Right, but the OP himself seemed to think that his plan of hanging out in a parking lot all night was the same kind of thing.
In the OP’s situation, the impression I got was that it was the other people involved, not the one who actually made the offer, who were doing the complaining.
But again, we don’t know the whole story, including what the grumbling was about. It may have been about the OP’s mooching (as some have suggested), or about the offerer’s unilaterally offering without consulting the others first (as some have suggested), or about the OP’s lack of gratitude (as some have suggested), or about the OP’s snoring or stinking or otherwise making things worse for the other people in the cottage, or it may have been about a bogus or totally unrelated issue.
BigT, as always, is right. This board can be so mean and hostile to innocent people just looking for a kind word or helping hand. It makes my heart cry.
Yeah or like the people who think the $20 they threw down before leaving covers the 3 hours of beer, wine, hard alcohol and appetizers they’ve been eating with the group at a Manhattan bar or club.
And he received advice. If it appears to be an “attack” it was because the OP became extremely defensive and insistent that he was in the right. Which leads people to believe that his request for advice was disingenuous. Whether the OP accepts the advice or not is ultimately up to him.
I really think it depends on the particulars of the situation. Is the OP a 19 year old in an entry level job while all the other extended family members are well paid middle-aged professionals?
Then the grumbling would seem petty.
Or are all of the family members cousins of approximately the same age and financial position? In that case maybe they feel, justifiably, that THEY couldn’t really afford the rental either but THEY managed to scrape up the money anyway.
Then the grumbling would seem righteous.
I suspect the real answer is somewhere in the middle.
Disagree. After grumbling is never righteous and almost always petty. Everyone in that cottage had an opportunity to question or remark on the arrangements, as events were unfolding. They didn’t. They just went along.
After bitching is just that. If you have some righteous objection then you should speak up at the time. If it’s an afterthought, it ain’t righteous to my mind.
I find I have little patience to listen to people gripe about things later, when they couldn’t be arsed to speak up at the time. If, for whatever reason, you choose to say nothing in the moment, then go with that and resist the urge to revisit it afterward just to get your bitch on.
But they couldn’t object at the time. At the time, he was literally going to be spending the night standing in a parking lot. You can’t let a family member do that. You have to offer them a place to stay. This is the heart of why it was rude to accept the offer.
It’s like this. Let’s a room cost $50, and he wasn’t willing/able to pay that. It wasn’t worth $50 to avoid standing in a parking lot all night. Fair enough.
One alternative is to ASK for a free place to stay “Hey, I heard y’all were renting a cottage. Could I sleep on the couch?” But that has a cost, too: you have to humble yourself, you have to put yourself in the position of asking for a favor. He’s not willing to do that, either. Standing in a parking lot all night seems better to him than having to ask for a favor. Fair enough.
Second alternative is to let them find out at the actual moment if his plan, in a way that forces them to offer a room. Then, he gets to feel virtuous: “I never asked nobody for nothing! I make my own way, and if I can’t afford something, I do without!” while still getting a soft bed. The cost in this case, the bad feelings, are borne by the people doing the offering. That’s not fair.
Depending what extent of ‘grumbling’ it really was, sure. But we’re depending on OP to accurately portray that against own (obvious) interest in seeking validation if it wasn’t really so much. And there was a pretty complete black out on further info about the relatives (like how much less stretched financially etc).
In contrast what we can see from OP directly is a stinginess toward showing gratitude, exemplified more than anything to me by the false logic of ‘already paid for’. When group of people minus one decide to split something then another person wants in, that something hasn’t by default become some free good to the extra person that they can enjoy ‘without impacting anyone else’. By that logic the cottage is open to OP if nobody rents it. The owner wasn’t getting anything for it anyway right, what difference if I stay there and don’t pay (besides petty legalities :)?
It would be rare in a situation like this if only one party was at all in the wrong. But IMO we can see from one of the horse’s mouths in this case that they were at least among those in the wrong.
I had a situation where we were staying in a 20 person backcountry hut - 20 bunks, each with an assigned person. Lots of people were camping outside - they all had gear and while it was wet and somewhat unpleasant, they knew what they were getting into when they planned their trip. All hut spots were reserved well in advance.
One guy we had seen hiking over the past few days had come in the hut to get warm, and had been chatting with a bunch of folks in the hut. Technically, this wasn’t even allowed; the posted rules said no one without a hut reservation could come in past the vestibule. After an hour or so one of the people staying at the hut said “Do any of you object if Jules here sleeps on the floor?” It was pretty much impossible to say no at that point, kicking someone out into the rain. Jules was a nice guy, and I enjoyed his company, but no we had an extra person in the hut, extra gear strewn about, and a body on the floor getting in the way of things. But it’s hard not to resent that - the 50+ other people out in the rain would have enjoyed staying in the hut, but they didn’t weasel their way in and put everyone in a position where it was pretty much impossible to say no.
I have no idea if the OP intended this at all, but saying “Oh, no worries, I’ll just stand here in the car park for the night. In the morning, just come pick me up and I’ll be fine” puts everyone in a difficult position. If it was a one time thing I could get over it easily. If it became a habit then he’d be on his own after that.
Let’s say it’s £800, or $1,400 USD. Divided by 6, that’s £133; divided by 7, it’s £114, for a difference of £19, or about 25 bucks.
I’m pretty sure everyone here would do that for a relative rather than have him stand in a parking lot all night.
ETA: I pretty much said that in the second post in this thread: “You probably should have offered to pay something, but they probably shouldn’t have been put out that you didn’t.”
No, actually, it wasn’t impossible. Awkward perhaps. Uncomfortable even. But not impossible. Anyone could have spoken up, they all CHOSE not to.
If you’re not comfortable speaking up in the moment, then you should own that. Not bitch about it later. Or blame the one accepting the offer. Especially if the group was asked outright, “Does anyone have any objection…”.
If what’s stopping you is not wanting to appear petty, or be the only objector, that’s a good reason perhaps, but it’s still on you. You alone chose to keep your objection to yourself. If you don’t have the ovaries to speak up when asked, you don’t get to bitch later, I think.
(And only bitching afterward makes you seem twice as petty, anyway!)
What about saying “Wow, I don’t begrudge Bob the room, but I wish he’d had the decency to ask, instead of flailing around helplessly waiting for someone else to take care of him,”?
Of course you get to. Someone puts you in an awkward situation, you get to choose when you want to complain about it. Sometimes in the moment it’s hard to tease out exactly what’s going on; it takes some thinking to figure out whether your unease and resentment is justified or silly. Your rules about when people get to complain are arbitrary.
Depends on which relative- is it one of my truly broke nieces or nephews? Then , yeah I’d do it, although I would probably wonder why my sibling didn’t cover it.
Is it my brother-in-law who treats other people’s houses like hotels*? He can stand in the parking lot for three days in the rain. He may be able to manipulate everyone else, but it’s not working on me.
*He recently asked my daughter why we never invite him to stay at our house. There are a number of reasons, but the main one is that he doesn’t even pretend he has any interest in seeing the people whose house he is staying in. My daughter got married last month , and he was overjoyed that the venue was near a friend of his wife’s. The wedding was on Sunday, and we had a dinner for out-of-town guests on Saturday. I didn’t expect the three of them to attend, because a normal person would spend some time with their host. But not him. They got there on Thursday night and spent Friday and Saturday at the beach. They didn’t even invite the friend and her husband to go to the beach because “He likes to stay home”. They came to our dinner Saturday night, went to the wedding Sunday afternoon, and went home Sunday morning without so much as taking his hosts to breakfast. It wouldn’t surprise me if he complained that there weren’t enough towels in the bathroom.
Its not ‘flailing helplessly about’, to accept an offer of a kindness, in my opinion. (Sheesh, tough crowd!) Just because you’ve known some moochers doesn’t mean everyone with a need is one.
If you accepted in the moment, then YOU accepted it. Sorry, no wiggle room, you’re a grown ass adult. You are later entitled to regret not saying something, but not to slag the person accepting the kindness offered, in my opinion.
“Flailing helplessly about” is not having a need: it’s refusing to ask for help or a favor and instead making other people’s job to thrust help upon you.
It also seems the others weren’t consulted, or even informed until after the room was offered. Unless you want to be the asshole who insisted on kicking the guy out, after someone else had invited him, you’re kinda forced to go along with it.
Mr. Shine also stated that he assumed he could just take a shower at the “lifter’s” house, like it was no big deal. :rolleyes: NOT that the lifter had offered, just that he had figured he could do it because:
And anyone who makes comments like, “I don’t write thank you notes, because it’s not 1920” is definitely someone who needs to brush up on their ettiquette.
