Fuck yes, cheapskates get thinned from the herd. As evil thing as money can be and how it can destroy friendships, it can also point out which ones are most dependable and which ones are worthless. A couple times I've lended money to people pretty much knowing I wouldn't see it again, but it was with that purpose in the first place. Mooches are a poison in life and they never stop feeding.
Meh. I admit I got suckered into a few hundred here, and few hundred there with this particular friend. Mostly it was for his business and I figured worst case I'd have him work off the tab since he does landscaping. I'm also a believer in the concept of having good will come back on you ten fold. It actually burns my ass more that he tried to short our tab with our friends than the fact that he owes me a couple grand.
I loathe and fear deadbeats, as a threat to my lifestyle. Me and most of my friends are single, have few responsibilities (ie kids, pets, mortgages), and consequently can be pretty careless with money (hello $2.5k on my credit card when I got carried away in a Vegas strip club one night). As we tend to live paycheck to paycheck, and love to gamble, we move a fair bit of money around. Someone needs to borrow a grand? To play blackjack at the casino? No worries at all. When I ended up homeless in Vegas, I messaged a couple of friends and ended up with $2.5k wired to me. My friends are awesome. I paid it back in 42 days (ahead of the 90 I asked for), and lived on mi goreng and cask wine while I did so. Right now my housemate owes my brother $6k, which he borrowed to buy a car while he liquidates some stocks. Every motherfucker that borrows money and bolts makes it that much harder for us to do this. See, none of us have ever, ever defaulted on a debt. That is the quickest way to be permanently banished to the land of wind and ghosts amongst us. Borrowing money and then failing to pay it back is holding up a gigantic sign to the world saying 'I am an untrustworthy asshole user who has absolutely no respect for anyone, including myself'. Double bonus asshole points for borrowing money from an SO, breaking up, and then using that as a reason not to pay them back. I've seen at least 3 people do this, and they sicken me. It irrevocably alters my opinion of people if they welsh on a personal debt, even if it's only $20. (Incidentally, for all that neither a borrower nor a lender be crap, I think 99% of problems in this area can be avoided by just discussing a payment schedule up front. How much will you be paying back every pay, and when will the total be paid off? The amount of people that don't do this and then watch everything turn to shit on them staggers my mind.) The other half of my hatred stems from working for a telco that aimed to capture the low end of the market. Every month, without fail, the 2 days before and the 5 days after the bill was due would be an endless series of deadbeat fuckwits ringing me up and screaming obscenities at me for daring to demand payment, or cutting off their phone. We only cut phones off after SIX MONTHS of non-payment. There were the occasional single parents who just needed someone to cut them a break, and would call up swallowing their pride and offering to pay us whatever amount they could if we could give them some time. Helping these people was legitimately the best part of my job. (The job sucked, and I grew up poor, so my sympathies lie in that direction rather than with the shitty company that was employing me). For every one of these, I would estimate I got at least 30 people that had subscribed to a porn or ringtone or wallpaper service at $5/message, up to 7 messages a day, and then rang me up and cursed me out for stealing the food/medicine/clothing out of their child's/parent's mouths. I lost count of the people that called me with sob stories about their entrenched poverty, and then I'd wonder why they had $120/month plans with a fucking iPhone. If I ever hear someone else rack up a $2k phone bill with 2 hour long interstate phone calls every night and then demand to know how I expect them to pay it and meet their other expenses, I am going to figure out how to make the zombifying signal Stephen King describes in Cell, bring about the Apocalypse and extinguish a goodly portion of the species, hope that the human race can rebuild itself without these fuckers, and do it with a smile on my face. Fuck. I'm pissed off just remembering it. Back to watching puppies frolic. http://www.ustream.tv/sfshiba
To expand on this: fuck homeless people and the stupid centers that enable their bullshit. Yes, there are homeless people out there who are actually nice people (blah blah blah). However, after 7 years in the fire department I can confidently say that 99% of them are deadbeat scumbags. Outside of child molesters and rapists, I can't think of a single group of people who I hold more contempt for. I spent a lot of time running on a medic unit in a very affluent suburb outside DC. However, there is one section with a huge homeless population. Out of place, right? Well, the fucking retarded local church thought it would be a good idea to start a homeless shelter in the middle of an upscale shopping area. We went from no homeless people to over 300 in less than two years. As soon as the homeless dickbags heard the shelter gave out free food in the morning and $5 cash for them to buy "dinner" after closing time, the fuckers flocked to the area. Every day at 3:00 pm, the morons at the shelter give out $5 bills to the army of vagrants outside. And every day at 3:15 pm, the foul smelling host migrates three doors down to 7-11 to buy booze. Around 7:00 pm we'll begin to get calls for "illnesses" in the area of the shelter. Why? The fucking dumpster dwellers know the hospital serves food to certain types of patient, that those meals are given out at 8:00, and that we cannot deny them medical services if they say certain magic words. Of course, these meals are usually billed to the patient (or their insurance), but the homeless fucks skip out on their bills and discharge themselves AMA. They then walk five miles back to the shelter to repeat it the next day. Don't even get me started on the motherfuckers who drive $70,000 luxury SUVs, have brand new iPhones, but pay for their hospital bill with Medicaid...