My Family Excluded Me From Dad’s Retirement Party. “we Don’t Want You Showing Up With Grease Under..

My family excluded me from Dad’s retirement party. “We don’t want you showing up with grease under your nails,” they said.

So I stopped being their free plumber and took the trip I was going to gift my dad. When they saw the photos I posted, they lost their minds.

Sup, Reddit. Apparently, owning your own business means nothing when your family needs a toilet fixed at 2:00 a.m. for free.

Again, my name is Shawn, 33 male. I’ve been a licensed plumber for 11 years and built my business from nothing.

I got my master certification at 27. Now I run a crew of four guys who handle everything from basic drain clogs to full commercial buildouts.

I started in my uncle’s shop when I was 19. I spent years crawling under houses and learning the trade the hard way.

I’m good at what I do, which is exactly why my family has treated me like their personal 24/7 emergency repair service since the day I got my license. The requests started small.

My mother needed help installing a new faucet. My father wanted me to look at a toilet that was running.

It was normal family stuff that I was happy to do because that’s what family does, right? You help each other out.,

But somewhere along the way, helping out became on-call free labor for anything water-related in a 50-mile radius. Let me give you the highlight reel.

My sister, Haley, got a burst pipe repair. I drove 40 minutes to fix it at 2:00 in the morning in January.

I crawled under her house in freezing weather with a flashlight and a pipe cutter. That job would have been an $800 emergency call if she’d hired anyone else.

She made me coffee and said,

“Thanks.”

My brother, Colin, had me replumb his entire basement when he finished it as a man cave. I moved all the drain lines and added a beverage station with a sink and ice maker hookup.

I installed a full bathroom with a walk-in shower. That job took me four weekends and would have been $8,000 if I’d charged commercial rates.

He bought me a pizza.

Then there was Christmas Eve when his wife, Kelsey, put a potato down the garbage disposal. I had to come over and snake it out while everyone else ate dinner.

My parents’ house has basically been maintained by me for free since I turned 22. This includes water heater replacement and whole-house repiping when the galvanized lines started corroding.

I did two bathroom renovations and a kitchen sink upgrade. I even installed a fancy rain shower system my mother saw in a magazine and decided she absolutely had to have.

There was $400 in parts I paid for myself because she said they couldn’t afford it right then. I never complained; I just showed up and did the work.

Sometimes I’d get a thank you. I figured this was what families did.

I helped with plumbing. My brother Colin, the accountant, probably helped with their taxes and financial planning.

My sister Haley, who works in event planning, probably helped coordinate family gatherings. Except, I later found out Colin had never done their taxes for free, not once.

He referred them to his firm, and they paid full price like any other client. Haley had never planned a family event without invoicing for her consultation time and expenses.

I was the only one providing free labor. I was the only one expected to drop everything and show up at all hours.,

Then came the week before my father’s retirement party, and that’s when everything went sideways. My mother called on a Sunday evening while I was watching the game.

She said Dad’s retirement party was coming up on Saturday. Before the guests arrived, she needed me to look at a small leak under the bathroom sink.

She called it a quick fix, 20 minutes tops. I drove 40 minutes to their house on a Tuesday evening after working a 10-hour day installing a water main for a new restaurant.

My back was killing me. My hands were raw from working with copper fittings all day, and I wanted nothing more than to sit down and eat something that didn’t come from a vending machine.

The small leak was not small. The supply lines were corroded so badly the braided steel was separating from the fittings.

The shut-off valve was frozen solid from calcium buildup. It was the kind where you don’t even try to turn it because you know the stem will snap.,

The P-trap had a hairline crack letting sewer gas seep into the room. I could smell it the second I opened the cabinet.

Two and a half hours later, I finished. I installed new supply lines, new shut-off valves, and new P-trap parts.

I paid for them out of my own pocket because driving to the supply house would have made a long night even longer. It was $63 on my credit card.

While I was finishing up putting away my tools, I could hear my mother on the phone in the kitchen. Her voice carried in that house.

She was talking about the caterer confirming for Saturday and the seating chart being finalized. She was making sure Uncle Dale knew the time had changed to 4:00 instead of 5:00.

I walked into the kitchen still holding a pipe wrench and asked what time I should show up Saturday. I figured I’d come early and help set up chairs or whatever, since that’s what I always did at family events.

My mother’s face did this thing. It was a frozen half-smile that I’d seen before when she was about to deliver bad news.

She sat down her phone slowly. She said the party was actually pretty small, just immediate family.,

They were keeping it small and manageable. I pointed out that I was immediate family, her own son.

I’d literally just heard her mention Uncle Dale, who was my father’s second cousin living three states away. He was a man who showed up to family events maybe once every four years.

My mother fumbled for words. She started talking about space limitations and about how they’d already given the caterer final numbers.

She said it would be awkward to change them now and that the seating chart was done. I stood there in my work clothes, hands still dirty from fixing their plumbing.

I watched my mother explain why I wasn’t invited to my own father’s retirement party. This was the party happening in four days in the house I’d spent the last two and a half hours repairing for free.

I had done this for 11 years. She said it wasn’t personal.

She said they’d do something with me separately, maybe dinner the following week. I didn’t argue or yell.

I just nodded, packed up my tools in complete silence, and walked out to my truck. She followed me outside, still making excuses.,

She said I was being dramatic. She said she didn’t understand why I was upset since it was just a party.