I’m intrigued by this. What would constitute sex addiction for a 19 yo male?
Doctor: “Do you fantasize about sex all day long?”
19yoMale: “Yes”
Doctor: “Would you have sex all day long if given the opportunity”
19yoMale: “Yes”
Diagnosis.
Real doctor: “Here’s a box of kleenex and lotion. Have fun”
Psychiatrist: “Do you have health coverage? I’m scheduling daily sessions until we resolve this issue”
I don’t think astro was describing a gender difference- I think he was describing a different relationship with his coworkers than some of us have. The relationship he and his coworkers seem to have is closer to “friends” than the relationships I’ve had with most of my coworkers. I’m friendly with most of my coworkers , but I wouldn’t ask one if I could move into her trailer, in large part because I don’t know them well enough to know that they have a trailer to let me move into. And I think that’s part of the reason the “do you have a room my son could rent” seems inappropriate. It would not seem inappropriate if the coworker knew that monsto routinely rented out her extra bedroom and was inquiring whether it might be free at the moment. Or if the coworker knew that **monstro **owned a two family house and routinely rented out the extra apartment on a bedroom-by-bedroom basis rather than renting the apartment as a whole. But she didn’t know any of those things, because they aren’t the case. It’s the difference between asking a coworker if she has a car you can buy when you don’t even know if she has a car and asking to buy the car that she’s already told you she wants to sell.
There’s nothing wrong with listening with an empathetic ear, and the woman didn’t do some horrible , awful thing that she can never be forgiven for. But it is definitely outside the norm to ask a coworker if your son can move in with her
I can just see the charity pouring off you from here.
doreen my gender comment was to astro’s “without getting into Mars-Venus …” aside. Sorry that I was unclear.
I am certainly not arguing against the position that the request was … unusual. “Inappropriate” is more marginal in my mind, as I can easily imagine the rationale of not knowing if someone has a room to rent out until you ask if someone has a room to rent. I can imagine a person, especially a slightly “off” professional person (and I’ve known many of them), just going into data gathering mode to collect all the possible options they can. Or not. Certainly agreed that as the experienced and relayed by monstro the request is unusual at the least. And apparently monstro has an uncommonly large amount of coworker interactions experienced as unusual.
It’s the responses beyond a simple matter-of-fact “no” and the reactions after that “no” that were quite polar to compassion and empathy to what posters believed was a coworker with few to no social supports who was, they felt, experiencing some desperation, that I have been commenting on. Declining to be empathic is one thing, but the reactions of this group was overall beyond that.
monstro felt uncomfortable, hurt even, being asked to do something that she very reasonably could not see herself doing, something that it was very reasonable for her to have said no to, and after the response to her “no” was completely a benign reaction. Trying to be put myself in her place I cannot understand why.
Sarcastic shit like the jsgoddess post above also are sad. Again, I do not think having basic human interactions with coworkers, and even casual acquaintances is “charity” or anything to be proud of. It is not special. It is simple decency. As they say, what we learn in Kindergarten. It’s what I see in most people all the time. The apparent lack of it in many posting here is what I see as unusual. At least in my real world experience.
I guess milage varies. Huh.
Have a Happy Thanksgiving all.
I am all for helping people whenever I can. I spent yesterday helping a former coworker move shit, because I have a truck and he needed the help. I didn’t know him well at all. We got to know each other better during the course of the day, and I ended up really enjoying the time we spent together. If he had asked to move his troubled teenage son into my house, I would absolutely have been taken aback. It’s not a lack of empathy that would have made me think twice; it’s a question of boundaries and personal safety. Maybe some degree is a question of mars and venus- I wouldn’t want to a strange man to sleep a few feet from me.
Can you quote me where I said I was “hurt”? Confused, weirded-out, shocked…none of the emotions I’ve confessed to having connote “hurt”. So perhaps you can stop psychoanalyzing me in your lame effort to justify your long-winded diatribes. I’d appreciate that very much.
You cannot understand what? You can’t understand why a person might feel uncomfortable interacting with someone who thinks it is appropriate to ask her to take over their parenting duties for no reason other than she’s a warm body and she’s not known for turning down a favor?
Because to me, feeling uncomfortable in that situation is not that hard to understand.
How is it that you can be as old as you are and you’ve somehow managed not to learn that one can be generous and kind to a person and yet still be completely gobsmacked, disturbed, and embarrassed by that person’s pathos?
In what world are you living in, where someone asking to take their strange son into your home when they know you to be single, childless, and without any experiences that would lend themselves to dealing with a troubled adolescent is “basic interaction?” Because in my world, chit-chatting about the weather and sports are “basic interactions”. Basic workplace favors would be lending someone a couple of bucks for the vending machine or letting someone use your stapler. I can deal with “basic” just fine. My experiences up to this point have adequately prepared me for “basic”.
But when someone drops a highly unusual request in my lap that makes me questions their abilities as an adult and mother, yes, I’m going to be blown away. Maybe this happens to you all the time, but it doesn’t happen to me. I don’t think feeling negative emotions about this woman warrants you implying I’m some type of cruel, heartless, classicist she-beast. I definitely don’t think anything that has occurred in this thread warrants your rambling sanctimony.
I also think the discomfort comes from the way she framed it as a personal favor to* her*. If it was merely a business transaction (“My son is looking for a place to stay for $150 a week and I thought I’d ask around the office to see who I might be renting”), it would be totally different. In that situation, it’s a totally non-awkward thing to say “Sorry, not interested!” because I would have been saying “no” to the extra income, not to personally helping her get out of a family mess bind.
I would not say she needs to be forgiven, because it’s not like she harmed me or offended me, even if she did put me on the spot.
But forget, no. My mind doesn’t work like that.
I have several times already.
But sure. After having telling us that this coworker asked you:
“Do you have a spare bedroom you wouldn’t mind renting out on a short-term basis? My son is getting kicked of his home because of some poor choices he’s made, and he’s going to be homeless if I can’t find him a place to stay.”
Actually not asking you for any favor at all, and not asking you to take any responsibility for him, just asking if you do happen to have a spare room to rent on a short term basis and appropriately disclosing why she is asking and for whom before you answer. By your quote of it anyway.
You then went on here, making a few guesses about what she’d want to pay and assumptions about the young man, her parenting, and her intent, and stating:
You’ve since informed that it does not hurt her because your not overlooking it and holding it against her means continuing to be the exact same around her as you had been before (and that part of your being judgemental about how this request means she is a desperate “hot mess” is because she is not a Walmart level worker but someone of the professional class.) It hurt that she asked you and it is not her that it hurt. That does not leave much option there.
Given the what you said she said there are two possibilities:
She is helping gather up possible options for her son. She would prefer that he have options other than a hostel or Criag’s list with a completely unknown entity or signing a longer term lease or for more apartment than he needs. She is not actually desperate at all. She is not asking you to serve as in loco parentis. She makes no presumption and simply asks around. You may have mentioned that you live alone in a small house (if my vague recollection is correct) and she thought that maybe you’d want to pick up a few bucks renting out a room. Or not. All the rest is your imagination going overtime.
Your deductions based off of her asking you about whether or not you have a spare room to rent on a short term basis and explaining who would be the potential renter, that therefore … only below market rent would be offered, her adult child is “having difficulties”, she does not want to take care of him, and is simultaneously desperate to help him, he’d be raiding your refrigerator or playing Xbox at all hours of the day, and mainly that what she really asking is not if you simply have a spare room that you’d be interested in renting to her adult son who now suddenly needs a place to stay on short notice but to “entrust her son to [your] care” … are all on point. Her calm demeanor and matter-of-fact reaction to your declination hides that she is freaked out that her son is now going to be homeless and feeling desperate, was asking you to do her the favor of being the parent that she has failed at being. Or okay, she is at least feeling stressed and has few to no supports and is poor at coming up with solutions.
In either case saying no was a fine response, as established.
If the first then no need be so “gobsmacked.”
If the second your being following up your “no” with any attempt at some small kindness for someone in what you interpret to be in a stressed out place was not shared here. Nor did many of the posters here who shared that interpretation suggest that their reaction would include that. More suggested overt rudeness, if they are to be taken seriously. Minimally the group response was a recreational drive-by Pitting of the woman.
In what world do I live in? One that sees someone asking me if I have a spare room to rent to a young adult as an easy thing to say no to (even though right now we have a spare room) and that would not jump from that odd request to having any thoughts at all about how “troubled” the young adult is nor to imagine that I was being asked to take responsibility for the young man. One that commonly has interactions with people of all classes that actually do have real significant dysfunctions as well families that do very very well … enough that it takes more, a lot more, than what you even imagined was the case to gobsmack me. And one that basic interactions include that if one does think a coworker is having a hard time one might ask them how they are holding up and try to be a little bit supportive, if one thinks that such support is desired.
So, monstro, you were worried that you might be overthinking your reaction to this? I think DSeid has taken over-think to a whole new level.
A desperate mom looking for a soft touch to dump a problem child on?
Nope. Not my problem. 
You’re 100% wrong. Everything from the way she approached me to how she framed her question indicated that she was asking me to help her out. Of course, you weren’t there and you just have to take my word for it. But no one else seems to be having that problem with this except for you.
If she’d asked if I was interested in renting a room out, that would NOT be her requesting a favor. But that’s not what she asked. She asked if I wouldn’t mind renting out a room to spare her kid from homelessness.
You’ve never heard the saying “It never hurts to ask?” Do you agree that it never hurts to ask anything, or do you believe as I do that some asks are crazy and will make others perceive you in a negative way?
Because that’s what I meant by “it hurts to ask”. I didn’t have a lot of regard for her before this exchange, and now it’s even lower.
It’s really sad that you seem unable to parse this very simple language. Never once have I said that she hurt me by making that request, unless you think being weirded-out is the same thing as being hurt.
I really wish you’d find something else to preoccupy your time, because the ass-showing that you’re doing in this thread is making me embarrassed for you. “Holding it against her” means I’m not going to be nominating her for “Adult of the Year” until she does something that convinces me she’s not batshit crazy. Two weeks ago, I didn’t feel quite this way.
“Holding it against her” means that even though I’ve always known her to be a bundle of neuroses, I didn’t know she was this out in left field with her social skills.
It does not mean what you seem to think it means. Once again, you’re siding with a person you know nothing about just so you can judge me in the most uncharitable way, believing that this makes you a nicer person than everyone else in this thread (except for astro). If you were truly a decent guy, you wouldn’t be judging anyone because you’d recognize that you don’t possess enough facts. Or personal experiences, for that matter.
And this may all be true, but there is a much better way to frame the question if this was her motivation. Like “My son is looking for a place to stay short-term. He’s willing to pay X amount per week/month. Do you happen to know of anyone who might be willing to rent a room to him?”
But that’s not what she did.
It’s also a fact that she has over-shared things about her son and her parenting adventures that back up my assumptions about what actually would be involved in fulfilling her request. You aren’t privy to these details and I’m not about to share them with you because they don’t matter to my OP. But lemme just tell you this: Only a fool runs off at the mouth the way you’ve been doing without making pretty damned sure he knows what he’s talking about.
And I wouldn’t have been gobsmacked if she’d framed the request in the way I laid out above. Because in that situation, it would have been a totally non-awkward thing to say “Sorry, I’m not renting a room.” But that’s not the situation I was confronted with. Instead, I ended up turning down a request to save her son from homelessness.
If I really thought her kid was going to end up sleeping on the streets, perhaps I would be feeling a mixture of other emotions besides the ones I’m currently feeling (and gradually not feeling, since some time has passed since I created the OP). But I actually don’t think he’s going to be homeless. I’m guessing when I return to work next week, I’ll find out that he’s still living with his father, he’s living with her, or he’s living with a family member. Worse case, Coworker has realized that her son will not disintegrate if he spends a week in a hotel, but I don’t think this is likely.
If she were a woman without any means, then this would be a totally different discussion. Because I can understand a mother being in a bind when she’s living in suboptimal circumstances by the skin of her teeth and she is financially unable to find shelter for her child. But even then, there are good ways of framing the request and then there are bad ways.
When I hear “teenaged male makes poor choices that put him at risk of being homeless, despite both parents being financially capable of caring for him”, my mind does not go to pleasant places.
And you know that I won’t be doing this how? What have I said that would give you the idea that I don’t know how to relay sympathy and concern to someone even if I actually have little of both?
In a world filled mostly with decent people, why not just shrug it off if you perceive people may be acting with a moral compass a little west of what you feel is common decency. Fighting the temptation to let them know that you know they’re not acting as decently as you would be might still make you feel like a better person, even if know one else gets to know about it.
monstro of course I have to take your word for it.
If you say that what she said was "“Do you have a spare bedroom you wouldn’t mind renting out on a short-term basis? My son is getting kicked of his home because of some poor choices he’s made, and he’s going to be homeless if I can’t find him a place to stay.” and then took your saying no with no muss no fuss then I take that as what happened for the purpose of this thread. By your report that was the extent of the conversation and the rest was, as you told us: “the cogs of my mind turning.”
When you state “she certainly didn’t work very hard at the selling the idea to me, and she didn’t seem all that shook up when I turned her down” we have to accept that as what happened.
Your description of the brief interaction seems to me less consistent with someone desperately begging for a favor and a handout, than with someone trying to gather up all possible options and who thought that this person who comes into work every day, who I know better than an unknown Craig’s list person, and who I know lives alone in a small house, might be interested in picking up a few bucks in an Airbnb fashion. An unusual thought yes. And sure expressed with a bit of helicopter mother anxiety … the 19 year old young adult may actually be able to figure something out for his own dang independent self without his mother swooping in to solve his problem for him. But one easy to say no to without a second thought or any further justification than not interested.
When you describe that you from that statement concluded that she was asking you “provide a caretaker role for their teenaged son” and that you are making best guesses as to what might the “poor choices” he may have made or where he is living now, if there is a father currently involved or not, that you were guessing it would below market rent, that from that statement you concluded that this 19 year old young adult’s “own parents don’t want to take care of him” and that he’d be someone who would “be raiding my refrigerator or playing Xbox at all hours of the day”, that she was desperately asking you for a personal favor … I take you at your word that those conclusions all came from your mind spinning off that asking you if you might have a room to rent on a short term basis with one sentence explanation of for whom and why. (Which many people might want to know before they answered.) They were your cogs spinning.
Duly noted that many others responders have shared that they have jumped to all the same conclusions.
When you tell us that you already thought poorly of this person as someone who is “needy”, “one of those TMI people”, one of those people who reflexively self-depreciates in response to a compliment, and who in short who you have already judged to be “a hot mess” … I have to accept you at your word that such was your existing filter for whatever this woman said.
When you tell us that, seeing her as a person in need and without social/emotional supports, going forward you will not overlook this and will hold this against her, specifically by staying very “private” around her, I have to accept that that is your intent on how to follow up next week rather than to “relay sympathy and concern.”
Any questions I have about the accuracy of your experiences of the reality of what happened are inappropriate to include in this thread. I can only assume that events happened exactly as you described them, that your reactions were as described, and that your plans moving forward are as you have described.
In this thread you are the unimpeachable witness. If you said it happened then for the purpose of this thread it happened; if you did not say it happened it did not. What you state occurred is what occurred and what you state were your interpretations and guesses and are your future plans are those.
Indeed I seem to be the outlier here that the request would not gobsmack me at all. I’d just say no not interested, similar to how you did, (and not with the derision that some here suggested) and maybe in the interest of typical interactive conversation ask a bit more. Not having jumped to the same conclusions I wouldn’t be viewing her as in a desperate place and so might not follow up too much. Maybe next week I’d remember to ask her what solution her son and she came up with and if she seemed distraught offer some smidge of emotional support. But she seemed pretty calm about the circumstance per your report so maybe I would have forgotten.
Just MHO and I promise I won’t belabor it any more. Points have been made such as they are, agree or disagree with them.
Bootis this is the IMHO forum. It is a request for the HOs of others. Honestly I tend to post less in the IMHO threads that my HO would be a “me too” with other posters … boring. Expressing and defending my HO when it diverges from the crowd, less boring. And sometimes useful to a discussion to have a minority take on an issue shared. Even from someone who is tonedeaf. I really don’t mind getting beat up on a little online. Mind out I don’t intentionally seek it out either. No, it is not about feeling like a better person, if it was I’d avoid threads in which the op makes personal attacks on me and accuses me of gaslighting and others pile on :); it is mundane entertainment. Okay with me if you use these fora in order to feel better about yourself though!
To me there’s no such thing as short term. Why I would say HELL NO!
Your answer was fine. Maybe there’s more going on than meets the eye, but this would require a lot of work. An aquaintance of mine has fostered several difficult teenagers, and given the damage and drama they cause was saint to do so. Bad choices may mean drugs, crime or worse. I’m all for multiple chances, but there are plenty of alternatives if you don’t want to do it.
BTW, I agree with monstro, this is a seriously weird thing to ask and I would be extremely wary of someone who thought it reasonable to ask their coworker to save their ‘so troubled his dad and my roommates won’t take him in’ teen from homelessness by bringing him into her house. It shows all kinds of issues with appropriate boundaries and a distinct willingness to subject the person being asked to a highly dangerous situation that puts their job, property, life, and health at significant risk.
Someone asking such a thing is a good indicator of why the kid is fucked up to begin with.
So it’s been two weeks …
Have you seen the coworker since? How have interactions gone?
You may not know, which is completely okay, but any word on how she is doing and what solution her adult son came up with, with or without her help?
I was way too busy to chit-chat with anyone this week. But she’s been working her regular hours.
I would inform her where the nearest homeless shelter is. Which is what I’m gonna say to my stepson the next time he steps out of line with me.