Look here.

I might not be the best person to talk about principles, but if you know what I’m talking about without the need of further elaboration – good for you.

This incident is to the bext of my personal knowledge. My friend isn’t in the know (maybe he will, eventually) and this is from my perspective what happened and I find it extremely silly.

Disclaimer ended. Basically – you can’t sue me unless I name you, post those fugly pictures of you and make personal scathing remarks about you (especially about the uneven teeth, like ever thought of visiting a dentist babe; or the weird slitted eyes you have; and last but not least, your dim-witted brains which you got from your parents.)

Go ahead, insult me, write to me – go ahead. I can be reached at derrick@derrickwrites.co.cc. Hugs and kisses, not.

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William**, a friend of mine just returned to Singapore from a semester overseas; and before he left, he made arrangements for his property to be stored at the apartment of two friends – as his apartment contract is over.

Three months into his semestral holiday (and a week before departing back to his scholastic pursuit), he got a text message from both friends whom he had left his things with.

They, apparently, demanded that he co-pays their rent for the three months he has left his things. Call me sexist, but these are two groups of females here, a pair that stays in two apartment.

BECAUSE I don’t think my friend should co-pay your rents.

There is no written agreement, neither there is one in text message, email, IM, or PM.

And you’re saying that MY FRIEND had actually TAKEN ADVANTAGE OF YOU by putting you to inconvenience because HIS things are in the way in your apartment.

AND you never realise that when he asked you? That boxes of things from a “student apartment” would be inconveniencing your life.

Neither did you thought of discussing any terms of payment in the first place.

Ho-ho-ho. Merry Christmas. Dong-chang-dong-dong-chang. Happy Chinese New year.

And look – suddenly you realise that you girls could have reaped some form of profit instead of staring at his things everyday, so you text him for money.

I’m sorry if I made you sound like a nasty whore. Forget it, I’m not even naming you – why would I apologise to nasty whores?!

But just for clarity’s sake, I shall name them after the Teletubbies. The former, Tinky-winky and Dipsy; latter being Lala and Po.

So Tinky-winky texted Will, after some time suddenly:

I’m asking you to pay rent now.

Rent, to be paid, for your information is $500 per month. (Not in actual currency, but quoting the figure-euivalence in SGD.)

And of course, being the nice guy Will is, he tried to soothe the situation and try to make sense of things and Tinky-winky responded:

There was no agreement in any form that I’ll let you put for free. Mentioned it after 3 months because I came to know we both wouldn’t have agreed in the first place if things were said clearer and above the table. It’s not about the money, I don’t give a shit abt money, I feel that I’m being used.

OH WOW. You contemptuous CREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP!

How would you know if Will “wouldn’t have agreed in the first place if things were said clearer and above the table”? And in the first place, how would you came to know about it SUDDENLY?! And please, Tinky-winky, could you define “being used”?

You’re just making excuses!

Oh c’mon. You needed money, you had a lousy time at the casino and made a huge loss. So the easiest way to earn back your rent is to either sell yourself or make some profit from the clutter which you allowed as a favour for your friend.

Of course, no self-respecting lady/teletubby would do the former. See, I’m nice.

But of course, what you did wasn’t exactly self-respecting also.

Will responded:

I get your point. I just want to close this quickly and amicably. I know you feel disadvantaged. But (sic) at that point of time we didnt agree on anything. and to me now, it’s a shock that you are asking me to pitch in the rent. Is there any other ways we can resolve this without much fuss on both our ends. (sic)

If you’re wondering if I had any share in these text messages – YES, I FUCKING DID. Go figure which ends did I contribute.

And while waiting for her to respond (it’s really very, very late), Will told me:

I know eventually I will win but its so shitty to go thru the whole process and make it so sour (even thou it alr is)

To clarify: I was telling Will to go legal. Why?

1. You didn’t come up with any agreement to have Will pay any form of rent, it is implied through your actions that you are willing to help him out.
2. Technically, you do not have the required permit to run a storage service business to be able to charge rent.
3. Even if you had the intention of wanting him to pay – you kept your silence and that, is your demise.

You have a nice friend in Will, who despite knowing he had high chances of winning, he still wanted to keep things amicable.

Remember how much rent is supposed to be paid? $500/month.

Will did his homework and got quote from storage service providers, and the cheapest one quoted him $77/month, with insurance and all.

Moving on – Tinky-winky went:

Then you think about what you should do to resolve this.

Naturally, I told him that it is right to be firm and stick to the original plan. After sometime, he replied:

OK I shall be honest with you. I asked you guys (D’s note: I’m wondering how many ppl are involved at this point of time.) for help because I thought we were friends, and friends help each other when we could for no cause or profit. I hope you’d understand and we close this amicably. I ensure such an inconvenience will be avoided in future.

I gave him a lot of suggestions, but in my mind was wondering – what happened to ethical principles?

Because her response took so long, because it went something like:

It’s not about me not helping, I would gladly help if it’s the proper way, if I feel that I should help I would. The thing is it’s against my conscience at the moment, I don’t feel good about “helping” you. Friends help yes, but friends don’t take advantage, and the least you could do is to be grateful, and offer, which you did not at all. We did you a favour by letting you put stuff at our place, even though we feel inconvenient, because people would be grateful about it, and at least offer something, but you made use of things. I shall be honest with you too, the least you could do is to share the rent. It’s unfair to us.

Let me break it down, Derrick-style.

It’s not about me not helping, I would gladly help if it’s the proper way, if I feel that I should help I would. The thing is it’s against my conscience at the moment, I don’t feel good about “helping” you.

You mean, there’s a proper protocal, a sequence, method, or technique to help friends? Boy. And I thought ensuring that your friend is not doing anything illegal is the best help one would get!

And… How would helping a friend ensure his things are safe and secure going against your conscience?

Fine, three months isn’t a short time, but to be this much unethical and charge him $1,500? What do you think you are – a deposit safe service?

I don’t know about you, but sometimes I don’t feel comfortable doing things to help friends, I still end the day feeling good, especially when I do see the effects – but of course I would usually make inquiries and be forthfront about possible issues. If there are issues that are hard to overcome, forget it, don’t take it up and move on!

Friends help yes, but friends don’t take advantage, and the least you could do is to be grateful, and offer *, which you did not at all.

You’re avoiding the word “money” where I placed an asterix. Alright, I’m thinking too much.

But isn’t him thanking you profusely showing enough gratitude to a certain extent? Unless you’re expecting him to call you week after week to give you your daily dose of hugs and thank yous (you needy bitch), you gotta be kidding me if you actually agreed to do him a favour without stating any proposals whatsoever and then biting him for not being “intiated”.

Enough. He’s not your friend since you treat him like that. You actually even got Lala and Po to ask for payment from him.

We did you a favour by letting you put stuff at our place, even though we feel inconvenient, because people would be grateful about it, and at least offer something, but you made use of things.

Woah, woah, woah! Did you just read that?

Defining FAVOUR:

As a noun, the word favour refers to an act performed out of good will, generosity, or mercy; whilst as a verb, an action to regard (someone/something) with especial kindness or approval. (Click here for reference link)

So what are you expecting my friend to offer? His life? His body? His…. …?

An act that is performed out of good will, generosity or mercy even doesn’t include any clauses that state that it must be compensated for.

Repaying a favour DOES NOT EQUATE to paying for a favour.

It’s like saying that you should be paid for doing the housechores at home by your parents. Then maybe you should pay your parents for every single year they took care of you, and for every instance which you never stood up for them, mistrusted them, abused them, ignored them and even chastised them.

And oh gosh – you feel inconvenienced by his stuff. So you decide to inconvenience him by ganging up with your gangmates (Teletubbies, what.) and extort money out of him for an act of good will, a service that is neither value-added, yet called a favour.

I shall be honest with you too, the least you could do is to share the rent. It’s unfair to us.

In what way is it unfair to you? The way that you have a few metre-square less space to live in that prevents you to hold a party in your apartment – and that in itself will render you a slide down the social ladder back into obscurity and possibly extinction?

Awwww… Poor tubbies. Not.

Like things are so unfair that you need to get people to join you in this exploitation heist, so you wouldn’t look like some bad person.

So I’ll leave it for you people to decide, and I don’t mind hearing from you guys what you think.

I just feel that the principle of the issue here is exploitation and a possibly fraud case – fancy the

“It’s not about me not helping, I would gladly help if it’s the proper way, if I feel that I should help I would. The thing is it’s against my conscience at the moment, I don’t feel good about “helping” you.”

I have friends who are there to help me when need be, and I’ll be there for some friends also; but this is really some awesome crap.

Just, like… Go and think it through. I’ll need to go back to work. =)

** Not real name. I doubt he’ll liked it if I did otherwise, but I need to get it off my chest. Thanks pal, for sharing this with me.