Internet Rallies Behind Couple Pretending To Be Drunk To Avoid Babysitting

Spending time at a resort is supposed to be relaxing—but when a woman’s brothers and sisters were using her and her girlfriend as free child care, she found a way of fighting back.

Posting to the popular subreddit r/AmITheA**hole, u/tiancrow explains the situation. She and her girlfriend were at a resort for a family reunion when the parents of the group decided to send their kids to the childless couple to take care of while they partied.

“The first day, a bunch of the couples seemed to just assume my girlfriend and I would babysit when we were hanging out at the beach barbecue. Just telling their kids to go to us to play. We’d send them back to their parents a few times but they’d complain they were busy and needed a break and ask us to ‘help’. But it didn’t feel like just ‘helping’ when it was looking like we were in charge of 7 kids all night while all their parents were getting drunk,” u/tiancrow wrote.

Though neither she nor her girlfriend drink a lot, the two came up with a plan so they could spend the trip enjoying themselves without necessarily having to corral all the kids.

“We decided to pretend each cup of ice water with lime was actually a double-shot vodka soda… So whenever we had one drink we could act like we had two extra strong ones,” she wrote, clarifying that while they were pretending to be drunk, they did still keep an eye on the kids to be safe.

“My girlfriend got up and decided to ‘teach me some ballet’ since she used to be a dancer, and she started doing moves messy on purpose and I’d copy them even worse, often falling down,” she wrote. “My sister came over like ‘What the hell are you doing’ and I slurred my voice on purpose and was like ‘She teaching me ballet! She’s sooo good at it, babe show her!!'”

“Then my girlfriend, with great comedic timing, tripped over the legs of my beach chair and I grabbed her to keep her upright,” she continued.

The poster’s sister asked her about how much she’d had to drink, and she lied saying that she’d had two Long Island Iced Teas and some double-vodka sodas. The parents on the trip took the kids back, and the couple, who in actuality only had two cocktails each, was able to enjoy the rest of their night.

The ruse worked, u/tiancrow said, for the rest of the trip. But on the last night, her mom overheard her saying the two had “played drunk.” She ended up coming clean to her mother, who then told the rest of the family.

“Well, my mom told my brothers and sisters and they were p***ed, saying that was immature of us to do, and really immature that we scared them into thinking their kids had been at risk,” she wrote, asking Reddit if she was in the wrong.

While parenting is, as the old saw goes, a full-time job, it’s not good manners to simply assume childless people can watch kids—especially during what’s supposed to be a vacation for everyone. In this instance, many experts recommend involving an actual—paid—babysitter on a trip.

The babysitter doesn’t need to be brought from home. Many hotels and resorts have options for babysitting, according to Half-Pint Travel. That said, this can be expensive—but there are also babysitting agencies in most locations that can be called for cheaper. Half-Pint Travel also recommends asking friends in the area for recommendations—or even bringing a friend to help, as long as it’s made clear that that’s why they’re there, rather than just springing the kids on them.

The replies solidly backed u/tiancrow.

“NTA, and this is hilarious. Your family needs to learn to stop imposing on other people for free childcare. Their kids weren’t ever at risk and they learned a good lesson about taking advantage of you and your girlfriend,” u/Long-Jeweler-5845 wrote, receiving over 12,000 upvotes for their comment.

“Why do people with kids always assume those without kids must want a wonderful vacation of catering to the desires of children they purposefully chose not to have?” u/Forsaken_Distance777 asked, later adding, “‘It takes a village’ only if the villagers are cool with it.”

“If I was OP I’d ask why the kids would have been at risk even if she was hammered? Their parents were present and OP had not agreed to have responsibility for the children. They 100% deserve to be scared for not making explicit arrangements about who was in charge of keeping their 7 kids safe near water,” u/MediumSympathy wrote.

“Absolute f***ing genius! Chefs kiss to you both! [Not the A**hole] just remember, now that you’ve outed yourselves, you’ll have to get drunk for real at least once next trip because they’ll be expect you to ‘make it up to them’,” u/randomusername71175 wrote.

“[Not the A**hole], I am a mom with several mom friends and believe me they will get drunk around me as quickly as possible so I get to be the surrogate babysitter. I’m a non-drinker so yea, as soon as I figured out that pattern, I stopped going whenever I felt I was going to be made babysitter. Do whatever it takes,” u/IAmTAAlways wrote.

Newsweek reached out to u/tiancrow for comment.