TwistedSifter

Boyfriend Keeps Volunteering Her To Make Portraits For His Friends, So She Finally Puts Her Foot Down And Says She’s Not His Personal Sweatshop

Source: Reddit/AITA/Pexels

Have you ever had someone in your life who constantly volunteers your services to other people without checking with you first?

It’s infuriating!

And the woman who wrote this story on Reddit decided that she’d had enough of her boyfriend’s shenanigans.

But did she go too far?

Get the whole story below and see what you think…

AITA for refusing to do a portrait for my BF, leaving him without a wedding gift?

“I do digital portraits, mostly as a hobby, but I have gotten a few commissions here and there.

A while ago, my boyfriend and I were hanging out with mutual friends and my boyfriend suggested in front of everyone that I do a portrait as a gift for someone’s upcoming birthday. While it was a little annoying to be volunteered by him, I did think it was a good gift idea and went ahead and did it.

He did it again…

The next time a birthday in the group came up, my bf made the same suggestion and as a result “the birthday portrait” has kind of become my thing. My boyfriend will get something small as his gift since he views the portrait as being “from us.”

The part where I may be the ******* here is that I haven’t told him explicitly to stop volunteering me for these portraits. It is my fault for going along with the birthday gift thing for our friends without saying anything, but I kind of assumed that he would at least keep these requests within the realm of common sense.

Well…his college buddy is getting married, and my boyfriend told him that I would make him a portrait of him and his bride as a wedding gift. I have never even met this person!

She had enough.

To make matters worse, he apparently made this promise weeks ago but only told me about it today, and the wedding is this Saturday.

I finally lost it at him and told him that I’m not his personal portrait sweatshop, and that he only does this because he’s a cheapskate and it gets him out of spending any money on a gift, even though it costs me a lot of time.

He argued back that a bespoke portrait is so much better than just buying something off the register, that it’s a generous thing for me to do, it helps build my portfolio, and that I don’t get very many paid commissions anyway.

For the record—I don’t get many paid commissions because I don’t charge peanuts for them. I have a full time job, so I price according to what would be worth giving up the amount of free time that it takes me.

That didn’t go over well…

He told me that I put him in a really difficult position, that he hyped up the portrait, and they were both really looking forward to it. He said please just do this one and I won’t ask again. I said no, I don’t even know these people, this is so not my problem.

He looked up a couple of portrait artists online, but none of them were willing to do the piece on the short turnaround he needed + at the quality he wanted + at the price he was willing to pay.

He even tried using an AI image generator—which was a complete slap in the face to me as an artist—but all of the outputs were very obviously AI.

He’s begging me to please just do this one and he will make it up to me on my birthday, but (especially after he apparently thought my work was so worthless that it could be effortlessly reproduced by a machine), I’m just really not in the mood.”

Here’s what people had to say on Reddit.

This person said she’s NTA.

Another reader said her BF is playing dumb.

This Reddit user agreed.

Another individual said he’s a cheapskate.

And this person said she’s NTA and explained why.

Sounds like this guy has some issues.

If you liked this post, check out this story about an employee who got revenge on a co-worker who kept grading their work suspiciously low.

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