Most people have a horror of being thought a tightwad, but this affair raises the question of what is the appropriate response when the laziness, thoughtlessness or possibly mean-spirited calculation of others causes inconvenience and/or financial loss.
Some years ago a group of us decided to have a Christmas banquet. Everyone was allocated responsibility for a component of the meal on the clear understanding that the boat was to be pushed out.
And everyone played their part, except the couple in charge of the salad. They turned up an hour late with some wilting, indeterminate vegetation they'd obtained at a suburban supermarket en route. Needless to say, their abject failure to enter into the spirit of things didn't prevent them from hoeing into the other courses which the rest of us had gone to some trouble and expense over.
Little was said and nothing was done but we would've been within our rights to have demanded a financial contribution in the absence of any other sort.
When you think about it, there are a few social behaviours that call for an invoice:
• When someone borrows a book and doesn't return it. This happens all the time, but that doesn't make it any less inexcusable since either the owner has pressed the book on the other party in the certain knowledge they'll derive enjoyment or enlightenment from it, or the other party has expressed such interest that the owner has felt obliged to lend it to them. If the owner's name is on the flyleaf, they should be entitled to add a 25 per cent surcharge to the replacement cost. If there's a note indicating this particular volume has some sentimental value " "New York, December 81" - a 50 per cent surcharge would be in order. Paradoxically, this shouldn't apply to rare books such as Kim Dotcom's signed copy of Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf which, he assures us, he bought for its investment potential rather than to curl up with of an evening. You wouldn't lend your 1957 Ferrari 250 GT 14-Louvre Berlinetta - only nine were built, one of which sold at auction for $11 million in 2013 - to someone to go hooning around the Coromandel, so why take risks with a precious book?
• When someone brings a bottle of cheap plonk to a dinner party, thrusts it at the host, then makes a beeline for the good stuff. A swingeing surcharge would be appropriate if said plonk is a particularly insipid white wine.
• When someone brings a few stringy supermarket sausages to a BYO barbecue, then proceeds to eat more than their fair share of the garlic prawns.
• When people who only smoke OPs - other people's cigarettes - go on the bludge. When smoking first became disreputable, smokers were usually mildly gratified to be asked for a fag since it made them feel less of a pariah. Now that the price has gone through the roof, habitual smokers are less inclined to be a charity for social smokers. Again, a swingeing surcharge would be in order if, on lighting up, the bludger smugly announces he/she can have a puff without the slightest urge to smoke the next day.
