to think people are arseholes?

[RosieWithTheGoodHair]

Not all of them. But another thread reminded me of something that happened to me when I was young and naïve (pretty much c+p from thread - those who read both aren't having déjà vu!):

In my early twenties I got chatting to and then bought a(n assumed) homeless man a drink in a pub.
My friend took a shine to him and invited him back to his flag where the three of us had an impromptu party - drink, drugs etc. he partook in both.
Woke up on the sofa the next day and our new friend had gone. So had all excess alcohol, plastic bags which had trace amounts of drugs in etc. The flat was actually comparatively tidy.
Went home, two days later went to withdraw some money from the cash point - card gone. Went bank - account empty.

The police had CCTV of him at the cash point down the road that morning, but because he must have seen my PIN when I bought him the drink there was no official crime committed according to the bank, I should have been more careful. Which I agree with.

My passcode on my phone was the same as my card at the time (I knooow) so I've always assumed he saw/kind of saw my PIN and then when I yelled my passcode to my friend who was wanting to change a song he had a lightbulb moment.

People are arseholes sometimes despite your best intentions.

Discuss.

If you assume that most people won't piss on you if you were on fire, then you don't get into this stupid ass situations.

You will lose nothing if you have a healthy dose of cynicism

No one who posts here ever did anything naive, reckless or ill conceived when they were young. No one here ever took drugs or randoms home from the pub. They never approached anything with a youthful, idealistic perspective.
You are a bad and stupid person who deserves what you got. Or something...I don't know why everyone's being so haughty.

You were naive, well intentioned and unlucky enough to come across an opportunist, creating a scenario in which you learned a valuable little something about some other people.

People aren't arseholes. He was an arsehole. The scale of other people's arseholery can be immense it's true, but that's not the sum of all.

"There's probably a pretty depressing reason why he behaved as he did though - not an excuse, but an explanation."

YY to this.

I remember going to my ex's flat one morning in the early days of our relationship, and there was a backpack stuffed with clothes on the sofa. He told me he had invited a homeless man back the night got before because he felt sorry for him. I told him it was a very naive thing to do.

I did have a quick nose in the bag, and was a little surprised to see that said homeless guy wore a pair of size 10 New Look trousers and a t-shirt from TopShop, but ex just shrugged it off, saying he probably had to wear whatever he could get his hands on. I believed him.

In the light of recent cheating (& hence why he's my ex), I now realise it was I who was being naive.....

Bloody hell, no idea why people are being so mean to you OP.

This happened many years ago, and the OP has openly agreed that it was a stupid, naive thing to do! She was in her early twenties - I think the majority of us made some pretty stupid decisions at that age.

Yes, people can be arseholes. It's a sad moment when we have to face up to the reality that even when you are kind and friendly to some people, they will still rob you blind. I hate to think of my own dc learning this lesson. I wish the world was a nicer place.

Did you think he was going to leave a thank you card and some flowers?

I have done many stupid and reckless things and put myself in stupid-ass situations which didn't all go right.

However unlike the OP and the one of the other thread, I didn't whine about it being other people being assholes, I understood the risk beforehand and chose to live with any consequences.

ClopySow I disagree.

What would be your answer, if someone posted this on MN?:

"I'm in the pub and I've made friends with a homeless guy, that I don't know. He saw my PIN when I bought him a drink. WIBU to take him home and get out of my tits on drink and drugs and then pass out, leaving my purse and cards on the table? Do you think he's' a safe bet for a party at mine later?"

It's just so reckless. And fwiw, I know of someone who took a guy home after a night out, and the next day she was found dead - he had smashed her head off a radiator repeatedly. I know it's rare, but it's the first thing that sprung to mind when I read the Op's post.

Anyway, hopefully Op you have learned your lesson. He's probably more desperate than an arsehole. When people are desperate, they do desperate things.

You need to think more along the lines of "what might go wrong here, if I do z/y/z"

I'd say 5%ish of people are anti-social and don't care what they do to others so long as they benefit somehow. On top of that, you have people who are like this because they have some sort of problem - drink, drugs - that coerces them into making selfish decisions.

Then you have the majority of people who just want to get along, but can be swept up in this sort of selfish behaviour.

Then at the other end wonderfully giving people who spend their lives actively helping others in a selfless manner. We should be following their example and being a bit more like them, helping them and not the 5 %ers who are selfish to the extreme.

OP you got involved with a selfish anti social individual because of the drink and drugs situation which makes you vulnerable to these people. But the fact he was a thief wasn't your fault. As the majority of us sit in the passive middle, we have to be careful about people in our lives and they need to show us where they sit too - are they at the one end of selfish using or nearer the other selflessly giving, or in the middle like most of us? Once you have enough evidence to make a judgement, then you can invite them to your home knowing how they will act.

But life is a learning curve and often we miss out the evaluation stage because we want to be kind or because our judgement is impaired. Plenty of us have been done over by the 5 %ers. But we all benefit from the leading lights at the other end: the ones who have improved humanity.

Take the suffragettes who spent time hunger striking, chained to fences,` beaten to ensure we have access to democracy. Or the people who gave their lives so ours would be better. Or those who work tirelessly for charities, answering calls to children in need or going round houses of women who need help or fostering children out of kindness etc etc. We all benefit from these people's sacrifices on a daily basis but often we forget about it and take it for granted.

x/y/z

Well! This thread hasnt gone the way you intended eh?
I did the first stage if your night in that i got chatting to a honeless man after my then boyfriend had argued with me and stonoed off and the homeless man was witness to the argument. I was angry and needed to cool off so i asked the homeless guy if he wanted a pint. Of course he did! We went to a bar, i remember the looks i got from other bar goers, bought him a drink we chatted about music etc he let me listen to his Jimmy shand cd. Then he went to thr tojlet and my friend messaged me. I told her what i was up to and she went nuclear on me and told me to just get out the bar. So i left. I still feel bad the guy would have come out to find me gone.
Wrt the ""people are arseholes".. yes they are. There are some really horrible people in the world. Alot of it i think it jealousy.

Most people don't do things purely out of kindness - at best it's to make themselves feel good.

Lots of people are arseholes all the time. Lots of people can be arseholes occasionally.

Had you invited this guy back to your flat without your flatmate's approval and in the morning her stuff had been stolen but not your's, then you would be an arsehole.

Personally I think there is a special place in hell for the arseholes who come on to MN threads and comment "I haven't read the full thread but...."

LiviaDrusillaAugusta alright Phoebe

Harsh lesson, but I'm glad you shared just on the off chance it gives someone else the chance to learn from your mistake before they find themselves in a similar situation.

Yeah, he was an arsehole but you and your friend were idiots.

He could have been kind and not taken advantage of your idiocy - but on the other hand he probably thought "this'll learn 'em" and taught you a valuable life lesson, that many people are arseholes.

Sorry you learnt the hard way. But it probably fixed some of your naivety and got rid of your tendency towards idiocy.

Someone was shouting outside my house for a neighbour at 2.15 this morning. I opened the window to look at him and he told me to mind my own business, as if someone shouting at 2 in the morning isn't my business. HE is an arsehole.

gwen You should have accidentally dropped something heavy out the window Like a piano.

Who is Phoebe?

I was scared of him to be honest Lois. There are some rough people around here (as there are among the homeless on the streets of course).

Phoebe? Friends? No? Ok then...

I think you're all arseholes. You post pics of yourself on here drunk and were expected to have sympathy when suddenly your drinking and drug taking has rubbish consequences. Perhaps this is a wee lesson for you.

discussion over.

It's a horrible way to learn that particular lesson OP, but at least you did learn it.

Hardly a week went by without my old flatmate going out on the lash and inviting a stranger home. She was 30 or so at the time - much older than all the other occupants of the house - so didn't have the excuse of being a wide-eyed innocent. It went pear-shaped constantly, 6 or 7 times in 10 the "guest" would either be aggressive, a crackhead or refuse to leave, at which point me or the other flatmate (male) would be called upon to do the honours.

In the end, one such guest threatened the male flatmate with a shanking and another a year or so later tried to break into my room and rape me. I was sexually assaulted numerous times as an indirect result of her actions. On one occasion it happened at a dingy bar at 1am that I'd crawled out of bed to rescue her from when she called me in a state about a "creep that wouldn't leave her alone". Suffice to say that when i turned up she was having a whale of a time and in between efforts to pull her out of the door, I got cornered by a 6'6 Italian bass player who stuck a hand between my legs when I tried to leave. Of course it wasn't her fault that somebody had chosen to do something like that, but the common denominator in all these little catastrophes was that the "complainant" was in a situation they didn't want to be in, in order to help her, or at her insistence.

She still didn't learn the lesson. We told her over and over and over again that if you behave that destructively when you take a particular substance or drink to excess, you gotta stop, end of. She protested hypocrisy on the basis that none of us were averse to the odd bender, but the reality was that she, as some people do, had a romantic image of herself as a hard-living troubled waif and refused to accept that some people can handle their poisons, and others can't and end up fraternising with dodgy strangers, having unprotected sex they don't want, endangering themselves and their friends, throwing wobblies and collapsing in the gutter. And of course that she was a member of the latter group. I put up with her crap for far too long, and from it all gained myself a nice big martyr complex and became hardened, bitter, and cynical.

The homeless guy in your story was of course being absolutely unreasonable in every way, OP, regardless of his living status. Something isn't morally defensible just because circumstance has made it easy.

Wasn't trying to accuse your friend of having the same appalling traits as mine by the way, OP! But your situation did take me back.

I think a larger proportion of people than will admit it would resort to crime if they were so penniless they couldnt eat and the opportunits came up.

I wouldn't. But maybe he wasn't "cunt of highest order" maybe he regretted it afterwards for ages?