Would you host a stranger if a family member asked?
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Anonymous
| Yes, of course. No 20-year-old wants to crash on a couch with strangers unless it's an emergency, so, yes, I would open my home. Always. |
Anonymous
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Sorry, OP. Most people would want to help. It's a one time thing.
It doesn't make you a bad person. You have your own reasons. |
Anonymous
| Given the facts as you presented I would have recommended for rag parent to arrange a hotel convenient for the guest. |
Anonymous
| Under thos circumstances, yes, I would. |
Anonymous
| Im 72 years young. This is the type of thing "back in the day" NO ONE would blink an eye at. We always helped friends of friends or distant relatives or church members or whomever. We have become a very insular society and we only think of our own nuclear family. Yet we complain when our kids have no community and can't ride their bikes to the store anymore. Im not sure what the answer is. Its just something Ive noticed within the last 20 years. My grandmother, mom and myself always had a few "random" guests every year. It was a chance to get to know someone, learn about where they are from, and what kind of things they do. Now with the internet and everyone constantly traveling anyway its no longer considered an educational opportunity/fun surprise its just an annoyance. |
Anonymous
| In your situation, I absolutely would have let her stay. A young woman who would have had to drive in the snow late at night? Just for one night and she would be gone the next day? No brainer for me, I would have happily had the kids bunk together. I wouldn’t house people I didn’t know just because they wanted to visit DC and save money on a hotel, or really anyone for more than a day. |
Anonymous
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Yes. Over the years, we’ve had siblings stays with us months on end during internships, children of neighbors from back home do the same, overnight visits from friends of family stranded at the airport, best friend’s little brother and his college buddies made an emergency overnight stop when they got a little too ambitious on a college road trip. When neighbors from back home had to move the matriarch of the family for cancer treatment, our home became their staging area for a few months.
If somebody we know asks, we assume it is because they have a legit need and we try to always say yes. Nobody has ever taken advantage of us and we’re happy to be able to help. |
Anonymous
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I HATE being taken advantage of and being inconvenienced. That being said, given what you said i totally would have.
I would want someone to take in my daughter in the same set of circumstances. It was a one time thing, not an every Monday type thing and really you wouldn't have been out much. For a one time thing like that, Totally. |
Anonymous
| I would decline. She can stay at a hotel, I don't like being a crash pad or set up expectations that she will stay with me ever time she would need to work nearby. |
Anonymous
| If I were you, that situation would eat me up for way longer than a month. You really should have helped the poor girl out. |
Anonymous
The poor girl had another play to go. She wasn't without options. |
Anonymous
| I would never impose on somebody like that and would get a hotel. |
Anonymous
+1 to this. OP, you have kids--wouldn't you rather they took the most cautious option if faced with a potentially bad drive at night? Wouldn't you be glad to know someone was helping them out the way your relative was helping this girl? If not -- would you rather your own young adult child just slept in the car rather than "bother" someone like you, whose entire objection is based on your being a bit discomfited for just one night? As for "after 10 the roads will be clear anyway": This was all being discussed before 10, correct? Weather this year has been so strange, and so different from one area to the next, that I wouldn't have assumed that after her shift, her particular drive would have been fine. Sure, it probably was, in the end. But you really were eager to say no, and you note that you don't like anyone staying with you. I don't love it either and we have no room but I'd have said yes because I have a DD about the age of that young woman and I wouldn't want her driving if she felt it wasn't safe. Nor would I be comfortable with her "springing for a cheap hotel room" as you so easily suggest--have you done that lately yourself? Do you know that a basic, safe, decently clean hotel in an OK location is not truly cheap? I wouldn't take just any total stranger in, but in the circumstances you describe, where I trusted the judgment of the person recommending the guest, I'd say yes. Your fear that you'd become this woman's "crash pad" if she stayed one night is...based on what? Unless you cut her a key, how could that happen? You'd just say no if that happened. Your crash pad worry was just another reason you found for saying no. You're owning your choice, but just consider what you'd want if your own child were in that situation. Would you pick up a middle-aged woman whose car was stranded in snow on a rural highway during an unexpected storm? Road covered in snow rapidly piling up, no plows will come (believe me), no way to know anyone else will pass by but you? I think you'd have left my mom there in her car all those years ago. I'm glad the stranger who stopped to help her didn't drive past her out of fear he'd become her de facto taxi, or out of an assumption there probably was a hotel somewhere near enough for her to walk to through the fields..... |
Anonymous
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I would have done this if it wasn't a relative that was always asking for stuff like this. It doesn't really put me out to have someone sleep on my sofa and staying up a little late to help someone wouldn't bother me.
What's done is done though OP, this was a month ago and everyone has long since moved on. Not doing it doesn't make you Satan or anything. But fixating on it isn't normal. |
Anonymous
| Absolutely. |