I rented a moving truck to move my things out after a very unamicable break up with my girl friend. The kind where we’re not speaking to each other the entire time I’m packing up, yet she’s following me around to make sure I don’t steal any of her stuff (as if I ever did anythig like that before). Very uncomfortable.
After I finished and was about to drive away, she asked if she could borrow the truck. When she saw my jaw drop, she said, “We’ll you’ve rented it for the whole day. Why should it go to waste?”
Now, I’ve been know to be a door mat more than a few times, but this one just had me shaking my head.
Y’all should meet my Good Neighbor Dennis. No request is too unreasonable. I’ve learned over the years that I’ll spend less time if I just do whatever it is he’s asking about and get it over with.
The most egregious example that comes to mind: I returned to my suburban home from my country estate about 8:30 P.M. one summer Sunday evening. I had worked in the hot sun most of the day, followed by a three hour drive. I was exhausted, seriously dirty, and dehydrated to the point of muscle cramps. When I pulled into the driveway, I noticed his dishwasher sitting on his patio and the patio door open where he could see my driveway. He was waiting, like a hungry lion waiting to spring his ambush. While I was gathering up my dirty clothes totake into the house, he sprang.
“Can I ask you a question?”
With much trepidation, “Sure.”
“Do you have any of that white stuff [teflon tape] you use to put around the thing that hooks up to the water thing? Can you come over and look at this to see if I’m doing it right.”
Well, he wasn’t doing it right or wrong because the new dishwasher was just sitting there. All he had done was taken it out of the box. I didn’t ask if he had been waiting all weekend for me to come home.
I didn’t say anything, I just went back to the truck and got the tools. Within an hour, I had the dishwasher installed. Just how I intended to spend my Sunday night.
Just last Saturday, he asked me about trimming his tree (a story worthy of its own Pit rant). I got out my pole saw and started to hand it to him. Then I realized that the cutter on it did work because he broke the spring on it the last time he borrowed it. Then (the unreasonable request part) he asked to borrow my chain saw. I had to refuse that request because the saw is a heavy, high compression, professional saw with no safety features. When I offered to trim the tree for him, so said he had to go to work soon. So, that task is still pending.
An ex once read in Martha Stuart’s magazine that botanists had developed brown roses. As they were new and exotic, they’d cost about 4 times as much as red roses. Ex insisted that I get her a dozen on her birthday. Not the day before, not the day after. Her birthday was on February 14. Estimated cost on that day? About $300. In the weeks prior, I practically killed myself visiting every florist in the city. Not one of them had heard of such a rose. I bought what looked close as samples, but they weren’t them and they weren’t good enough. Ex warned me that if I didn’t come through, things would get rather chilly in the bedroom.
Which was fine by me, I’d lost all attraction to her anyway.
Yesterday: an elderly friend of mine has emphysema, and possibly lung cancer (she has patches on her lungs, biopsy not back yet). She lives off her small pension. She has a prescription for nicotine patches (and she can fill prescriptions free) but choses to still smoke as she’s “too old to try giving up now”. She still spends the majority of her weekly pension money on smokes. That’s her choice and I’m not about to lecture her on it as she’s an adult.
She asked me over especially yesterday just to ask if I can give her - not lend, give - £400 for some bills she’s behind with. She’s elderly, not eating very well due to spending all her money on smokes, her health is getting worse, and I’m her only emotional support available as her family all lives on the other side of the country. Her phone, cable and net connection have been cut off due to non-payment. Her refridgerator’s just broken down and is not working. Her kitchen is bare of food. So, to my friend? Thanks just a bundle for putting me in the position of having to say no to a sick, possibly dying, emotionally and physically fragile old lady who is going hungry every day when you know darn well I don’t actually have £400 right now. That felt just marvellous. Hey, how about not spending all your money on cigarettes and giving those free nicotine patches a try, then buying some food?
I have a much cheaper solution to coming up with some brown roses for someone with such a sense of entitlement. It involves a dozen red roses, and fiber.
In my mid-twenties, I met a very attractive guy in a gay nightclub. After seeing each other maybe 3 times over two weeks, he comes over one Sunday afternoon.
He ended up asking me to co-sign a loan at the bank for him for a serious amount of money.
He somehow got the impression that he needed to leave soon thereafter.
There’s a rental house next to me. A few years ago a couple moved in and the guy made friendly gestures, usually coming over everytime he saw me outside. It was OK at first, but got old pretty fast. Then I didn’t see him for awhile and he was noticable in his absence, pleasantly so. Then one day his wife catches me out working in my yard. She goes into this long tale about his having been unfairly arrested. According to her he was walking in a warehouse district, something about his car being broken down, and him looking for a phone, when the police arrest him for B&E. I’ve hardly ever spoken to this woman before, now she’s telling me all this. Next comes the hook, can I lend her the bail money, a couple thousand, to get him out. WTF, I can’t believe she’s asking this. I tell her I don’t have it…and then, believe it or not… she tells me that I can put my house up as collateral???
I never saw him again and the house was empty a few weeks later.
Where the hell do these people COME from? I would be hesitant to ask this of my best friend. Scratch that. I would rather sit in jail than ask this of my best friend. Ditto for most of these other requests.
I do seem to attract women with a sense of entitlement. Just two months before, she “asked” for earrings for Christmas. Pearl. And not just any pearl earrings. Tiffany. She practically pushed me out the door to go buy them. And this was while she was living with me and not paying a stitch of rent.
She was better than the previous GF, though. I’d often offer to make dinner for her (I’m fabulous in the kitchen, babe). Usually I’d need about $10 worth of food from the supermarket down the street. I knew I was introuble if she offered to go with me. Every single time she’d remember a few things she needed for herself. And by “a few”, I mean an entire shopping cart full of steak and caviar. Of course, since it was me doing the shopping, I got to pay for all of this. If I asked her to chip in a little, she’d blow up about how “no one else treats me like this.”
The actual solution to this involved far more that a dozen red roses. In the week before Valentine’s Day, she got a job at a florist. Her lust for roses was quickly cured.
Dang, people never cease to amaze me, in a bad way.
My best friend from grade school, whom we’ll call Mimi, since everything was about her, is one of the Entitled Ones.
When I would get money for my birthday or as a reward for good grades or for chores at home, Mimi would insist we compare the amount of money each one of us had. If I had more, and I usually did, she would insist that I give her some until we were “even”. I was a complete idiot, so I did. This was a roughly biweekly occurrence.
High school came and Mimi would insist we “get ready” (primp) to go out together. This was so she could use my bedroom as a staging area while she commandeered my cosmetics, clothes, mirror, etc. Then she would bitch at me after her hour-long primping session that I wasn’t ready yet. You’re wearing my clothes, ya’ butt!
After graduation we “lost” contact for a few years. I got a phone call from her out of the blue one day. She wanted to ask me for a little favor. She had married some money and they had a nice big house and a sweet little boy. Mimi’s neighbor had a dog that would bark all the time and had come into her (Mimi’s) yard while her son was outside. She had talked with the neighbor, and they for some reason had agreed to get rid of the dog. The neighbor had put a “free to good home” ad in the paper. Mimi’s idea was that I would answer the ad, get the dog and take it to the pound. I told her no, but used a whole lot more words, and that was the last I heard of her for many more years.
I see her occasionally now and her speech and mannerisms are so affected it makes me sad. She calls me “darling” for God’s sake.
My brother in law was shocked when I turned him down, then went to all my relatives to complain and ask them to make me reconsider
His request: I should let him keep his pet bird in my house uncaged and crapping on my carpet.
The nerve. And he never caught on why I would turn him down.
I’ve had to forgive this woman for these actions, or else I’d be eaten up with hatred. But it bothered me terribly for years.
My first child was born with a heart defect, and required open heart surgery. I scheduled to take off work several weeks. Just prior to leaving, someone several steps above me in rank began micromanaging the work of our department. Unhappy with a piece I’d produced, she suggested I take it along to the hospital and proof/edit/write on it so I’d have “something to do” while hanging around the boring old hospital. Where my only child was ill–where I would have plenty to do, for God’s sake, not to mention how out of my mind I was with worry and fear. Later, after the child’s death, I came back to work, and after a few weeks I wanted to bury myself in work. I took on freelance jobs in addition to more work in my office. Seeing how consumed I was in work, this woman praised me for the good job I was doing and particularly how she appreciated me not “playing the poor mother.”
Yes, I said I forgave her, but it makes me upset even now, 13 and a half years later.
When my husband and I first started dating, his paternal grandmother died. We were at the funeral home for the viewing. A little background info: My husband and his parents were not close with his dad’s people. Infact, they had spent years avoiding them. My FIL’s childhood was filled with abuse and neglect and his people give white trash, slack-jawed, incestous, cretins a bad name. At the time, I was 19 years old, quiet, shy, and would rather die than think of offending anyone. Within an hour of meeting these people, one of my husbands aunts pulled me aside and asked for a favor. The grandkids and great grandkids of the deceased, decided they wanted granny to be buried holding one of the roses from the arrangement they had bought. But, nobody actually wanted to touch dear dead granny. And it would mean sooooo much to them if I would place the rose in her hands since it wouldn’t bother me. :rolleyes: I really thought I had to do it, and was almost in tears when I found my husband and told him. He was livid, as was his mom. But, the others just couldn’t understand why a total stranger would have a problem touching their dead granny.
:eek: :eek: :eek: :mad: :mad: :mad:
I’m not a parent, but this would have had me outraged if someone tried to “compliment” me by telling me they were proud of me by not playing a victim role when someone that close to me had recently died. That woman’s got some serious problems if she didn’t understand that “burying yourself in work” after a death like that means “trying to avoid overwhelming grief” and she should have been supportive in a less offensive way.
Mr. S has a sister that he . . . avoids. Her first husband went to prison, and her second has barely avoided going there. Their life is a big white trash soap opera.
One day she calls up out of the blue and want to know if her teenage son (whom we’ve never laid eyes on) could come and live with us for a while, because we’re in a different school district and he’s been having trouble with getting picked on by some possible gang kids.
Oh yeah, bring that right on! :rolleyes: We told her about the Wisconsin school choice law, by which you can send your kid to any public school district you want. And I think some other options too.
Jesus, we’d have to think long and hard about taking in a non-problem kid that we KNEW and LIKED. Not so much a total stranger!!
I’m way too late to post it, but it was technically possible to give her the brown roses she craved (and without all that messy fecal matter too). The trick is to buy them in early January, boxed, and leave them in the box. Then just have the box delivered on Feb 14th. :eek:
Of course, the trick would be to find a suitable matching card. And to have your locks & cell # changed prior to delivery.
