Has your goodwill ever been taken advantage of?

[C F]

Nobody ever takes advantage of my goodwill. Mainly because I'm clever enough to recognize and outwit them whenever they try.

Those who think I am a sucker are underestimating me. Therefore I can make them the suckers.
Or just, you know, politely shut out their attempts to take advantage of me.

 

[putowtin]

I'll hold open a door for anyone, but I have, n the past, been stood there for 10 minutes.

"People I'm not being paid for this!"

 

[Patrick Buck]

Every day of every week of every month.
I'm to nice. I like everyone straight away, until someone full-on fucks me over. Which happens fairly often. I should stop but I don't. I wish I was the cynical bastard that I pretend to be, everything would be easier.

Let's just say, I've lent out money, tried to help people, sacrificed time, effort, money and tears only to have them thrown back in my face over and fucking over.

/Rant/
Wow, I'm in a bad mood today.

 

[Worgen]

I was going to say that I couldn't think of any examples but in fact there is one actually related to this site. Many of you will probably remember the whole Extra Credits mess a while back: I was one of those who donated towards Alison's arm surgery as a sign of thanks for my appreciation of the show. My initial goodwill was broken however when just a few weeks later it was suddenly announced that Extra Credits was leaving the site because of a dispute over where excess money donated would go. While I realise the Escapist made a mistake in their earlier view, they then changed their views to match Extra Credit's demands and EC still decided to throw the toys out of the pram and leave the site. As a fan I felt taken advantage of that they had willingly accepted our money a few weeks before and then abandoned us over "bad vibes" with the Escapist Staff. Since then I've watched a number of EC videos but never as regularly as I used to.

As I understand the situation was that the escapist wanted to use the excess money to cover misc costs and act as a salary for the ec guys, who had been doing the vids for free for awhile. The ec guys wanted to use the extra money to try and open a publishing label for games that might not otherwise get published. I know they did offer to send back any money donated if you didn't like what they were doing with it.

That's correct and pretty much what I said in my post... the key part of this that puts the blame squarely on EC is (as I mentioned in my previous post) that the Escapist changed their position in response to EC's demands and said EC could keep the raised money but EC still left the Escapist regardless even though they had what they wanted because of "bad blood". Frankly I think it sucks that they didn't stick around for the sake of the fans.

Its annoying that they still left but I can understand why, I've had to drop out of a class since I didn't trust my teacher with my grades.

 

[Combustion Kevin]

surprisingly, no, I've donated some of my food to the homeless newspaper-vendor just outside the shop many times and given some cash to another roaming fellow at the train-station with such regularity that I got to know him personally.

the latter even found a home and job, so I suppose those by-weekly five bucks went somewhere good.

 

[TheDrunkNinja]

When I was 10, my older brother who was a college drop-out living with us at the time would constantly ask to borrow money from me. He would do it infrequently but frequently enough so that I had a trouble remember which times he's paid me back and which times he hadn't (he fully admitted that this was his intention years later). I still remember every now and then how he would knock on my door late at night asking to borrow $20 bucks. And my begrudging, sleepy 10-year-old self wearing Spiderman-PJs would reach into my wallet to give my dead-beat brother what I later figured out was drinking money. Yes, those were the days.

And for the sake of not turning this post into a slander of my brother, he cleaned up his act, got married, and works leading his own design team for a company he loves working for. He's also one of my favorite people to hang out with, and I wish I could keep up with him more often.

 

[Magnikai]

I was outside eating an apple on break one day when a rather dirty looking man approached me and started up conversation. Being the friendly type I am, we hit it off for a while before he stops and just says "Are you a good person?" to which I respond "What?". He then goes on to tell me how he uses his bike to get everywhere but he has been having difficulties lately because one of the pedals is broke (which he then demonstrated by gently kicking it and it slid partially off) and he was wondering if I could spare a couple bucks so he could go into the store and buy some. I told him that sadly I only had my debit card on me and he thanks me for my time and walks off. Feeling pretty bad about it, I finish up my apple and went in and bought some pedals for the poor guy. I left them in the bag and tied it to his bike and went back inside to talk to my friends. About...6ish minutes later the cashier that rang me up comes up to me and asks if I gave someone those pedals. Feeling pretty good about myself, I said yes, why do you ask? She then told me he came back in and tried to return them for cash and that he has been in before doing the EXACT SAME THING to other people. I WAS FUCKING LIVID.

 

[J Tyran]

Once I was stopped by a ragged looking girl outside a chip shop asking for some cash to get some food, she looked pretty much like a street worker down her luck so had some pity and told her to wait a sec. I bought my own meal and a second meal for her, when I tried to give it to her she exploded into a rage and hurled abuse at me.

It soon became clear she was rattling and wanted the money for drugs, something I would have had some sympathy for and probably would have helped with too. Needless to say I was feeling pretty pissed at the abuse and went to leave, the final straw was when she stepped in my way still screaming and the extra fish and chips ended up in her face.

After that I have never helped beggers directly again although I always give charities like the Salvation Army something.

 

[Thyunda]

There was one occasion when I was out on the high street, and this old guy comes over and starts off on a sob story about how he was down on his luck and nobody would help him. At the time I was a support worker at a homeless shelter, notorious for my aviator sunglasses, which everyone regarded as oversized. Now I hadn't got my sunglasses on, and I guess he must've never seen me without them, because he rattled on with this story till I put the aviators on. The sun came between the clouds and it hurt my eyes. Then he recognises me from the shelter he ate at that very lunchtime, and decides it's best to make a hasty retreat.

Ungrateful shit.

 

[Launcelot111]

Naive younger me was once convinced to sit at a bus stop with some random guy I met at a Mcdonalds once for like 45 minutes. Older me is frankly terrified at that memory.

I also volunteer at a food bank regularly, and the ways that the clients try to game the system or whatever is depressing. Like assholes who walk in without ID, want nothing but cakes (like full size chocolate cakes) and get legitimately mad when we don't give them three or four despite the fact we very begrudgingly gave them the first one. Some people just walk behind the counter and try to steal all kinds of shit for themselves.

A friend of mine gave a homeless guy a $20 and asked for change. You can imagine how well that went.

 

[GistoftheFist]

Every day of every week of every month.
I'm to nice. I like everyone straight away, until someone full-on fucks me over. Which happens fairly often. I should stop but I don't. I wish I was the cynical bastard that I pretend to be, everything would be easier.

Let's just say, I've lent out money, tried to help people, sacrificed time, effort, money and tears only to have them thrown back in my face over and fucking over.

/Rant/
Wow, I'm in a bad mood today.

At least your avatar suits it.

 

[likalaruku]

I notice that if I lend things to my friends without taking an item of equal value, that I will never get that item back again.

Speaking of Goodwill taking advantage, we had a little problem a few years ago with Salvation Army workers stealing donations & selling donated items for personal profit.