AITJ for kiking my friend out my apartment on the day he got fired?
My friend moved in with me last summer after braking up with his girlfriend. He'd been sleeping in his car for a couple of days and looked completely devastated, so i offered to let hi stay with me temporarily. The deal was simple a month at most, until he found a job and place to live. He doesn't have any family here, all his relatives are in another state so he didn't realy have any other options at the time.
At first, everything was fine. He got a job at an small electronics store, chipped in for the rent, and sometimes bought some food for us. Then things started getting weird.
I’m a creature of habit. I always leave my watch, wallet and keys in the same spots. And I started noticing that things weren’t where I’d left them. A couple of times, money went missing from my jacket pockets. Not huge amounts, like 10 or 20 bucks, but enough to notice.
One day I came home early and saw him coming out of my room. He immediately started saying he was looking for the vacuum cleaner, even though it’s in the storage room and he knows that perfectly. After that, I started feeling strange.
Thover. So a couple of weeks later, I set up my old phone to record in my room, a place he wasn’t even supposed to go into . And yeah, I know, it sounds sketchy.
In the video, i saw hom him rummaging through my desk, opening the envelope with the cash for black day, taking a few bills, then putting on my watch and filming himself in the mirror. He also sends someone a voice message saying something like, yeah he’s got so much stuff here, he won’t even notice a missing.
I felt my whole world collapse inside. But I didn’t make a scene right away. Honestly, I was in shock and, for some reason, hoped he’d confess on his own, or give a refund. That didn’t happen.
A couple of weeks later, he got fired. As far as I understood, it was because of being late and constant conflicts at work. That evening, he came home very angry, started complaining about what a jerk his boss was, and then asked me for money until next month.
And that’s when I just snapped. I hadn’t planned on having a conversation that day at all, but after everything hearing yet another give me money was just too much for me. And I showed him the video.
At first he denied it, then said he hadn’t stolen anything, but had borrowed it and was planning to return it. Then he started accusing me of being crazy for filming him without permission. I told him to pack his things and leave now.
In the end, he left to stay with some acquaintance from work. Some of my friends say I did everything right. Others think I could have given him at least a week after firing him.
And now I don’t know. Because yes, he lied to my face for months. But the thought that I kicked him out right after firing him still lingers in my mind.
TL;DR: I took a friend in when he was going through a tough time, but he turned out to be a thief, so i kicked him out on the day he was fired.