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A woman has been defended online after she refused to compensate for the “expensive” cake slices her daughter ate without permission.

In a viral Reddit post shared to the “r/AmItheA**hole” subreddit, a mother revealed that her daughter was babysitting her family members when she ate the piece of cake left in the refrigerator. But when the mother’s sister demanded that she pay her for the custom-made cake slices, the woman said no.

The 38-year-old mother began her post by explaining that she’s a single mom living with her 17-year-old daughter, who she referred to as Carly. The woman’s younger sister lives nearby with her husband and two children, a nine-year-old daughter and a seven-year-old son. Carly tends to babysit her cousins on the weekends so that she can have €30-€40 ($32.44-$43.25) extra cash, the mother said.

“Me and my sister do not make Carly babysit, she volunteers to. She likes having the extra money to fund her Starbucks addiction without a part-time job in fast food or retail, plus the kids love getting to see her,” the woman wrote. “I’m glad that she’s getting to learn responsibility. I think it’s a win all around.”

However, she explained that there was an incident one week ago, when Carly went over to babysit her cousins. “A couple hours after Carly came home from babysitting, my sister calls me. It was my niece’s birthday two-ish weeks ago, and there was some leftover birthday cake in their kitchen,” the Reddit user said. “It was a custom-made fancy lemon curd cake and I remember at the party a lot of the kids didn’t want to eat it so a lot was leftover. Whilst she was babysitting, Carly had eaten two slices.”

The sister insisted that Carly “should’ve asked before helping herself” to the cake, which she noted was “expensive”. While she apologised to her sister and told her that she would speak to her daughter, the sister pressed further by claiming that “we should be compensating her” for the custom-made cake slices.

“At first I honestly thought she couldn’t be serious, but she did want me to give her money because of the cake,” she said. In a comment, the woman clarified that the cake was being kept in the bread bin rather than the freezer. While the woman jokingly told her sister that the cake was going to turn stale anyway, she “made it clear” that she was not going to give money to her sister.

“She says she paid €70 ($75.68) for the cake and she expects me to give her €20 ($21.62). I told her I’m not doing that,” she added. “My sister says I’m being inconsiderate, and that my daughter ate the slices without permission. I feel like she is being petty, and what difference would it have made if all of it got eaten last weekend or at the birthday party?”

Since it was shared to Reddit on 20 February, the post has received more than 7,000 interactions and over 1,500 comments. A majority of users defended the woman for refusing to pay for the cake slices, and encouraged her daughter to stop babysitting for them entirely.

“Pay sis for the two slices of her fancy a** cake, and tell your daughter she will not be babysitting her siblings without full and comparable to other sitters compensation ever again,” read the top comment. “Your sis had the golden goose of babysitters, and she obviously had no idea how good she had it. Emphasis on had. If she wants to nickle and dime you, let’s go.

“And don’t bother to give your sister a heads up. She can find out your daughter will be charging her, oh, shall we say, €20 an hour? For every hour? Or whatever the going rate is, or she can scramble to find an alternate.”

Another person agreed that her daughter should charge a higher babysitting fee, rather than paying for the cake. “Next time they need her to babysit, make sure your daughter charges them the full amount of babysitter for each child,” they said. “If they want to get petty, they better appropriately compensate your daughter for her work time.”

While the woman “100 per cent” agreed that her teenage daughter “should’ve asked for permission before helping herself to something like a birthday cake,” she maintained: “I just think that my sister is majorly overreacting to the situation?”

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