Sure, it would be great if she had been nice from the start. I agreed that she was really unpleasant. One explanation was that she was scared, desperate and not getting what she needed (from her perspective) from the only person who came by to help her. However, she also could have been freaking out thinking she was alone and trapped and some people do fear as extreme anger. Add when it became clear that all she wanted was to call the cops, he suggested AAA, and made other suggestions, as per the OP.
He could have talked to her, called the cops as she asked (which most people would assume that the person knows by that you want 911) and sat in his car until the cops arrived. Why was he making suggestions when he could have just done what she asked? What was it to him? Just reading the OP, she may have been nasty, but his actions could come off as patronizing.
Not to double post- but it also occurs to me that she may have wondered about his motives.
I hope I would have been nicer, but if I was scared, alone, in a rural area, trapped and with a strange guy who wouldn’t call the cops for me, my “this isn’t right” meter would have been going off.
Because she showed up at his place of work and started screaming as soon as she saw him. He had no obligations to her; she imposed on his life and seemed to have expectations that he would do as she demanded; being a thinking adult, he had different ideas.
Frankly the woman strikes me as crazy. Who knows what stories she might start telling when the police get there. You might end up in a lot of trouble if you hung around. There is a big difference between helping someone who is acting normal and someone is acting deranged.
It’s actually less of an imposition to call 911 and walk away and sit in your car. He offered suggestions and didn’t just simply call the cops. If it was such a burden to help why did he offer to do more than she asked? Plus she didn’t show up at his place of work and started screaming obscenities- she got hurt in his parking lot and when he came out was freaking out. Yes, as I’ve said she was pretty off the wall, but it’s not like she barged into his office demanding something. So what if she’s screaming at me. Call the cops and sit in your car (or office).
And frankly, if she’s going to tell tales, wouldn’t it be better if you were there to give your side of the story then let her tell it all without you?
If someone is worried about getting raped I don’t think they usually scream at the “motherfucker” to get back here/not leave. Then again some people really don’t like to see any job not get finished so who knows.
Fine. I guess I go to the place that if someone is acting very unexpectedly that may be there is a reason for it rather thn just saying they are a flamming bitch or crazy. Especially in a weird, emergency situation, I would give them a bit of slack and simply do what they were frantically asking for. I guess I’m fairly alone in thinking that all he had to do was call the cops and hang around 10 minutes for them to arrive rather than what he did. I think his actions may have escalated the situation, based on what the OP said- especially if she was nasty. Why would you continue to engage someone who was treating you so badly and seemed so volatile? So, even if she was a total piece of work-so what? Call the cops, sit in your car and know you did the right thing.
I do not thinking leaving someone in that situation, unless you felt threatened yourself is the right thing to do, and it surprises me how easily others would have left this person.
I think we’re getting well into Zebra territory here - I think she seemed like an unpleasant, entitled bitch because she WAS an unpleasant, entitled bitch, who made her own problem and wasn’t happy with someone who wasn’t solving it exactly the way she wanted it solved.
As for leaving her, hey, if you want people to stick around, you should try not screaming obscenities at them (as a general rule for life, really).
And I think you’re going in the opposite direction- you’re an entitled bitch when, in the middle of what you feel is an emergency (and I would agree) all you want is someone to call 911 and they won’t? It wasn’t like she was asking him to solve it and bitched at him for not doing it. It was the other way around!
And I don’t think you leave people in distress, regardless.
Not really. I actually think I’m less empathetic than average, though how can we really compare such things? In my case, it’s that “help others when you can, especially in an emergency” was a cardinal value drilled into me by both my parents in different ways growing up.
My mother is more about the “everyday needs” stuff, like making sure neighbors and co-workers and folks she meets on the street have their needs met. There’s no doubt in my mind she would have immediately called 911 on her cell (or inside if no reception) and talked to the woman the whole time to let her know help is on the way.
My dad is very good in emergencies - always has both a physical strategy,like how to get her un-stuck, and a big-picture strategy, like call 911 and get the pros involved immediately, maybe call the nearby garage too and since he’d already be friendly with such important business neighbors, get them to come right away and start working on it in case the cops are hung up elsewhere.
I am neither of them. I don’t have the patience or empathy of my mom or the wide physical problem solving skills of my former Marine/engineer/lawyer dad. But I have my own ways of doing the things they taught me to do. I wouldn’t be as nice as mom or have her out as fast as dad, but I wouldn’t be able to leave her alone, no matter what.
I think every family has a few really core values like this - this just happens to be one of mine. That doesn’t make me a better person, just a person who would handle the situation laid out in this thread differently. As a PS, I definitely have considered the fact that it’s certainly possible that I or a family member will get seriously injured or killed someday due to “getting involved.” We all try to remain alert and stay safe, but honestly that risk is one I’m willing to take. I don’t do extreme sports or recreational drugs beyond moderate alcohol use, and I don;t have a high-risk occupation. I figure I have a little leeway for danger in my life.
I wasn’t really looking to call anyone out by name, just voice my objection to the general tone. Mostly because it would make me feel better about the thread if they didn’t go unremarked and figured maybe someone else might feel the same.
Good, I’m not crazy/completely misinterpreting.
This was the other one. Not “rape” but sexual coercion and rings the same bells.
Thank you. I’m not claiming any of the jokesters or those who laughed are rapists or seriously suggesting such actions, which is why I didn’t call out names initially. It’s the jokes themselves that bother me, and I think I expressed that in a reasonable, non-offensive way.
That never occurred to me until it was explicitly raised by NinetyWt after my post. Kinda funny i guess. Meh.
I would have ignored her attitude and tried to help her however I could. I would have either called 911 right away or the nonemergency number. If I had gotten a reply that the police couldn’t get there for 30-45 minutes I would have called the emergency number and/or called the service station down the street for immediate help. I absolutely would not have left her there alone after informing her that no one else would be there for at least 30 minutes and probably not for longer. Everyone knows the police could have just not shown up because of an emergency or got the address wrong. If she had been there all night she could have had serious damage to her arm.
All you people are willing to walk away and leave her to possibly be in that situation all night just because she’s a bitch are cold. Who knows if the bitchiness is because of panic or her real personality. It doesn’t matter. I hope in a real situation you would have a little more compassion. Just because someone is a bitch doesn’t mean you have to be inhumane. I’m shocked and horrified that so many people would have walked away.
I would not make the decision to leave her alone. If she had wanted my help, I would have rendered it. But as the OP describes the situation, she did not want help, and made the decision on her own that she wanted the OP to leave. I do not know why she made that decision, but it was her decision to make, and she made her decision quite clear.
I think that most people said that they’d call for help, and THEN leave her alone. Call for help, because that’s the right thing to do. And then leave, because just because she’s scared or in pain doesn’t give her the right to abuse someone who is trying to help her.
I think that she probably WAS uncomfortable, at the very least, possibly in pain, and she had been scared. But that doesn’t excuse her abusive behavior towards someone who is trying to solve her problem. She seemed to hold the OP personally responsible for not responding to her hollering, even though he couldn’t hear her. She also seemed to expect the OP to wave a magic wand and get her arm out of that car immediately.
I would have called 911 like the lady asked me to, and then I would have gone over safely out of yelling distance and surfed the Internet on my iPhone until the cops showed up. Sans iPhone, I would have read a book. In the extremely, extremely unlikely event that something really bad happened to the woman after I left and before the cops showed up (I don’t know, wild bear attack? she passes out and winds up losing her arm due to lack of circulation? the car starts rolling away?) I wouldn’t want that on my conscience. And it’s no harm to me to hang out for 30 min until the cops show up.
I’m not sure that staying would have helped anything, since there was nothing you could do. But why didn’t you call 911? If her arm was actually swelling, like you said, that requires emergency help.
Add me as another who REALLY disliked peanuthead’s rape joke.