agonyaunt | (no subject)

DEAR MISS MANNERS: I was active-duty military, eligible to shop in the commissary, where goods were somewhat less expensive than at a civilian market. My pay was also less than the equivalent civilian profession.

A civilian mom who lived upstairs from me once sent her child to ask me for a can of tuna. I supplied them with a can of albacore tuna from a common brand. A few days later, she replaced it with an equal-size can from the same brand, but of lesser quality tuna. The price tag on her can was within a few cents of what I paid for the albacore.

Her action was deliberate. Never again.

GENTLE READER: Your certainty that there was a snub in repaying your kindness with inferior tuna perplexes Miss Manners. Perhaps there is a backstory -- or direct evidence -- you neglected to mention.

But if you are instead just following the newly popular trend of reading ill will into a casual act, are you not being both unkind and illogical? These days, when people seem eager to scream obscenities at passing strangers, who can believe that anyone would take the trouble to be so subtle with an insult?

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I sincerely hope LW gets whatever help they need for whatever is going on in their life to make them fixate on... this.

wow. LW surely does seem to be stretching to find insult here. for many people a can of tuna is a can of tuna; possibly the neighbor always buys the "lesser" quality and didn't notice the 'loan' was a higher quality. or possibly they cannot afford the albacore, and got what they could afford to ensure the 'loan' was repaid.

frankly, if a neighbor needed tuna and I had it, I probably wouldn't expect to immediately get a replacement can, but maybe some cookies or something down the road.

LW get a real problem

I notice LW didn't ask a question, which makes sense since they've already decided on a course of action: feel insulted over nothing and never do a favor for anyone again. Okay! Have fun with that.

To make it worse, the use of the past tense suggests that this may have happened months or years ago!

I honestly thought the rule for borrows from neighbors was that you get repayed with a similar loan, favor, or small gift of food. It would never even occur to me that it should be the same item...

... especially an item from a shop that the neighbour is (presumably) not able to use!

Surely this sort of thing is only an issue if it is housemate/partner habitually scoffs a person's supply of premium [whatever] and replaces with cheapo generic [whatever].

Three midnight visitors to this guy without waiting for Christmas, right?

Exactly this. Especially on "ask a neighbor to borrow," especially mediated through a child--you KNOW when you send a child over to ask a neighbor for something, the kid is not going to be able to assess the thing and say, "oh, this is too nice for my mom to afford to replace, we'll just do something else."

Honestly if our neighbor sent their kid over to ask for a tin of tuna, they would be disappointed, because we don't keep tinned tuna in the house. And if you aren't gladly and with a whole heart able to give your neighbor whatever they're asking to borrow, you can always say no. They don't have your pantry inventory. They don't know whether you keep tuna or not. Don't say yes unless you're glad to do it.

I have always understood "borrow" as polite code word for "take, and possibly replace with some of the cookies you're using the egg in question for, but otherwise consider it an act of neighborly kindness." Have I been Doing It Wrong all this time?

+1 If you "borrow" a consumable from a neighbor it's a signal that you're happy to be borrowed from yourself in the future and nothing else. If you want to pay it back that's another way of building the relationship but I would never expect it?

I would not be surprised if the LW snarked about when the tuna would be "repaid" but conveniently "forgot" to mention it here.

This guy is definitely worse than the bear.

We don’t know that LW’s a guy; I’ve met outrage-collecting women, too.

I have a suspicion that LW might be the sort to see the world in terms of sheepdog/sheep/wolf social taxonomy—-and note the smug condescension toward the ungrateful “sheep.”

That essay is interesting ... especially

The difference, though, is that the sheepdog
must not, can not and will not ever harm the sheep. Any sheep dog who intentionally
harms the lowliest little lamb will be punished and removed.

because uhhhhhh that totally happens

Hey, LW...what's the actual question here?

Also, I had no idea that there were different quality levels of canned tuna - it all looks and smells like cat food to me

Oh, yeah, solid > chunk, in oil > in water, and albacore > random whatever tuna.

That's definitely good to know! The only time I bought tuna in recent years was to give it to my cat as a treat, so my concerns were low sodium and packed in ~~oil~~ water so I didn't have to worry about her getting dehydrated or sick to her stomach

Edited 2024-11-04 23:00 (UTC)