What is one question you hate to be asked? Explain.

I’m not sure how anyone reading this will react or what their opinion of me will be afterwards, but if I were worried about that I wouldn’t be sharing.

One question I hate that immediately came to mind after reading the prompt:

“How can I make it up to you?”

Depending on the situation/circumstances I have different reactions to this kind of question, but they are all based in the same area of my mind. I can forgive some and let it slide, but those situations are few and far between for when the question actually gets used.

I’ve had “friends” that borrowed things from me, and although they did ultimately return the item, they misused it in the exact way I told them not to. Sound too vague? Here’s a story.

I was in my early 20’s and just out of college trying to find a job. TRYING to get out from under my parents. I ended up moving in with some friends when one of them bought a fixer upper house. Cheap rent and utilities, and the house was livable regardless. One of these friends wanted to borrow my laptop. I said “sure, but no looking at porn.” I was very clear about that because I had a sneaking suspicion that they would.

Why would you lend them your laptop in the first place if you were suspicious of them? That’s kind of weird.

I had reasons to doubt their intentions but I wanted to give them the benefit of the doubt. Well, they obviously did misuse my laptop, but they thought they were being clever and used one of the web browsers I had installed but never used, thinking I wouldn’t check it. They were wrong.

I calmly confronted them, no yelling, no anger, just pure fact. I told them I’m not going to lend them my laptop again because they did the one thing I asked them not to.

If you’re this far into the post and thinking I’m overreacting, I applaud you for not “yucking someone else’s yum” as a Canadian friend of mine would put it. Regardless, the concern is less about the content in this case, and more about compromising the security of my laptop. Porn sites used to have a notorious reputation for trying to install shit in the background. Whether that’s still true 10+ years later I don’t know and don’t really care.

ANYWAYS! I told them no more and they asked the dreaded question that is inspiring this post.

“How can I make it up to you?”

In my mind, at that time, if you had to ask that question then you don’t understand the situation you have put yourself into. Breech of trust, and in an immaterial way that can’t really be redeemed because it’s not like you broke something and can just replace it. If you had to ask that question then you don’t respect the situation you have put ME into. Asking me to try to think of a way for them to redeem themselves in my eyes was almost LAZY on their part because to me it meant they didn’t want to have to put effort into thinking about what they did wrong and the lesson that should be learned.

As I recall the situation, I gave them a similar but abbreviated answer along with a simple “You can’t.”

In that situation I don’t think there was anything they could have done. That’s why I responded the way they did.

I know this question sometimes gets asked in response to honest mistakes, but as I said before these situations are rare. At least in my experience.