30 year ago, a group of us left our jobs, and all came together again for a work reunion. Two of the guys started talking and one said to the other
“We lived in that old apartment together, and all these years I remember that I stiffed you on half of the rent deposit that the landlord kept. I said that I’d pay half, and I never did. My half was $500 at the time, and I actually did the calculations on the plane last night, and that’s $1,100 now. I’m going to give you that tonight to pay you back.”
Followed by
“I remember that too, and honestly, I thought you were a jerk for not sending that to me, as you said you would. But I made peace with it a long time ago. But now, I’m really successful, and $1,100 isn’t much to me at all. But 30 years ago, I was cold stone broke after I lost that job. I was young, didn’t have any money, was struggling with a couple of jobs while going to school. That $500 then was worth a ton of money to me, I couldn’t care less about $1,100 now. I don’t expect you to give me a dime, but that $500 then is really comparable to $10,000 or more now.”
Did he have a real point there. What would have been the "proper thing to do? Would the inflation adjusted $1,100 be the right thing, or should the change of circumstances have been taken into account?
Well, among friends? The proper thing to do is to offer the inflation adjusted amount and then the proper thing to do was for the other guy to politely refuse, or request that it go to charity.
The second needs to sort himself out since he clearly has not made peace with it. It was right for the first man to offer the $500. It was noble of the first man to offer the inflation adjusted amount. It was downright money-grubbing of the second man to insist that he was owed for pain and suffering to the tune of $10,000.
Had it been me who was owed the money, and $1,100 didn’t mean much to me, I’d tell the guy to give it to charity as well. In fact, I’d say that if just giving $500 would salve his conscience, just give that, but if it needed to be $1,100, let it be that, then we’d settle on a charity we both felt good about.
If someone told me $500 was now $10,000, because he was successful, regardless of how successful I was, and what $500, 1,100, or 10,000 meant to me, I’d think he was a putz. If this really happened in my real life, and have to explain that there was no way I could come up with $10,000, and $1,100 was a stretch. If he was refusing the $1,100, then that was that. I tried.
Does the other guy apply this “logic” to other transactions in his life? “Oh, I couldn’t possibly pay you $5 for that hamburger, inflation adjusted that’s the same as 50c when I was younger, and that was a lot of money for me back then. I’ll need to pay you at least $100 to simulate the emotionally equivalent loss.”
Stiffing him in the first place was also a poor move, although I have a pretty high threshold for forgiving that sort of thing if its more accidental than intentional. But here I see a good faith attempt to make something right responded to by an asshole. I’m far more sympathetic towards the first person’s transgression than the second.
I’d put it this way: it was marginal for the first man to offer $500, it was right (hardly noble) of him to offer the inflation-adjusted amount. It would be better to offer repayment as if it had been a loan, with a simple interest rate of maybe 4% per year. According to my calculations this would come to $1621.
It isn’t clear to me that the 2nd guy was actually asking for $10K, or if he was just making a point. Giving to charity is fine but it can feel like the money just gets lost in the mass of contributions. If the 1st guy really wants to pay it forward, he could find a single deserving struggling young person (like his friend was 30 years ago) and give that person the inflation-adjusted amount. Doing the work of finding a truly deserving person would show more atonement than just throwing $1100 at his friend or at some charity.
An apology is the proper thing to do. Then it’s up the offended party to make a stink about an old debt. Applying interest and/or inflation is not appropriate, the other guy didn’t try to collect that debt before.
From the OP: “I don’t expect you to give me a dime, but that $500 then is really comparable to $10,000 or more now.”
So the second man is not actually asking for $10,000 or $1,100 or $500. He is just pointing out that stiffing him back then was a shitty thing to do and offering the money back now, with any amount of interest, won’t make it right.
In other words, he’s not just refusing to accept the money but also refusing to accept the apology. He’s saying “You knew that what you did was wrong, and you’ve had plenty of opportunities to contact me and set things right. Now it’s too late, and you can take that $1,100 and shove it where the sun don’t shine.”
A bit harsh perhaps, but I can certainly see his point. He would have done a better job of taking the high road if he had not named any numbers, though. And maybe #1 would have done better to let the past remain the past as well.
I don’t think he’s necessarily in the right, but I understand where the second guy is coming from.
Guy 1 is trying to assuage his guilt by buying off Guy 2. I get the impression that this isn’t all that noble of Guy 1, it’s more him making himself feel better about not having debts (has he recently been through AA or something similar, where one of the points in to make right wrongs you caused in the past?) rather than to humbly apologize for his past transgressions. I don’t really appreciate being the instrument whereby someone else vacates themselves of guilt.
Guy 2 is hearing this and thinking back to when he suffered through eating ramen for 3 months because he got stiffed by Guy 1. He doesn’t want Guy 1’s money. I don’t think he wants the 10k either. He wants Guy 1 to understand the crap he was put through. Monetary compensation doesn’t fix all those hurts.
Now, Guy 1 is probably not getting it and Guy 2 should probably let it go for his own health. But I don’t think he’s a total asshole for his response.
At the moment (or at least at the end of the time frame of the OP) one guy was being a jerk 30 years ago and the other guy is being jerk now. So I’d call it even.
What may also play a role is, apparently these guys aren’t exactly BFFs, they’re former colleagues who have not seen each other for 30 years but who finally ended up having a reunion.
So maybe during those 30 years #1 has had occasional pangs of guilt about that theft he committed, though apparently it never bothered him enough to actually contact #2 and settle the debt. And now someone else in the group has organized this reunion, and he wants to go but he is afraid that the topic of the stolen $500 will be brought up. Suddenly it looks like that buried old shame might come back to haunt him again. He can either skip the reunion, or spend the whole evening nervously waiting for the other shoe to drop.
So he figures, the best defense is a good offense: he can’t prevent the topic from coming up, but he can take the initiative, bring it up first, and even score some points by impressing the others with his generosity in spontaneously offering to pay back the debt with interest. And #2 isn’t falling for it.
(In case someone wants to nitpick: I am using the word “theft” in its colloquial, moral sense; I really don’t care if legally this would be considered misappropriation with intent to purloin or whatever.)
The second guy’s logic is nuts. It’s like saying that if somebody took your last dollar, and now you have a million dollars, they now owe you a million dollars because they took all your money, and now “all your money” = a million dollars.
If I was the first guy I would have given guy 2 an incredulous look, said something on the order of “you’re out of your mind”, and walked away with my money still in pocket. Because there’s no point in giving him the $1,100; he said he didn’t want it and it wouldn’t resolve anything.
What guy 2 should have said would be something like, “I already forgave you of that, but if you really want to pay me back, just the $500 would be plenty. There’s no need to inflate it.” Not only does it make little sense to retroactively account for inflation (would he have paid a few extra cents if he only paid a week late?) but guy 2 claimed he didn’t need the money anyway. So simply paying back the straight amount owed should, were we talking about a reasonable man, be fine.
In what way is the other guy being a jerk now? By refusing to accept guy number one’s 30 years too late apology and offer of inflation adjusted cash he stiffed guy number two on? Guy number one has had thirty years to apologize and make amends. He only chose to do so now because he was going to see guy number two at the reunion. I’ve been stiffed out of decent sums of money in my youth; I’d consider it pretty tasteless to be offered inflation adjusted repayment 30 years later at a reunion myself.
So what would you say is an appropriate apology for the act of stealing the last dollar of a man who is down on his luck and for who that $1 could well mean the difference between survival and starvation?
I agree that saying you owe him a million dollars because he is now a millionaire, would be silly. But on the other hand, giving him the $1 back with interest, long after he no longer has a need for it and has managed to get back on his feet by himself, also doesn’t quite seem to cover the seriousness of what you did.
Which is, I believe, the point #2 was trying to make.