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To Our Former Guests: An Open Letter
10 years ago
Dear He and She Who Shall Not Be Named,
Remember me? Of course you do. You slept on my couch for almost a month. You were the beneficiaries of my fiancee's and my decision to be generous to a furry and her boyfriend whom we knew only from Facebook because we understood that you were in a difficult situation and needed help, and felt bad that nobody else was willing to offer said help. We were to understand that you would only temporarily need housing, and that the situation would resolve itself quickly enough for everybody to leave the theater with a smile. Well, either our understanding was incorrect, or your definition of "temporary" and ours don't match. We endured just shy of four weeks of you making the bare minimum of effort to show any gratitude that we took you in, let you use our power, water, and internet bandwidth, fed you until you got your EBT set up, gave you refrigerator/freezer/cabinet space for the food you bought with your EBT, and also used a friend of ours for food and cigarettes. You put as much stress on my fiancee as anyone or anything ever has (believe me, I've never seen her so stressed out), and it trickled down to me as well. I didn't want you to feel guilty about stressing us out, so I lied and said that you weren't the main cause of our stress, but it's only fair for you to know at this point that you absolutely were. I tried to be nice. Even when Sammy wanted you gone, I put it off (which stressed her out even more), because at that point I believed that something was being done to get you out of our apartment and back on your feet. There came a time, however, when it became clear that it wasn't, and we had to take action or be stuck having to deal with four adults and one newborn baby occupying a one-bedroom apartment (which would violate the hell out of our lease agreement, not that we weren't already in violation for letting you stay with us). Maybe that's not your fault. I know that you were dealing with very unreliable friends and family. However, since you didn't have anything lined up to begin with (no transportation, no job, no other housing), it IS your fault that you decided to make the trip assuming that you could use others' generosity to get you wherever you want to be. We could've said no and left you to fend for yourselves from the very beginning, but we didn't. We genuinely tried to help. Tell me, what thanks did we get for it?
Addressing the two of you individually, starting with the female of the couple: I'll be honest, perhaps I don't harbor quite as much ill will toward you as I do toward your boyfriend. Obviously being 8 months pregnant limits your ability to do a lot of things. It's not my place to tell you what you can or can't do, but I will say that given your financial situation, the two of you put yourselves (and potentially a child) in a bad spot, and that could've been avoided. Again, not my decision to make though, so here's hoping that your child is healthy (I could go into more details on that, but I think Sammy covered that already) and you're able to better your situation for her sake.
As for the male of the couple: while there was a time that I felt bad for seeing you in the situation you're in, your lack of effort to better the situation and your passive-aggressive attitude toward Sammy and me once we determined that you needed to go for our own sanity pretty much killed that for me. You could've walked down to McDonald's (yes it's not a terribly short walk, but for someone in your condition it's doable), applied, more than likely gotten a job, and actually been able to start saving up to support you, your girlfriend, and your child. Everytime we gave you that option, you declined, saying "fast food just isn't for me", or "it's too stressful, last time I tried it I made it three days". Did you expect your dream job to fall right into your lap? What were your other options with no transportation and no other source of income? Were you going to ask us to just permanently keep you here and let you rely on us for everything but food? No. You were aware that you had to get something going before your child was born. We made that clear to you. Like I said before, it sucks that your family and other friends were unreliable, but to be brutally honest, since you're 35, have no job, no car, no housing of your own, and a child on the way that you can't afford to support, I can't help but wonder if maybe they've just given up on you. You may be pissed at us that we're "shoving you into this hellhole with no advance notice" (and let me reiterate that we held off to give you the exact amount of time that you asked for to get your belongings accounted for, so yeah, you had all the notice you needed), but what choice did we have? If we were to let you stay with us indefinitely, what would you learn from it? That it's okay to sit back and do nothing all day because you have someone to leach off of? How far would that ultimately get you in life? I have no idea where you're going to go from here, and at this point I no longer care, but at least maybe this was a wake-up call for you. Talk all the shit about Sammy and I you want on Facebook (yes, we're well aware), but like I said before, we could've just said no to begin with when you asked us to let you stay with us. Truth be told, we should've. Thanks to you, we now know never to do that again.
Remember me? Of course you do. You slept on my couch for almost a month. You were the beneficiaries of my fiancee's and my decision to be generous to a furry and her boyfriend whom we knew only from Facebook because we understood that you were in a difficult situation and needed help, and felt bad that nobody else was willing to offer said help. We were to understand that you would only temporarily need housing, and that the situation would resolve itself quickly enough for everybody to leave the theater with a smile. Well, either our understanding was incorrect, or your definition of "temporary" and ours don't match. We endured just shy of four weeks of you making the bare minimum of effort to show any gratitude that we took you in, let you use our power, water, and internet bandwidth, fed you until you got your EBT set up, gave you refrigerator/freezer/cabinet space for the food you bought with your EBT, and also used a friend of ours for food and cigarettes. You put as much stress on my fiancee as anyone or anything ever has (believe me, I've never seen her so stressed out), and it trickled down to me as well. I didn't want you to feel guilty about stressing us out, so I lied and said that you weren't the main cause of our stress, but it's only fair for you to know at this point that you absolutely were. I tried to be nice. Even when Sammy wanted you gone, I put it off (which stressed her out even more), because at that point I believed that something was being done to get you out of our apartment and back on your feet. There came a time, however, when it became clear that it wasn't, and we had to take action or be stuck having to deal with four adults and one newborn baby occupying a one-bedroom apartment (which would violate the hell out of our lease agreement, not that we weren't already in violation for letting you stay with us). Maybe that's not your fault. I know that you were dealing with very unreliable friends and family. However, since you didn't have anything lined up to begin with (no transportation, no job, no other housing), it IS your fault that you decided to make the trip assuming that you could use others' generosity to get you wherever you want to be. We could've said no and left you to fend for yourselves from the very beginning, but we didn't. We genuinely tried to help. Tell me, what thanks did we get for it?
Addressing the two of you individually, starting with the female of the couple: I'll be honest, perhaps I don't harbor quite as much ill will toward you as I do toward your boyfriend. Obviously being 8 months pregnant limits your ability to do a lot of things. It's not my place to tell you what you can or can't do, but I will say that given your financial situation, the two of you put yourselves (and potentially a child) in a bad spot, and that could've been avoided. Again, not my decision to make though, so here's hoping that your child is healthy (I could go into more details on that, but I think Sammy covered that already) and you're able to better your situation for her sake.
As for the male of the couple: while there was a time that I felt bad for seeing you in the situation you're in, your lack of effort to better the situation and your passive-aggressive attitude toward Sammy and me once we determined that you needed to go for our own sanity pretty much killed that for me. You could've walked down to McDonald's (yes it's not a terribly short walk, but for someone in your condition it's doable), applied, more than likely gotten a job, and actually been able to start saving up to support you, your girlfriend, and your child. Everytime we gave you that option, you declined, saying "fast food just isn't for me", or "it's too stressful, last time I tried it I made it three days". Did you expect your dream job to fall right into your lap? What were your other options with no transportation and no other source of income? Were you going to ask us to just permanently keep you here and let you rely on us for everything but food? No. You were aware that you had to get something going before your child was born. We made that clear to you. Like I said before, it sucks that your family and other friends were unreliable, but to be brutally honest, since you're 35, have no job, no car, no housing of your own, and a child on the way that you can't afford to support, I can't help but wonder if maybe they've just given up on you. You may be pissed at us that we're "shoving you into this hellhole with no advance notice" (and let me reiterate that we held off to give you the exact amount of time that you asked for to get your belongings accounted for, so yeah, you had all the notice you needed), but what choice did we have? If we were to let you stay with us indefinitely, what would you learn from it? That it's okay to sit back and do nothing all day because you have someone to leach off of? How far would that ultimately get you in life? I have no idea where you're going to go from here, and at this point I no longer care, but at least maybe this was a wake-up call for you. Talk all the shit about Sammy and I you want on Facebook (yes, we're well aware), but like I said before, we could've just said no to begin with when you asked us to let you stay with us. Truth be told, we should've. Thanks to you, we now know never to do that again.
Our second charity had a job, paid what he could but neglected to tell us that he had a court sentencing down in Missouri, which inevitably led him to spending three months in jail down there for his sentencing. Needless to say we stopped being welcome mats for others. It's hard to gauge someone on their situation that they are in, and how they eventually act after they move in. I feel for you guys, I also feel bad that this couple isn't taking their child-on-the-way seriously, what with the weather getting colder, the guy just sounds like he's one big leach and doesn't take much for responsibility. I can see why his family was refusing to help them out.
This is definitely the last time I do anything like this though. I should've learned last time I took in a furry I didn't know personally. I had more hope for these two than I had for the last guy. He asked me for a ride to the bus station in Norfolk to go visit a friend in Michigan, and I told him I'd get him to the bus station, but he'd better buy a one-way ticket because he wasn't coming back to my place after that. I should've thought about that when they asked us.
Take it from a law student - contract, contract, contract ... even an informal one is better than just "he said," "she said."