No Good Deed Goes Unpunished

[scorpion1110]

So lesson learned.

A good friend bought a 55 Sedan. He doesnt have a garage, just a driveway. The plan was to keep in his driveway for a few months and then store in his daughters garage. So I say; you can keep it in my garage until Spring while you make arrangements with your daughter. This is October 2017. I want you to move it by March 2018.

He comes over and wants to work on the car and it becomes a regular occurance.

Spring comes. and goes. So does summer and winter. So does 2018.

Its now 2019, and in the Spring its still here and then through May. Friend is using my tools, my supplies, my utilities, my workbench. He has his stuff everywhere.

At this time I buy a sports car. I tell the friend I need space. I can barely squeeze the MG in the garage. Still his car doesnt move.

I tell him I want to work with the MG. He offers to help me push it outside to work on it since I cant get the doors open very far. Really?

At this point I say sedan has to go in 4 weeks. 4 weeks comes and goes. Its now nearly two years in my garage.

So, I stop buying supplies, lock my tool boxes. I simply cutoff access to my stuff. And tell him it needs be out by labor day.

So it finally left last night.

As he packed it up, I could see how much stuff he had everywhere in the garage. Under this bench, behind this cabinet, under this tool box.

So after 2 years I can walk around again, I can get to my chevy and my MG. I spent the day just working on my stuff and not stumbling around someone else's stuff. Wow.

Of course now I feel like the bad guy. Tough lesson.

No good deed goes unpunished.

Scorp

[BamaNomad]

That's the way it goes sometimes, Scorp!~ What can one do? You did him a good turn, and then he *abused* you...

PS. Some friends just cost you too much!

[scorpion1110]

That's the way it goes sometimes, Scorp!~ What can one do? You did him a good turn, and then he *abused* you...

PS. Some friends just cost you too much!

Thats whats messed up. I consider him a good friend and I expect our friendship will change and we wont talk much; with the reason being I didnt offer lifetime free storage of his car.

[busterwivell]

Same thing has happened to me, twice. Friend brought a 56 Chevy out to my shop, and wanted a Camaro clip installed. Another friend installed it and the car sat, and sat, and sat. I finally (after about 6 months) told him it had to go, I was tired of working on my car in the gravel outside my shop.
Fast forward a couple of years. A friend brings his 71 Cutlass out to do some work on it. He lives in an apartment. He disabled the car, removes suspension, works on it every weekend, then........nothing. It sat in my shop for almost a year. I got tired of it, told him I wanted my shop back. When nothing happened, I figured out how to drag it from my shop, set it outside, and filled it with all the parts that were strewn all over my shop.
I got my shop back, have only spoken to him a couple of times since.........
Never again.

[markm]

I have a shop and lift and people always want to tie it up for extended periods. I am being bugged right now about a tranny job. They want to use my lift so they can have a bench job done. These people have no idea what heat, and shop supplies cost.

[BamaNomad]

Suggestion: If you have a shop with a lift, and you use it regularly but not daily, then it's fine to allow a friend to use it (briefly - ie. a half day or less) for an oil change or repair, but don't allow them to 'disable' the car from rolling... At least if it rolls you can 'roll' it out and call them to come get it.. :)

I've a 'homemade' paint booth in my garage. Over the years, I've brought friend's cars in to either paint them, or help them paint their car, but each time, knowing it was going to 'take a while' (weeks to months at our speed), then I agreed on the condition that I send one of my cars to their garage while we were painting their car... :). That creates incentive for both of us to 'hurry' and get the job finished.. :)

[Rocketman]

Sounds to me like this guy was never a friend. He was a user and he used you. I can remember years ago helping "friends" with stuff and never got any payback. I haven't had a close friend in years. I can't afford them. It is unfortunate.

[chevynut]

Similar thing happened to me. My wife had a friend who she met before I met her, and he would come by now and then to have a beer and talk. We really didn't have a lot in common (he was a liberal) but he was a fabricator and a painter so that's what we talked about. He built animated stuff for haunted houses and places like that in Vegas where he lived before moving here, and built some race car chassis.

He had a girlfriend who kicked him out of her house, and he was going to leave all of his stuff there because he had no way to move it and no place to store it. I told him he shouldn't do that and lose everything, so I helped him haul two large trailer loads of his stuff into my back yard for "temporary" storage until he got a place to live. The trailers had a 40+" slip roll, lathe, milling machine, 48" stomp shear, TIG welder, compressor, and lots of other equipment, tools, and parts stacked on them.

The trailers sat covered in my back yard for two years before I finally told him they needed to be moved because my HOA was going to start complaining. I figured out why his girlfriend kicked him out....he took advantage of people. I offered to buy some of the stuff from him and helped him move it to his garage at his rental house. We never closed the deal and he ended up dying of an aneurysm a year or so ago. His new girlfriend got control of his stuff because his daughters who lived in Vegas didn't want anything to do with it I told her I wanted to buy some of it before she got rid of it.....but somehow she got evicted from the house and the stuff stayed in the garage, and I believe the landlord sold it all. I never heard a word about the sale.

Anyhow, I ended up with a second MB bead roller and dies for it that were stored in my shop, and a few other small pieces. I did buy a JD3 tube bender and a whole bunch of dies from him earlier. I really wanted the slip roll and stomp shear. :(

[WagonCrazy]

I have to say "no" alot too...
People are people...
Oblivious to the footprint they leave. You have to see it coming and deny them access...
They look elsewhere when that happens.
Problem solved.
You're not the bad guy Scorp. You're actually being firm in not letting people walk all over you. People who tend to misuse relationships need to get this feedback in order to know when they cross the line.

[chevynut]

So are none of us guilty of the same sort of thing? I am :-o.

Years ago I was going through a divorce and needed a place to store my Willys Jeep and to work on it. My Nomad and all the rest of my belongings were in a garage belonging to my dad's neighbor. A co-worker friend offered to let me store the Jeep at his place for a while and work on it in his garage. So I moved it over there and worked on it a little, then things got in the way, and I kinda forgot about it. Months went by, and I don't even remember how long it was there. He kept asking me if I was going to work on it and I said I was, but did so very little. Finally he told me I needed to find another place to store it because he was wanting to build an airplane.

I honestly don't know how long it was there, as there was so much going on in my life at the time. I had just graduated from College, lost my home, lived with friends, and was trying to buy property and build a house. I really didn't realize it was causing him issues. We're still friends, though, and I've loaned him a lot of my tools so he could finish his airplane. ;)

[markm]

Unless you count my 56 in folks garage in the 70s no, Dad is gone and I still have three of his cars at my house.

[Rick_L]

Back in the early 70s I was guilty of hogging a friend's garage space. I had bought a 67 Camaro to make into a drag race car, and it was pretty rough. I was living in an apartment and didn't have a lot of extra cash. As I recall we never had an agreement on when I'd get out, nor did I say when I would. I'd go over there and work on the car pretty regularly but of course everything took longer than first expected, and I was doing body work too so was making a mess. I was never directly told to get out. I eventually did get out, but after that our friendship went away.

Moral of this looking back. If it's your space, you have to be direct about getting your friend's car out, and be persistent. From my perspective, I appreciated the use of the space but didn't do much to reciprocate.

[BamaNomad]

Thinking more about my using other's shop/tools... From Aug 1971 until late May 1972 I had my '53 Henry J in an UNCLE's shop, left the car there while I removed the body from the frame, cleaned/painted the frame and under the body, changed out two engines during that time going from 283-2bbl PG to a 302+030 with Muncie 4 speed, I welded up the headers, rebuilt the (57 chev) rear end, rebuilt the king pins on the 41 Ford front axle, etc.. etc. Using Uncle's tools all that time with Uncles' assistance whenever I needed it. Was a great 'learning' time for me in my auto education... and didn't cost me a penny! Of course, Uncle was only paying me about $150/month for my full time(+) work, sometimes on Saturdays and Sundays!

... that Uncle was UNCLE SAM, and I was using the Keesler AFB auto hobby shop and tools... :)
:)