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?!

Picked a child up from school regularly,and took to an afterschool club by car ,only to find out the husband was sat at home on his arse and didn’t want to collect child

How old was the child when she did those things? I know little ones do sometimes but they are usually told not to and outgrow it - and wouldn't dream of such actions in someone else's house. I hope you told her mother how she behaved. However if it was after school, you weren't having her that long.

Hee hee, as others have said, no good deed goes unpunished. You won't offer again in a hurry!

Clevererthanyou, your post is testament to why AID is a very bad idea!

These are awful! Had similar - glamorous school mum at junior school pushes hard to suggest we form a lift club for senior school. Such a waste for us all to lifting every day, etc! We can help each other! So we divide up all the lifts between 3 of us mums. Only a month in, her "work schedule has changed" and she can't do her share. For the next couple of years the remaining 2 of us mums lift her DS every single day between us. Took us ages to realize she'd planned it exactly as that from the start. Never again.

I've lost count tbh.

Oh gosh. Way way too many times

People are ALWAYS taking advantage of my kind nature. Only to be shit on from a great height every time. My husband says I trust too much. This is too true.

Now lockdowns happened. I've no friends who check on me

Not one. I could be dead for all they know.

Went shopping to local supermarket after drop-off with a new mum friend I'd only known a few weeks.
I only needed a couple of things but browsed the shop with this friend as she loaded her trolley.
At the till 'friend' had forgotten her purse.
She asked me to pay for the shopping. I did, thinking she'd go straight home for purse to pay me back ( £48.40)
No. She told me she'd give me a spray tan as repayment..

A few things, I toughened up, best move

I once picked up a purse in a car park which contained money and bank cards. I was working for a large organisation in a public facing role at the time. I wasn’t too sure whether to hand the purse into a bank or police station (not in the U.K. so may not have reached the owner), instead I decided to call a number on a business card inside the purse to ask if they knew the owner. They did, and a woman came in to collect her purse. She then proceeded to shout abuse at me and say that I had embarrassed her ringing the number on the business card, which was just a florist. If I hadn’t been at work at the time I would have responded less apologetically.
I was also shouted at for retrieving some paperwork that had blown off a pub bench into a road in central London.
I do agree with the saying ‘No good deed goes unpunished.’ I try not to be too quick to offer help now, and to think through possible consequences first.

When I was doing freelance work, more temp staff were needed so I put forward a friend's name. She persuaded the manager to take her on full-time and stop using freelances.
Another time I got freelance work for a friend at the same place I was freelancing, she was distraught when the work dwindled and one of us had to leave. She pleaded with me to let her keep the job, so I left -- I had other work and could just about get by. Later when she had a full-time job she didn't even respond to my messages.

I arranged a spa day for me and two cousins after one had recovered from breast cancer. It wasn't the flashiest spa ever but it was nice enough, and like I say I was paying and it was the max I could afford. They picked at every detail grumbled about the facilities and didn't say thank you.

Also arranged a whip round for FILs 70th, emailed tons of people for ideas got him beautiful decanter with inscription based on a favourite poem of his, pluscard written by all who pitched in and he smiled and nodded when it was presented, didn't say thank you and it's never been seen since!

Yes! I once leant all my Christmas lights to the admin person at the school where I taught. She returned them squashed into a carrier bag with loads of the bulbs broken.

I went into a phone box (in 1980 something), found a handback stuffed with paper money. I was broke and in severe debt but not for a minute did i consider keeping it. Paper work inside showed it was a weeks taking from a market stall. Owners details and phone number inside. I called her and waited till she got there. She grabbed the bag out of my hand, marched back to her car and drove off, never said a word to me!

@whatisheupto

Going through one (sort of) at the moment. Offered to do elderly neighbours shopping when lock down began. 6 or 7 big shops later and I'm wondering how much longer this will go on for! Feel bad thinking that as really they shouldn't risk catching Covid but I cant help wondering why their 2 DC don't do an online shop for them? (They live v far away). I have suggested that but it fell on deaf ears. However, I also believe in helping out and all doing our bit for the community. And one of them is pretty frail and unwell.....

@whatisheupto I am really hoping you don’t live in a large town in Cumbria! My dad has neighbours who have shopped for him since lockdown. I have arranged online delivery for him, it was at the very start of lockdown when online deliveries were a bit shit, so he was not very happy with what he got. So, they are still shopping for him and he says they don’t mind. 😳 But I am worried they regret offering now, it’s gone on so long.....I am dropping hints to him every couple of days about it. He is elderly, but quite fit, and I worry they might think he’s taking the piss now...

@Elouera

I was a regular patron at a vegetable stall near us. The shop owners mother looked unwell & was about to collapse. I rendered medical assistance till the ambulance arrived. Whilst this went on, the shop owners large dog ate a bag of lamb chops I'd just bought.

Whilst I don't regret helping the elderly lady at all, I thought the shop owner might have given me the fruit/veg I'd bought for free, instead of charging me! Especially as their dog ate £15 of lamb chops I'd bought for a special meal!

This made me laugh, sorry! I can just picture the scene. 😂

Yes many lessons learnt not enough to completely put me off helping someone but I definitely take more time to size up the responsibility before I offer.

Helped a friend by looking after her DD for a few evenings a week whilst she worked. Her DH worked away.
Not only did I never have a word of thanks from her, I discovered years later after I'd ended this arrangement that him working away actually meant he was with his other family in the next county.
I still don't know if she knew he had a double life.

I gave my pram to an old colleague's daughter, she sold it for £150 a week later.

years ago i was out with my boyfriend when this American couple got chatting to us, it was their first night in the UK. I decided to be kind and buy them a beer each. Then the chap started coming onto me and dancing really grossly up against me. Turned out they're weren't a couple and in fact brother and sister.

He took that gesture the wrong way and my boyfriend and i ended the night with a huge argument. That was the last imte i did something like that again.

@Paperthin I’m in a support group offering shopping (nowhere near your dad!)
Almost all the people I’m shopped for have family members who could do it - but the person (older age) wants to be independent and not bother them! They see “using” a volunteer as more independent. I had a weird conversation when I rang one lady (she’d given her number to a co-ordinator, to be passed on to me as nearest volunteer) - the phone was answered by her own daughter, who’d popped in to shop.
I don’t volunteer because I have nothing better to do - but to help those in actual need!

Yes. Someone I knew had been travelling, and a kind stranger helped him out of a tight spot in rural Bangladesh. They kept in touch, and the Bangladeshi man moved to the UK. My friend told me he was working under appalling conditions as a delivery driver, and as the company I worked for also employed delivery drivers, I pulled some strings for him to work there, same job but better money and conditions.

He bombarded me with emails complaining about things constantly, and when it wasn't emails he was coming up to the office to corner me at my desk, asking me to intercede on his behalf over various complaints with his manager (such as that he didn't want to have to work when it was cold), could I arrange for him to have next Friday off, he didn't like being a delivery driver and could I please arrange a job for him in our accounts department (!!) instead... etc. I had to just stonewall him eventually. Never again.

Does anyone remember that curiously fascinating thread about the woman who'd offered to put up a friend, someone she didn't know very well, and the woman refused to leave, then got pregnant? It was years ago but I was hooked.

Im happy to help most people but although this happened about 15 years ago, i still feel pretty bad about it and wish i hadnt helped as i was totally taken advantage of. My then boyfriend was losing his job and had lined up another one but he was going to be a couple of months without an income. I never normally lend money but he was worried for his rent and wanted to still pay his maintainence for his 2 girls. I really loved those girls and didnt want to see them without so i agreed to lend him money to cover his bills and he could pay me back at 100 pounds a month once he started work. Over the next 2 months he borrowed 3x700 pounds and had asked for more but i noticed that suddenly he had fancy haircuts and new jackets. I then refused any more and was starting to get a bit nervous about the 2100 he owed me. At this point i must say that this didnt put me out in any way and i wasnt in debt for him. Once he started his job for the first few months i got my 100 a month until the point where he still owed me 1400. He then disappeared and i couldnt get a hold of him and his number was changed. I enquired if it was worth taking him to a small claims court for the money but there was no proof i gave him the money so it was his word against mine. Several months later he appeared at my work looking for me as he wanted to continue to pay back the money but at 50 pounds a month and could i remind him of my bank details. I handed over my details but by this point i could see he wasnt happy as i had a new boyfriend. Needless to say i never saw any money ever again and he disappeared. About 5 years ago i saw his name on the news as be had been charged with downloading child porn!!!!! I will really have to write off that money now as there is no way im going looking for him now. Some things are not worth persuing

My mother insisted my sister wanted all my baby gear. I told her it wasn't worth posting it due to postage costs but she insisted it was sentimental to have the same stuff used for family babies.

She also insisted I post a moses basket which she'd insisted I take with me when I moved across country to use for my second DC, even though my 1st hadn't liked it (it's a very small 1970s one) because of the sentimental value of all the family children using the same basket, going back to my sister and I.

My sister didn't want the stuff.

My mother threw it all away, except the old moses basket which she started using as a towel hamper.

She admitted this very casually in passing when I travelled to meet my new niece, as if it was completely normal.

There were things in there like the wrap I'd carried all my children in. Sentimental to me. As well as the fact I'd paid more than the stuff was worth to post it all.

Absolute blank astonishment that I was bothered.

All on my mother, not my sister as it's fair enough she didn't want it and she didn't even take it from my mother's house.

(As in, offered to let her crash there for a week or so, but the friend stayed for months and refused to move out)