I don’t know what you have inferred about anybody’s ‘way’, but you asked for info on how to ID a freeloader.
When I say “your way,” I am referring to the fact that many of your listed “warning signs” of potential freeloaders seem to relate only to the conditions that indicate that the person may be in NEED of help, not to the fact that they will take advantage of the person who tries to help them. Yes, many of the people in need of help will end up taking advantage, but if there’s no way to figure out which ones in advance, I’ll just take my chances, rather than assume everyone that is homeless/penniless/supportless would screw me over given the chance. Identifying needy people and avoiding them is not the issue. At all.
How to spot a freeloader:
(1) The person says, “I can sleep on the couch, you won’t even know I’m there!”
(2) You have a bed pillow and folded sheet and blanket on the end of your couch.
(3) All the towels in the bathroom are wadded up on the floor.
(4) The toilet paper spindle is empty. The shampoo is on the floor of the shower, tipped over, lid off, empty. The toothpaste tube is squeezed in the middle.
(5) All the cookies, chips, and beer are gone. Your secret stash of chocolate is gone.
(6) Your “guest” says, “Only buy frozen vegetables, I don’t like canned ones.” And this is AFTER your entire stock of canned vegetables has vanished.
(7) The only bread you can find is the heels, in an open bag, stale.
(8) The living room smells like dirty socks.
(9) The cat won’t come home.
(10) The batteries in the remote are dead.
~VOW
If there were a way of definitively knowing who is a freeloader or not, you could package that and sell it for millions. Human behavior is too complex to provide such certainties.
There are signs which can provide indications, but nothing which is absolute.
That’s assuming they don’t hide their true intentions until after moving in and paying for a few months of tenancy.
I bought a house last summer and advertised that several rooms would be available for rent (three out of five bedrooms, to be precise, leaving one for me and one for the occasional guest from my nuclear family). By the end of August I had three signed leases, each lasting until the end of February (six months). Early in September the housemates and I had a big dispute, which soured the atmosphere and gave them ideas about how to get on my nerves without technically breaking the lease. In October a few changes in their employment situations turned out to be just the excuse they needed to start refusing to pay rent, or at least to pay only token amounts (up to 93% less than the price they agreed to in the lease). Claiming either that I’d broken the lease first, or that a throwaway comment I made (about reducing the rent to soothe the tensions that had emerged among us) justified their stinginess with the rent money, they united in defiance of my requests for rent payments, one of them even going so far as to lash out at the food I was eating while we were trying to come to an understanding about how much was owed.
I filed a “failure to pay rent” complaint with the district court, but that process will take some time (30 days to vacate from the time my tenants get served, plus further time to enforce the eviction orders if they refuse to move out). In the meantime, I feel physically unsafe in my own home, taking such measures as camping out in my workplace or in the woods, despite sub-freezing nighttime lows in the weeks ahead. I wonder if it’s possible to get a restraining order put on the tenant who made threats on my person and actually got violent across the kitchen table. Such a restraining order might be problematic to enforce, since both of us are technically entitled to access the house until a judge rules that the “failure to pay rent” complaint is valid.
This exact OP could have been written by me. Except it wasn’t a friend, it was my partner’s long estranged daughter, age 20. Except she isn’t 20, not really. Emotionally and functionally she is 12, maybe 14. Self absorbed, clueless, expecting the world on a platter. She moved across the country mid September to be with us, to get to know her dad. We moved to a different apartment so she could have her own room. Because of the increased expense I worked almost every day of the last two months. She barely helped wth the move, much less with the unpacking. She spent days sleeping 12-14 hours and nights on the computer or texting friends with her phone. The end of October she told Facebook she was moving back before she told us. The last week she hasn’t talked to me because I told her I was “annoyed” with her behavior. (Told her in a text)
It was a mistake from the start but I had to give it a try because my partner is so excellent with my son I felt I had to be open to including his daughter. He was ready to kick her out one month in. I took her to the doctor to screen for medical issues and depression. (But I didn’t go in with her, so I don’t know what she said to the doctor) I took her with me to the gym. I helped her with a resume. My partner and I had long talks with her about motivation, goals, expectations. She cooked dinner once and occasionally did her own laundry. (never laundered her sheets and actually stained the futon mattress)
Two months to the day she arrived I told her it was best time to move along. She had planned to leave December 1st but I confronted her about her behaviour trying to get some kind of reaction out of her. I expected her to say she would try harder, or her dad to tell me to cut her some slack. No one interrupted me. She was out of the house before noon. I feel bad about how it ended but my husband has no regrets. Our house is getting back to normal.
My husband has now instituted a “NO ONE stays with us” policy. Which is fine with me.
I had a roommate like this. There was a rent agreement but he’d lost his job so I told him he could take his time and find something. I didn’t want him to worry about losing his home on top of everything else. This went on a few months until he went back to work. I assumed the rent would be paid after that. I waited a few weeks before I had to be demanding about it. After that it was spotty, but worse he wasn’t doing his share, and actually making our work harder. He was a slob. He started bringing home people I didn’t want in my home. He started behaving strangely. After a few months I became suspicious. Then I came home one day last month to find he’d stolen what he could pawn and pretended like he didn’t do it until my brother talked to him and found out the guy is addicted to meth.
I wish I’d kicked him out sooner.
This is me, but I wouldn’t pull out the big guns for the first volley. It sounds like you never really had a conversation about your expectations of how he would contribute to the household in exchange for living there. So do that now; sit him down for a very frank discussion of expectations, whether or not you write them down. Give him a deadline for getting his backlog of chores done, and be clear that you’re not going to stand around and nag him to maintain his part of the duties. If he can keep up with things himself, problem solved. If he can’t, be clear that at that point you’ll be giving him a deadline to move out.
Kicking him out when you were never really clear with him what you wanted him to do just seems really unfair, IMHO. He can’t read your mind, the only way he can know what you want is for you to tell him. He may have no idea how much you resent him being there, at this point.
Of course, if you have this conversation and a couple weeks later nothing has changed, then is the time to give him his move-out deadline.
There’s no such thing as a freeloader. There’s no freeloading gene, and everyone freeloads to one extent or another in their lifetime. It doesn’t help anyone to arbitrarily define their whole existence based on some subset of their temporary behavior or mutable aspect of their person.
If someone is acting in a way you don’t like there are three usual reasons:
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They don’t know any better. Teach them, but kindly and without judgement.
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They don’t have the emotional resources to deal with their situation, or the courage to directly face whatever internal obstacle is tripping them up. Help them become more aware of what it is, and how to constructively deal with it.
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Sometimes neither person has a real problem per se, there is just a difference of preference. Make it clear in a non negative way what things are acceptable to you on your time or in your space, and that it is not a matter of judgement, but just of your own personal preferences, limits, and boundaries.
But also be open to alternative solutions. You may have a certain goal or need, but the particular way you are trying to accomplish it may be causing conflict. Discuss with the person if they have another idea of how to meet your real goal or need that works better for both of you.
- Combination of the above. Sometimes someone has an issue, and it need not be a personal failing of theirs, but it is affecting you, and you are unable to help them, or cannot help them any longer or in the same way. Tell them, in a loving way, that it’s ok that they have this issue, but that you are unable to help them, except to suggest other resources more capable of addressing their issue.
The short version: it’s perfectly fine to inform other people of, and stick firm to, your own personal boundaries, as long as you do so in a loving, non blaming/judgmental way.
I live in a “punk house” with between 3-7 roommates. This arrangement is fairly common among people I know. We often have new people coming to stay with us, and some of them are sporadically employed or street musicians. When I moved in here, I was homeless and fairly broke. Having a steady place to stay made it possible for me to get a steady job and get my shit together.
The most important thing is to have ground rules and let the person know about them when they move in. Everybody is expected to supply their own booze and most of their own food. Hard drugs, fighting and excessive late-night loudness are not allowed. Guests have to help out with household chores or home improvement projects, loosely defined as an hour a day. If the person is planning on living there more than a few weeks, they must contribute a percentage of utility bills. Otherwise, they are out pretty quickly.
I know our setup isn’t typical, but it might help a little bit if you find yourself in this situation a lot.
My last post was written with much facetiousness.
However, the absolute truth is located in the first two lines:
**How to spot a freeloader:
(1) The person says, “I can sleep on the couch, you won’t even know I’m there!”
**
~VOW
I’m trying (without much success, I’m afraid) to get a feel for how much of your evolving attitude toward the guy has been taking place entirely within your own head, and how much has resulted from you sitting down and discussing matters with him.
I’m not sure what you mean, kaylasdad99. I have discussed his lack of contribution, and he was defensive, but claimed he would do more. Is that what you’re asking? I have not had repeated discussions of the topic, assigned chore lists, etc., nor will I. My attitude towards him changes according to his actions. Is that within “my own head” by your definition?
“As people do in small things, will the do in large ones” or some such. If your friend was “preemptively helpful” to others before things went downhill in his life (opening doors not only for those with him but also for strangers, behaving in restaurants in a way which made servers’ jobs easier…), then the change gets blamed on depression; if he’d never been helpful, he wasn’t going to become helpful by being in your house.
There is another type of person who needs a second step in order to be detected: some people have blinders when it comes to certain activities and will perform them but only if they’ve been prodded to do so recently. Littlebro is one of these; he’ll open doors, he’ll cut bread and serve water, he’ll carry packages, but if you want him to clean up the table you need to remind him dishes don’t fly off it by themselves. For some reason that particular task is just not in his radar. The way you separate these people from the uncouth and the freeloading is by noticing they’re not doing a task you’d expect them to do and pointing out the task.
For the current situation, don’t discuss generalities. Are you a woman? There are a LOT of house tasks which the average guy simply does NOT see and the average woman does, you need to point them out; try to find an arrangement which will be easy for him to remember and comply with, rather than some vague “we both have to pull our weight”. The arrangement should include “and any other task I point out at any given time”, but in turn you need to be clear on the requirements and pretty please don’t pull shit like tell him he’s “free now” and come up with another task as soon as his ass hits the sofa.
^ This is really good advice. Some of us guys can be real bricks when it comes to house work. It could be because mom always did it for them and it just doesn’t occur to them that it’s an actual contribution of help. Or they may get step A but not step B.
Step A- Put used bath towel in hamper. Step B- do laundry when hamper is full. Huh?
Step A- Take dirty dishes to sink/dishwasher. Step B- Wash dishes/turn on dishwasher when full of dirty dishes. Huh?
It’s not an excuse but I’ve seen it way too many times. Women are capable of this as well, it’s just not as common.
I think the question is “How much do you expect to change without confrontation?” If you’re like me, you hate confrontation, and if you are also like me, eventually it will build up to where that is less important than getting your life back.
So…my advice? The sooner started, the soonest ended. Give him a deadline, no more than a few weeks, and then start planning your life around you instead of someone who has no interest in helping YOU out at all.
I am generally easygoing and I don’t like to initiate confrontation, but if it comes up, I make no effort to avoid it. I have informed him in no uncertain terms that he is not doing his share of household chores, but I don’t have any interest in opening up any kind of negotiations with him or taking on the unpleasant job of “managing” his labor.
Who typically gets paid more, the person who scrubs the toilets or the person in charge of the toilet-scrubbers? There’s a reason for that. Would most people take an unpaid work promotion that placed them in charge of others? Perhaps. Would they regret doing so within a week? Typically, yes.
Personally, if someone does me a favor, I look for ways to make that favor cost them less, not more. If I ate a meal someone else had purchased and prepared, I would not have to be asked to clean up. If I was a regular user of a toilet, I would not wait to be assigned a turn to clean it. The idea of being a “mooch” is unacceptable to me, and I would seek opportunities to, at minimum, create no impact labor-wise. But maybe I am a freak, and it is now considered foolish to not grab all you can from others to the fullest extent to which you are permitted.
Nava, you say
I have observed that many men are blind to dirt and do not perceive its presence, let alone interpret it as a call to action, but I don’t want to come up with tasks and assign them. Yuck. A man is not a child. People don’t see what they are not looking for, but it’s their responsibility to look, not someone else’s to repeatedly point it out.
I agree with you, but this approach is unlikely to get you the results you want – so is this a hill you want to die on?
If you want him to do stuff, it may (probably) means assigning him a regular task list. Every day, you do XYZ. Once a week, you do ABC. Waiting for him to notice that the kitchen counters are dirty is likely to be an exercise in frustration.
Hell, even if you don’t want a task LIST, giving him parameters would probably help. If you say “I want you to help out around the house more,” he may just be thinking “by doing what?” Assign him a room or two that he’s responsible for maintaining, if not a task list. He may be depressed, or he may have a higher dirt/mess tolerance than you do; either way, giving him an externally-imposed structure is only going to help him meet your expectations of how clean you want it.
I’m glad you didn’t marry my other brother or my father, then. Middlebro and his wife discovered very early on that he was much better at groceries (he’s immune to the vast majority of household-related sales and packaging tricks); back then he could cook and she couldn’t (he’s a better cook, she’s a better baker); she sees tumbleweeds where he’d swear there isn’t even any dust. Do you have a job where people have different duties? Why shouldn’t people have different duties at home, divided in the way that will be most efficient? 
Of course people may divide their own household tasks as they see fit, but the fact that one person is “better” at chores should not mean that the chores are all theirs. For one thing, a child of elementary school age is perfectly capable of performing nearly all household chores adequately, so there is no excuse for an adult to think someone more skilled should do the work. If you aren’t “good” at vacuuming, grab a vacuum and start practicing. Ask for a lesson. Google vacuuming tips. Once upon a time, you couldn’t walk or speak. You didn’t learn these skills by leaving them to those who had already mastered them.
More to the point in this case, my roommate lives in my home for free. I own my house, so there is no rent to go up or down depending on his presence, my electric bill is extremely low, as we do not use heat or a/c, my internet cost would not change without him, and he takes short showers, thus has little impact on my water bill. In short, his presence need cost very little, and I was using the room he occupies for storage prior to his arrival and have consolidated some stuff to make room for him, but would not rent out the room regardless of whether he lives there or not.
How much extra cleaning do I want to do because he is there? Exactly none. Everyone who uses the bathroom, walks on the floors, uses the kitchen, etc. should take it upon themselves to maintain the cleanliness of these areas. Maybe I am “better” at it, but so what?