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An article by popular demand from friends, colleagues and those who asked to talk about it. Therefore, likes and reposts are welcome, especially if you are not even bothered with requests ... but with a sincere conviction that it doesn’t cost you anything to cut, hem, look, roll up. If you find it difficult to say out loud “It costs so much” while looking into the eyes of a friend or younger sister.
It's not "you're sorry", but they're not ashamed
Just imagine a situation when a relative (friend) asks the same question not to you, but to a completely outsider ... a Jewish tailor. Moses Tatyanych, do you mind sewing up a suit? You’ve been sitting here all day anyway, you don’t have clients now, you have half an hour to work…
Does the petitioner admit that it was precisely these sudden half-hours that Moses Tatyanych planned to carve out for a tea party with a bun, which dear Roza Syabitovna had carefully wrapped in oiled paper, which Uncle Monya had long and purposefully laid eyes on. Well, what, he is a widower, she is quite a fit divorcee, but how she cooks! With this gastritis, you need to eat normally, without being carried away by work to the very pile ...
And then the shabby hipster Gennady comes and from the threshold throws a suit with deer on the table - Moses Tatyanych, knock down your pants, be a friend! What, are you sorry?
And Uncle Monet becomes very uncomfortable. He seems to be the nephew of the esteemed Rosa Syabitovna, but on the other hand, his eyes are already rippling from the fabrics, the tea is brewed and almost getting cold, and the ulcer has grown inopportunely ...
Gene, you are a thief!
It is vile to use family ties and the thinking of the primitive communal system, when everything was done together, as a shaman, and the word outcast was a terrible curse. In a world full of dangers, people kept together and helped each other using service barter. Today I will help you unload the cart with firewood, and tomorrow you will help me renovate the stove ...
In those days, work was manual and uncomplicated, all the men were able to more or less cope with the sowing, and all the women with sour dough. They looked after the children en masse, built houses and jumped over May Day bonfires.
Now the hipster Gena cannot offer Moses Tatyanych anything that he cannot buy for money. If a) he has a good rest, b) he doesn’t come down with an attack of gastritis, because he didn’t eat on time again, c) he doesn’t quarrel with Rosa Syabitovna because of her overly impudent nephew.
Being in a good mood, healthy and rested, Moses Tatyanych will receive a trustworthy and paying client in the evening, who will be sewn a beautiful tuxedo for the wedding. And then he will sew an excellent funeral suit for an old competitor ...
Hipster Gene steals from Uncle Monya not only 15 minutes of his time. He steals from him rest and switching to the parasympathetic nervous system, which will restore the body's strength to the fullest. He steals from him the working condition in the evening and the concentration that a timely dinner will provide him, a blissful mood and bright thoughts about the evening in the company of the magnificent Rose. Hipster Gena cannot offer Moses Tatyanych anything that could make up for all these losses. And he knows it very well. Therefore, Gena is a thief.
Since when do you open your arms to impudent thieves?
Maybe you pour bread crumbs for cockroaches - well, they are hungry, no one feeds them, they beg for anything, poor fellows. And their neighbors even poison them with dichlorvos! Chick-chick, my masks, I left you here to eat...
And look how the homeless uncle Vitya suffers in the gateway? Since yesterday evening, he has been burning with all the pipes of the body, trembling with members and shaking his inferior denture. Let's take pity on him, let's dump a tithe of the salary on a hangover?
Since when did someone else's inability to earn money and buy services without resorting to freebies become your problem? Why should you punish yourself for someone else's laziness or greed? What does it take for our hipster Gene to understand that it’s not worth using Uncle Monya’s favor with Aunt Rosa, but you can hem your pants at another tailor. And it costs two rubles and forty-eight kopecks. But Gena is greedy and impudent beyond measure. He would rather buy a fashionable sweater with a red star with this money and take a selfie on Instagram. And for change, he will buy oranges for Uncle Monet to the hospital.
The right to rest and the right to work
You don't have to take on extra work just because you've been asked to. Or because you "sit at home anyway." You have the right to sit at home and rest. You have the right to spend time with your family, TV, a cup of cocoa and strawberry sauce pie.
Our rest is part of our work. This is the process of restoring the energy reserves of the body. This is a recharge, without which the next working session is impossible. And if, in the process of recharging, you constantly turn off the phone in order to ring for a minute to that other, third, check the mail - by morning you have a damn not charged and unusable phone. Then why should "some fifteen minutes" affect you not in accordance with the law of conservation of energy? Because you are “sit at home anyway”? Home furnishings began to change the physical properties of objects??? Nobel Prize for Proof!
Being at home makes no exception for theft. Since when can you go to someone's house and take what you want, just because "well, you feel sorry for something"? Why not go to the store and ask them to sell a thing for free? Or call a plumber and not pay him, citing the fact that the work was for fifteen minutes, is it worth it to trifle because of this?
How to turn off a brazen manipulator
Words. Psychologists recommend simply giving up. But then again, I believe that a psychologist is a trained person who has gone through many hours of personal therapy. For the insecure and manipulative freelancer, such a blunt approach may not work. We act softer.
- Hem my pants, Uncle Mon!
- Come on, what are you doing to me?
- Are you sorry?
“Not at all, don’t you feel sorry for doing something for me, too?” I need to clean the toilet. I'll sew for now, and you take a rag out in the corner and wash it.
The work that you must inevitably do is dumped on the manipulator, and it infuriates you with its very existence. An absolutely win-win option: if you agree, you change 15 minutes of pleasant work (for example, sewing) for 15 minutes of hateful work (washing the toilet), in case of refusal, you rid yourself of the impudent sticky forever.
Important note: when doing this exercise, try to bite your cheek from the inside with your teeth. It helps not to whine. Practice doing this before you jump out your first victim with a guerrilla jump.