As a man, I’ve been told my entire life that one of the worst things I can do is to leave the toilet seat up.

Now, someone less enlightened might ask “if others need it to always be down, why don’t they just get in the habit of checking that? Like how I always need to check depending on how I’m about to use it? And is one quick arm movement (like the ones that, again, I need to do half the time), really such a horrid inconvenience that we should endlessly shame each other about it?”

Not me, of course. I wouldn’t ask those kinds of things. I wouldn’t dare insinuate such heresy.

Especially since I might end up in a story like this one.

AITA for helping my niece “gang up” on her dad?

I 36f was dropping some things off for my brother 41m at his house today and I stayed to visit for a while with him and my niece 13f.

There have been plumbing issues with one of their bathrooms so my brother, niece, and SIL 40f have all been using the same bathroom and apparently my brother has an annoying habit of leaving the seat up.

She bonded with her niece over men’s toilet habits.

My niece came out from the bathroom upset because her dad had left the seat up again, she started complaining about how he always leaves the seat up and how annoying it is.

I could relate to this because my husband 38m frequently leaves the toilet seat up at our house.

So I agreed with my niece and pointed out how my husband leaves the seat up to and how annoying it was for men to do that.

She seemed to appreciate my support and she talked about how annoying it was when her dad leaves the seat up.

A light roasting ensues:

We got a little too into it and turned to my brother and (in a joking silly way) asked him “is the toilet seat just too heavy for you men to lift?”

“Is it?”

And we then both went (again in a joking silly way) “I bet it is” “yeah” “yeah” (we both repeated “yeah” back and fourth a few times).

Then my niece and i shared a laugh.

And now it’s a whole parenting issue.

The rest of the visit went okay but later after I left I got a call from my SIL.

My brother was very upset with me for encouraging my niece to disrespect her dad, she said that my niece has developed a bit of an attitude lately and it’s been an issue for them that they’re starting to become concerned about.

She said they’re trying to fix my nieces attitude problem and do not appreciate me encouraging it.

My brother and SIL are very upset with me and want me to apologize to him.

So was this interfering with their parenting? Or just some lighthearted bonding?

I never meant to encourage my niece to disrespect her dad.

I honestly just thought it was a silly thing to joke about with my niece, but my brother and SIL are upset with me for it so maybe I went to far.

AITA?

It may have been a silly joke to the aunt, but the niece may not have seen it that way.

Let’s see what the comments make of it on Reddit:

Things take a different turn when you leave the realm of convenience and start talking about sanitation:

In which case, everyone shares an equal responsibility:

In the end, you really couldn’t have known this would be such a big deal.

You don’t want to see a perfectly good relationship go down the drain over something like this.

If you thought that was an interesting story, check out what happened when a family gave their in-laws a free place to stay in exchange for babysitting, but things changed when they don’t hold up their end of the bargain.