When you have a special skill or service, you may want to offer it to friends or family at a discount to help them out.

All too often, however, those friends and family will take abuse your offer and push to get even more.

That is what is happening to the woman in this story. Take a look at how she is handling it.

AITA for telling my neighbor I was not happy to tutor her kids on weekends?

I (35F) am a private tutor.

My neighbor, S (42F), requested that I tutor her 2 children (12F and 14F) in Mathematics and Science.

Wow, that’s impressive!

Their grades have gone up to straight A’s, with the younger even scoring perfect 100%.

S requested a huge discount as we were on good terms (I am listed as the girls’ guardian), with the agreement that sessions would be thrice a week.

My usual rate for 1 to 1 tutoring starts at $40/hr, and for her girls’ levels, their individual rates would have been $50/hr and $55/hr, or $75/hr for both girls together.

That is very generous.

However, S kept telling me about all her financial burdens and I lowered the rate to $45/hr for both girls together, with the agreement of 3 sessions a week.

From the beginning I made it clear to her that weekends are my free time for activities with my dogs, and I only accept urgent requests for tuition plus weekend rates are higher (they start at $60/hr).

Last week S told me her elder girl was failing English and requested for a temporary weekend slot but at their usual rate.

I didn’t want to be calculative so I accepted.

After the first weekend lesson, she texted me to say that the girls suddenly had after school activities, and would have to drop one of their weekday slots.

I agreed because these things do happen sometimes.

Hey, weekends were not supposed to be permanent!

After the second weekend lesson, S texted me again to tell me that she would only need tutoring on 1 weekday and 1 weekend from now on, since she had signed her girls up for enrichment classes on another weekday when we were supposed to have a tutoring session.

She seemed to expect the weekend slot to be a permanent arrangement.

I was taken aback because I felt like I had been forced to give up my weekend for a lower rate than normal.

I tried to ask her if it would be possible for her to change the enrichment classes to weekend but she texted me a short “no”.

After consideration, I decided to put my foot down and texted her this:

Polite, but clear.

“To be frank, I am not happy with this arrangement. I only agreed to a temporary weekend slot as I was under the impression that your daughter needed urgent help as she is failing English, but now you are reducing the number of sessions to fewer than what we started with, which makes me feel like she didn’t really need the extra tuition on weekends. My weekend is for bonding activities with my dogs or urgent assignments only, which are supposed to be temporary arrangements. I hope you can understand my pov.”

She replied with, “Fine, then don’t come.”

Oh wow…

2 days later, she texted me that she no longer wanted me to tutor her girls.

She also unfriended me across all her social media.

Was I too rude in my text? Just a few days ago I was still dropping by with breakfast for their family, and now the girls dare not even talk to me when I run into them.

The younger told me that S was really mad at me but the elder shushed her.

AITA?

What a horrible position to be put in.

I bet the commenters will have something to say about it, let’s take a look.

Yeah, some people don’t like to be called on things.

This person says that friends shouldn’t beg for discounts.

This person thinks she was being more than reasonable.

Yes, good advice.

Absolutely.

That is not how friends should treat you!

If you enjoyed that story, read this one about a mom who was forced to bring her three kids with her to apply for government benefits, but ended up getting the job of her dreams.