I think it means that the father preferred to view the relationship as one of equals or partners. When the tenant starts playing games with the rent that forces the father's hand and makes the relationship adversarial in nature.
The sentiment reminds me of people who view their boss as the enemy always out to screw them vs an equal they work with to accomplish company goals. It depends a great deal on the general demeanor of the boss for sure but basic professionalism on the part of the employee goes a long way to keeping the boss from having to be the bad guy.
I think you're glossing over a very important part of this: the power imbalance. It's easy for bosses (or landlords) to think of their relationships with subordinates/tenants as one of "equals" as long as it benefits them. As soon as they perceive it doesn't, however, that imbalance becomes very much front-and-center. Any notion of equality in the relationship is either an illusion or temporary and it's best for all parties if they behave as though they recognize the imbalance and understand what it means.
I consider my manager as an "equal". I respect his "role power", but working for a small IT department we very much have a partnership. His role is to get strategy and priorities from on high, my role is tactical - implement the best architecture and training in the way I see fit within the very broad guidelines that he sets.
He has the power to guide my job but I also have the power to leave and find another job.
That works nice, as long as it lasts. Do you think your manager views your relationship as a partnership? What happens when his boss jumps on him for failing to deliver something, delivering something poorly, etc.? Are you sure he's not going to serve you up as a scapegoat?
If i am the lead dev/architect and he gave me the latitude to implement it the way I thought was best, why would I be the "scapegoat" and not the person that should shoulder the blame for a poorly implemented project?
On the other hand I don't over promise. I've told everyone that they can either impose a deadline or features but not both. In other words, they can tell me these are the features they need and I can come back with a deadline after talking to the rest of the team, or they can tell me the deadline and we can discuss what features you can have by the deadline.
I'm not naive enough to think that everyone has a job where they can do that. But when I interviewed I was coming in to basically create a modern dev shop from scratch - source control, CI, automated testing, etc. with a group of developers who learned on the job without any formal training. I only accepted the job with the promise I would be given the time to set things up correctly.
I think the balance is not as universal as you make it out to be. As long as the employee/tenant is capable of leaving (and same with the employer/landlord), then the relationship will be equal as it is only continued to mutual benefit.
Not every business interaction has to be executed as a business interaction. It might be safer, it might make you more money, but it's ultimately just two people interacting.
The landlord didn't sound like they wanted to bring in the full power of their role into play in the relationship, would have preferred it keep it to more of a gentleman's agreement - an arrangement which is absolutely not in the landlord's favor. That they chose to not take up that full mantel in most interactions is to the renter's benefit.
While the landlord theoretically has more "power", tenants have them over the barrel, in a weird sort of way.
Tenants can decide not to pay, break stuff, make noise, waste tons of the landlord's time, etc. The worst the landlord can do without a ton of headache and hassle is ask the tenant to pay, then evict them and perhaps keep the security deposit.
As a commercial tenant, I run into this sort of "practiced politeness" all the time with my landlord. And I think it's common of people who'd rather not upset the status quo.
I was a landlord for over a decade. I worked with tenants to a point because the alternative - eviction was not an easy process. To evict someone you have to (it's been awhile so I've forgotten all of the legal terms):
1. Give them a 7 day notice
2. File an eviction notice with the court
3. The tenant then has 7 days to respond.
4. The tenant can respond with almost anything and then you have to wait for your court date - that can be two weeks to a month.
5. Then you show up to court and then you have to wait a week (?) to file another request from the court to schedule a policeman for a two hour window to evict them.
You must have a crew of 5 and must have all of their belongings on the street within 2 hours.
This whole process can take up to two months and each step costs time and money.
I would never become a landlord again unless it was part of an LLC with multiple tenants - at least 20 - where I would expect to make a profit with 75% occupancy and had a dedicated staff.
> The worst the landlord can do without a ton of headache and hassle is ask the tenant to pay, then evict them and perhaps keep the security deposit.
Or variations on that. I had a leaking water main. Got letters from the utility warning me. By the end of the saga my water bill was $400/mo.
Landlord / PM refused to do anything, or anything meaningful. Would not return calls. After I cornered them in person, they sent a "maintenance guy" who found nothing. It continued. All the while I'm paying this. After another month of harassment, they send a plumber who is "only authorized to do a visual inspection", not to go under the house, not to dig anywhere.
Unsurprisingly he finds nothing. Eventually it's so bad, as I say, that the utility is writing letters to me, the PM, the homeowner and reluctantly, they do something.
Shock, horror. It's found within two hours of light digging from the meter back. Fixed within another hour. Probably <$500.
Now, I write a nicely worded letter to the PM. Show them my water bills for the equivalent time the previous year, and say that I think I should be reimbursed for the nearly $1900 in utility overpayment caused by this problem and their tardiness in rectifying it.
Big mistake.
They start dodging those calls and letters. But, at the same time have staff drive by and start "fining" me for policy breaches at a rate of $125 per breach, plus $35 for an inspection fee, plus $15 for "delivery of notice", etc.
What kind of policy breaches, you ask? The most egregious? "Failure to maintain lawn". By which they meant that there was in the region of 4-6 dandelion heads a few inches above the grass which had been mowed /that morning/. So outraged by this was I that I took video, took photos, took the invoice from the lawn care company to the owner of the PM company and demanded that they show that this was anything more than retaliation, and that if they wanted to take things to court, to see how well they'd do at claiming I was a negligent tenant.
They still stalled. Called me a deadbeat who was trying to get out of my obligations. Told me that when she pulled up my file, they didn't owe me anything, in fact, I owed them over $3,000 in "fees for late rent"!
This, they said, stemmed from the fact that two or three years earlier, I had paid a partial rent check a week late and they'd tacked on a fee (fair and reasonable), that I didn't realize at the time, but were now claiming that because "they process fees, penalties and then rent, in that order" to any payment received, I had in fact been late all 40 or so months I had lived there, so had been fined $75/month every month since I moved in.
Bear in mind, this is the first I'd heard of this, at this point when I was trying to recover my money paid. In fact they'd renewed my lease twice, despite me "being a deadbeat", as they were now claiming.
After a couple of hours of calm discussion (a challenge at times), reviewing the "coincidence" that the PM had just "discovered" this discrepancy, along with my "failures to maintain", only at the time when I had asked to be reimbursed, the company owner finally acquiesced, and agreed that I did not owe any money, and that they would waive my next months rent.
Oh, and that she would instruct the PM to NOT, as she had been planning to do, report that three years plus delinquency to a credit agency.
So there are plenty of things landlords can do to make life painful. Categorizing it as "oh well, I can ask for money, and you can or cannot pay it, and maybe I'll get your deposit" is a little generous.
The sentiment reminds me of people who view their boss as the enemy always out to screw them vs an equal they work with to accomplish company goals. It depends a great deal on the general demeanor of the boss for sure but basic professionalism on the part of the employee goes a long way to keeping the boss from having to be the bad guy.