When friends, or even acquaintances, ask me for help, I really try to be as helpful as I can. I put myself out there, maybe more that I should, to not just answer some silly questions but to REALLY help. I'll put them in contact with people I know, or I'll do some leg work researching something, basically going out of my way to help them as much as I can.
Most of the time, I am disappointed by the result. I usually end up feeling very underappreciated, that my efforts were pretty much taken for granted. I then start to feel bad about myself, wondering if I am trying too hard to desperately help people, wondering there are subconscious insecurities manifesting themselves in weird ways motivating me to help every Peter and Bob and Jill who asks for a second of my time.
Take last week for example. A college acquaintance of mine is writing up his masters thesis and asked if I could help him reserve space on my campus. He needs to conduct some focus group meetings with college seniors for the thesis research. If there's one thing I know, it's my campus. I know the ins and outs of getting things done (reserve space, "reserve" space, casually drop by as if the space is already reserved). Most of all, I know people. I know a lot of people.
So immediately, I offered to help. He needs seniors for his focus group. I offered to send emails to seniors whom I know. He doesn't know where he could hold a focus group meeting. I offered to meet up with him and show him the secret meeting places in our student center. I expected ingratiating behavior on his behalf in return. Not so much. He didn't even seem remotely excited. Maybe I was being too eager. He just said that my offer was generous and he would follow up with me.
Fast forward a week. Wednesday morning, I get a frantic email from him. He wanted to know if we can talk at 7:30 that night so he can enlist my help to set up a focus group in our student center center for lunch on Friday. I felt really awkward: do I, or don't I, tell him that planning on Wednesday for something on Friday with a campus full of flaky students is a bad idea? He is on a campus himself. Surely he knows this?
But I said, "Sure, give me a call at 7:30pm, and we will talk."
Unbeknownst to him, I rearranged some things in lab that I had to do in order to be available at 7:30pm to talk to him. Nothing big, but I did adjust things.
7:30 rolled around, and he didn't call. 7:35, and still no call. 7:45, and still nothing. I sat around this whole time twiddling my thumbs waiting for his phone call. It was ridiculous. I don't know why I was taking it so seriously when he obviously 1) wasn't that serious about his own thesis, and/or 2) just plain don't didn't value my time. I had more lab work planned for after the call, and the longer I waited to start those, the later I had to stay in lab Wednesday night.
Fuck it, I finally decided, and went to do my own stuff.
8pm. My phone rings. It was him. I was so annoyed, yet so undecided as to what I should do. Do I answer it? Do I ignore it? Do I ignore it but call back 5 minutes later just to passive-aggressively rebel with hopes that my very very subtle behavior will somehow convey my supreme annoyance?
In the end, I put down my lab work and just answered the phone.
"Sorry for the slight delay," he said. SLIGHT??? You're 30 minutes late.
"Oh, that's okay," I replied. WHY???? Why do I pretend that his behavior was no big deal?
"Do you still have a few minutes to talk?" he asked.
"Sure, what's up?" I answered. I kicked myself. Why can't I say no to things?
We ended up talking for 15 minutes. I manage to convince him to delay the lunch until next week, and in the meantime, if he sends me something, I can circulate around to some seniors I know. He agreed to send me something Wednesday night.
This (Friday) morning at 1am, he emailed me the blurb he wanted to me forward out. It looks like spam. It has multiple colors. It makes a false claim. Well, he would say it's looking forward to the long term goals of his thesis. I think it's a hell of a stretch, thereby making it a plain and simple false claim. He also asked me to forward his email along with a very specific subject line. The subject line promotes the false claim.
So now I am caught in a weird place. I've gone out of my way to help this guy already. He showed no semblance of appreciation up to this point. He has, what I believe to be, unreasonable requests in his email blurb that I somehow feel obligated to foward out to my friends. I really don't want to. I feel like sending something like this may jeopardize my relationships with people I know, expending my political capital (in corporate speak), to what ends? I'm not even getting a sincere thank you from him.
The rational, but pissed off, part of me wants to email him back and say that his email is inappropriate, and that I will not forward it as is to people I know. The other part of me thinks that the recipients are busy college seniors who don't really care that much, and how can a silly little email like this really hurt me? Is it really worth it to make this situation worse by now retracting my offer to help, which I very voluntarily put out there myself with little to no prompting from his part?
I just feel caught in a weird situation, feeling the same awkwardness I often feel after perhaps trying too hard to sell my help to those who mention the smallest things that I can help with. I just don't know why that is. Why I feel the need to so desperately be deemed helpful, and why I still keep doing it after all the empty letdowns I feel after wards.
3 comments:
hey you~ you seem like a very nice person who takes on responsibilities that are not part of one's journey.
:-)
just because you are able to help does not mean your should...sometimes we can get in the way of others. it is their journey~ no point just giving people the fish, as they never get a taste for the effort that really goes into it (taking responsibility i mean).
ironically, you take on other's responsibilities whilst neglecting your own; to yourself (you wanted to leave the lab at the time you expected, you didn't want to answer the phone yet did, you didn't want him to think it is ok to call whenever he feels like it yet said it was ok when he did), you want to not compromise your values (supporting his false claim by forwarding the email), and you don't want to forward the email~ regardless of why, and yet you have...!
your homework is to learn some Verbal Judo (assertiveness with grace) http://www.verbaljudo.com.au/courses.html ; to take on role models who say "No" gracefully e.g., Tyra Banks, Oprha, Dr Phil, Carla-Bruni Sarkozy etc; and to meditate on "discernment" of when to provide help, as sometimes witholding it is the most un-selfish thing to do.
I wish I could offer you some great advice but, damn it all, I do the same thing. All. The. Time.
I have a friend who does the same thing. When she doesn't get the appreciation for all of her work, she sends out a somewhat scathing "woe is me" email making it very clear that she is upset.
You know what? No one asked her to put in any of the extra work she did. She CHOSE to do all the extra research, work, advice, etc. Often it's unnecessary and a bit too much for the asking party to handle.
It's not that people don't appreciate what you do. It's more like people think that is just YOU... your natural behavior.
Just like Char said, just because you're able to help doesn't mean you should. If you are going to be this upset about the lack of appreciation, you shouldn't do the work you feel deserves the extra pat on the back.
You probably will anyway, but you have to accept that people aren't asking you to do anything more than what they originally requested.
"Can you help me reserve space?" should be met with a simple, "yes"
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