Crying over split milk; or why the word 'inappropriate' will never be the same for me again.

On my birthday this year, I made someone cry. It wasn't pretty.

A week later, my outrage is at a mere simmer so I thought I could share my experience, calmly, and as fairly as a one sided monologue can be.

When Mike got a new colleague who was asking him about living options in the city, we offered our sofa bed for a couple of nights knowing that it is much easier to look for a place when you are in the city. Mike had given, let's call her Jane, information about getting on the waiting list for where we live and other cheap places in the city as soon as she got the job and the offer of staying here had been accepted; a little too readily actually. We later found out that she had been given relocation expenses so could have got a hotel only she decided to spend that money shipping her 10 boxes of clothes...

Months passed, we went to the UK and came back, which eventually I may even get to blog about, slept a lot and then Mike emailed Jane to see what her plans for arrival were. The reply came back to say that she had booked her flight for Thanksgiving as it was much cheaper. We groaned, knowing that this would mean a whole long weekend before she started work, and in our small flat, no time for Mike and I to ourselves. In reality, it was much worse than we could have anticipated, and I like to pride myself in my ability to imagine the worse case in any scenario.

We expected that she would go out and be hunting for a place to live or getting to know the city; envisioning an independent woman who has moved alone from her country to live in another. That takes a certain sort of person doesn't it? Apparently not.

So, we had our first 'American' thanksgiving hosted by some generous friends, who even generously picked up Jane from the airport in the middle of turkey cooking. If Jane knew how much bother everyone had gone to for her visit, she certainly didn't show it. It turned out that she was not an independent woman, but a spoilt self obsessed little girl who was used to people doing things for her and thoroughly incapable of doing anything without guidance, mess and irritation; one of life's takers. This was only my first impression, when I was still being kind. She never shut up, constantly ramming her opinions, hopes, dreams, in your face and as exhausting as a demanding toddler. In fact, any brain activity she had just spilt out of her mouth instantly. So, after the delicious turkey feast, she decided she was tired (it helped that people were talking about other subjects other than her now) and needed to go to bed. It was understandable given the travelling and change in time zones; however as we don't have a spare bedroom, it meant that we had to sit in our bedroom quietly reading for the next few nights while she slept but at 5am when she was waking up, she didn't afford us the same courtesy and even had loud phone calls at some ungodly hour in the morning.

We knew we had to put up with this for the weekend so we made the most of it and showed her around the city a bit. She made no movement to want to go out alone - I offered her my keys to go and explore but she wouldn't leave my side. She followed me when I went downstairs to the bins, sat on the end of the bed when I put my socks on and questioned me constantly whenever I did anything, like take a cup from the cupboard
'oooohhh, what are you doing now?'
'Getting a cup'
'Awesome.'

Yep.

For an educated woman, she couldn't understand some very basic things; so after both of us trying to explain what can be recycled, composted and what is rubbish, she would either try to compost everything (so I had to go through the used teabags and take the plastics out) or she would leave her rubbish on the side so that the magic fairy would deal with it. Yeah, well I look terrible in a pink tutu.

I showed her our grocery store and hinted that she could buy some food. She did; she bought a bag of rice, some nuts and frozen veg, then offered to cook for us, using most of the eggs and onions, raisins and other things I had just bought,and staining the cooker yellow with turmeric in the process, so that the next day I had to go back to the shops to replace everything she had used. It also took me forever to scrub the cooker clean. I genuinely can't remember the last time someone made me this furious.

Monday came which was the day she needed to be looking for a place to live. She made a half hearted attempt but was on Facebook whenever I looked at her laptop screen - she even cancelled one appointment as she said she was too busy. Yeah, busy being a parasite, paying for nothing, being ungrateful and getting in my way...so let's just say I was ready for her to leave at this point, by now she had been here 5 nights but it was awkward as obviously Mike would have to work with her but we agreed that we would ask her to be gone by Saturday morning.

However, as they tend to do, things took a turn for the worse. Tuesday (my birthday) arrived and I stayed in bed so I wouldn't have to deal with her in the morning but Mike left work early which actually meant we had some time to ourselves for the first time in days and it felt wonderful just to be able to relax, but our peace was soon interrupted when she returned accompanied by the usual ceaseless chatter about how difficult her life was. This was all addressed to Mike this evening, then after about half an hour she looked at me and wished me happy birthday, then as an afterthought, quickly wrote a card and handed it to be distractedly whilst talking to Mike, without licking the envelope or writing my name on the card. It would have been better had she not bothered but this was insulting. I left the flat for one minute and in that time, she had made herself some chai on the stove and as usual, as she had done every day she had been there, she had spilt it everywhere leaving me to clean it up because she hadn't watched the pan and it had boiled over. Today when I saw it, something snapped, and I went MAD. Properly shaking with rage, red eyed, furious. I went for her, shouting about how she was incapable of doing anything and I was sick of cleaning up after her, like a mum who has just completely lost it at her sullen waster of a teenager. I didn't even continue with all the list of many things but checked myself in case I exploded and left it. She didn't say anything, just sat there looking pathetically at me, seemingly stunned. Of course, she would not have been able to comprehend someone else's needs. Then she produced some crocodile tears presumably for Mike's benefit. I went to bed and didn't sleep a wink all night, still seething.

The next day, I got up calmer and ready for the show down but she had left really early, I imagine to avoid me, but leaving her dirty knickers on Mike's clean towel despite the events of the previous night. She got back really late that night and had avoided Mike all day at work. Now, apparently, we were just her doss house.
I told her that this situation was ridiculous and asked her to leave by the next day, shut the door and left her to her tears.

Mike caught up with her on the way to work and looked into her dumb blank face and asked her if she even knew why I was so angry with her. She had no idea and told Mike that my behaviour had been "inappropriate" so he told her in no uncertain terms that she was self obsessed, ungrateful, treated me like a slave, selfish and a thoroughly horrible guest and person. She was about to protest and he gave her example after example after example of what she had said and done, an inarguable essay of her faults, delivered admirably, with his usual steady eloquence and reasoning. The dirty knickers were the clincher. She said nothing, came to collect her bags later, didn't look me in the eye (she hadn't even packed properly so I had thrown the rest of her stuff she had everywhere - phone charger, razor which she left on the side of the bath (about the only toiletry she actually owned) etc etc etc into a plastic bag unceremoniously) and left without a thank you for the SEVEN nights she had stayed here free of charge with all meals, or a sorry for being the cause of so much stress.

Lessons learnt, at first I thought it was never to be kind to anyone ever again. But that isn't it at all. Idiot selfish princess types are in the minority. The lesson I learnt from this; I need to work on getting people who are never going to be my friends not to like me so ridiculously readily, so I plan to tell everyone exactly what I think of them from now on in, from the off. It should make life even more interesting ;-)