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Fri 13 Aug, 2010 08:54 pm
I have two female classmates. One is a postgraduate who is majoring in biology, one is an official clerk who was an English major. They rarely contacts me, they only contacts me when they has a document to translate. I helped both translate their documents one or two times, but recently they sent me their respective documents to ask me help translate only because I was their classmate. I feel they are taking advantage of my kindness. They are shirking their own responsibility and it seems that I have much time. Quite the contrary, I resigned from my previous job and started to prepare my own business but I have not made any significant inroad into it so far. I am constantly thinking about how can I press ahead even when I am half-asleep. I am under tremendous pressure to press ahead with my business. But they are insensitively bothering me by asking me to help them translate documents. What can I do? If I don't do it, they may feel unhappy and it may jeopardize the friendship between classmates. It seems that I have to sacrifice my precious time to help them for free. I only have a bachelor's degree and my major had nothing to do with English. But they want me to help translate simply they knew I am good at English. Please suggest what I should react?
@stevenya,
The answer is simple. Explain to them that although you would like to help them, the time necessary to do this is affecting your business and livelihood.
You shouldn't feel pressured by this. If it affects the friendship, then there was no real friendship to begin with.
Good luck.
@stevenya,
I agree with Intrepid. If they were a friend then they'd understand and respect your right to say no. If they don't then they weren't real friends to begin with and are just using you, you don't need friends like that if that's the case.
@Caroline,
Or, you could start charging them. Translation services are highly skilled labor, and they are getting it for free. These are not friends of yours.
Recognize that I'm not giving you a way to salvage the relationship with either of them but, then again, it sounds as if you don't want to.
@jespah,
Good idea, why not charge I'll bet they are the type who would guffaw at such fairness.
You want to run a business, then it is time to stop acting like a doormat.
@stevenya,
Charge them a fee for the translations - that way you can make some money or get them to stop bothering you.
@jespah,
Ha - you beat me to it.
By the way, I used to charge friends and other classmates money to type their reports and even to input their computer programs. I was (still am) a fast typer. No one seemed to have a problem with it and actually seemed very happy to fork over the money rather than type it themselves.
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