Where's Amorpha's Money, Astraea?

[lb_lee]

For the past year, we've been helping our friend Amorpha move. Over the past few days, they moved the last of their possessions out of Astraea's condo, using a moving truck that another friend of mine, Katz, rented for them. Astraea had been obstructive and passive-aggressive throughout, but then they went beyond the pale.

Astraea stole the truck, lied about it, and tried to weasel their way out of paying for it. They owe Amorpha thousands of dollars for similar reasons.

First of all, Katz has written her entire side of the story here. Here's what I know:

Amorpha left the truck keys on the counter. Astraea stole them and the truck for their own use, parking it illegally and racking on an extra four days of its use along with the associated fines, all of which Katz was liable for. Since Katz did this all as a favor to me (knowing neither Astraea nor Amorpha), I was livid, and only got angrier as Astraea then tried to lie their way out of it. (Plures kindly did the phone conversation for me, since I was too angry to speak.)

First, Astraea insisted that they thought the truck was theirs. Since I was on the phone with Katz at the same time, I knew this was horseshit. Katz got the truck for Amorpha only.

Then Astraea said that Amorpha had told them they could use the truck. Since I was in contact with Amorpha, I knew this too was false. When I said so, Astraea attempted to then claim that "this was their understanding" and that "they needed Amorpha's input on it" but I said, no, I had Amorpha's input, and Astraea's understanding was wrong, RETURN THE TRUCK.

Then Astraea insisted they HAD returned the truck. Amorpha said no, they hadn't, and eventually, Astraea "discovered" that they'd kept the keys in their pocket, by "accident." Golly gee.

Days passed. Astraea kept coming up with bullshit reasons not to return the truck, until finally I'd had enough. They were holding Amorpha's truck hostage, their THINGS hostage, and Amorpha was beyond stressed.

So I called Astraea. "This is how this going to go," I told them.

They tried to interrupt me. I silenced them.

"You are going to give the truck and the keys to Amorpha."

They gasped. "But my things are in that truck!"

"That's not your problem anymore. You're going to give the truck and the keys to Amorpha. They are going to drive away. And you are going to wait at the station until my friend Katz picks you up."

I hung up. Astraea gave Amorpha the truck. Astraea got stranded in the train station for a couple hours but well, if they didn't want that to happen, they shouldn't have stolen the truck in the first place.

It turns out that of course, Astraea "forgot" to give Amorpha the key to the truck padlock, thus only allowing Amorpha to drive it, not open it. It turned out they hadn't even brought that key with them, forcing Katz to drive all over hill and dale to get the damned thing back.

And finally, after all this and extorting another truck out of us on Amorpha's dime, Astraea refused to pay for it. They claimed they couldn't afford to.

Astraea have been moving for months. They hired their own personal movers, only to then fail at using them, thus wasting the money. They're moving from a gated condo with an aviary into a new apartment, while Amorpha have been homeless for months, and yet somehow Amorpha is expected to pay for the whole thing! And Katz too!

I paid the $200, since Katz's friendship is worth far more than that to me, and I texted Astraea: "You owe me $200 for the truck you took. You have 24 hours to pay me. My PayPal address is [blahblahblah]." Then I blocked their number.

I fully expected to never see that money, since Astraea apparently wailed on about their poverty. But fuck me with a turnpike, they paid up. For all their wailing and carrying on, THEY HAD THE MONEY THE ENTIRE TIME. (Or got it SOMEHOW. Who cares?)

But did they pay Amorpha, the one they've swindled for thousands? Did they pay Katz? No. They only paid me. Contemptible.

I am giving all $200 straight to Amorpha. It should've been theirs to begin with.

Astraea, you are an unctuous bag of wizened bats. You put my friendships at risk, wasted everyone's time and money, and you owe Amorpha thousands of dollars. Pay them the back-rent you owe, pay them for that godforsaken truck you whined out of them, and spare me your crocodile tears.

Comments

[minoanmiss]

Wow, I am so sorry they were so utterly terrible.

[silvercat17]

I helped move Amorpha out in the first place. LB stayed at my place and I drove us to Astraea's. Which was a giant mess, with practically every square inch of flat space covered. My main job was to keep Astraea distracted so they couldn't be an energy suck and keep Amorpha from getting out.

Amorpha was paying for two storage units. The one I saw was mostly empty and should have been consolidated with the other ages ago.

[we_are_spc]

They sound like they're using a disability as an excuse.

My people will sometimes do this, and while it's not often, it is annoying. Especially since they have conditions that flare up at times.

Still, pay up, bitches, because that's the right freaking thing to do.

And good on you SC17 for playing distraction. That couldn't have been easy.

-T~

[silvercat17]

They reminded me of my self-absorbed arrogant grandfather who I'm glad is dead. I gave them a topic and let them run with it.

[we_are_spc]

Ug, those types. Those types make me grimace hard.

I know a thing or two about self-absorbed grandparents; my grandfather is one. He's 97, and thinks his age means the world should revolve around *him* and he can get away with shafting his kids/other descended relatives from them. Bty favoring 1 family over another. ... and gets upset when it doesn't work.

Yep, giving them a topic sounds like a good plan. If they can't run with one, find another they can.

[silvercat17]

Astraea was worst than useless. They kept distracting LB and Amorpha with conversations about I don't know what.

They also tried to flatter LB, and iirc, me, which had no effect.

[we_are_spc]

Ug...Yeah, no.

All they had to do is go "Oh, but we'll give you this if you staaayyyy!" and they'll remind me of a creapy guy who said he liked me a lot and tried to ply me with gifts to not leave his ass alone again.

Didn't work, obviously; I'm in Ohio now; last I knew he was in Indy.

-T~

[mirrorofsmoke]

This doesn't surprise me. I wish it did. They think that flattery is going to get them in everybody's good graces, and make everyone love them, if they can't pigeonhole people into their little holes of what people should be in their minds.
To them, everyone must be sociable, talkative, very emotional and willing to trade empty flatteries and gush about how awesome they are.
I'm not overly emotional at the best of times. I also don't think that flattering someone when they don't do anything to deserve it is a good thing. I also don't think they're good people, and haven't for years. Because I don't think that way, because I'm not overly emotional, that means that I obviously didn't like them, and they had to tiptoe around me like I was a volcano ready to erupt.
It was ridiculous dealing with them, and the longer I did, the worse it got, so finally I stopped answering any communication they tried to have with my system, and the rest followed suit and I wish we'd done it sooner.
I didn't hate them because I wasn't emotional. I disliked them because they were abusing some of my closest friends, and I could not continue, in good conscious, to have any kind of association with someone who was abusing people I cared about.

[we_are_spc]

Ug.

And I thought my life was hell. Omahgawds what a fucking pile of shit mess that is.

I'm sorry for all that, and I hope things work out as they should for all involved. (Tikun.)

-T~

[mirrorofsmoke]

Yeah, we can vouch for all this. We've been talking to Amorpha all weekend, and if you ever get to know Astraea, as closely as we have, they are a total dumpster fire. I don't say that lightly. They take advantage of every single person they know. I count my system lucky that they never begged us for money.
The worst they did to us was have their ex husband send us a present for Christmas, without fucking warning us or asking if it was a thing we'd want.
-Axel

Astraea being assholes? What a surprise! /s

[ex_not643]

I'm posting to vouch for LB's post. We've known both Astraea and Amorpha for 13 years, and Astraea's behaviour is completely consistent with everything we've known about them. They've been emotionally and financially abusive to Amorpha for years, and this is just the final straw from them.

I called Astraea a few days ago to see why the hell they'd made off with Amorpha's truck. (Hess initially wanted to, but he knew he'd lose his temper and the whole thing would backfire, so he asked me to do it.) They kept claiming that the move was a 'joint project', and that they had heard completely different things from Amorpha than what we, LB or the Rhymers had actually heard. And yes, they did claim they'd 'forgotten' the keys in their jacket pocket.

(Also, hilariously, when I called, they first thought I was Katz's husband!)

They were extremely condescending to me and thought they could get away with lying their ass off to us. We're not surprised they had the money. They'd actually lied to Amorpha about not having money last week and turned out to have way more than they claimed.

~Y.

Re: Astraea being assholes? What a surprise! /s

[lb_lee]

Thank you, Yavari, for fielding that and doing it so well! If necessary, your call receipts will come in handy.

Extortionate gouging vulture.

Re: Astraea being assholes? What a surprise! /s

[mirrorofsmoke]

"A joint project?" That's absolute bullcrap. Amorpha moved out of the apartment to get away from their abuse months ago. What lying sacks of shit.
Axel

Re: Astraea being assholes? What a surprise! /s

[lithophiles]

That's correct. We left around the beginning of November, ostensibly so we could more easily see some doctors in LA, but stayed permanently rather than returning because it was such a relief to be away from their mess and the clarity that came with the lack of them messing with our head all the time and telling us we were misperceiving or misunderstanding things.

-Amaranth

[lithophiles]

Just putting in a few clarifications for the record here about what happened:

Saffron (someone in our system) did offer to let Astraea share the truck Katz rented, but told them that they would have to get everything either into storage or into their new place within 24 hours. Instead, they just kept sorting through their stuff (at a snail's pace) and more and more and more of it had to be packed, and all we could do was stand around and watch while they decided what was and wasn't important, and Saffron would pack whatever they decided was important. She didn't want them to lose their furniture, especially since some of it originally came from us, so she helped them pack what was left of that too-- again, with the expectation that it would all be unloaded within 24 hours.

It also turned out they had almost no room left in their own storage unit. Saffron offered to let them borrow ours if they co-paid the rent on it, because she didn't want to have to deal with them in our face sobbing about how they'd lost this or that that was important to them. None of us did; it was essentially emotional blackmail, because they know we always cave in when they start crying about the prospect of losing their belongings and talk about other times in their life when they lost things.

"We'll be done on Sunday" turned into "We'll be done on Monday" turned into "We'll be done on Tuesday," at which point the landlords could not give them any more extensions. The apartment has already been rented to someone else. The maintenance just needs to go in and clean it.

The actual details of what happened to the truck padlock key were even worse than you mentioned, though. Since we didn't have it, we thought it must be in Astraea's possession. They told us they had no idea where it was, and it finally turned out that they had left it behind in the old apartment. They had to call the office to get special permission for us to re-enter the apartment we were supposed to have vacated, in order to retrieve it. They said that "we left it behind in all the confusion," but that confusion and mess would not have existed if they had planned in advance like we had been telling them to do for months, rather than leaving everything till the last minute and packing more boxes in three days than they had done in the three weeks leading up to then! As a result, we didn't get it back until an hour before the storage place closed, and had to haul ass with Katz to get everything out of the truck, sort ours from theirs, put our stuff in the unit, and their stuff back into the truck, and just barely got out three minutes before management locked the gate. It's amazing what you can do when someone is actually prepared to work with you rather than passive-aggressively come up with reasons why they've made almost no progress and escalate into screaming arguments when you suspect them of not being entirely honest.

It's true that they don't have a lot of money. Because a lot of what you saw came from us. From our savings and the money we inherited from our father when he died. The professional movers were over $300; we paid for half of it, and one of their long-distance friends paid the other half. We expected that they were going to actually BOX most of their stuff. Instead, they only had the movers take the furniture that they expected we would not be able to lift, we realised later. With the expectation of us being their unpaid labour/money dispenser/truck procurer/general saviour when it came time to move the rest. Just as we had done during our last two moves with them.

As for that gated apartment, the majority of the money on the rent-- for the last two months, after promising again and again this was the last time they'd ask us for rent money-- also came from those now thoroughly depleted savings. And though we had been asking them for ten years to help facilitate us through looking for a regular job, while they called themselves our facilitator to everyone they spoke with, they did nothing except drive us around and act like this constituted exhausting labour on their part. Even as we got health insurance, saw new doctors, got new treatments, and our diagnoses piled up and we began to figure out what exactly our problems were and how to deal with them. They seemed to think they were our saintly caretakers just because they bought us Nyquil at CVS, and similar things, while in reality, they did nothing particularly helpful and did nothing to help us find a job, even a work-from-home one. Even when we offered to help them expand their jewelry business, they seemed to go out of their way to forget that we had ever promised it or invite us to collaborate on projects together.

(Also, just in case people are worried-- we're not sleeping on the street or anything; we're living in a hostel in LA. But it still technically counts as homelessness in the sense of not having a fixed place to live or a place where we can receive mail.)

-Amaranth

[lb_lee]

I figure most of your comment stands on its own, though I want to point out that there's a big difference between what you stated ("You can use my truck but only in this limited way,") and how Astraea acted on it--taking it without asking, commandeering it for DAYS and racking up tons of time, stress, and costs, then trying to whine and weasel their way out of it.

I'm sure you already know this, just making it clear that their behavior is completely unacceptable and clearly not just a matter of misunderstanding--because all of Astraea's "misunderstandings" always seem to benefit themselves and hurt everyone else.

[talewisefellowship]

wow astraea are absolutely terrible. Im glad so many good ppl have amorpha's backs!!

--Hikaru

[the_network]

dang we drop off of DW for a bit and everything goes to shit

I'm sorry you and Katz and Amphora had to go through all that, emotionally/physically/financially, no one deserves all that mess and I hope your fundraising for Amphora goes well <3

[lb_lee]

It has! Together, we've raised almost $700 for Amorpha! So at least there's that.

Astraea have been a problem for a long time. Though I admit, even I didn't expect them to going a truck.

Astraea= Jerks

[mint_phalanx]

Why were we upset that their website was suspended for a bit? (Oh, right. Consortium's Multiple Code.)

Re: Astraea= Jerks

[lb_lee]

The Wayback Machine has it! You need never rely on Astraea's webhosting again. Also maybe the Consortium have other stuff on their old site you might like.

Re: Astraea= Jerks

[mint_phalanx]

Ok.