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?!

quarantimespringclean thats a lovely one on the midst of all these. My jaw is dropping at some.

I primary school my DD was quite friendly with a girl who had a difficult home life, she was one of 8 siblings, neither parent worked. I used to pass on DD's clothes, and often 'lent' them money, not huge amounts but still.
At high school the girls drifted apart completely, but I still passed clothes on and lent them money. They owed me some, and my DD make the mistake of asking the girl at school when her 'mum was paying my mum back'. Incidentally I wasn't happy with DD about this, however it set off a shit storm.
Her step dad sent me abusive voice messages, said he was going to beat me and my daughter up and never mind my grown up sons, he'd 'batter' them too. It was dreadful and quite scary. In the end I had to go to the police who went and spoke to him.
We moved house last year and I was relieved they no longer no where I live.

Couple of years ago we had a cleaner who was lovely but had a few problems at home...difficult ex, troublesome teenage daughter etc. During the school holidays she’d bring her younger two children with her as she didn’t have childcare. Just turned up with them one day so I ended up looking after her and my two while she cleaned. One of her boys had a birthday a few weeks before Christmas and She wanted to get him a bike but couldn’t afford it. We thought about it and offered to pay for 12 weeks cleaning up front so she Could get the bike and put some toward Christmas. She started putting off our day until the next week, then couldn’t come the next week and then because it was run up to Christmas people started booking deep cleans “so they obviously take priority” . We eventually gave up trying to get her to come and wrote the money off. Couple of months later she did text as she wanted to come and explain. We declined as it would be weird having her in our house so she could tell us why she took advantage of us.

*know not no haha !

I hate to say this but a lot of these posts don’t sound like a “good deed”, they sound totally over the top and make the author sound like a right mug! So it’s not surprising that they were then treated as one!

Offering to give lifts for months on end is a ridiculous gesture and if someone offered that to me I would assume they didn’t mind and had nothing better to do! Really no need to offer things like this!

@Tiny2018

I'm living it now. Due to my twat of an exes landlord losing her job due to Coronavirus, sge was forced to sell the house, essentially leavibg ex and his son homeless. I used the last of my student loan to buy a small caravan to put on the front of my house for him, he agreed to pay half back and pay me money per month towards bills. Last week after he once again began shouting at me and calling me names I told him he will have to leave. He told me if that's the case, he won't be paying anything to me and will stay as long as he needs, go to the council, tell them I moved him in and take my house. I am currently living in a state of misery, not talking to each other, with three children in the house. I knew it was a terrible idea at the time, but I couldn't bear to see anyone homeless. When will I learn.

He has absolutely no rights to your house. Call the police if he won’t leave.

I let my beautician bring her 8 year old with her when she came to do my nails, eyebrows and lashes. He sat on the rear cushions of my brand new sofa with his shoes on the seat cushions (effectively using rear cushions as seat) I asked him to get down and he was rude. He was teasing my dog, shouting and being a pain, after they left I found he had spilt black currant juice on my light hey sofa and not said a word so it had dried. I haven’t had her back to my home since in case she wants to bring her son again

@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.....

(They live v far away). That's the beauty of online shopping though, isn't it? I do online grocery and other shopping for my mother who lives over 40 miles from me with no problems...

Dp ‘friend’ wanted to buy his car off him but didn’t have the money immediately available, asked if he could pay him over the next few months! 18 months it took to pay! He took the piss on a massive scale and at one point I didn’t think dp would ever have all the money owed!

I was annoyed at dp for putting up with it and trusting this ‘friend’ who I was never much for and this incident made me like him even less!

Lots! I've a weird one that still stings. A friend I'd done my master's degree was talking about applying for PhDs and worrying how you did it; I said if it'd be useful I could sit down with her and talk her through how I'd done my application. We met up, I told her what I'd done, and two minutes in I saw her expression and asked what was wrong. She told me I was being patronising and she had no need of help.

To this day I've no idea why she reacted like that. At the time I was really worried and kept going over what I'd said. We'd literally met up to have the exact conversation she shut down.

Also, virtually everything we've ever done for DP's family, especially my MIL. She is a massive chancer. Lots of things stick in mind, but especially this one (which is actually my parents' kind gesture, not mine!). My parents booked a holiday in a holiday house with a beautiful and obviously much-loved garden, for all of us adult children and our partners. Knowing my MIL didn't get away much, they asked us to invite her to come over for a beach day and tea. She turned up, looked at the garden, said 'oh, I'd like that' and promptly began wandering around breaking springs off whatever plants she fancied and putting them in her bag!

I'm all for asking someone for a cutting of something you love, but who wanders into someone else's holiday let and starts nicking things?!

@Patbutcherismyhero

Regret spending an absolute fortune on an ex's birthday who turned out to be a total shit. I spent loads and made some really thoughtful homemade gifts and when it came to light just what a horrible cheating bastard he was I felt like a real idiot.

Same!

Yes. Sold our house early 2000s, but for whatever reason we had to exchange and complete on the same day. We were in a chain of three. People renting buying ours, the house we were buying and the current owners of new house were buying brand new.

Anyway, all was good, date for moving was set and a few days before the people at the top of the chain decided to pull out. The couple buying ours were devastated as they had put notice in on their rented house and were about to be made homeless. So we found another house, put an offer in, it was accepted, and we agreed to carry on with our sale, as we did have a house we could borrow / move to, with cheap rent, for the 10 weeks or so whilst we waited for the new house sale to go through. We thought this was the right thing to do to prevent our buyers from being made homeless.

Unfortunately, we were then totally messed around by the new people above us in the chain, and as it was at a time house prices were rising quickly, we ended up being completely priced out of the market.

We're now happily settled somewhere else, but I do have a three bed rather than four, and the house we would have bought is now valued between £100k and £150k more than mine.

So yeah, that was the last time I try to do the right thing.

Do you think part of it is that some people don't perceive these actions as kindness but as service t which they're entitled and other people's failure to understand that they're merely supporting actors in the drama of their lives?

That plus the sheer joy some derive from being CFs?

This is really helping me. I recently posting about only attracting user friends and friends that test my boundaries. Any tips on how to stop people taking advantage?

Any time I’ve been kind and generous with my older sister! Completely regret it as I’ve come to see pretty recently just how damaging to me the relationship with her has always been.

When I was eleven a "friend" asked if she could borrow a really beautiful fountain pen I had been given, during a lesson. Being a mug I said yes, and I still remember the devastation I felt when she gave it back after about 6 months (no matter how many times I asked previously), and obviously the nib was totally worn to her writing style. I think she even said I may as well give it back to her as I couldn't use it properly now. It sounds so dim to still be irritated now x decades later, but I am and I do think it has impacted my willingness to share anything since.

Also helped an old man last week who had fallen and hurt himself, he was very distraught and dazed, took him home cleaned him up, called and waited for an ambulance and then I wrote a note and posted it through his relatives front door to let them know what had happened giving my details. At the very least I expected a call asking me to to fill them in on what happened I’ve heard nothing not even a thankyou! Was DP birthday that day Andy should have been prepping a romantic meal for him rather then first aiding strangers

I've lent money that I've struggled to get back, and very rarely lend anyone anything after having sewing machines, books, etc returned damaged, assuming they were returned at all. Have also looked after people's stuff in the garage that was to be there 'a couple of weeks' and still being climbing over it to to get to my stuff 6 months later. I am very careful who I do this sort of thing for now, as there too many CFers about.

I had a friend who I'd known for a couple of years, she was increasingly broke and I was always very kind, paid for the odd meal out etc, and if she liked a dress of mine or whatever, and it was a bit tight on me, I'd just give it to her.

I was supportive with her problems and kind with gifts. So all in all, I felt I was pretty nice to her.

I took it one step further and paid for a holiday for her... flight, her share of hiring a car, and all the drinks etc. Total cost about £400, didn't expect anything from her because she had no money she said but as she hadn't had a holiday for years, I was OK paying.

She arrived on a different flight to me, we got to the apartment and were unpacking and she showed me a skirt she'd bought at Heathrow airport that cost £90 that she 'just fell in love with'.
I was totally shocked. She brought 50euros for the week spending money, she had me treat her to a holiday because she was broke, but had spent £90 on a skirt????
I felt used.
Friendship fizzled out

Took our inlaws on holiday. They spent the entire time treating DH as though he was their carer, leaving DD out and only opened their mouths to complain or talk about the "son they never had" then proceeded to lie to him about me.

I regret it because I spent a year working to pay for said trip, and not a word of thanks. They ruined the holiday and I jabent been able to bring myself to talk to them since.

The additional kicker....despite them spending the trip complaining about how unwell they were, I am actually closer to death than they are.

Also, I organised a large donation of stuff for a local women's refuge of stuff they really needed last Christmas. They were really difficult to deal with, flakey about returning emails etc, trying to arrange how to get the stuff to them. Our local gym ended up donating a load of stuff alongside the stuff I'd organised, and we just wanted a picture to show the handover, just to show the gym-members where the stuff had gone. Very difficult to sort, and difficult to believe we were giving this stuff away. Met the woman at the refuge ( I knew where it was as I had worked there years ago) and the woman I was meeting met me in the street, and didn't know which was the actual refuge! Hard to believe, she was a fundraiser for them. So it's a good job I knew then... Staff at the refuge perfunctory almost to the point of rudeness. Suffice to say I won't be bothering this year. The organisation were much quicker to email me about a month later when they wanted donations for something else. Nah mate, not happening.

Just remembered entitled cow that I met in an antenatal group. Single mum, very low income, lots of offers of help from the group - sharing baby equipment, decorating her house, lift everywhere...

She was leant a lawnmower by Nikki (not real name). I know she understood it was leant not given, because I had bought her one on eBay that was in her garage as it wasn’t as good as Nikki’s and she’d said, “thank you so much, it’s good to know I have one when Nikki needs this back.”
Nikki not very wealthy herself, and after about 3 months needed it back. This woman launched a massive verbal tirade of abuse at Nikki (for thinking so much of herself with fancy house - it wasn’t - but hardly the point). Nikki is one of those sweet gentle souls, honestly - like kicking a puppy!

I was peripheral to that, but dropped her myself after crap said about me. I was having a party for the group. I lived 10 miles from the other 5, who all lived within 2 miles of her. All of us had given lifts at times, but mainly me. I called her and said, “I know you can’t get to mine. I could collect you 3 hours early if you want to hang out? Otherwise, I’m sure on of the others would bring you.” At this point, I didn’t know 2 of the other 4 had actually texted lift offers. Soon after, I found out that she’d texted the remaining 2 and totally slated me for leaving her out, and what a bitch I was, and she was sorry she wouldn’t see them as I hadn’t offered her a lift (20 miles round trip when I’m preparing to host, and she’d already had 2 offers...) so she couldn’t come.

Fortunately, by this point we’d all got the measure of her, especially after lawnmowergate! Even if I hadn’t gone out of my way to invite her... no-one would have thought badly of me - because why would I?

I’ll never understand what she was playing at, what her aim in lying was. Good bloody riddance!

I used to be a Guide Leader and our District arranged to take the girls on camp for the Girlguiding centenary.

I was given the job of cook alongside one of the other leaders and so every morning we got up earlier than everyone else to prepare breakfast and cooked meals for 50 for a week.

On the last night all the leaders got together and thank you was said to the organisers, the first aider, the camp site staff and me and the other cook were ignored. We both got up and walked out and eventually received a very begrudged thank you after the person giving the thanks got a hard time from the other leaders for her rudeness.

Mainly things I've lent to people over the years - CDs, books and videos which were then either lost or returned damaged. A genuine accident but I lent a video to a friend and her mum taped over it. It was a carefully compiled collection of snippets of band performances and music video clips, interviews etc. My own fault for not putting tape over the tabs, those were the days! Other times, I've had books lost or damaged and I very rarely loan anyone anything now unless I know they'll look after it. Usually I have to chase people up for their return though. I'd just never borrow something from someone and not treat it with respect.

Several years ago we lent BIL £15,000 to help his business, hasn’t paid it back and when we asked about it, he basically said no he had no intention of paying it back! Not even made an attempt to repay £1! He’s married to the daughter of a multi millionaire!!