My family and I spent a week in the Outer Banks last week in a rental home. This had been planned for many months. Well we have 2 large dogs and 3 cats. Normally we have a pet sitter that comes by 3 times a day to tend to our pets. However, since we were going to be gone 9 days, we thought about asking a friend to house sit. We are lucky enough to have a very nice home with pool, media room etc. Kind of house which would be a nice place to hang out.
All is agreed and she comes by the evening before we leave to go over a few things. She is familiar with the house but wanted to cover media room instructions and pool stuff. Well we hang out for a couple hours and then she leaves since we have to get up very early. She asks if she can use our SUV and we readily agree. So she backs out of our driveway and proceeds to plow into our neighbors mailbox, destroying it and denting up the back of our SUV. Her first response was, "Nobody saw that, lets just pretend it didn't happen". I was stunned. She leaves and I go across the street and assess the damage. I tried to fix the mailbox by replacing the neighbors with my own, but to no avail. Well its after 9:00 and there is no way to fix it. So we write a note explaining what happened, apologize profusely, and leave $200 with the note hoping that it will be enough to fix the damage. We also tell her that if its more, we will cover the cost.
So, we have to leave at 5:00 am to go to the airport and I check the neighbors house and it looks like she got our note. So at least we aren't skipping town without trying to make amends.
Well upon returning on Monday, we find that this 38 year old woman has basically been acting like a fucking teenager. She invited all her family and friends over to hang out. Several even spent the night. We told her about the $200 we gave the neighbor, but she has not made any attempt to reimburse us. Also upon our return, we discovered that the collision resulted in some nasty damage to the SUV. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see it either, so apparently she has no intention of taking responsibility for that either.
I guess I am not so much asking for advice as I am just venting. Neither my wife or I am the kind to get in somebody's face and make demands. I think we are both just totally stunned that an adult would act in this way. We have lost all respect for the friend and sadly I am pretty sure our friendship is pretty much over. If not over, its forever changed.
The really sad part is 6 weeks earlier, another set of friends visitied from out of town for a weekend. They pretty much treated our home like a hotel with us being the staff. That was bad for sure, but now it seems trivial in comparison.
So in retrospect the old adage of choosing your friend wisely is really ringing true these days.
"It takes courage to do it, to be a runner. We all found that out a long time ago. Because it's about more than fatigue. It's about pain, and dealing with it for a long time. And its about resolve." - Quentin Cassidy
All is agreed and she comes by the evening before we leave to go over a few things. She is familiar with the house but wanted to cover media room instructions and pool stuff. Well we hang out for a couple hours and then she leaves since we have to get up very early. She asks if she can use our SUV and we readily agree. So she backs out of our driveway and proceeds to plow into our neighbors mailbox, destroying it and denting up the back of our SUV. Her first response was, "Nobody saw that, lets just pretend it didn't happen". I was stunned. She leaves and I go across the street and assess the damage. I tried to fix the mailbox by replacing the neighbors with my own, but to no avail. Well its after 9:00 and there is no way to fix it. So we write a note explaining what happened, apologize profusely, and leave $200 with the note hoping that it will be enough to fix the damage. We also tell her that if its more, we will cover the cost.
So, we have to leave at 5:00 am to go to the airport and I check the neighbors house and it looks like she got our note. So at least we aren't skipping town without trying to make amends.
Well upon returning on Monday, we find that this 38 year old woman has basically been acting like a fucking teenager. She invited all her family and friends over to hang out. Several even spent the night. We told her about the $200 we gave the neighbor, but she has not made any attempt to reimburse us. Also upon our return, we discovered that the collision resulted in some nasty damage to the SUV. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see it either, so apparently she has no intention of taking responsibility for that either.
I guess I am not so much asking for advice as I am just venting. Neither my wife or I am the kind to get in somebody's face and make demands. I think we are both just totally stunned that an adult would act in this way. We have lost all respect for the friend and sadly I am pretty sure our friendship is pretty much over. If not over, its forever changed.
The really sad part is 6 weeks earlier, another set of friends visitied from out of town for a weekend. They pretty much treated our home like a hotel with us being the staff. That was bad for sure, but now it seems trivial in comparison.
So in retrospect the old adage of choosing your friend wisely is really ringing true these days.
"It takes courage to do it, to be a runner. We all found that out a long time ago. Because it's about more than fatigue. It's about pain, and dealing with it for a long time. And its about resolve." - Quentin Cassidy