A Not So Simple Favour

It began as a simple favour, and ended in bitterness and rancour.

I was planning a gig, a celebration, an epic event that was the culmination of years of work. As such, I was excited, too excited. I invited everyone I knew, placed posters on the walls at work, handed out information in person, and emailed everyone I had ever met.

Someone I knew through one of my networks sidled up to me, offered to do a favour for my big day. I refused, thanking them.

“No,” they insisted. “I want to.”

“No,” I said, again.

“I would love to,” they continued.

“I’ll pay you,” I said.

“No, absolutely not. This is a favour I want to do,” they said.

I accepted.

This was my first mistake. Never accept a favour from a stranger.¹ Especially one that you did not ask for nor did you want.

The gig happened, the favour was delivered. I gave them a present to the tune of $150 as a thank you for their time and attention. Months rolled on, and this moment is forgotten.

Cue this year. The person approaches me, they’ve written a memoir, they tell me. Oh, I say. I have just created an online memoir writing course. I’ll give them a code to access it for free. I walk away, forgetting this conversation.

They approach me again. They have written a memoir they say, and they want my help publishing it. Unspoken between us is the favour they did me. The one I did not ask for, but the one I accepted, and now I must repay.²

“Of course,” I say, mustering as much graciousness as I can, and gird myself for resolving this favour and moving on with my life.

They send me their memoir. I format the book, I create a cover using an image they provide, I write a blurb. I send it back to them. Tell them that I have not proofread it, but have formatted for publication.

It is their job to create an Ingram Spark account for me to upload the files.

“Oh,” they say. “I have edited the book again.”

I want to scream. I have already done what was agreed upon, prepared the book for publication. Now the favour is stretching to something more.

We make a time to meet, to hash it out, and to check the layout. They want me to edit the book. They want to pay me to edit the book. They thrust $200 into my hands.

“No,” I refuse. “You did me a favour. I’m returning it.”

“You must. I insist, you must accept the money. You’re now doing work for me. If you don’t accept the money I will not continue with the book,” they insist.³

They are heightened, the conversation is getting uncomfortable, I keep trying to refuse. They keep insisting. I want out.

I accept, again. This is my second mistake. Never let someone cross your boundary a second time.

In between are coffee outings where they insist on paying, coded conversations where I know there’s something more that they want, but I can’t decipher it.

Like the time they tell me they have 20 people who want to buy the book, that they might even be able to make a profit. I tell them to make sure the price covers the hidden cost of publishing, the handling fee and the postage.

I re-format the book, again. I edit the book, which I’m now paid for. I re-send the files. We are finished. All that is left to do is to upload the files on Ingram Spark and request a proof copy. As long as there are no formatting errors, we are done. I breathe a sigh of relief.

They approach me again.

“Oh, I can’t make any editorial changes to the documents,” they say.

“No, you can’t,” I say. “The time for edits is done. The job is complete. The last time you made changes it cost me another 2 hours of my time to re-do the formatting (there are images that need to be inserted so this is not a simple job).”

The conversation ends. I force air in, force air out. We are nearly done. Not much longer.

They come back. Thrust a card into my hands and leave before I can walk away. I take the card, open it. Inside is a note, an apology for being a pain, and a $100 voucher.

I am upset. I don’t want any more money. I just want this fucking saga over. I want this sorry business behind me. I want to move on with my life.

I see them.

“I can’t accept your voucher,” I say, handing it back.

“You must,” they insist.

“You’ve already paid me. The job is done,” I say.

“You have to accept the money,” they say. “I insist.”

They’re getting heightened, I’m getting heightened. We are shouting, the situation is getting volatile, and out of control.

I try a few more times, but to no avail.

“I don’t want this to ruin our friendship,” they say, when they can see I’m flagging. “We’re going to be friends forever.” They open their arms for a hug.

And that is my third and final mistake. I capitulate. I hug them. I accept their over-inflated sense of our friendship.⁴

I walk away, feeling angry, uncomfortable, used, furious. I am beset with bitterness and rancour, thinking through all the other people who have sidled up to me, used me for expertise, until I realised and then flicked them off.

I go home and find an Express Post envelope. I place the voucher inside, and address it to them, with a card that says, “Thank you so much for the kind gesture, but I cannot accept.”

I block them on my mobile. I block them on social media. I block them on my email.

The job is done, and they are finally out of my life.

But the bitterness remains.

No longer can I look at people with the same naivety. Now there is a reserve, a weighing up of intention and sincerity, whereas before I accepted people at face value. I hope this is a side-effect of this moment, and that soon I will shake off the residue of this episode.

The sad thing is if they had approached me with openness about wanting an exchange of favours, I would have been happy to consider.

The sad thing is that their memoir is heartfelt and if I had heard about it in any other circumstances, I would have been happy to champion it.

The sad thing is that if they had accepted my boundary, anywhere along the journey, the friendship could have been salvaged.

But none of those things happened. Instead, this person infiltrated my barriers, acting like a ‘nice person.’⁵ They entered my world under a pretext, tied me with manipulation to a transactional friendship and then treated me like a vending machine where they would throw money at me for endless favours that they had probably already lined up in their head.

While for me this saga is finished, they have one more arrow in their quiver.

I receive a letter from them. They will be forever grateful for my help. They send me an invitation to lunch that I ignore, and they want to apologise for any offence caused.

I tear the letter up and put it in the bin.

I see it as another attempt to position themselves as a ‘nice person’ in words, but not in deed. This person crossed my every boundary, continued making demands on my time and using my energy.

They get no further chances.

This transactional friendship is dead.

Notes

1. Robert Cialdini’s reciprocity principle. Influence at Work — on why an unrequested favour still creates a felt debt in the person who receives it, and why that debt grows with how personal and unexpected the gesture feels, not with its price.

2. Marcel Mauss, The Gift (1925) — the foundational anthropological argument that no gift is ever fully free: every gift carries three linked obligations — to give, to receive, and, above all, to reciprocate.

3. “Guilt-Tripping: How to Recognize and Deal With It,” Psychology Today — names the pattern at work here: invoking a past favour to make someone feel indebted, and framing a plain refusal as a disproportionate betrayal.

4. “The Need to Please: The Psychology of People-Pleasing,” Psych Central — on why holding a boundary under pressure is so hard: fear of losing the relationship drives self-sacrifice, which curdles into resentment and burnout.

5. “Weaponised Kindness: Understanding Manipulative Acts of Helpfulness,” Gulf News — describes the exact dynamic of this essay’s final turn: help offered with invisible strings attached, tallied like a ledger, and produced later as proof of the giver’s good character.