The old phrase: "Give your little finger to other people and they take the whole hand."

[Trenchfriend]

How do you handle it?

I'm absolutely honest. I'm not giving my little finger to other people, here in Germany. I got my experience and need to protect myself. The older people, "teaching" the old phrase to the younger, are right.

 

[Lean'n'mean]

In the English speaking world I believe the phrase is " Give them an inch & they'll take a mile"

 

[Trenchfriend]

@Lean'n'mean
Seems to be.

 

[tonyb]

Another variation is "Help a guy when he needs a favor and he'll remember you the next time he needs a favor."

 

[Bigger Don]

Teach a man to fish and he'll expect you to buy the beer.

 

[tonyb]

I can't be the only one here with a somewhat one-sided friendship or two. Or three.

You know, you're almost always the one who loans money or picks up the dinner tab or brings the extra potluck item.

In some cases I just accept that otherwise solid characters are chronically broke (or nearly so) or pathologically cheap. Ain't the worst thing you can say about a person. Far from it.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Pretty much all my friends are poor, as in earning less than $20,000 a year despite working multiple jobs. I'm a long way from rich, but I don't mind picking up the tab for them. In fact, I usually insist on it.

 

[Fading Fast]

One of the things I learned from my crazy father and agree with is you always help a friend in need out and in a way that never embarrasses them. A good way to do it is to get to the bar / restaurant first and give the bartender or waiter you card to "start a tab" whether they ask for it or not. This way, you just sign the slip when the bill comes and when asked, you say, "oh, I had to give them the card to get the tab started." When your friend offers to help out, you say, "thank you, how 'bout you get it next time," and then move the conversation along.

 

[tonyb]

^^^^^
In a similar vein, a person ought be mindful that the invitations he extends might be difficult to accept.

People don't like turning down invitations. Not most people, anyway. So they accept invitations to events they'd rather skip. If they're at all gracious, they do so with smiles on their faces.

A couple three people I can think of right off the top of my head are what you might call "over gifters." They bestow upon people items that clearly didn't come cheap, putting the recipient in an awkward spot. Of course, as the recipient, you say "thank you" and some variation on "you really shouldn't have," which, in such instances, accurately reflects what the speaker really means.

 

[green papaya]

feeding the homeless is very similar to feeding stray feral cats, the more you feed them the more they multiply and wont go away

and pretty soon they feel they are entitled to get free stuff , the more you help them the less they help themselves

 

[LizzieMaine]

I've never met a feral cat I wouldn't feed, and three of them have become the best house pets you could ever know.

One of the greatest advantages in living where i do, in a neighborhood that abuts a big abandoned junkyard, is that there are no prissy complaints from neighbors when I huck my scraps over the fence to feed the animals that live there.

And as for the "teach them to help themselves" argument, that's all well and good, but I've found from personal observation that this is a philosophy that seems to last only until the one espousing it needs help.

 

[ChiTownScion]

When the guys and I go out, we generally split the bill evenly- no matter who gets what. It can be a bit "unfair" in those instances where alcoholic drinks are ordered as I'm the Diet Coke Kid. But it evens out, as I see it. Like Lizzie, a lot of my younger friends are just starting out in life, and it's a struggle for them in some ways. And, if we go to a bar for drinks, someone will generally pick up my soda pop bill. I figure, when these guys get older they can pass along any favor I've given to the next person. Grown men really shouldn't play that, "well, I only had the salad and you had the roast beef" game, IMHO.

Regarding things feral... I've been fortunate in this life mainly because people have for the most part given me a fair shake. I've risen a little, and life for me is financially a little better than it was for my parents. If I can't send the elevator back down to the lobby every now and then so that someone else can rise a tad, I'm a pretty rotten individual for it. If I have some loose money, I'll try to help someone out if they're begging. After a while you get to know who the decent ones are. That could just as easily be me panhandling out there, and I haven't forgotten what it was like not to have that proverbial pot to piddle into.

 

[tonyb]

Homelessness may not be a voluntary condition, but many are the homeless who voluntarily choose not to do what it would take to put roofs over their heads.

But we rarely heap such scorn upon those on the other end of the socio-economic spectrum, who are often disproportionately well compensated for their "contribution" to the greater good. Indeed, a good argument can be made that they are in many cases a bigger drain on the rest of us than those scruffy guys with the cardboard signs.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I try to make up for that particular deficiency. Death to the parasite-oppressor class.

 

[Bigger Don]

But we rarely heap such scorn upon those on the other end of the socio-economic spectrum, who are often disproportionately well compensated for their "contribution" to the greater good.

oh come now! The "Occupy" movement was all about heaping scorn on those most well off. I hear "privilege" being applied to those in the middle class.

 

[Bigger Don]

Death to the parasite-oppressor class.

Gee, I'm glad this is a politics free forum. Sheesh!

 

[LizzieMaine]

Some people have no sense of comic hyperbole. The curse of a generation that takes itself far too seriously.

 

[ChrisB]

People sometimes give me their finger, but it usually isn't the little one.

 

[LizzieMaine]

oh come now! The "Occupy" movement was all about heaping scorn on those most well off. I hear "privilege" being applied to those in the middle class.

Interestingly, the idea of "producerism," the notion of a so-called "middle class" being simultaneously oppressed both from above by "haughty elites" and from below by "lazy undesirables" was a central tenet of the various right-wing populist/nationalist movements which swept across Europe during the Era. Those views had some currency on this side of the ocean among the Coughlinite movement and the followers of Gerald L. K. Smith, but that particular variety of producerism didn't really catch on here until after the war, when it was heavily promoted by the National Association of Manufacturers and its various front groups. Those groups, in turn, were the incubator which gave birth to the teachings of both the John Birch Society and Willis Carto's "Liberty Lobby," from which the Goldwaterite movement of the 1960s, in turn, drew much of its thinking. You can trace the line of descent further, but that would be beyond our period of discussion.

 

[Bigger Don]

right-wing populist movements

Another political diatribe on a forum that supposedly is free of such stuff.