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Forgetting a phone charger at a friend’s house is understandable. Forgetting what sounds like the majority of your closet, bathroom and skincare routine requires a little more explanation.

One woman recently moved into a new house with two friends and accepted some moving-day help from a longtime buddy they affectionately describe as quite the “character.”

He can be incredibly loyal and helpful, but he also has a history of being oblivious to other people’s boundaries—particularly when weed is involved. So when he offered to help with the move, his friends agreed on one condition: the visit would last only three days.

Initially, everything went great. He helped them move, everyone went out together and the new roommates appreciated the extra set of hands.

Then his behavior started getting a little strange.

By the time he drove home, however, the bigger surprise wasn’t what he had done during the visit.

It was what he had somehow managed to leave behind.

What started with a few forgotten skincare products soon became an estimated 50 pounds of personal belongings—and apparently, he expected his friends to package and ship every last bit.

AITA for refusing to ship my friends stuff back?

Me (F24) and 2 friends ( S (F24) and H (M25)) just moved into a new house together. S and I have known each other for 15+ years and so have a few shared friends from each others respective schools.

One of them is “Hambo”(M25). Hambo is quite a character; a ride or die kind of friend but he also can be extremely oblivious to the point where it’s disrespectful.

Weed also makes this 10X worse. There was a prior incident that led us to believe he might revalue his intake and a conversation with S about being more mindful of others and their boundaries.

Yikes.

Fast forward to move in day, he offers to come help us and me and S agree as long as he only stays 3 days ( we love him to death but he can be a very stress inducing personality and we are in the middle of moving).

Moving day arrives, he’s super helpful and we have a lovely move in and night out afterwards.

However, the next night he begins acting weird. Eating all of the brownies we made, dumping an entire storage container of pasta in cold water to cook, all fairly small things but reminiscent of the other visit I previously mentioned that turned out not okay.

Definitely sounds odd.

The next morning, I leave for work pretty early and when I get back i see his location is on the road so I assume he’s left.

I notice some small things in the house that we gave him are still here that he left. 15 minutes later he texts me he is at the door because he left his stuff so I let him in and help him gather the things I saw in the living room.

Well by help I mean he stands on the porch with the door closed and asks me to get everything for him. I do and he drives off.

Byeeee.

An hour later, he texts the group chat asking if someone could mail his skincare that he left on a shelf. I text him separately and say yes.

Around 30 min or so later, as I’m unpacking my room, I come across an entire laundry hamper of his clothes. I text him and say he probably just needs to come back and get it ( he lives around 1:30 from our house but will be leaving for school in another state 6 days from then).

He says no, ship that to me too. It’s like 20lbs of clothes and that’s not going to be cheap.

No way.

We exchange some texts basically saying it’s too much stuff for us to ship and it’s going to be cheaper to just drive back and he can hang out with us another night. He claims we are holding his stuff hostage.

We later find two more FULL book bags of his clothes, blankets, skincare, and a caddy of bathroom stuff and medications.

This all adds up to like 50lbs at this point. We tell him this and that it’s too much for us to ship ( he said he would pay the fee fyi) and that it would be cheaper for him and easier for him to just come up and visit again before he has to leave the state.

Just trying to help a brother out…

No response.I decide to offer to meet him halfway but when I go to text him I see his location is already headed to school out of state 5 days early.

I don’t know how he forgot it all, it’s like his entire closet and bathroom.

AITA for saying I won’t ship it to him?

Agreeing to mail a few forgotten skincare products is a reasonable favor. Discovering an entire hamper, two backpacks, blankets, toiletries and medication changes the scale of that favor considerably.

Even if the friend offered to pay the shipping costs, someone would still have to gather everything, find suitable boxes, pack roughly 50 pounds of belongings and get those packages shipped. That’s a significant errand created entirely because he left an astonishing amount of his stuff behind.

His friends also gave him alternatives. They told him to come back, invited him to stay another night and were even considering meeting him halfway. Instead, he apparently left for school several days earlier than expected without arranging to retrieve anything.

Calling that “holding his stuff hostage” is unfair. They aren’t refusing to return his possessions or demanding something in exchange. They simply don’t want responsibility for transporting them across state lines.

The medications may deserve some urgency, so finding a practical way to get those to him separately would be considerate if he needs them. But the rest can wait for a mutually workable pickup plan.

Forgetting your belongings creates a problem. It doesn’t automatically assign that problem to whoever happens to find them.

This. person says just let him pay for it.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a person who calls on dozens of whirlygigs to combat the neighbor’s complaints about the fence.

This person thinks this was done on purpose.

And this person has a lot of questions and opinions…

Leaving 50 pounds of your belongings behind doesn’t turn your friends into a complimentary packing and shipping department.