A Philadelphia couple was slammed online after they posted a crowdsourcing request, asking strangers to do chores for them and provide them with free meals after their first baby was born.
“As the father-to-be, I’m teetering on a fence of emotions,” expectant dad Jim Burns posted on the crowdsourcing platform Meal Train.
Although his post has since been removed from the site, snippets of the request were recently shared by Twitter user @JJFromTheBronx, the New York Post reports.
“One of the things I’m most afraid of is not getting a great deal of sleep and as a result not being in the best frame of mind to offer my wife the support she needs to recover from the child-birthing process,” Burns said.
It isn’t wrong for someone to ask help from a neighbor but the specificity of the couple’s request was what drew ire on social media.
Burns asked neighbors to do their chores like vacuuming or doing the dishes.
"My wife and I are having a baby. I'm starting a meal train because it is our first and neither of us have a clue what we're doing. If you are feeling neighborly" so I clicked the link bc there is no way these people are asking strangers to make them food bc they have 1 baby(2/?)
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And if the neighbors were able to cook, the couple provided recipes for dozens of meals, noting dietary restrictions such as to “avoid[s] sugar.”
The Twitter user shared the screenshots, writing: “Turns out they are … asking total strangers to help them and with the most millennial phrasing I have ever seen in my life.”
Among the recipes requested by the parents-to-be were coconut soup, red lentil, chickpea, steel-cut oats, and banana oat bars.
“We’re looking for a ‘check-in train’ to have people check in on us to see if we need or anything as we acclimate to the new routine,” the original post says, according to the screenshots.
Trying not to be negative, I figured maybe it's like "if you make a lasagna and make too much, we would accept it". That would be very reasonable inside a totally unreasonable ask. BUT THERE WERE 30+ SPECIFIC MEALS WITH RECIPES pic.twitter.com/BkE2kBuhyJ
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“That might mean a meal or some snack staples, yes, or it may mean stopping by and walking the dog, or doing some dishes, or simply bringing your smile and some conversation.”
The internet users slammed the couple for their bizarre request.
One person commented: “I just keep thinking that in the time it took him to write up that list, he could have made a bunch of meals in advance and froze them.”
This guy then tops it all off be telling us we can sign up for a day to text, and if they decide they would rather not see people, WE CAN COOK THEM A MEAL AND LEAVE IT FOR THEM IN A COOLER HIS WILL PROVIDE IN THE YARD BECAUSE HE COULDN'T BE BOTHERED ANSWERING THE DOOR pic.twitter.com/FXtNRgVa8Z
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Another wrote: “MealTrains are great! Supporting new parents is great! But, uh, normally it’s the *friends* of the new parents that support them with a Meal Train. I have never, ever, seen anything as bizarrely entitled as this.”
Following the backlash, Burns told Post in an interview that he and his wife were surprised by the outrage.
“I apologize if it was taken the wrong way — and I’m frankly just very surprised and a little disheartened by … the response,” he said.
“If they are not interested, then they don’t have to check that site or do anything. This is the world we live in.”