The missed having a maid so much that they decided to make me one

So, I (22f) just graduated college and I went back home because the job market is hell on earth and I am still unemployed. There’s not a single week where I don’t apply to 20-30 jobs, if not more, and besides that I cook, clean, and help out in the family business (though I try to keep my hours VERY reduced since my mom screamed at me for hours and “fired” me three years ago). I am VERY short on money (I have severe credit card debt due to a surgery I had to have seven months ago, my family offered to help pay, but in the past they’ve held that sort of thing over my head (which now they do because I decided to recover with the help of my roommate and not them) and I did not let them) and very anxious about making my monthly payments, in addition to knowing that college repayment starts in five months. Whenever my family offers to pay me for my work at the family business, they haggle down because they know how desperate for money I am and how frustrated I am for not being able to get any work, telling me that to my face, even.

The other day, my sister (30) offered to pay me $35 to do her chores (relatively light, but she gets paid around 120k and she’s had multiple tragedies lately. i understand because i have suffered from severe depression for my entire life), and when my mom (mid 60s) found out, she first told me she would’ve just made me do it for free and then tried to convince my sister to only pay me $20 (again, to my face). Today, me, my sister, and my mom went to the because me and my mom had to get our phone batteries changed (for free). While there, I chose to buy myself a $20 dress, as I had enough saved up for a little treat. My family then pressured me to buy five pieces of underwear (for $10) so my sister could take part in a deal and then made me buy for their drinks ($20), all while my mom and sister both spent hundreds of dollars on each other (and none except a $15 lunch plate on me).

When it came to the drinks, I looked obviously uncomfortable, as that would mean that all the money I got from my sister would effectively go down the drain. That’s when my mom got the fantastic idea to offer my maid services to my sister (for an unspecified price) seeing as all I really needed to do was to “get working and do something.” I was like, okay. So when my sister started complaining about her bright white sneakers being stained (and they are very, VERY stained, like they would take detail work to clean), I offered my services. I was going to offer a discounted rate of $15, when she came out with a price of $7. For delicate tennis cleaning and stain whitening. I eventually was able to raise it to $10, but I can’t help but feel like I am just a fucking maid to them.

Back in our home country (we immigrated to the US when I was a tween), having maids is really common for those in the upper middle class (which my family used to belong to before the move) and above. My family was rich and lazy enough, at the time, to have TWO. I don’t remember much from that time period, but I know that they raised me much more than my mom did. I still remember how my mom and dad used to condescendingly speak to and about them, always going on about just how much money they would “demand,” how they would always ask for “too much,” how they never ever did “enough work.” I always disagreed, but they never paid mind because, again, I was a kid. Now, seeing how my family treats me… I can’t help feeling that now that having “service” in the US is more expensive, they just decided to make me one, treat me the same (in addition to standard emotional abuse, of course. i am their greatest failure in their eyes, after all), and pay me the same poverty wages in the name of being family.