There are a few people from my past who keep showing up occasionally wanting favors. They don’t ask how I am, nor do they care. They want help. Free help. And they want it yesterday. They’re life suckers – they roll into my life and suck up any and all free time, help, money, etc. they can out of me, then roll back out like engorged ticks, satisfied. One in particular called three times in the same week recently asking for help on three separate issues. I help when I can, but when I’m being taken advantage of, I have a foolproof plan for halting the freebie train – I drop the ball.
It goes against everything I’m about to let someone down. I’m a helper. I’m a recovering codependent. I have to help or I work myself up over letting someone down. But it took just one or two serial life suckers to make me realize that frank talk, rejection, and saying no wasn’t ever going to work. Instead, I said nothing. I simply let them make their case, responded with “Uh huh” at the appropriate times, and said something like “Well, that’s a pickle, isn’t it?” More often than not, I let these calls or emails go unanswered. I’m sorry – if you want to go to lunch or you want to touch base because you genuinely care about me, great. But if I see you or hear from you once every three years, you’re obviously using me.
Whenever I’m caught in one of these conversations, I stop short of promising help. I say I’ll see what I can do, but only when asked directly and ONLY when there’s no way around it. Remember, “No” doesn’t work on these people. I will do whatever I may have said I’d do, like in the last call from the one life sucker, I did pass along a call to an agency for her, but I’m not following up. They each have the other’s contact info. In my opinion, that’s the end of my commitment to this particular situation. I will not arrange everything for her as she expects, nor will I coordinate her schedule with the agency or help her with the paperwork. Grow up already. Oh, and lose my number, would you?
Another serial life sucker was thwarted by my moving from one town to another. Since he called me every 8 months or so, he had no idea (nor would he have cared) that I’d lost my job and moved in with my now-husband within just a few months. I thought about sending him a holiday card – for that’s the only communication without strings he’d ever engage in with me – but I couldn’t. See, each time he called, it was the same story. Help me. Be my reference. Write my resume. Let me treat you to dinner. And inevitably, he’d cancel dinner. Every time. I’d understand it if he had to cancel, but it was clear he never had intentions of picking up the check or even meeting an old friend (was I ever a friend? I wonder) to see how life was treating her. I’d take it personally, but he did the same thing with a mutual friend of ours. She got fed up about the same time I did. He’d made the same promises to her. And like me, she never saw a meal or even a face-to-face conversation with him. Luckily for her, she’d moved much sooner and therefore he’d lost her contact info faster. He’s probably on to someone else by now.
These aren’t clients, thankfully, but I have had one or two clients who have had troubles understanding the word “No.” In those cases, I repeated myself in writing and refused to get into a continued conversation on whatever it was that caused me to draw the boundaries in the first place. I guess my point is it’s okay to be unreliable when you’ve tried every other viable means of relaying to your client or your friend from high school or that old coworker that your free time is not up for grabs any longer.
How do you deal with a life sucker? Would you be able to be unreliable if it meant the cycle would break?
“There’s nothing I can do to help” is one of my stock phrases in these situations.
I’m a big believer in cutting the deadwood out of my life on a regular basis. I try to ease out gently and simply “lose touch” in many cases.
If the person is persistent, I will say very bluntly, “You’re trying to take advantage of me and my answer is no.”
Then I stop returning phone calls and emails. Period.
Ah, Devon, I admire your b!tchiness. :o)
Lori, I use the same approach as you — vague responses and unreliability. Recently a neighbor discovered my website and suddenly wanted to “talk to me” about things, particularly my ghostwriting services. I can smell a request for free help from a mile away, so I was vague and haven’t followed up on it.
My standard response is, “When I have some free time.” Which, of course, I never have. There’s probably a whole slew of rejected favor-askers who pity me my busy schedule! ;o)
The free time line probably works best because it IS true: who has free time on their hands nowadays?? We can ALL find stuff to occupy our time: important or no- the fact is, the time is being used otherwise, and hence, not FREE
I am going to try Devon’s suggestions! I struggle with this issue!
You guys will love this one – I had a complete stranger call the other day. Did he want me to work on his project? No… he wanted me to look for his friend. My first reaction – where exactly did you get my number? Remember that client (now being arraigned) who set up that allegedly phony foundation? This dude saw my name on a release I’d written for it. Didn’t kill them all, I guess.
Anyway, I explained that the foundation was defunct, the client was in jail, and I wasn’t any more associated with it than the caller was. Didn’t matter. He kept talking, telling me his story. He heard “reporter” when I said, “only wrote the release” and he may have thought I was going to write his story. Uh, no. I used the “I can’t help you” line then because hey, I can’t. I got him off the phone in quick time, but not before he started through his story (and his wife’s – how is this all relevant anyway?) three times, asking me each time for help. Sorry, dude. Wrong tree. Bark somewhere else.
Gee, to think I turned him down after he told me I had a beautiful voice and I was a beautiful person. Dude, you don’t know me. You have no idea this was one of the weirdest days and you’re the icing on top. Move on before the smackdown occurs!
^^Lori, that’s just crazy -lol.