I’m moving this thread from General Questions to In My Humble Opinion.
Gfactor
Administrator
When I saw this thread title, my knee-jerk response was:
Good deeds are not always punished, but they are usually not appreciated. So, in a sense, the “punishment” you receive from an unappreciated “good deed” is self-inflicted.
Moving away from the whole legal/illegal angle and getting back to the ethical/moral angle of whether this is a “good deed” you got “punished” for I’d say not. about 10 years ago I gave approx 20 leftover Oxycontin’s I had received for a painful tailbone injury to a friend recovering from prostate cancer surgery, so I’m not in position to judge you. I wanted to help my friend, and I was going to flush the stuff anyway. He said thanks a lot and that was the last we discussed it.
Where you lose your moral “good deed” brownie points is (to be honest) your willful feeding of someone who is obviously dependent on drugs, and then, against all common sense, expecting that an addict was going to follow through on a quid pro quo you wanted to set up for being her connection.
There are few more unstable and dangerous people in this world than drug addicts and you kept trying to bargain with one. That’s not a “good deed” that’s being willfully stupid, and you know it. You’re lucky she didn’t try to break into your house.
Yeah, even if he’d been giving his neighbor something innocent like peppermints then that would only be a good deed if he were just doing it to be nice. Once he started nagging her about how she was going to pay him back and asking her to do him special favors then that’s not doing a good deed, it’s being manipulative and demanding.
If someone started complaining about how I hadn’t repaid them for all the peppermints they’d been handing out then they’d get a pretty frosty response from me too.
Perhaps you could tell us more about this “specific favor?”
I think I remember the poster you’re replying to mentioned that he works in the emergency department. Unless you’ve done that sort of work, you probably don’t appreciate how ridiculously often they have to deal with narcotic-seekers who often become extremely hostile if they aren’t immediately given their preferred fix.
It is really frustrating to constantly have drug addicts trying to lie and manipulate you, treat you badly when you don’t play along, etc. It can easily make someone jaded.
What was wrong with you that you needed painkillers that others thought were wonderful?
I understand having a supply, once i had a tooth pulled and was given some liquid. Whatever it was it was powerful, only a third of the recommended dose took the pain away.
I kept it awhile in case anything happened that I would need it again. I would never have given it to someone else.
I wonder about the favor you wanted, cutting the grass?
Trimming the hedges?
I don’t understand your story at all. If you had 3 months of narcotics why not just flush them? It’s not cool to give out perscription pills if your not a doctor because she could be allergic or die. It’s also illegal.
Your motives seem less then stellar. “Good deeds” are not giving someone addictive pills so you got what you deserved. So what did you expect to come of this?
Firstly, why do people seem to think it’s acceptable to ‘flush’ unused narcotics into the water supply? Do you imagine that the water purification plant is somehow removing such things? It’s not. Stop doing this, stop saying this. Sheesh!
Secondly, I would posit that you find no ‘good deed’ goes unpunished, in your experience, since your ‘good deeds’ all come with the expectation of something in return. See now, that’s why you’re getting the punishment along with it. You have yet to learn the lesson, and it will keep playing out, and repeating itself until you do. A gift is something you freely give without expectation of any future return or consideration. Perhaps you missed being taught this lesson. No time like the present to learn.
While it’s true, that when you help someone out, they are often, more than willing to do you some good turn, should the circumstance arise. Resentment is born of giving something with the expectation of reciprocity. A gift, freely given, carries no such strings.
Wow, this thread has quickly devolved into everyone attacking JackWhite for being an unknowing drug dealer. I came in to answer the OP, and yes, I do regularly feel that good deeds are punished because people assume it was no big deal for you to do the good deed, and the fact you did it once means you’ll do it again. I’ve had this happen in both work and personal settings.
At work:
I took a job with a consulting company that offered me $20,000 more in yearly salary to jump ship and join them because they wanted my skills in winning grants for small businesses. Then, when I won them their first grant, which was for only $100,000, I was surprised at the hostility. Even though I made it clear that was how much the grant was for when I pursued it, the fact that it wouldn’t pay the full time salary for a senior engineer for a year was seen as a ‘waste of time’ because they decided they wanted/needed more money. So Yarster (who is not an engineer) had to run the project AND do my regular business development job because I created this ‘problem’. Then came the salary reduction a year later. $30,000 pay cut, but I could make it back $5,000 at a time for every grant “I” won. Of course, if I had to consult with the engineers, then perhaps “I” didn’t win it, but it was a team effort, so that wouldn’t count. This jerk off company just wanted my winning formula for writing grants, then wanted me gone. I left and am much happier at my current company. I don’t think much of my former employer, needless to say.
Personal:
It’s amazing how often friends with kids need help moving. The reason is that one parent has to spend their time corraling the rug rats, while the other does the actual moving - thus the need for the friend. On the last move, I seem to have screwed up my knees something terrible. Meanwhile, if I ever need a favor from any of these same people… well, they have plans all the time because Timmy has a birthday party that day, or they already made plans 3 months ago to go to the beach that day…If the kids are sick, somehow both parents have to stay home on the weekend to take care of them. Perhaps it’s not fair of me because if I had a friend in a wheelchair, I would help him move and not expect him to help me do the same, but I hardly think having kids is a disability of some kind that gets you out of helping anyone. Meanwhile, because I have no kids, I’m always the guy who gets called when people need help…
If your “good deed” is actually enabling a drug addict or alchoholic, letting someone shirk their responsibilities, covering up incompetance, or “just being cool” with someone’s lazy, irresponsible or otherwise degenerate behavior, then yes. It will probably bite you in the ass.
Contrary to what one might think from the title of the thread, the OP is about a specific situation and not good deeds in general. JackWhite was also a perfectly “knowing” drug dealer. He didn’t give his neighbor those pills by accident.
*Although you’re justified in being angry about how this company treated you, I’m not seeing any good deed here. Doing the job you were hired to do isn’t a good deed. That’s just ordinary everyday behavior.