Irked and Befuddled

The BBQ Pit
1

Over the weekend and friend and neighbor asked he could borrow our mower. He had borrowed it before and since I knew none of his (he has three) worked, I gladly let him borrow ours.

We have known he and his wife for several years and consider them to be good friends and when their schedules permit, we spend a lot of time together.

On to the irksome part…

As I said earlier, I let him borrow the mower, told my husband and took off with another friend to do some shopping. I arrived home about four hours later and noticed our mower sitting in front of our garage door. I thought it was rather strange the mower was not in garage as my husband, kids, and my nephew were all home. I shrugged and put the mower in the garage.

Today, while at work, I received a phone call from my very pissed off husband. He told me the mower was broken and let go with a stream of invective that ended with my husband informing me that these folks were never going to borrow our stuff again.

You know what? It probably (hopefully) won’t cost that much to repair. It’s not the money. (I think it’s the throttle, so hopefully all we need to do is replace the throttle cord or wire or whatever it is.) It’s the fact that our so-called friend didn’t have the balls to say the mower was broken. ( Yes, it worked just fine when he received it. We had finished mowing the lawn the previous day.) I mean, all he had to say was something to the effect that the mower broke while he was using it. We would have shrugged, fixed it, and life would go on. I am really befuddled as to why he wouldn’t own up to it. We’ve known each other a long time and he knows we wouldn’t have gone off the deep end.

This isn’t a friendship breaker or anything. I’m irked, is all. I guess he won’t be borrowing anything of ours for quite some time to come either. This isn’t the first time something like this has happened. They’ve borrowed other, less expensive items and either lost or broke them, but we just shrugged and went on. They did replace a couple of the items they lost or broke, but this really just kind of gets to me. Had the situation been reversed I would have immediately owned up to it, and offered to pay for the repairs. It’s not that hard to do.

Really, it’s not worth getting too bent out of shape. My husband, however, has been crabby since I came home, so now I get to put up with it. :rolleyes: That shit just annoys me. I didn’t do it, the freakin’ neighbor did.

2

I think your husband has hit the Popeye left of patience - “I can’t stands no more!”

It seems that your neighbor, although nice, isn’t the shiniest penny in the roll. He could have at least left a note on the mower describing how he had killed it AND offered to pay to have it fixed (since he has three broken mowers, I’m guessing he isn’t mechanically inclined).

By saying “It probably (hopefully) won’t cost that much to repair. It’s not the money,” it appears you are siding with the neighbor and against your husband (I’m not saying you are, it LOOKS that way to your husband). If you’re extremely well-off and can afford to have your neighbor destroy your stuff without compentsation, fine. I’m guessing you’re like everybody else. You spend your hard-earned money on stuff and you don’t want to see it destroyed.

I would put an end to the borrowing. Eventually, he borrow and br

Just an opinion.

3

:smack:

Hamster ate part of the post.

I would put an end to the borrowing. Eventually, he’ll borrow and break and/or destroy something of real value.

Just an opinion.

4

Just commenting from the outside, but you say this has happened before. Sounds to me like you (or your husband) have allowed anger to accumulate and build-up, to the point that the lawnmower becomes the last straw that overflows the cup.

If you are really friends with these people, take some time to calm down, and find a friendly way to address the problem with them. There is surely a non-confrontational, non-angry way to say, “Fred, did you have any problems with the lawnmower?” If he says, “Yeah, gee, sorry, I meant to tell you, I broke the blades when I tried to mow the roof,” then you can ask him to pay for it. If he says, “Yeah, gee, sorry, I forgot to mention, the motor just conked out” then you can decide whether to ask him to chip in. If he says, “No, it worked just fine, why do you ask?” then you can decide (a) he’s telling the truth and the thing died coincidentally when your husband next used it; or (b) he’s a lying son-of-a-bitch and you can end the relationship.

In short, letting anger accumulate is usually harmful in the long run. It is perfectly possible (you didn’t say what was broken) that this is an honest misunderstanding that has got blown out of proportion?

5

Taters it sounds to me like this was the last straw for hubby, as C K Dexter Haven said. Also, since they’ve had a history of either breaking or losing stuff they borrowed, it might be a good idea to not lend stuff to em. C K’s idea of asking if your neighbor had any problem with the mower, along with an explanation of what was wrong with the mower when hubby tried to use it is a good one.

I’m so lucky. My good neighbors and me borrow stuff (mostly yard stuff cause I swear between us we have at least one broken mower/weedeater/edger/blower constantly) all the time and we’ve never had problems. If something goes wrong with something I borrow, I fix or get it fixed and vice versa. Heck, they even forgave me for running over their mailbox with a rented moving van. I found somebody to build them a nice brick mailbox and paid for it even though they were so nice and said I didn’t have to. I told em if they got a substantial mailbox it’d stand a much better chance of survival with me next door. :smiley:

6

Well, I thought about asking him in a nice way if he’d had any problems with the mower, but if he didn’t own up to it in the first place, I don’t think he’d own up to it now.

I’m not sure, but I think it may be the throttle cord. If this IS the case, then the mower MAY have worked just fine while he was using it and then snapped when he shut it off. Turns out hubby hadn’t lubed it. If this is what really happened, then I really can’t blame the neighbor because he would have been unaware of the problem. Although we’ve never had this sort of problem with this mower or any other mower before, it could be the problem. I haven’t looked at it it; I am making this assumption based on what hubby told me.

Trust me, I am NOT extremely well off. We are just plain ordinary working folk who work hard for our money and don’t appreciate having our stuff broken.

I am not siding with the neighbor, and trust me, I did not even bring this post up to the hubby.

As to loaning him stuff, yeah you’d think we’d learn. Honestly though, it had been quite some time since he’d broken anything he’d borrowed, so we thought all was good. The three mower thing? One of those mowers was an old one we gave him. The other two are left over from his yard service business from a few years ago. We’ve good-naturedly teased him about either fixing one of those mowers or just breaking down and getting a new one. He keeps saying he’s going to do it. I have no doubt that his wife will soon nag him into it.

Finally, we’re not ANGRY. Well, hubby was when he first found out…but had calmed down considerably by yesterday evening. We’re just irked is all. When we borrow something we’re careful to return the item either new or in better shape than we found it. Frankly, we rarely borrow anything just because we don’t want to accidently break something.

Finallly, the guy is smart. He’s a firefighter and just finished a year-long stint in paramedic training. He currently waiting on his national certification results and I have no doubt he’s done well.

7

It’s really a question of whether you value this guy’s friendship or not. Because it’s possible that you’re being irked (I’d say there’s anger in there, but Ok, let’s not quibble) over something that’s not his fault and that he’s completely ignorant of.

So, you either have the discussion to clear the air, or you find your relationship with him sours completely. Sounds like he’s not a bad guy, and perhaps your husband is leaping to erroneous conclusions and misjudging. Perhaps not, of course – no way of knowing unless you (a) ask neighbor and (b) find out what’s wrong with mower.

8

I had a friend like that once. The third time she asked to borrow something, I said, “No thanks; I can break it myself.”