Young people now days

Played nice guy/got hosed
Long story as short as I can make it:
This random kid comes to our house/property this last spring and says he is looking for work. Yard work or whatever I can throw his way. Relatively young guy, maybe 18-19 y.o. “Jake”
Now usually I would just tell the focker to g.t.f.o. cause I don’t care for people just to stroll on in and approach me that I do not know. Our place is a bit isolated and not many people even know it exists at the end of a long driveway at the end of a col’desac.
So I took pity and gave him a chance. I asked him a series of quick questions to see if I can frustrate him from dealing with me. Nope he was solid as a rock and seemed sincere. So I asked when he could begin. He said right now. I put him to work that day.
Simple stuff like weeding, clearing brush and piles of accumulated crap from the previous owner and such. When he was done I paid him what we had agreed on.
Jake asked if he could come back the next weekend and so it began. He was very consistent and called ahead of time when he was available and then showed up. I would give him work he would finish (or not) but would then arrange to return to finish anything he did not. I made sure he would always get the money for the day that we agreed on ahead of time.
This went on for a month or two with no problems. Then he had some car problems. Now the kicker…..he asked to borrow some money to buy a used car that he found. He gave me the big sob story about this and that, so I agreed to lend him about $1,400 bucks to get transpo.
I told him in no uncertain terms, that I expect to either be paid back or he can work it off. Then his calls were very infrequent but he did come back a few more times. We would agree on what a task was worth and I knocked that off his tab. He worked it down by a couple of hundred. I kept track of it and showed it to him and he was agreeable to the figure.
Can you guess what happens next? Or more like what does not happen, that’s right folks he stops calling us altogether and we don’t hear from him until a couple of months later. He called (wife’s phone) after a period of time and says he got a job as a wild fire fighter and was down in Utah, and told my wife he would be back up when his gig was done. So we thought, ok give him another chance to redeem himself.
Then a couple months later he called my wife’s cell number again to ask to borrow some money for a motel, because he was back up in the area. She of course told him no. That was the last time we heard from him. His number we used to call ……..guess what again…right, it is no longer a working number.
Will this put me in any hardship….no.
Would I like to be paid back….yes. But it more than the money at this point. I trusted the little fuck.
The Moral to the story is what? Don’t try to help a kid out who seemed honest? Don’t be nice to anyone?
Fack it. I give up on being a nice guy.
Yes, I know ,I should have known.


thanks for letting me rant!

 

tl;dr

 

You learned something people have known since at least the early 1600's.

Neither a borrower nor a lender be;
For loan oft loses both itself and friend

Hamlet Act I, Scene III

 

Sorry that you are caught short.

I'm not a bank, I don't loan money as a business. When I loan anyone money, I have to consider the possibility that I'll never see it again. The last guy I lent an amount to dropped dead 6 months later of a heart attack at age 48, and I'll likely not see even 25% of what I'm owed after the estate settles.

Young guys are often over confident, and also don't plan long term. He probably had every intention of paying you back/off when he borrowed the cash, but life intervenes, and now he can't. He may be a deadbeat, or he may be so embarrassed at his inability to pay off his debt that he can't face you.

Time will tell.

 

Even though it sounds like he was honorable enough to receive your approval, it really sucks to get taken. Do you think he feels bad about all this? My Dad used to help people all the time, this was 20-30 years ago. He would see a guy stranded on the side of the road with a broke down car. He would stop, help fix the car, loan money for repairs in exchange for hiring the guy to work for his construction company. Granted he only did this to people that he felt was worth it. I would say my Dad was correct in his assumptions probably 75% of the time. If he did this these days, I'm guessing the rate would be more like 10% instead of 75%.

Maybe the guy will come through someday on his debt.

 

Don't feel too bad, you were probably just one of a bunch of "customers".

 

There are two people I'll lend money to

My wife
My parents

I have an older sister and she won't get it without a ton of working me over

 

I would like to think he has some guilt about this. If he does then maybe i was not to far off the mark in my thinking he is a decent enough guy. I mean he would ask for advice and seem to genuinely take what i would suggest to heart. So i thought i had earned some respect from him or whatever. Maybe as was suggested he just is embaressed about the situation and is to proud to face me.

 

Quite the interesting relationship...

just sayin'.

 

If you make a private "loan" to someone, think of it as a gift, because that's what it really is. If you actually get paid back, you got a gift in return.

 

Yes indeed. I will consider this as a lesson relearned

 

How so?

 

ZOOM!

 

Lock the doors.
When the money runs out, "Some" people turn to other means ...
He knows your schedule , He knows the lay out of the land , He knows its secluded .
Trust No One !

 

They're coming to get you!

 

Have you checked to see if his name comes up on any deaths related to wildfires? There have been quite a few in the past year.

Well, it could have happened.

 

kind of a bad generalization of young people. More like a good generalization of all people.

There are only a handful of people on this earth I trust to give money to. And some aren't even my good friends. And there are good friends I would NEVER give money to. It's just people man, people cant be relied on.

 

Also check the list of people arrested for arson. Might as well check all bases.

 

That's hawt.



I think the guy is probably embarrassed, it sounds like he had every intention of paying you back. Hopefully he will pay up one day.

 

I loan money to anyone who'd I give it to.

Loaned an employee $1,500. Paid down to about $600 and he took another better paying, and more hours job. I guessed that he'd never pay it back. He sent $40 per week every week to me via a friend until paid back. Didn't miss a beat, and then sent an extra $40 for the "trouble".

So, this is the 1 in 10 positive experience.