted that he toe the line, and never fell for his blandishments. He could manipulate anyone but me. My second-guessing brain wonders: Could I have forced him to learn to extend that respect to the workplace? Could I have set an example for him that would have changed the course of his life?

I think we all have those defining moments in our lives where one decision sent us down an entirely different path. A better path. Did I take that away from him?

I’ve done a lot of time soul-searching, wondering. It’s possible that that was the opportunity he needed. It’s barely possible I could have exerted some influence. But at what cost? Probably too high a cost.

That job provided 5 years of income – it paid for my entire college education and a huge portion of Mom and Dad’s debt. A lot happened in those five years as a result of that job. I worked and went to school full time, graduated with a four year degree without debt, made enormous inroads into our parents’ debt. It wasn’t a glamorous job, it was retail level stuff. I never made more than $10/hour there and that’s after 5 years of more than full time work. But because of that flexibility and the seniority I earned from busting my butt, they worked with my schedule so I was able to go to school.

If he had been hired and I couldn’t push him to be a better person then, going by the pattern of his sparse work history, his spiral into grandiosity might have taken the form of ghosting the job, or flubbing serious judgment calls causing harm to a person or their pet, or lying about any number of problems that his ego would have caused. Finally, if we’re being really sensible, his almost-respect was developed over many difficult and contentious years – he wouldn’t have listened to me back then.

I would have been tainted by association, so the next domino to go would have been my own reputation, called into question as the person “recommending” (or not vetoing) his hire. I would have had to find a job elsewhere, but no job in town had that same kind of flexibility and capacity for overtime hours so my schooling would have been delayed. Maybe for a year, maybe for ten, because the debt I uncovered was never going to be paid off with a $10/hour job.

If that’s how that played out, we both would have been burned by his hire and disgrace.

We recently made a $1000 mistake giving an amateur a chance to do some garage work for us but the guy was sloppy and didn’t know a quarter of what he needed to do the job. We stopped him mid-job when PiC had put in as much work as Amateur had, without getting close to a satisfactory result. It was a situation that called for micromanaging to the worst degree because nothing the guy did was close to good enough. At the very best, working with my sibling would have been like that.

Once upon a time, I felt responsible to be his keeper in some ways. I don’t feel the full weight of that responsibility anymore, but that he has never yet found a turning point is not just a tragedy of his life, it’s had enormous impact on my life as well.

My veto on his hire at our place didn’t blackball him in town. He could have worked hard at any equivalent retail job anywhere else in that town before or after that application didn’t pan out. But he didn’t.

I have some regrets about decisions I made in the past, both for taking chances, and not, and loads of relief in hindsight about choices made. I’m not sure which column this falls under, I just wish things had gone a different way.

:: Do you remember making a decision that would change your life? Did someone ever take a chance on you? How did that work out?

Edit: On a less depressing note, I also have a guest post over at Chief Mom Officer’s on being a breadwinner. Timely.

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