Perils of the well-intentioned

I don't like people who are good-intentioned, they are some of the most unpredictable and scary people I know. Once I visited a city that was renowned for its "nice" people. Driving there was a nightmare. Instead of behaving appropriately (and thereby predictably), they would go out of their way to "accommodate" other drivers, often leading to dangerous situations in which no one knew what was going on or who had the right of way.

One day on this most recent trip I was at the mercy of a well-intentioned driver. I was staying out in the countryside with some friends. To get anywhere, we had to rent a taxi. I needed to go into the city to run some errands so I called a cab. On the 40 minute ride into the city, my friend who more or less spoke the native language (expat from home, but of the same ethnicity) translated to me that the driver wanted the return fare, so offered to just drive us from place to place. I was fine with that and we went about our business, eating, shopping, and picking up stuff for the next few days. We told the cab driver to be on a look out for an ATM for my bank -- an international bank with many ATMs in the center of the city, but not out where we were staying. The reason I was so determined to go to my ATM was I had a special account that didn't charge me any foreign fees at all if I used their ATMs, whereas another ATM would charge me their fee plus my bank's fee, plus an additional 3% to my bank and I wanted to take out a large sum of money.

I needed to get money that trip because I needed local currency to pay the cab driver. He knew as much from my friend explaining that to him. We never passed an ATM during our errands, but we did pass by one on a side street just as we were leaving downtown. We told our cab driver to turn left, but he hesitated too long, then thought it too difficult, and continued driving, assuring us that there were plenty of my bank's ATMs on the route home that would be on the right side of the street -- we wouldn't have to go out of our way and could keep the fare down. We showed him the logo on my bank card just to be sure he understood and he said that he was 100% certain that there would be an ATM for my bank on the way home. I didn't insist on going back to the ATM because I wanted to believe him, and I didn't want to insult my friend, who the previous evening had been deriding all of the other expats who treat the natives as second class citizens in their own country.

My friend trusted the cab driver because he was so good-intentioned (had "helped" us "not get ripped off" before with a local tradesman earlier in the day), and continued to relay messages to me about how we were "certain" to find an ATM, until suddenly the cab driver wasn't certain at all.

After about 20 minutes of driving when we were about to leave the outskirts of the city, the cab driver started trying to get me to use any ATM we passed. I hated him by then. He apparently knew by that time that he had made a mistake and didn't want to bear the consequences of it by not being paid in his preferred form of local currency. I insisted that we keep trying to find my bank. I was angry, I told my friend to tell him that while he was "saving" us a pittance with the local tradesman, he was costing me roughly the cost of that long cab ride or more in fees. Plus I was "certain" that there was an ATM right by my friend's house, something the cab driver vehemently denied, although I turned out to be right.

It wasn't the money, of course. If we had never seen that ATM from my bank on the way out, I would have gladly paid the additional fees for the convenience of using another ATM. I was mainly angry because I had trusted the cab driver in a half-heated attempt to be agreeable.

I should have realized that the cab driver's "helping" us meant that he was a well-intentioned person. I would have preferred a neutral cab driver, or even a crooked one over this guy -- someone whose self-interest would have made him go back to that first ATM so he would be sure he would get paid. Instead I got someone who presumed to know better than I did what was best for me. It's that presumption that I hate most. The good-intentioned think that they are being a sort of saint, when really they are just arrogant meddlers.

See also imperialism.