Shauk

So, here's the situation.


I got WoW at launch, as did my Girlfriend.
we enjoyed the game, and came over from FFXI.

We convinced 2 more of our friends to come over to WoW. A friend I've known for 5 years, and his fiance, who he has a child with.


Also, 3 more friends we got were, 2 brothers, and thier roommate

So..

7 people I know IRL.

6 of these people have no problem maintaining a semblance of responsibility. 1 does. The friend of 5 years with the kid and fiance.

I bought him the game back when we worked at the same company together, He had been promoted to a manager posistion and was doing very well at his job.

After getting the game, he started missing work, started not doing very well at his job, and the head manager noticed a few errors with his work during one of his closing procedures, and left a note in the office for him.

My friend, already looking for a reason to quit, took this as "public embarrassment" since the note was where anyone could have read it.
He quit.

Since then he has jumped to 5 other jobs. Each being quit with a very lame excuse. "well someone else there made more money than me, I find that to be unfair since we have the same job"
"i don't like driving 30 minutes to get to work"
"They always make me stay an hour or 2 later than when I'm scheduled to get off"

All very lame reasons to quit.

If he was alone, I wouldn't care, As long as he was fending for himself, it wouldn't be an issue. But he has a 6 month old child. He doesn't take care of him. When his fiance is at work, he is playing WoW, and in the background, anytime he speaks, is a crying child.

So, in between his 4th and 5th job, I talked to a mutual friend of ours to get advice on my responsibility as his friend. Should I talk to him? Ask him if there is a problem?

Well, I gave my friend a timeline. He had been out of work for a month, His Fiance just started college, and is working, and taking care of thier kid, He's mooching off her financial aide money so he can sit around and play WoW all day.


It's heartbreaking to see him in this catatonic state, I try to call him on the phone, and he just cannot take a break and hold a coherent conversation. At 1st it wasn't as obvious, but later it became more apparent as he would sit there and talk on his headset to ventrilo saying things like "pull that mob, ill lay a freeze trap" and all that.

We all play wow, (me and the 7 that is) we all see his addiction as a problem. he spends over 14-18 hours a day. He's on from 11am-to as late as 3am.



Thats just my preamble.

Now the situation is this.

Between his 4th and 5th job, he was out of work for a month, I suggest that he go try working at this pizza place down the street, and he goes and applies, gets hired, and doesn't take the job immediately because he has plans to go to PAX, a gaming convention in seattle, to meet up with his guild members from SoCal. He's 27, and had his dad drive him over, and stayed at a guild members house over there because he had no money. At this point I wanted to talk to him about things, but I decided to see how his job at the pizza place went before I said anything.

Well he gets back, 3 days later he calls me when he should have been at work, and I ask him if he worked today or not. He said yeah, but he left early. I ask why, he says the other driver makes more money than him because he takes more runs. He tells me it has nothing to do with his lack of knowledge of the streets in this town, but rather, the manager is out to screw him because the other driver is his friend. I told him he needs to talk to the owner about that and have it dealt with, and he agreed. I've walked out on shifts before and kept my job after having a serious discussion with management.

When he went in and applied, i went in with him and filled out one too. Because I have previous experience, they wanted me to work, but I told them to hire my friend 1st because he needed the job more than I did (I already have one) So of course, 3 days after I talk to my friend where he says he walked out, The store owner calls me up and says he wants me to work, says that my friend quit, and that he never said a word to him.

At this point I feel lied to. At this very moment, I check our vent server attendance, and sure enough, our addict is there.
I called him up and told him I didn't appreciate being mislead into thinking that he was actually still working there when he was not. Told him about my conversation with the manager, and finally just broke down and told him that "I don't think you are making the best decision here regarding your employment, since this is your 5th job in the last 6 months. I'm concerned that you may have a problem and we should discuss it"

his response is "I won't even talk to my family about it, what makes you think I'll talk to you?"

At this point I really didn't have anything to say, but he became hostile on the phone, and I just said that we could talk about it later when he cooled off because I didn't mean to say it in a way that sounded hostile at all.


fast forward 2 days.

I'm playing the game before I head to bed for the night, he pops into my vent channel and says something like "I really don't need my friends to call me and tell me that I'm fucking up my life!" in front of about 8 people.

I just pretended to not be there, I had no desire to argue with him in front of 8 strangers and feed his penchance for drama.

a day later, he's typing the same thing in our guild chat saying stuff like "My friends like to call me up and tell me I'm worthless"

So at this point, I'm pissed, He lies to me about the situation surrounding his job, and then he lies to others about what I actually said to him.

I'm pissed, but I still want to help him out as a friend. I just don't know what to do anymore :\