"I need an example of an action with good intentions behind it that didn't turn out so well."

Pretty much every law passed with good intentions fits. I know, the personal touch. Still...

Looking for examples a little more, uh, shall I say, heartwarming?

Many years ago I was in S. Korea with a Korean girlfriend. I was the "rich" American G.I. So my Korean girlfriend wasn't crazy about my style (jeans and t-shirts any time I was off duty).

So she goes out with her limited funds and buys me a pair of shorts and and shirt in the style she'd like me to adopt, but she got the sizes wrong (too small).

So then in my ineptness at the time, I went with her to exchange them. Instead of getting the same clothing in a larger size, I changed what she had bought for something else entirely.

She never said a thing, but I found out later, through the roundabout, that she felt that I didn't value her opinion.

We wouldn't have survived as a couple anyway, but I don't think that helped.

Just happened yesterday- I was giving someone a ride and asked "do you want to take the scenic route through the mountains or the freeway?" This person was in a hurry, and answered "the freeway". A mile into the freeway, gridlock due to a fire about 8 miles down, so it took about 90 minutes to go 15 miles. (This is Idaho so not anywhere to just turn off.)

This person started freaking out after 30 minutes and began to blame me. I wasn't about to drive along the shoulder or use the emergency vehicle only turnarounds, so I wasn't being helpful or cooperative, and making this person late.

When we finally got to the destination no thank you or even goodbye.

As I get older I realize more and more that no good deed goes unpunished.

I generally dont like people. But the best exaple I can come up with all revolve around a food bank.

I was between jobs, low on money and another vet I knew told me about this program out of a local VFW. Turns out the VFW just hosted them.

The lady coordinating it got sick, or her husband did, so I along with my mother took it running it. Within a few months we had spread the word around that the food bank went from serving 10 people a month to nearly 100 twice a month. The VFW did like the traffic even though the members (even the ones using the food bank) never helped set up or break down and clean up, so they "withdrew [their] invitation" to use the facility

Just thought of another one, Amy. A couple years back a friend of my ex-wife got a serious computer virus and was in a panic because she never backed anything up. She worked at my kid's school, so I was happy to make a few brownie points for my son. I spent most of the weekend burning her files to CD's and repairing the damage, repairing her registry, basically making the laptop like new. I went far beyond just getting rid of the viruses.

The bitch never said a word of thanks to me, but treated herself and my ex-wife to a spa day.

>> Also, I used to be "pathologically altruistic,"

There are still a few people I will do anything for, but that number seems to drop by 1 a year or so.

PS- Amy.

Your question is a difficult one, because shit happens. Most of the time we all just chalk it up to chance and forget about it.

PPS- If you (and Gregg, of course) were in Idaho tonight, I could offer you a beautiful Ribeye with a rose\green peppercorn sauce, baked potato, garlic bread and homemade Ceaser salad. First time I've really cooked since the snow melted!

http://www.food.com/recipe/the-perfect-steak-says-chef-fabio-475322

My mom came to stay with us when my son was born in January. She thought our fish (several mollies and their offspring) looked hungry, naturally she fed them. Being pets, fish always act hungry, and a lot of people don't know how little they actually need to eat. She gave them like a week's worth of food. Of course a bunch ended up lying around uneaten and would decay and produce poisonous nitrates, so I had to vacuum the tank and change the water.

Also once my MIL bought us new towels because she thought we needed some. I don't think she could have picked a color that I like less.

First and last time with a former GF. I was blotto and I suspect she was too. As we were gettin' down to business she said "It would help if you were harder." I promptly blacked out and have no idea what happened after that. Against my will, my heart stayed in that moment for a very long time.

Hopefully these are nicer:

When my daughter was young she wanted a dog. My then-wife said that wouldn't happen until the cat was gone. So my daughter put the cat outside. My wife found her by the sliding screen door with a funny look on her face. Luckily the cat was not at all an adventurous sort and was easily retrieved.

Around the same time, I let my then 7-year-old son help me with the leaf blowing. I put eye and ear protection on him but he didn't grasp a key concept: the leaves needed to be blown away from the house.

I was strolling around the neighborhood when I saw a cat I thought I recognized loitering on a friend's front porch / concrete slab. I approached it and it let me pick it up. I walked back to my next-door neighbor's house and "returned" their cat to them, just to be told it wasn't their cat. I walked back and put the cat where I found it.

Once when I was a teen, Goodwill came by to pick up donated clothes. My mom wasn't home, so I found the bag she had set aside and handed it over. Turns out I gave them all of my parents' dry cleaning; the donation bag was in another room. My parents were unable to retrieve their clothes.

A friend and I were visiting a couple we know who were living in London at the time. We noticed that one of them (hereinafter referred to as the "Idiot" left his resume face-side up on the desk that was in kitchen/living room (where I was sleeping on the sofa). We assumed that he wanted us to look at it, because the Idiot was always asking for help with just about anything anyway. So we edited his resume (which, of course, was a complete mess). When he got home, instead of thanking us, he screamed at us for being nosy and going through his things - when the reality was the Idiot was too stupid to put his resume out of sight.

This couple moved back near me a while back and the Idiot called me up one day and said: "I think I pulled some muscles in my back working out at the gym. Will you come over and take care of me and Morrison (their dog)?" Well, with the resume episode and so many other incidents with him, I respectfully declined.

There has been so many yet I can only recall one that I think qualifies.

My grandfather left some money to his brothers and sisters. Not a lot at all but significant. The trouble was for 2 of them that messed up their hardship aid (for like nursing care - they were all in their 90s) because now they had too much money to qualify for at least some of the programs...yet the money wasn't really all that much and was a one time deal. Of course they couldn't turn down the money because that would also end the eligibility. It took quite some time to get it sorted out and I don't know what really ended up happening.

I agree it is hard to remember examples. But had to share what this made me think of:

2 Arigata-meiwaku (Japanese): An act someone does for you that you didn’t want to have them do and tried to avoid having them do, but they went ahead anyway, determined to do you a favor, and then things went wrong and caused you a lot of trouble, yet in the end social conventions required you to express gratitude

Former co-worker (from a previous job), currently unemployed due to a layoff, contacts you about opportunities at your current job.

Having sympathy for a friend, you help them with their mediocre resume (which is mediocre despite their many skills), coach them on interview questions, and make the introduction to HR.

They get hired. They thank you profusely...

...and spend the next 2 months refusing to learn the details of their new position, being "awol", gossiping incessantly, and making you look like an idiot to the HR department to whom you recommended him.

None of this behavior was in evidence when you worked with him before. You made the recommendation with the memory of their good work in the past.

He gets fired (for cause). And then he won't stop calling you and alternately:

1) Blaming you for putting him into a bad position,

2) Accusing the company of being biased, and

3) Asking for another chance/asking about other job leads

All the while, completely immune to self-introspection.

Amy,

Do you know the origin of the the expression "It's a white elephant"?

Very interesting history.

I think this is common for those who live in organized chaos.

I can think of a few times somebody thought they were helping me by straightening up/putting things away, but really they created more work for me because now I don't know where anything is.

I may have piles of paper and whatnot, but I know what are in the piles even if it looks disorganized/messy to an outsider.

It was the week before Christmas in 1976. My 18-year-old, cute, charming but childishly naive wife of four months and I had a grand total of $26 to our name, all cash, which we kept in her purse. The expiration date for the liability insurance on the old truck I used for work was 12:01 AM that night. The bill was $22. If I didn't make the payment that day I would have no insurance and couldn't use the truck for work. There would be no money coming in for a long time.

I had to go to the insurance agent's office that day and make the payment in cash. I didn't finish work that day until after the insurance office closed, but if I put cash in the payment envelope and slid it under the door they would count it as paid before the 12:01 AM deadline.

During the day while I was at work my awesome young wife walked several miles to two different department stores and spent just over $25, pretty much all we had, on two Christmas gifts for me, which she hid under the bed to surprise me with on Christmas (bless her precious heart, she spent all we had without a thought for herself; she was always like that).

When I got home that night and asked for the money to make the payment, she sweetly tried to evade telling me what she had done, but I got annoyed and insisted that she tell me. I tried to explain to her that without the insurance I couldn't use the truck for work, and in that case the little bit of change she had left would be the last money we'd see for quite some time, and we wouldn't be able to pay rent on the first, or utilities, or buy food; and I needed the $4 we'd have left after the insurance payment to buy gas to finish a job the next day, for which I would be paid the day after that and we'd be OK through Christmas; so we needed to hurry and return the gifts before the stores closed so we could get the money back.

She said she understood and didn't argue with me, and handed over the gifts. But she cried on the way to return them and I felt like a shithead. I'm sure she still didn't really get why her gifts were not more valuable than insurance.

We were married for almost 29 years, and have been divorced for eight. She's still beautiful and charming and childishly naive, and says nice things about me to our daughters and grandchildren (as I do about her). Whenever I think about that first Christmas it makes me feel kind of low.

My mom came to stay with me a few weeks ago while I was recovering from surgery. She took the trash out for us several times while she was here. Which was really nice. But she didn't know that the green can is recycling only, and put the trash in there. The the trash truck won't empty the green ones, and the recycling truck wouldn't take the trash. So we ended up having to empty the can and properly sort it, after it had been marinating in the Texas sun a week. There were maggots. It was awful.

Our second Christmas, when my wife was 19 and I was 23, also included a well intentioned blunder by me, but it luckily had a better ending.

My parents were hosting a family Christmas party at their home on Christmas Eve. Those family holiday parties would have 30 to 40 people. My mother wanted to have a gift exchange, but knowing that many of us younger couples were barely making it financially, she didn’t want to impose the cost of an extra gift on everyone. So she asked all of the couples to each bring a gift they had gotten for their husband/wife/boyfriend/girlfriend, to be opened at the party. She thought it would be fun for everyone to watch each person receive a gift from his or her sweetheart.

On the night of the party our only transportation, an old 1960 Ford ton-and-a-half flatbed truck, was having problems, and by the time I got it running we were running late. As I was getting the truck started I paid no attention to my wife as she gathered up the baby and randomly snatched up two of the small, wrapped gifts we had gotten for each other.

One of my well intentioned acts that Christmas was getting my cute, sexy, lovely wife her very first vibrator, meant to be opened early Christmas morning, or perhaps late on Christmas Eve in the privacy of our own home. Where it went wrong was that was the gift she randomly snatched up as she raced out the door.

At the party there was chatter and laughter and compliments, and sometimes hoots and whistles as each person opened their gift. I was sitting next to my wife on the sofa. When it was her turn and she started unwrapping her present, that’s when I first realized which gift she’d brought. I just sat there dumbfounded thinking, “Oh… My… God.” She enthusiastically tore the wrapping paper off and held her gift up as she looked at it for the first time, such that she was finding out what it was at the same time she was showing everyone else. The whole room went dead silent for about three seconds. My wife tried to quickly jam the present down between the couch cushions while giving me a shocked, hurt look that said, “Why would you embarrass me in front of everyone like that?” Then the whole room broke into cheers, laughter, hoots, whistles and applause. For the rest of the party other women kept teasing and joking with my wife, telling her she’d gotten the best gift, that I was the best husband there, that she was the luckiest wife, that they were jealous, that they wished their husbands were thoughtful enough to get them a vibrator for Christmas, and on and on. Maybe they were trying to make her feel better, or save my ass, or really meant it. By the time we got home that night she was still embarrassed, but happy.

I worked through the weekend and have been listening to your blog talk radio online for the better part of two days. Today I heard that interview and wondered about all the odd noises in the background. Funny to read your blog at the end of the day and have the mystery solved.

Last year I was trying to help a friend get hooked up with a new job. She easily met the qualifications; it was going to be an easy internal transfer, and the hiring manager didn't have any other good candidates. It was nearly a done deal. Then, the day she was supposed to interview, a hiring freeze went into effect. It's still in effect. What I didn't know was that she had turned down another offer because she wanted this job. So now she's still stuck in her old job, which she hates.