I am perpetually stunned by the enormous number of people with so much time to toss-off massive numbers of missives about subjects with little meaning or importance. You should all just go suck some nice dick. Seriously.

My grandmother sorts her cash in order, all facing the same direction, and does this immediately whenever she makes a transaction. She always tells me that if you respect money, it will respect you. The boyfriend doesn't have much money, and he doesn't seem to respect the money he's got. He is gifted (whether graciously or not) with this trip to Africa, and in the process he loses $1000.

This seems like a small price to pay for a lavish vacation, although obviously such an unexpected expense can be a shock and can cause logistical problems. Maybe he should have revealed the theft in that kind of a light: "I hate to inconvenience everyone, but I've made the mistake of leaving my wallet out in the open, and now a thousand dollars are missing. Can someone let me know how to contact my family back in the States so that they can wire me a loan?"

On the other hand, a host has some responsibility to help advise guests about local precautions and customs. That is, the good host might have offered advice up front about where to store valuables. But I've let people I hardly know crash in my living room before. I don't feel terribly obligated to those people, beyond offering to draw them a map to a good local restaurant and telling them to feel free to raid the fridge. What would I do if such a person came to me and told me that he was missing a large amount of money? I would offer to help do anything I could to investigate the loss.

I can't pony up a grand to anyone except my landlord, quite frankly, and while I would give the stranger the benefit of the doubt and trust they're being honest, instead of just slipping them some cash under the table, I might call the police, ask the guest to make a statement, and see whether my insurance company would or wouldn't help reimburse that guest. If I had servants (pretty big "if"), I would expect them, as potential witnesses, to cooperate with the authorities. I would leave the matter in the hands of the professionals, where it belongs. I would offer to help that individual compensate for the money loss (eg "I can give you a ride to the museum" or "I can let you borrow some cash."), but I don't think I would immediately reimburse the person until I had a clearer picture of the events surrounding the supposed theft. I might change my mind if I realized I had left the doors unlocked, though. Should a host, probably pressured by social obligation into allowing a stranger into his house pay $1000 on the word that that guest has been robbed while inside? I would really want a real investigator of some sort to weigh in on what most likely transpired.

I find this letter a little weird: the homeowner didn't seem very disturbed by the theft. Why would a maid risk a theft she'd be immediately suspected of committing? Why would a homeowner be so casual about hearing about that large of a theft? This all seems very suspicious to me. I don't blame the father for feeling as though he has spent an unreasonable amount of money on the boyfriend, trip included. He probably didn't even want the guy to come, but if he truly extended the invitation, then he should be gracious about that. The girlfriend should have known her own family well enough to know whether or not her parents sincerely wanted the boyfriend to come along on the trip. Resentment builds up over time, and it sounds to me as though the father's feelings are not purely related to this one incident. The daughter should be worried about the future of her relationship. She'd be a lucky girl if both her father and her boyfriend were big-hearted enough to be willing to pay, but it sounds like she's stuck with two jerks here: a boyfriend who won't take responsibility for his belongings and unabashedly freeloads off her family's vacation and a father who resents people for accepting offers of generosity and puts a price-tag on his approval. Add to that a host who seems, while willing to reimburse the money, not entirely open and honest about his household security....But why aren't any of these people more worried about what really happened?

Maybe this is a case for Judge Judy, or Encyclopedia Brown.

Wow cosicmojo, that's a wonderful analogy...if the guest "left the window open"...I guess if we want to play that game, what if the guest was staying in a house that wasn't air conditioned? What if somebody else opened the window and the dog peed on the guest's suitcase, and the guest was never aware of it? What if, what if, what if...

This is very simple...guest is staying at the host's home (who's apparently well off and not lacking money). Guest makes assumption (however wrong) that his possesions are safe. Guest has possession stolen. Host, out of the goodness of his heart, remedies the situation. Guest is satisfied, host is satisfied...

This would be the end of the story, had the father not intervened in the matter. That's what the rest of this story is about, not the reimbursement itself...

I disagree. Are you saying that thieves can't open drawers and look in closets? The boyfriend was in a private home, under the protection of the host and the associated protection of the daughter's parents. In a private home, a larger degree of trust is the norm, and if you want to talk about social contracts, that increased degree of trust in a private home is because, to behave otherwise, as if no one in the home can be trusted, would really have been a breach of a social contract.

Blaming the victim for someone else's crime is always interesting to me. Why do people do that? I think it's because they don't want to believe a crime can be committed against themselves. After all, there must be some complicity between victim and perpetrator or heck, it could happen to anybody. Since crime can and does happen to everyone, whether they 'deserve' it or not (how heartless and ridiculous is that 'he deserved it' stuff, by the way--right, well ...). I stand firmly by my conclusions. A reasonable degree of safety in a private home includes all contents within the house, be they on the counter, on the floor, in a drawer, in a safe, in a closet, etc.

And, your comparison (of the dog and suitcase) doesn't follow, not unless the boyfriend left a door to the house open and an arrow pointing the way to the wallet. Plus, if a dog in my neighborhood jumped through my window and peed in a guest's suitcase, that would still have occurred in my house, and I would be taking care of it. After I found the dog and put it in the circus ...

The one truly responsible for the theft itself is the thief.