Lesson learned. important message

So that others may learn.

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Abraham
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Re: Lesson learned. important message

#16

Post by Abraham »

When strangers ask odd personal questions, such as, what days are you working, etc., my first response would be to turn the table and ask: Why do you want to know?

This can be accomplished in friendly way.

Then, when they stutter and stumble with a poorly worded response, that's when I just smile and walk away.

We're compelled to answer a stranger's personal questions in any situation...and not answering isn't being rude, it's being prudent.

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premedit8ed
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Re: Lesson learned. important message

#17

Post by premedit8ed »

Abraham wrote:When strangers ask odd personal questions, such as, what days are you working, etc., my first response would be to turn the table and ask: Why do you want to know?

This can be accomplished in friendly way.

Then, when they stutter and stumble with a poorly worded response, that's when I just smile and walk away.

We're compelled to answer a stranger's personal questions in any situation...and not answering isn't being rude, it's being prudent.
I felt if I didn't answer they would have came regardless, we no longer live there and the employee that invited the strangers no longer is with my wife's company
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CHLLady
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Re: Lesson learned. important message

#18

Post by CHLLady »

Thank you for sharing your story. You definitely were targeted, I'm so glad it worked out as it did. This has taught me a valuable lesson about 2nd party invites.

At least she no longer works for you. Might I suggest video surveillance cameras?
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Re: Lesson learned. important message

#19

Post by Abraham »

I left out a critical word, that word being "NOT" that should have been posted right before the word "COMPELLED"

We're "NOT" compelled to answer a stranger's personal questions in any situation...and not answering isn't being rude, it's being prudent.
Last edited by Abraham on Wed Sep 17, 2014 11:07 am, edited 1 time in total.
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The Annoyed Man
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Re: Lesson learned. important message

#20

Post by The Annoyed Man »

I think you handled things about as well as could be expected, taking into account that you were not armed at the time.

Until very recently, my wife and I entertained a lot. We discontinued, just this month, hosting a twice-monthly dinner for the single folks at our church which we had been hosting for two years. It was always held on the 2nd and 4th Fridays of the month. To put it in perspective, that's 48 dinner parties in 24 months. We have been asked a few times by a guest if they could invite a friend along. It's always been a girl, asking if she could invite a girlfriend, and the 3rd party has always been someone she knew from our church.....another single person. We always said yes, because the risks were low.....and we knew we would have enough to feed one extra mouth....plus it expanded the ministry we were doing.

However, our primary concern was always to make sure we had enough food prepared to feed everyone who showed up. So one of the things that we did early on was to set up an email list, and we sent out reminder emails on the Monday's before the dinner party, asking people to RSVP, so that we would know how many people to fix dinner for. It might be anywhere from 5 or 6, to as many as 12-15. We always prepared enough food to feed the number who RSVP'd, plus 1 or 2 more, because we knew that RVSP is a dying art, and either not everyone invited would respond, or they might change their mind and decide to come at the last minute.

One of the advantages of doing things that way is that if someone were to ask of 5 or 6 friends of theirs could come, we could easily (and truthfully) say we hadn't planned on that many people and won't have enough food to feed everyone.....so, not this time. It provides us with a gentle way of saying "no" without offending. In our particular case, the kind of people who were coming simply didn't associate with thugs, so that was not really an issue. But having done it for a couple of years taught us a lot about how to make life easier for the person(s) doing the planning and hosting. Two of those lessons learned are 1) the emailed invitations requesting RSVP, and 2) the "gee, no, sorry......we just don't have enough food for everyone."

I'm pretty sure you could apply those two tools to just about anything you host, including a halloween party.
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premedit8ed
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Re: Lesson learned. important message

#21

Post by premedit8ed »

The Annoyed Man wrote:I think you handled things about as well as could be expected, taking into account that you were not armed at the time.

Until very recently, my wife and I entertained a lot. We discontinued, just this month, hosting a twice-monthly dinner for the single folks at our church which we had been hosting for two years. It was always held on the 2nd and 4th Fridays of the month. To put it in perspective, that's 48 dinner parties in 24 months. We have been asked a few times by a guest if they could invite a friend along. It's always been a girl, asking if she could invite a girlfriend, and the 3rd party has always been someone she knew from our church.....another single person. We always said yes, because the risks were low.....and we knew we would have enough to feed one extra mouth....plus it expanded the ministry we were doing.

However, our primary concern was always to make sure we had enough food prepared to feed everyone who showed up. So one of the things that we did early on was to set up an email list, and we sent out reminder emails on the Monday's before the dinner party, asking people to RSVP, so that we would know how many people to fix dinner for. It might be anywhere from 5 or 6, to as many as 12-15. We always prepared enough food to feed the number who RSVP'd, plus 1 or 2 more, because we knew that RVSP is a dying art, and either not everyone invited would respond, or they might change their mind and decide to come at the last minute.

One of the advantages of doing things that way is that if someone were to ask of 5 or 6 friends of theirs could come, we could easily (and truthfully) say we hadn't planned on that many people and won't have enough food to feed everyone.....so, not this time. It provides us with a gentle way of saying "no" without offending. In our particular case, the kind of people who were coming simply didn't associate with thugs, so that was not really an issue. But having done it for a couple of years taught us a lot about how to make life easier for the person(s) doing the planning and hosting. Two of those lessons learned are 1) the emailed invitations requesting RSVP, and 2) the "gee, no, sorry......we just don't have enough food for everyone."

I'm pretty sure you could apply those two tools to just about anything you host, including a halloween party.
Thanks for the tips
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Re: Lesson learned. important message

#22

Post by premedit8ed »

CHLLady wrote:Thank you for sharing your story. You definitely were targeted, I'm so glad it worked out as it did. This has taught me a valuable lesson about 2nd party invites.

At least she no longer works for you. Might I suggest video surveillance cameras?
You're most welcome and yes, I've thought about installing some.
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TexasCajun
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Re: Lesson learned. important message

#23

Post by TexasCajun »

Welcome to the forum & glad everything worked out. I'm curious as to why the friends of the coworker weren't at least interviewed by police. That the incident occurred within a false timeline that you conveyed to them should have been enough to take some action on.
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LAYGO
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Re: Lesson learned. important message

#24

Post by LAYGO »

Unrelated, but related via the "friend of a friend" thing. We had a friend from NYC ask if she could bring a friend to our place in Dallas for a couple of concerts we were going to road trip for. Since our friend had quite literally saved our bacon in NYC the year prior, I acquiesced. Her friend then proceeded to steal my woman's limited edition book he took a fancy to when he saw it on the coffee table. This was after we housed them, fed them, drove them around, etc. Our friend got into a fight with him while out one of the nights & we left him in Dallas while we went to Austin & was left to fend for himself.

That ended our relationships with "friend of a friend" staying with us until we had met them on neutral ground.
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baseballguy2001
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Re: Lesson learned. important message

#25

Post by baseballguy2001 »

I had a somewhat similar situation after Christmas. We had a party, some work friends invited some friends of friends etc. We have very few windows in our house, all but a window in the garage is double paned and both windows locked. I also have a residential security video system that sends motion detection alerts via email that I can receive on my smartphone. I get quite a few falsies, with the wind blowing tree limbs etc. About a week or so after the party, my other half was out of town and I was working from home on a quiet Wednesday morning. My phone dinged after it checked for new mail and I got a motion detection from a camera. I should have told you earlier, with the detection, the system snaps a photo and sends that along also. The photo is a stranger in the front yard near the garage window. The cameras aren't hidden, they are in plain view, everybody can see them. Next, I hear glass break. I open the app on my phone for the security system and now I have live video of an intruder crawling in the garage window. A bit more background, my wife's truck is in the garage parked very close to the window. To get inside, the intruder has to crawl underneath the vehicle, then once on the other side, you can stand up. Once I see the live video I'm headed towards the cabinet, and dialing 911. I cautiously open the door from the house to the garage, thinking the intruder might be already inside. He keeps getting caught in the bushes on the outside of the house and hasn't made a clean entry. I enter the garage and stand at the rear end of the vehicle by the tire, somewhat hiding. In what seems like an eternity a figure comes crawling out from below the vehicle, he's face down and hasn't seen me. I had already dialled 911 and mashed the send button on the phone and placed it on the back bumper. In my haste, I didn't prepare the 870 in case something happened. So I racked the action probably harder than I ever had, put the shotgun on my shoulder and yelled DON'T MOVE!! (or something similar, I was on adrenaline by now) The sound of the action putting a shell in the chamber echoed all over in my small garage and lucky for me, (and him) he didn't move an inch. The point of this novel is, the idiot turned out to be one of the friends of friends. I didn't talk to him at the party, had no idea who was lying on my garage floor, nothing. He was a young kid who had broken into a few houses and never been caught before. My guess is, he saw some things in the house and thought he would just help himself. What a bonehead. He told the police he thought the cameras were fake, dummy's. Next party season, be careful who is on your guest list.
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