Give someone an inch and they’ll take a yard: 1 (London)

In the last month or so, a woman in her 40s has started coming regularly to the library I spend a lot of time in myself.  She must also have noted the fact that I’m a regular myself, because one day she asked me to look after her rucksack while she went to the loo, saying, “You know me.”

A couple of weeks later, on my Saturday night pub shift, I found her sitting at one of the tables in the raised area, which is out of the direct view of the bar area.  I later discovered the significance of her choice of seating area: she is a homeless person, with a shopping luggage trolley type of contraption all loaded up with plastic bags of her belongings, sitting a bit of distance away from her — presumably so that the staff wouldn’t connect it with her and decide to make her leave the premises.  Out of pity, I didn’t draw my colleagues’ attention to this non-paying presence.  After all, it wasn’t busy at the time, and it was cold outside.

Last week, I was watching a Chinese TV period drama on YouTube on my computer at the library when she asked me to look after her Huawei Tablet.  (So, she might be homeless but she has a Huawei Tablet!)  She said she was going to the loo and would be a couple of minutes, five at the most.  I agreed.

When she came back from the loo, she asked me to mind her things for another five minutes while she nipped out for some coffee, but she was away for ten.

Yes, she openly drinks her coffee in the library, just as the other regulars (a group of Greek, Cypriot and/or Turkish old men) openly and loudly chat in a group around a big round table, treating the place like their local café.  (I have a sympathetic angle on this, as old people can get very lonely, so it’s nice that they have a social corner of their own.) I’d even occasionally found people eating a takeaway in there (ribs and chips, or something equally strong-smelling).  On more than one occasion, I’d spotted a woman in her 50s plucking the hairs on her chin with a pair of tweezers by one of the bookcases as the light there is good.  Another regular — a woman in her 70s with Parkinson’s — openly eats her sausages while doing her crossword puzzles.

This morning, the homeless woman approached me to look after her rucksack again, saying, “Can you look after my bag for two minutes?”  I hesitated, saying, “Umm, I need to leave soon, to go and teach.”  She said, “Just two minutes.”  I reluctantly said OK but stressed that I really had to leave.  She then went and spoilt it all for herself by saying, “Maybe five minutes?”

That was when I decided she couldn’t be trusted.  She had already done it to me once before, saying she’d be gone five minutes but took ten.  (No, she didn’t explain upon return why she’d been gone longer than she said she would be.)  Today, however, I had to go and teach, so I couldn’t afford to be late, especially since it’s a group of three students.  I’m a seriously responsible person:  if I’ve agreed to look after someone’s things, I don’t up and leave when I need to go, even if they don’t come back at the promised time.  She, on her part, doesn’t seem to have the same sense of responsible behaviour.

There’s a Chinese phrase for this:  得寸进尺 dé cùn jìn chǐ / “get inch enter foot” — to go on further to take a foot after getting an inch.

Aesop's "The boy who cried wolf" also comes to mind.

(London, 2018)