To ask whether you’ve ever regretted a kind gesture?

[Rainbowb]

I offered to pick up a friend’s daughter after school three times a week when she got a new job. I then discovered the child liked to jump on furniture, trash bedrooms and eat me out of house and home! Was two terms before I had the guts to pull the plug on it! Was wondering if any of you guys had ever tried to do something kind and wish you hadn’t bothered?!

Yep! I LENT a friend a costume for school to find out after the school dress up day, the costume was on a local buy and sell page!

O God just remembered another. Old uni friend desperate for someone to look after her daughter during London interview for college.

So I put her on touch with a friend who had air bnb in London.

Not only did this very old ex uni friend do my friend out of 200 quid she also left her own daughter, penniless in London while messaging me about it.

I repaid my friend with air bnb, apologised a lot for extremely shabby acquainted one.

Dreadful.

Yes, as a Childminder often in the past I have been taken advantage of by people who are only friends as they realise you could be quite useful, I am older and wiser now.

I was trying to pay some kind things forward, and one thing I did was to offer help when people posted about not being able to pay for xmas due to job loss etc. The second year I did this I picked a family with 3 little girls who asked for toys and food. I asked what their interests were and whether they would like them wrapped or unwrapped. I had saved up a lot of toys r us vouchers over tge year so i bought two sacks full of gifts for them and wrapped it all. Then I contacted an Acquaintance who had helped me the previous year when I ran a gently used toy giveaway. He agreed to meet me at a grocery store and he paid for 10 bags of holiday foods including turkey, ham and everything they could need for a nice holiday week.

I turned up to the house excited to give the items, knowing they had nothing, not even a tree. The man who came to the door with a cigerette in one hand and a can of beer in the other bsrely grunted at me and told me to bring it all in. Didn't offer to help me on all the trips back and forth to the car. I handed over the two full bin bags of dolls and games and he said "is that it? Shove them under the tree then". There was a tree, a fancier one than my own, and a huge pile of gifts already underneath. He also asked "are you the one that's giving me the money? I though there was going to be money too". He looked disgusted when I told him that was not me.

I left and he hadn't even said thanks or seemed even a little bit happy. I had to lie to my acquaintance and say that the family were grateful. Then I got home and saw all the other messages of people I could have helped out, and felt sad I picked the wrong family that year.

@GYNisaliarWTF I just felt so annoyed, but also so awkward as we are friends anyway that I didn’t say anything. I know she struggles with childcare so I was trying to help her out but her DS is so badly behaved! If I went to hers for treatments he was naughty then too and she would be distracted constantly sorting him out. We have both moved house and live much further apart so rather then hurt her feelings I let her think that’s the reason I don’t use her now.

You live and learn about people and although it's the whole 'don't judge a book by the cover' , sometimes you just can I think or just ' gut instinct' .
I knew my friend would be stitched up by her new best friend , but I didn't let on as I would have been accused of being mean. I was right , but had to stay quiet!
' never a lender or a borrower be' is a good one to live by too which is why I don't. Apart from banks : they are there to be borrowed from and have to be paid back.

Yep. One of our v good friends was having a ‘whip round’ for her husbands 30th to buy him a camera. Other friend couldn’t afford to chip in and was embarrassed.

I had a brand new book about photography on my book case that I hadn’t opened, suggested she give him that instead of contributing to camera as it was in line with the theme.

6 months later, spotted book on her bookshelf. She’d kept it for herself and not given anything to friend for his birthday!

I have a nice one to tell. I tend keep my guard up and not to rush to help out anyone, especially if it's some kind of child care arrangement issue.

This is some years ago now but one day I found my neighbour's elderly parents on our shared drive with their moving truck. They were moving to the area to be nearer their daughter but something had gone wrong last minute (I can't remember the details) and the moving truck was pressuring them to unload the truck.

Uncharacterisitically I found myself offering our garage (which luckily was fairly empty!) for them to use and store the furniture and possessions until the situation was sorted. It didn't even occur to me think about insurance and other pitfalls.

They, my neighbours elderly parents cleared all their items from our garage about six weeks later and we were given a dinner voucher to our local fancy restaurant and a huge bouquet of flowers. They were a lovely couple.

@JustAVeniceQueen

I have a nice one to tell. I tend keep my guard up and not to rush to help out anyone, especially if it's some kind of child care arrangement issue.

This is some years ago now but one day I found my neighbour's elderly parents on our shared drive with their moving truck. They were moving to the area to be nearer their daughter but something had gone wrong last minute (I can't remember the details) and the moving truck was pressuring them to unload the truck.

Uncharacterisitically I found myself offering our garage (which luckily was fairly empty!) for them to use and store the furniture and possessions until the situation was sorted. It didn't even occur to me think about insurance and other pitfalls.

They, my neighbours elderly parents cleared all their items from our garage about six weeks later and we were given a dinner voucher to our local fancy restaurant and a huge bouquet of flowers. They were a lovely couple.

And it's because of lovely people like them we keep helping, hoping for just a decent amount of gratitude.

I was helped out of a tricky situation by someone and thanked her with theatre vouchers (as well as paying the rate requested). She was hugely grateful. Someone else who I asked for help in the same situation and turned me down with no advice about where else I might go (both worked in same industry and knew each other so Unhelpful could have referred me to Helpful).

Funnily enough Unhelpful friended me on Facebook shortly after the vouchers were given. But I know who I'll be recommending in future!

DH lent his brother a chunk of money. They set up a repayment direct debit. BIL is always complaining how poor and hard up he is (whilst spending on himself). DH told him to forget the last payment, BIL said fine, shrugged and looked pissed off. I’m convinced he was furious he had to pay it back at all (which happened to all the ‘loans’ from PIL). He has never bought us as much as a drink.
If you go to his house you have to buy a takeaway to eat (and usually theirs as well). He calls us stingy. Won’t have a penny from us again.

I remember when my son was younger, he found £20 on the floor in the aise in Morrisons at Yate.
At the time I was teaching about honesty etc and so we took the money to customer services and handed it in.
The 'kind lady' took the money and said she will put it in the diary and if nobody claimed it in a couple of weeks then my son could have it.
Roll on three weeks and we went back to the shop, my son all excited at the prospect of getting £20.
Only to find that there was no record of any money being put in the diary.
So what started out in a lesson in honesty turned out to be a lesson in dishonesty.

@everythingbackbutyou omg yes! Painfully true is right as it's the ones most likely to give you grief that don't get this at all!

I had one tip up 3 hours late and no apology not even a poor excuse, hadn't read the t&c's I'd sent her and didn't even know what my fees were, her dc ran riot and were clearly a lot to handle and she was obviously one of those that didn't like EVER telling them no let alone telling them off -

I'm sure you know the type!

She left and as she'd been a bit iffy about the fees (which were better than average for the area) I didn't expect her to want to be with me anyway.

She called the next day asking if her dc could start full time the next day! A Tuesday and she wanted them minded 8-6

No settling in period no answering any of the queries I asked her to check.

And when I said I wouldn't be taking her on she acted as if I had a nerve! Threatened to slate me locally, said my fees were far too expensive, my house a dump and that I didn't even have much experience (I'm a trained nurse, had been a nanny for 7 years on and off prior to childminding and been babysitting since the age of 14 and at this point I was 31! I have TONS of experience).

Dodged a bullet there!

She was the worst but by no means the only one.

They also seem to think childminders are "rivals", well I don't know others experiences but in mine the opposite was true.

My other local childminders met up regularly to do things with the dc, and quite honestly the problematic families were known about!

Certainly the ones that flounced from more than a couple soon found it hard to get care - usually the ones who were horrendous for paying on time.

We understand if people have genuine difficulties eg at the start if tax credits mess you up, but the ones that are just completely disorganised or worse try to avoid paying nah they can jog on!

@WeBuiltThisBuffetOnSausageRoll

I totally agree with the immaturity assessment.

Sister (again! I know! I could write a book!) once LITERALLY stood in the street stamping her feet and shouting because the coffee she had just bought wasn't exactly to her specifications - she was in her 30's and a mother of 2 at the time!

Patsnpons - yes you have to very quickly if not immediately NOT give in to requests for free childcare. As said up thread people really don't appreciate professional services. Most childcare workers are massively underpaid anyway but I understand it's difficult as those employing them aren't well paid either.

It's an issue that needs addressing by govt.

When I was about 18 I took out a mobile phone contract in my name for my then boyfriend.
We subsequently broke up, and you can guess what happened with those payments!
It was a lesson learned though I guess.

I only offer my help to family

I am unlucky enough to have a CF in my family.
I have learned not to lend her stuff because "what's mine is hers" if you see what I mean - she never returns anything. Once I lent her my new vacuum cleaner & had to nag for weeks to get it back. First she denied having it. When I insisted she did have it, she was at a loss to know why she should return it, instead of me driving over to her place to fetch it back. Finally she said anyway, it's broken. When I pointed out that it wasn't broken when I lent it, she said that after the builders had left she'd used it to "hoover up the rubble".

Thanks for giving me the chance to get that off my chest!

@ConcreteUnderpants

Yes!! I let someone use my garage for storage for free. Then he put his own lock on and disappeared. But still uses my garage.

Really puts you off doing someone a favour, which feels terrible.

Cut his lock off and claim it back .

@WeBuiltThisBuffetOnSausageRoll, so true about adults with the 'young child' mentality. My stbxh is always pleading poverty to his parents, despite being middle aged and in a well paid job. They totally lap it up and have paid for new appliances, rent, a car etc. in the past because they think the sun shines out his ass and love to feel needed, I think. He has savings but, like others have mentioned, these are very much seen as not to be touched, by virtue of their being savings. He also has a very skewed view of what constitutes 'want' vs. 'need' e.g. complaining he is broke before turning around and buying himself a 200 quid mattress topper, always making sure he has the craft beers and foods he likes, buying lego sets ffs...
@Graphista yes, fellow childminders look out for each other where I am, too. I think CF families don't realise we all warn each other of who will not pay on time, whose children are utter nightmares etc.

Sorry to hear about that end of the line some people are v cruel and selfish and its not always obvious which ones

no huge ones but MIL & SIL v over entitled people I was very kind accommodating to them in the first few years did all the visiting to them (an expensive flight away) neither where grateful or seemed in anyway inclined to return the favour. Both extremely self obsessed expected love to demand to waste hours of your time on endless petty minor self created problems then if you had an issue "it was nothing to do with me i cant get involved". SIL always "far too busy" to visit us her and MIL demanded we must visit them all the while SIL spent half the year on at her holiday home abroad not to mention always finding time to visit a particularly wealthy relative. We were not taken advantage of in some ways more that I/we were far too kind in terms of being generous and over accommodating to begin with and got out selves trapped in it.

It took many years and the birth of our children to really move away from a lot of MIL/SIL silly expectations and we are now v v careful with them and others like them to be v forceful at the start to avoid setting the expectation that we are happy to do stuff that we are not happy to do.

Also a few CF school mums always happy to ask for / accept a playdate then think its ok not to return the favour eldest DC now in juniors and we just dont bother with them type of parents. If DC wants the company of a friend i am very happy to have a kid 2 or 3 times but if no invite back is forthcoming i just stop inviting. obv not talking about parents for whom it would be impossible to reciprocate rather those who accept an invite yet never reciprocate despite them happily being able to invite every other kid but my child. We have one mother who is like that and whilst I dont mind her and my DC likes her kid neither me nor my son really want to be obliged to a one way type of situation.

@Ilovelblue I’m not sure your neighbour story was a good deed at all. It must have been very stressful for her and her mother. I wonder if they think of you as the nosy neighbour?

@Solomi that is sooooo weird.

Andwoosh they didn't think I was a nosy neighbour when I brought the old lady into my house when she'd locked herself out, nor when I looked after her when she'd reversed her car into a workman's van opposite her house....

Lots- particularly offering care for after school for friends of my DDs (I finished work at 3 pm by starting early) but as soon as their kid had other options, my kids were dropped as friends. Happened with 3 mothers! No more though.

One that rankles- friend with 2 kids suggested we go away for a weekend to CentreParcs. At the time we had 1.
They had the master bedroom and their 2 had the 2nd room. We 3 had the small 3rd- mainly because we turned up 20 mins after them.
Then wife went out for a massage. Husband was popping out- he disappeared for 3 hours, leaving us with their 2 unruly kids. Turns out he fancied a massage too.

We started just going out with our DD and leaving the parents to look after their own kids.

We also bought lots of food to cook, spend a lot at Tesco.
When it was their turn, they had bought nothing, so had to buy from the site shop. They expected us to go halves. Oh how we laughed (and never went away with them again)

Having read this and CF threads, there appear to be 3 common situations that bring out the CF in people:

• Borrowing money and not paying it back/taking forever to pay it back.
• Childcare/play dates - expecting free childcare, and not recpricating playdates
• Staying/living at someone's house for a long time and not paying and/or leaving the room/house a pigsty.

Of course there are other scenarios (borrowing stuff and not returning, CF neighbours etc) but the 3 situations above seem to be mentioned time and time again. Interesting.

I lent a ‘friend’ at school an English essay after he asked to look over it. It was due in so I asked for it back. He denied ever seeing it. It was written by hand as our teacher back then was very old school and didn’t let us type anything 🙄 I told the teacher what had happened and friend was questioned. He cried and eventually admitted to losing my essay. He still handed his version in and got good marks though. I had to completely rewrite mine.

Let a friend stay rent free so she could save up for her own property. That was until she came back with three bags of shopping from Harvey Nicks, started showing me the amazing new clothes she had bought and wanted to know where we could go for drinks on Saturday night to show them off.

She was gone within a week.

Always put in for birthday collections bake cakes send cards. My birthday came I made three different cakes/treats. Got nothing off most. The receptionist bought me a card and a girl who was on holiday brought me a bunch of flowers when she returned which ment so much to me just to be recognised. The rest can do one in future, even the staff I have a good relationship with just sent a message to say my cake was good. Future collections will have to go without me contributing now. Watch me be called out for it.