That’s the angle that I saw. She can’t understand someone living alone (especially someone living alone by choice). I know a few people like that (they’ve finally begun to believe me when I say I’m not married. They still ask me over and over again whether I live with my parents.) She also may see any woman over the age of 30 as a “mom.” (I know people like that, too.) So from that POV, she’s solving several problems at once (her son’s not living alone, you’re not living alone, her son has a substitute mother).
But still, yes, it’s a weird request and you handled it well.
If I had the room, and if I lived alone, I might do it. I’d need a lot more information, and I would have a set of ground rules and a written agreement as to the terms. I’m all about giving the kid a chance, but it would depend a lot on what he was getting kicked out for and what else is going on in his life. I wouldn’t risk my own safety.
As it is, I don’t have room in my house; but more importantly, I have a 10 year old daughter, so there’s no way I’m boarding a 19 year male that I don’t know. I would try to help my coworker think of other options, though. If she’s asking me she must be desperate.
You get an A+ for the way you handled this very awkward situation . Your co worker was waaay out of line putting you on the spot like that ! I wouldn’t had been as nice as you were. I would had said “If you don’t want your own son living with you why the HELL do you think I would want him in my home!!!” There is the YWCA or homeless shelter if the son end on the street and there also is this mom’s home.
Inappropriate and weird request, but the co-worker sounds like someone who likes to involve people in her drama. When someone is ‘troubled’ to the point that family members kick them out of their house, you really don’t want to become their landlord. Even more so when the drama is going to spill into your workplace. Plus anything you do in private will potentially be reported to TMI mom so everyone else will know about it. And a single woman with a ‘troubled’ 19 year old male has its own set of problems.
I agree, I don’t think it’s classist at all to expect that a person who makes $60k a year and doesn’t have to pay for a place to live will have more money available than someone who works behind a counter at Walmart or McDonald’s. “Classist” would be sneering at the lower-paid people for not having money, but I don’t see that here at all.
Definitely not an appropriate request to make to a person you only know in the work setting. My response would be a similar “No, I’m not comfortable with that”. No ors, ands, or buts about it.
Thing one is how actually transgressive the act is of asking a co-worker to rent a room to your 19 year son kid for a limited time.
Thing two is making a personal decision about the advisability of doing this and conveying it to the asking party. The OP gave a polite and perfectly valid reason why she did not want to do it. End of story for the request.
Some of the responses in this thread to the hapless mom’s act of asking this question were basically goggle eyed spit takes at the sheer insanity of the request. The fact that the woman makes 60K per year was not revealed by the OP until well into the thread then and it changed my take on her level of desperation as she could easily have used her credit card to solve the problem.
But even so there was the position in the thread that regardless of the money issue asking someone to put up your kid for a limited time was so far outside the bounds of proprietary you should be offended and shocked at the request. This position was insane. Shit happens and people have emergencies and looking to co-workers for assistance in emergencies is not all that unusual. I’m a large man who lives alone and I may have been willing (in that context) to put the kid up for few days if the asking lady was truly in need. I get that it’s awkward and annoying to be asked this especially if you a very private person, but desperate people are desperate and the act of asking is not beyond the bounds of all propriety .
As it happens , I have spent the last 22 years involved with the process of people being released from prison finding somewhere to live. They frequently cannot live with their parents and often, a parent (usually a mother) who cannot take provide a place for their child to stay will suggest others who might be willing to put him/her up. They suggest the other parent, grandparents, siblings, cousins, official or unofficial godparents, family friends, the lady from their church group and occasionally even a neighbor. All people who have some sort of personal relationship with either the person who needs somewhere to stay or the parent. One thing I have never heard is “Let me see if he can stay with one of my co-workers”. So it seems to me that it is unusual to ask co-workers for this kind of assistance, as unusual as it would be to ask the guy behind the counter at the deli ( which is another suggestion I’ve never heard). Do you actually know anyone who has done this or are you equating asking a co-worker to do this with asking a co-worker to lend you $5 to get lunch? Because they are not at all the same.
No that would not be classist. But that is not what is being discussed here.
The groups being characterized in this thread: someone with a professional degree(s) making approximately national median income; and people who have steady lower income employment at the McDonald’s or Walmart level.
The behaviors and circumstances in question?
“Over” sharing personal travails with a coworker and misreading the polite listening as interest and compassion.
Possibly feeling economically insecure and stretched.
Having a dysfunctional family situation with apparently few to no social supports.
Investigating if there were other options for her suddenly homeless son than the local hostel or such, including asking a coworker who she views positively as a person if she might be interested in renting out a room if she has a spare. Which some here view as a terribly transgressive act.
Are these behaviors that are the result of poor people doing things to survive? No. Are they even based on absolute amount of resources? No.
Believing that someone who has professional degrees (possibly with the debt from having gotten them) and who makes about median income should be know better than to “over-share” with a coworker, should know better than to mistake polite listening as interest and concern, could not possibly be economically insecure, should not have a dysfunctional family with few to no social supports, and should know better than to be so transgressive as to ask a coworker if she might be interested in renting out a room to her son, but that all of those would of course be understandable from the WalMart and McDonalds employee set … if that is, as it seems it is, what the op believes … seems classist to me.
My family is far more dysfunctional than that woman’s and I can see someone who doesn’t have good boundaries not knowing that this is seriously weird.
There’s no way in hell I’d let the kid stay with me even if I were single. I’m a guy but have zero interest in being a substitute parent, which is what everyone in that family is expecting.
I understand asking, in much the same way I ask everyone if they’re interested in adopting whatever foster dog of the moment I’m taking care of, but I ask with the expectation that people are going to say no.
If she’s just putting it out there that her son needs a room, and accepts your perfectly reasonable refusal, then admittedly a bit odd, but not a big deal. If she seemed surprised or offended that you didn’t think it was a great idea, then I’d have more of a problem with the request.
As a mature, single, childless woman, who likes living alone and who can well afford to pay my bills without a tenant, I too would want nothing to do with having someone move into my home and invade my sanctuary, especially a troubled nineteen year old being kicked out of his father’s home.
The teeming masses need to know: what is he getting kicked out of the house for? Dealing meth? Not going to church which pisses off his ultra religion father? Something else? I guess that won’t likely ever find out.
I guess “that’s it” if that is as far as you read and if you make at least one major assumption.
Let us go through a bit so you can tell me exactly what is wrong with me.
A coworker shares that her son is being kicked out by his father on the basis of “poor choices” and asks if the op has a spare bedroom to rent out on a short term basis. The op politely answers “no” which the coworker accepts and the coworker “leaves on good terms.” No expression of surprise or of taking any offense.
So far so good. “No” is of course a very reasonable answer. Accepted. As brainstall notes, maybe a bit odd, but no big deal.
In real life that is likely how 99+% would have responded without feeling “proud” about it. “No. I don’t have a room that I am interested in renting right now.” Maybe a private eyebrow raise. In real life I imagine that a few of us are less “private” than monstro is and might say something empathic to the woman, and try to be of some friendly emotional support to her. But many would not and that is okay too.
Some posters here, if their answers are to be taken at face value, claim their responses would have been to swear at the coworker in response or be otherwise overtly rude or to make a joke at her expense. Maybe we should not take their responses seriously but around here? Some people here are that sort of asshole.
The op continues that her reaction includes that “sometimes it hurts to ask. Some requests are too over-the-top to be overlooked. … I can’t help but hold this against her.”
It hurt to ask?
Who did it hurt?
It caused monstro pain to be asked if she happened to have a spare room she might be interested in renting out on a short term basis?
Or was it hurting the coworker because now monstro was not going to overlook this transgression and would hold it against her?
monstro then later clarifies not overlooking it and holding it against her means continuing to be the exact same, being private around her and not thinking much of her and being willing to share such if asked. Confusing but if so then it is not hurting the coworker, so we are back to monstro somehow being hurt by being asked if she had a spare room she could possibly rent out to this coworker’s son who accepted the “no” reply with no fuss.
Yes, I think monstro characterizing herself as being hurt by being asked if she had a spare room to rent out is over the top and dramatic. If the person hurt by her being asked is the coworker because of how monstro would not overlook it and would hold it against her, then even more over the top out of line.
You think my thinking that is something wrong with me? Okay. You are free to. It nevertheless is MHO, in the spirit of this forum. Yours is different.
Let us be clear. As noted by TB above, we have no idea what the coworker’s (who monstro later describes as quite religious) idea of “poor decisions” by her son were. Did he tell his father he was gay and was kicked out? Did he skip going to church? Was he running a meth lab? Stayed out past curfew? We don’t know and should not care because the answer in any case was no so was no one else’s business.
We also have no idea why the mother is interested in investigating other options than a nearby hostel and might prefer to give her son an option of a short term rented room with someone who she feels she has more reason to feel is reliable than is a stranger on Craig’s list or trying to help him rent out a one bedroom with a longer lease. It is not difficult to imagine lines of thinking that are not the result of “desperation” but may in fact seem rational to the person at the time. Some posters here however prefer to imagine and conclude with near-certainty that the coworker has been a long time horrible parent who cannot handle her now adult child who must be awful and out of control and wants to pawn him off.
Says something about some posters here to me.
Just saying “no, not interested” that she may have her reasons but not my concern and I do not want them to become my concern, isn’t enough … they have to justify their saying no by making up stories … the might be a drug dealer! A perv! The coworker is needy! Is dumping wanting to dump her kid on someone else! Can’t imagine anyone wanting to live alone! Wants sympathy!
These imaginings are to me pathetic. monstro does not know what the coworkers reasons are, is offended that the woman shares any non-work related thoughts with her at all, and proclamations made by the likes of this crowd about her worthlessness as a person are at very best silliness.
monstro continues that such a transgressive question would be understandable if asked by someone of the Walmart or McDonalds set but this woman has professional degrees and makes about median income!
Yes, I believe that that was a classist statement.
You are free to believe that family dysfunction, lack of social support systems, and poor read of who is a friendly face with resultant social misfires, never occur in middle class individuals with professional degrees, and that such are to be expected among those who have steady lower paying jobs, and if your humble opinion is that such is not classist, okay fine. What “is wrong” with me is that I have a different humble opinion than that.
No, monstro’s "Dafuq"s and (okay pretty weak-assed attempts at but still attempts at) personal attacks on me are not justified by calling my expressing those thoughts (agree or disagree with them) to be “gaslighting.”
Well then so nice of you to offer a non sequitur.
Agreed that what you described would not be classist. Any response to the circumstances that the term “classist” was attached to in this thread?
She probably asked because she knows you are trustworthy. I’m sure she expected a “no” but was hoping for otherwise. Sometimes in a crisis, people can fixate on a single solution and will push it until they are clearly thwarted.
I had a friend who wanted to move in with me about 5 times. I said “no” each time knowing perfectly well, that we would not remain friends if she moved in. But she pinned her star on me because I had helped her out of difficulty before. I think your coworker will move on to another option now. But it can’t hurt to point out Craigslist ads for her son.
In thinking about it my co-workers are a team of people I have worked with for almost a decade. We are in sales and celebrate each other successes, go to conferences together, drink together if we close a deal , loan each other trailers to move with. etc etc. My co-workers are people I know in this sense and we are mostly men who are assertive “take care of business” types, and we rely on each other.
In this context we probably have a different and possibly stronger interpersonal connection than some of the random “co-workers” mentioned in this thread. My co-workers are people I have a connection to that’s stronger than just being at the Christmas party together once a year. Plus, without getting into Mars-Venus or cultural issues a if a co-worker in my context needs a favor you’re kind of expected to step up if you can and the request is not insane.
Having said all this I realize my perception of “co-worker” is probably different than others cited in this thread.
Despite not being friends with this coworker, I was prepared to grant the kind of favor I thought she was going to ask. A ride home? A loan? Someone to watch her puppy? I am not such a mean cold-hearted person that I would automatically say no to a coworker’s plea for help.
I think most people are like me. They like being able to grant favors. And there is social pressure to say yes when someone comes to you hat in hand.I think that is pretty dang universal.
Which is why favors need to be reasonable. Unreasonable requests make for awkwardness because few people enjoy being put into a situation where they have to give an emphatic NO.
Forgive my typos and lack of participation in the thread. I am typing all this on my phone.
I don’t think it is a gender issue. Nor an econmic one.
I am one of only three males in my immediate office environment. Three of my four partners are female and all but one of the employees are women. Incomes go from relatively working poor to the higher percentiles. The group are not all friends but they are all friendly with each other. Talking to each other about their kids, spouses, exes, their stresses and celebrations in life, and supporting each other … it’s just what they do. If any one had some particular stressor that they shared with another the other would not offer to jump in and fix it but they usually listen with actual empathy, and they usually will follow up and ask how the person is holding up later.
It’s the contrast of that to what posters here describe as how they’d respond and how monstro describes herself responding to this person going forward that has me doing my relative spit take. The complete lack of what I have experienced as routine human interaction between people who are part of the same team and who spend hours together. Posters interpreted the inquiry regarding if the op had a room to rent as the coworker having a family crisis of some sort, perhaps correctly and perhaps not, and the overwhelming reaction of this crowd was to insult the coworker. Both saying no to the request and offering an empathic ear did not even get on most of this crowd’s radar.
Heck even in the context of this board, I have in the past been PMed by some that I obviously have no real relationship with, would not consider even virtual friends, who only know me as a bunch of pixels, asking me for some help regarding medical issues. One woman I can think of in particular with some motor control disorder that was not getting clearly diagnosed and the progression of which was worrying her greatly. I could not help her much but at least I could express honest concern for what she was going through and offer the little information I knew. That was nothing for me to be proud of; it’s just what I’ve always thought people do. We may not be able to help other than by being empathic but dang, it seems like a little empathic listening would be of some real value to the coworker and it costs so little to give it. Instead the consensus here was to join in a Pit-like chorus about how horrible and inadequate that person must be.
We live in a sad world I guess.