When someone is nice, don’t take advantage of them…

This is one of those posts that you wish you didn’t make – until you think about it – and then you just do it!

There comes a point to ‘niceness’ when someone does not appreciate what you do or allow done…then that person – perhaps – starts taking advantage of your ‘niceness’ or your ‘generous nature’.

The question is: Do you then become ‘not nice’ or ‘stand up for yourself’ or ‘let it go’…

We had a  new neighbor who noticed we had a nice aluminum ladder beside our house – chained up to prevent theft. So he was friendly, and after a bit, asked to borrow our ladder for the renovation work he was doing on his own home. Okay, hubby unlocked the chain around the ladder and gave neighbor permission to borrow for the work he was doing to fix up his house.

We continued to keep the ladder chained up and locked as time went along, and the neighbor continued to ask to borrow it. He would, however, always bring it back over our side of the fence when finished for the day.

One day, however, we needed our own ladder, but hey! We found tt was locked up in the neighbor’s back yard – out of our reach! We knocked on the neighbor’s door, as we knew his wife was at home, but no answer….but before too long, we got a call from the neighbor asking what we needed (knocking on his door)?

We said,  ‘We need to get our ladder which is now in your back yard and we can’t get to it!” So he quit what he was doing (sorry – not sorry!) and came home, and brought our ladder back to us!

Another day, after that episode (a few days or weeks later) our neighbor asked to borrow our ladder again, so hubby went and unlocked the chain so he could get it – when – much to our surprise – he proceeded to load OUR LADDER on top of his SUV and strap it down!
Turns out he was taking our ladder to work on his friend’s house! Without asking if that was okay with us!

Needless to say, that neighbor was NOT a good neighbor and was one who was simply taking advantage of our kindness to him.

(He even wanted to borrow our new riding lawnmower which was not even paid for yet! Hubby, said ‘ Absolutely, NO!’ )

Sorry, neighbor – but to get a good neighbor, you have to BE a good neighbor!