I’m always volunteering at work, taking on extra assignments, etc. It has gotten me into more trouble than I ever could imagine. Lesson: DO NOT volunteer! :smack:
You’re not alone in falling for that one. My worthless cousin declared she was going to turn her life around after her mother died. She was going to go to a medical assistant training program. She was clever-- she got details about the program and talked endlessly about what she’d be doing after she completed it. Even had an “in” for a job, if I recall correctly.
So, the whole family pitched in to help her get set up. She must have laughed all the way to the bank. (Well, the dope dealer, anyway. I don’t think she’s ever had a bank account.) She comes back every now and again with another incredible story of rotten luck, bosses who are extraordinarily harsh, getting blamed for car accidents that may look like she caused them but really were the other driver’s fault, medical maladies and the desperate need for new clothing that is* required* by her new job. (Brand name, of course.)
She recently hit up my mom for a couple of hundred bucks to pay her cell phone bill. Mom, quite understandably, refused. Cousin responded to that by quitting her job because, as she says, “You can’t work without a cell phone.” (Mind you, she worked at a gas station at the time.) She now blames my mom for the fact that she’s unemployed.
Many years ago, my ex was diagnosed with thyroid cancer. We had been broken up for a few months (I fell out of love and she was self-centered) but very good friends when the news came. Doctors were able to remove the malignancy entirely and she is now in remission, thankfully. However, the surgery left her hormonally imbalanced and an emotional wreck for months.
Even though I no longered loved her as a girlfriend, I loved her deeply as a best friend so I vowed to stick by her side and give her all the emotional (and sometimes financial) support she needed for as long as it took. Through the many months of sobbing, the depression, the low self esteem, the unemployment, there stood I. And somewhere along the way, I guess I fell in love with her all over again.
It went unrequited.
No good deed goes unpunished. Sigh.
Oh, I never considered it a loan, believe me. A tiger rarely changes it’s stripes, after all. It was some cash plus a grocery gift card, which of course can be used for booze.
But it was a gift I never should have given.
My Dad was sitting in front of the TV.
He had been drinking.
He had been smoking (tobbacco).
He was semi-asleep.
His lit cigarette set his hair on fire!!
I beat out the flame with my hand, this being the only thing…handy.
Even though 3 other family members were in the room, nobody besides me noticed the fire.
He immediately took a swing at me, & ever since he has bitched about me “hitting him”.
Nobody has believed me, then or since.
I’ve noticed that whenever a down and out person says they want to “move to Florida” for a new start, it usually means that they’re about to ditch all their friends and family and leave them holding the bag. This state is the sump of the US. Sure, a lot of us come down and improve our lives by getting professional careers. But it must seem like the promised land for low-level scammers and slackers of all breeds. I think the tropical paradise image fools them into thinking they’re going to live the easy life. Like there’s no need to work for any kind of regular pay.
So be careful of anyone who thinks that “Moving To Florida” will automatically fix their rotten life.
Nigh on a few weeks ago, my sister married a guy I still call “Lick”. His real name is Derek, which was shortened to “derelict”, shortened even further to “lick” (he’s a bootlicker–more to follow).
When I first met Lick back in '01, he made a few comments to me that he used his “military influence” to get a few bucks off a jet ski rental. This pissed me off to no end: I’m active military and he ain’t military in any-way-sense-of-the-word, except he claims to be a member of the “Coast Guard Auxiliary” (my apologies to the CGA, but I think y’all don’t bandy it about like he does).
Anyway, “Lick” makes mention of his ‘military discount’, and I counter with a similar comment that, "Yeah, The rentals were $35 each. With a “military discount”, they were. . . “$35”.
I let it slide after that.
Then comes my sisters’ wedding a few weeks ago. We’re all at lunch before the wedding, and Lick decides to tell me that he was at his bachelor party, and a few people were ‘looking at him’. He tells them “he’s a Major in the Air Force,” and they apparently quit bothering him.
So he makes this comment, and I’d had a right mind to walk out of that luncheon and not even be a part of the wedding party–but I don’t, simply because it’s my sister getting married. Had it been any other situation, and my girlfriend who reads these boards may not believe this, but I would have gone over the table and knocked his head into the potato chip rack several times while he met my left jab on his nose. . . repeatedly.
Bottom line, I let him get away with it once. I let him get away with it a second time, and even supported his stupidity when I should have walked away.
This will come back to bite me in the arse.
Tripler
Babe: If I decide to “counsel” Lick, I’ll take it outside first, so as not to mess up the carpets.
I think there isn’t a person here who has read some of your posts who doubts you in the least. You’re a good man, Bosda. It’s too bad your Dad doesn’t know it.
Gave a lot of time and support to young female member of the team (new to Paris) at my last job who claimed that she had been gang-raped … answered the phone to her at all hours, listened, offered advice & sympathy, ensured she wouldn’t be teaching males in 1:1 situations, walked her to the metro station then went back to work, took the long way home to accompany her on public transport, explained to our boss, listened as bit by bit she gave me more details (pretty damned disturbing actually) … turns out she was lying & I was allowing her to continue the ‘fantasy’.
I’ll never really understand.
Her story got more and more elaborate, it was obvious I was going to find out. I think she might have been re-living something which had happened to her a couple of years previously. Maybe it was an extreme type of Munchausen’s. Anyway when I finally did “confront” her, in a calm non-agressive way she told me I didn’t understand and ran out of the office, she then resigned and went to work elsewhere.
The saddest thing is I never really helped her even though I thought I was, I may even have made things worse. If she’d hung around maybe we could have worked through it, I don’t know.
I don’t feel bitter to her, something was serioulsy wrong. However the regret comes from the fact that relations with some of my colleagues soured (some seemed to feel that it was my fault they’d been strung along others less involved felt I was wrong to dount her) & I allowed her to take precedence over others more important to me.
When my husband and I got married, he was close with three or four of his co-workers and planned to invite them to our wedding. I was dumb enough to suggest that he invite ALL of the people that he worked closely with, so that no one would have hurt feelings about being excluded. All said they would be there, and - you guessed it - only the ones that he originally intended to invite showed up. There were five people that blew it off, and we had to pay $25 a plate for their dinners that they couldn’t bother to show up to eat.
The reasons were terrible, too. Two “forgot” and three “suddenly got sick”. I suppose they said they were coming with no intention of ever really doing so.
Lesson learned - I tried to be nice, but it was an expensive mistake at a time when we really didn’t have much money to spare on foolishness.
I helped a guy after a minor “accident”, when I could have ignored him.
I was near my house, and I stopped at a corner and when the light changed I turned right.
A thump on my rear fender made me stop. A pedestrian had decided to jaywalk to catch a bus, and watching the bus instead of traffic, he had walked into my car’s rear end, and this made him plop sitting to the sidewalk. I got out, made sure he was okay, which he said many times he was. He admitted his fault and simply was mad at himself as he would be late for work by missing the bus. As I was just headed to the store, I offered to take him to work, which I did. I gave him the insurance card I had in the glove box and said if he decided to see a doctor later to call me.
He never saw a doctor, but the turkey, on advice of do-gooders at work, reported it to the police. I naturally did not, because only injury accidents must be reported.
Anyway, eventually I needed to rent a van and they declined me, for “having too many points on my driving record.” I had been given 2 points for failure to report an accident, and convicted without a hearing or even notice!
It took me months to find anyone at the police department to “reopen” this trivial file.
When they did I got the 2 points “removed”, but that only showed up on the driving report as an asterisk, directing the reader to some cryptic police codes that went unexplained.
So even though my record was clear I still couldn’t rent a van for two years, till the whole thing disappeared.
A few years ago, I was introduced to a woman who’d gone through a lot. At the time, she was dating a scary ex-con. She’d call me every so often to go shopping or out to lunch. We became friends, then one day, she just vanished.
Her scary guy showed up on our door step wanting to know where we were hiding her. Hubby even let him take a turn through the house to show him she wasn’t here.
A couple weeks later, I got a call from her at work. She have moved in with her mother in California.
I wished her luck and said good bye. That was in August.
At Christmas that year, she showed up on our doorstep with no where to go. She asked if she could stay a couple days. We said yes, and she stayed a week. Seems she had been back in the area for a few weeks and had worn out her welcome with all of her other friends.
After a week, she left, and we didn’t hear from her for about a month. Then, once again she just appeared with no where to go.
We let her move in “until she found a job.” She didn’t find a job, but she found a boyfriend in another state. Hubby kept her car maintained so she could travel to see him. Fe fed and clothed her.
She’d leave to see the boyfriend, but come back every so often and stay a few days or a few weeks.
Then Hubby came to me and said she couldn’t stay any more. Seems she’d been subtly coming on to him, but he hadn’t noticed. Finally she just took her top off in the car one day, and told him what she wanted to do to him.
He told her to put her top on and get out of the car. She cried. He drove her home to get her stuff.
A week later, she called me to ask if she could come back. I confronted her with what she’d done. She denied it. She had no idea why my husband would say anything like that. (oh, I should mention that she’d admitted to me long before, that she’d slept with the husbands of all of her close friends over the years.)
I told her then what I’d told her several times in the past, that I could forgive anything but a lie.
She hung up, and thankfully, we’ve heard no more for the past 2 years.
Because I’m such a putz and a push over, two of my roommates now owe me close to $700 put together. It jsut so happens that I also have about half as much money in my bank account as I need to pay the rent this month, and I now that one of those roommates won’t even pay his full share, because he hasn’t been able to do so so far at all.
You people wanred me not to get into this, and I didn’t listen, and now I’m royally fucked. :smack: :mad:
Lending money to friends and relatives. 'Nuff said.
As a longtime Florida resident, I have to ask, “Can’t you keep your loser people at home?” At the very least we should have an extradition process for returning people like this to the places that made them.
My story is pretty lame compared to all of yours, but here it is.
I left the gym one night and two little hotties were staring at their dead car. Their guy friend was going to jump the car and pulled up next to them. But lo and behold, he didn’t have any jumper cables. So I offered them mine. Well, once they had the cables in place, I disappeared. That is to say, I could still see my reflection but apparently no one else could see me. Or even remember where the jumper cables appeared from. So once the car hooked up, they discussed it amongst themselves and the young guy with the car and no one else. Especially yours truly. After they were up and running, I made sure to say things like, “Good thing I had my cables with me.” and such as I gathered up my stuff. But to no avail. I was still invisible and mute as well.
It’s such a minor thing, but to be completely ignored and snubbed by the people who I’d just helped was pretty damn irritating.
You wanted thanks from hotties? How naive you are! You’re just a supporting player; it’s your purpose in life to serve them.
You know, I think that my naivete may be what bothered me most. I let myself be influenced by their looks. Or at least desired their gratitude more than, say, some old guy in the same trouble.
I have a friend who has a messy house. There is no way I can appropriately describe the state of her home. 15 cats, four dogs, three large tortoises, two hamsters, two tanks of fish, one guine pig and a growing number of mice. (She adopted two “male” mice. One was less male than the other. :rolleyes: ) In addition to the animals, she has stuff. Things picked up at thrift stores, objects set aside for “craft” projects which she never gets around to, old magazines, etc.
This friend also likes to entertain at her house. A couple times a year, she panics about the mess, calls me, and I help her shuffle and hide all the junk.
One of these days I’m going to wise up, stop helping her “clean.”
One time, when I was a young teenager, I got my change back from a purchase at the drugstore, and I realized they gave me too much change. I gave back the extra dime.
Not only did the clerk look at me like I was an asshole 
, but in giving it back I had too little for my bus ride home and had to walk the 2+ miles home.
:smack: