So far, they seem to add up to: most “guests” are OK and helping them is good for everyone. Some are bad news.
Question: what then are the early tell-tale warnings of the "bad newes"type of guest?
Based on these stories and my own experience, I would say this is the warning-list:
seems to have completely broken with familiy and seems to
have no friends that go back longer then a year. All “friends”
are recent additions. (I mean: if you managed to alieniate your
own mother and your aunts and grannies and old favourite
schoolteacher and friends, you really must have treated them
badly, no? Maybe the home was an abusive place, but a
standard network holds about 5 people, and if they all broke up
with this person they cannot all be wrong… Exeptions to this
rule are the withdrawn people who had never had anyone
notice them enough to help them.
Has a “life owes me” attitude from the start. Does not do his
share of the household(expenses). Does not go out of their way
to prevent trouble. Example from own experience: recent good
guest asked: “is it OK if I vacuum at 10 PM, or will neighbours
object?” Bad guest never vacuumed, cooked so bad he never
had to do it agian, came home ate without giving advance
notice etc.
Borrows without asking. If little stuff disappears (clothes
borrowed without asking, aftershave) you can expect valuable
stuff to disappear sooner or later.
Overstays their welcome. This too is a sign of stretching the
hosts boundaries taut. Usually, the host is cajoled into letting
them stay longer because they are so sad, or have nowhere
else to go, or the big job/study-opportunities are just around
the corner etc. Bad guests will immediately begin building up
hostility, convincing theirselves you are bad for not putting up
with them any longer. And so you deserve all they are gonna do
to you.
My experience is"if you throw them out, do it swift." If they do
not respond to friendly suggestions like: “when are you going to
move out, we need the room ourselves” do not announce it, but
wait till they are at work, have the lock changed, pack their
stuff and deliver that to them at work or the bar they hang out.
Has a victim-like “fuck them before they fuck you” outlook on
life. The thieving guest from my own experience told me very
casually that he and his teammates at work had beaten up a
guy that showed up late for work. The victim was badly bruised,
but “he had that coming to him, the bosses would have
otherwise taken it all out on the team”.
a drughabit (even marijuna or booze) they probably cannot
afford (like said above.)
I feel your pain. One of my brother’s shithead friends stole my laptap from my house around this time last year. And to think, not even a month away from my birthday.
Now here’s something weird. My brother has a friend that did that to us, too. He moves between Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane and wound up staying with us for a total of 16 weeks before mum finally said to leave and not come back.
Huh. Flashback to just a couple of months ago, when I bought someone a plane ticket to come visit me… and he never did. Oh, he got on the plane and came to San Diego alright, he just never came to visit me - instead, he went out with his other friends, partied and did drugs, went back home, and then sent me an e-mail to apologize.
When i was still in high school i used to fight with my parents alot, when I did, the best thing to do was get ot of the house for awhile. I ended up on my friends couch most of the time, once i was there for almost a month. But I had a job, and I always payed for my own food. I pretty much considered the people god for donating their couch. But you guys did all that, and those little bastards stole from you?
that once again proves my theory that this generation sucks.
But that’s just as bad! You had very little and they stole it anyway. Not cool.
This past Xmas, when Mr. Rilch and I were visiting with his mom an old friend—I mean, from way back—stayed with us a few nights. Oh, he was so helpful, especially when the basement was flooded and we had to move everything and yank out the carpet. No problems whatsoever. Or we thought at the time.
He did, however, exhibit one of Maastricht’s warning signs: addiction. We’ve known for some time that he’s addicted to pornography, but just wrote it off as a quirk that didn’t hurt anyone, and probably saved some people a lot of grief.
MIL got her phone bill last month and freaked. Did Mr. Rilch make all these expensive calls? Did I? Did Friend? No, we always used our phone cards for any call that wasn’t local, and we didn’t recognize those numbers anyway. Finally, it came out that the calls were all made late at night, to phone-sex lines.
MIL is now going to call on Mr. X at his house. Not in a confrontational way; just a discussion about how he’s going to pay her back. Mr. Rilch will back her up if Mr. X is not amenable, although that probably won’t be necessary. See, the thing is, he’s really a nice guy, except for this. But jails are full of really-nice-guys-except-for-this.
Yes, just as bad morally, but not as big a deal as far as actual damage. Not as risky to us. And I’m quite serious when I say that these people were at severe risk for getting seriously hurt elsewhere I mean it. Not all of them, but several.
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