My (F27) (now ex) partner and I (M30) shared use of a car that she owned. For grocery runs, commuting to work, errands, regular household stuff.
This is the point of the argument. She was very upset that I didn’t adjust the mirrors and seating position "back to how I found it". Her reasoning was the following:
1. "When you borrow something, you return it how you (as far as possible) return it in the same condition you found it. eg: if you used 20 dollars worth of fuel, you replace that 20 dollars worth of fuel."
2. "I shouldn’t have to adjust it when it’s my car and you are the one who borrowed it. It’s your responsibility to re-adjust it back, not mine. If it was your car the situation would be reversed."
My reasoning was the following:
1. we are different heights and very different driving positions. It is therefore literally impossible for me to know the exact positions of the mirrors and driver’s seat because my body has different proportions.
2. It’s the responsibility of the driver to check mirrors and seating position EVERY TIME they get behind the wheel –especially if someone else drives the same car because of the above reason.
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Other important details:
It’s a late 2000s Ford SUV with none of the modern trims like auto-adjust seating and mirror positions. I know some more modern cars have features where you can program a specific set of positions for each driver so you don’t have to spend time adjusting every time you swap drivers.
This car didn’t have any such features. It doesn’t have indicator marks on the seat rack. It doesn’t have position indicators for the mirrors. It doesn’t have anything like that. It’s all old school manual self-adjust.
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She maintained that I was being pedantic and that I was fobbing responsibility off to her, and that I was being inconsiderate of her and things that belong to her.
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This isn’t the reason why she’s now my ex, that was for something completely unrelated. I am just trying to do my due diligence and check myself in case my perception is wrong.
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EDIT:
A lot of people think I never tried to re-adjust anything. I definitely have tried a number of times. There’s no programmable positions or anything. It’s an older car with completely manual adjusters and no indicators or fine-tune controls. So any adjustments I can make (as far as I have tried) are guesswork.
I even asked her to demonstrate and adjust everything to how she likes it, the re-adjusted it for myself, then tried to re-adjust it back. I couldn’t get it the way she likes and she thought I was using weaponised incompetence.
Yes, usually you should put things back the way you found them, but this is an exception. You’re absolutely correct. That’s just how things were.
Hell if you went back to the 70’s and 80’s with a pen and paper you’d probably be able to fill a book with sit-com scenes and standup-comic bits about the irritation of having someone else use your car and put everything out of whack.
NTA.
NTA. Having to adjust mirrors and seats is part of sharing a vehicle with someone.
NTA. Safety-adjusting before you drive is mandatory, and recreating someone else’s exact manual settings is guesswork. Return fuel, not ergonomics. If she wanted set-and-forget, memory seats are the solution, not your clairvoyance.
NTA. I feel like the people calling you TA have never driven before.