JUST SAY NO, YOU GET IT

Martyrs Finish Last

You deserve more

When I was a waitress at a coffeehouse pizza joint, I hated bringing customers pizza and coffee. Why was it my job? Whenever a customer offered me a seat at their table, I happily complied — even when the manager’s jaw hit the floor.

I told my boss sitting and chatting was my shtick. It made people feel at home. Sure, the pizza might take longer and taste colder, but they’d always remember the congenial waitress in the cute apron who listened to their problems.

Even if they were complaining about how long the food was taking, or they were having a private conversation, or their pizza was becoming spongy under the warmer — I was putting human relationships above my indentured servitude. I’m a people person but I’m no martyr.

I know martyrs. Martyrs are people who like bringing other people coffee — but they are always bitching about how nobody brings them coffee. I don’t want to be one of those people. It’s annoying and if I have to listen to someone complain while they’re frothing my milk, I’d rather have someone else bring it to me.

I tried being a martyr once, but it sucked. I had to nail holes in my palms and I got a fucked up sunburn. Don’t get me started on the cross thing — totally gratuitous religiosity.

Martyrs get excited by helping people, but do you know what martyrs really get off on? Dishes. Martyrs always say, “I love doing dishes. It relaxes me.”

I hate hearing that. If they’re lying, what a stupid thing to lie about. You only get 14,783 lies a day and you shouldn’t waste them. If it’s true and they do love doing dishes, I feel totally ripped off. Why can’t I love doing the dishes?

I hate doing dishes, even other people’s dishes. You know those people — I mean those women — who offer to help when you invite them over to dinner?

They say, “I don’t mind helping clean up. I hate doing my own dishes but other people’s are totally different.” I don’t get that. Why is washing my dishes better than washing their own dishes? What the fuck is wrong with these people? I mean these women.

I also hate when women say, “We girls are gonna go into the kitchen and clean up so we can talk.” I can talk without doing the dishes. How about we say, “You guys can go into the kitchen and clean up so we ladies can do a bong hit and talk in the jacuzzi?”

But that’s not the world we live in. We live in a world where being a martyr is the baseline for being a good person. I am not for it. That’s why I’m studying learned helplessness.

I want to sit around like a pig in my own slop and have people bring me crap. I want to be surrounded by dirty socks and food-caked plates and wait for other people to clean that shit up so I can take a nap.

In my twenties, I was very messy and I loved it. It was so easy to be me. I remember a woman, who I became friends with, told me the first time she came over to my insanely disheveled apartment she wondered, “What the fuck is wrong with that lady?”

Then, she did my dishes. That’s how my longest friendships usually begin. She showed genuine curiosity about me and she did my dishes. That’s a life-long friendship in the making.

Learned helplessness is my only way back to being a genuinely happy person who other people can wait on. I will probably be tempted to get off my ass at some point, but I will resist. I’ve observed practitioners of learned helplessness and I can honestly say, they are the happiest people on earth.

Learned helplessness is a valuable life skill. If you pretend you don’t know how to do stuff, people do it for you. If you act dumb and people don’t have time to explain things, they’ll do it for you. It’s like being famous without the paparazzi and people wondering if you got fat or you’re just pregnant.

I didn’t realize how pro-learned-helplessness I was, however, until I asked my dog to bring me my coffee. Then I asked my coffee cup to bring me my computer. Then I realized I needed everyone to bring me shit if I wanted to be truly happy.

I started to research learned helplessness on YouTube shorts. YouTube longs took too much time and I wasn’t interested in putting in the effort. I’m sad I don’t live in a time where everyone gets a robot that waits on them 24/7.

I wish I lived in the time of WALL-E. I know we’ll all eventually become morbidly obese and the robots will end up killing us — but, those few months, when a robot brings me a coffee on command — that will make my imminent demise totally worth it.

Thanks, Betsy Denson for your not-lazy editing.

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