You never expect doing a good deed to turn into someone trying to treat you like their personal employee.

So, what would you do if you agreed to help a friend’s family with a complex project, but one person begins treating you like an on-call servant and demanding you rearrange your actual career to suit her schedule?

Do you oblige? Or do you cut ties?

In the following story, one engineer deals with this scenario and decides it’s not worth his time.

Here’s how it all played out.

Entitled “Client” Learns that Professionals can Infact Walk Away

I work as an engineer. I do some consulting on the side, but typically only for people I know and as a favor.

A good friend asked me to help his in-laws, who were doing some fairly massive renovations/additions.

I agreed solely because he asked me to. This is not something I have any interest in or need to do except as a favor. It’s an old house and had a can of worms written all over it, with some of the changes they wanted to do.

The MIL was more than unpleasant.

Now he warned me that the MIL can be unpleasant, but that was an understatement. She seemed to think that, because I was being paid (I charged probably 1/10th what a business would), she could snap her fingers at me like a servant.

I had a few unpleasant emails with her, but it was tolerable. She was rude when I was pointing out issues with their plans, but nothing too extreme.

That changed when I started trying to find a time for me to stop by and inspect a few areas of the house to verify some information. I offered times to stop by on the weekend, but that didn’t work for her. I tried evening times, still a no.

At this point, he was done.

Nope, she wanted me to stop by during my office work hours because that was best for her. When I told her no, this gets done on the weekends or in the evening, she went from rude to incredibly hostile.

Telling me that she is paying me (LOL) and that I work with her availability. Not the other way around.

I CC’ed my friend in on the chain, told them I was out, and to have fun working with whoever they get. My friend apologized, and I said, “No worries, it’s not my problem anymore.”

She emailed back, quite stunned that I was walking away, telling me that it’s not how business is conducted. I didn’t bother responding.

Then, the husband contacted him.

About three weeks later, I got an email from the husband, now asking me if I would reconsider, and he promised that his wife wouldn’t speak to me or be involved in any way.

I hear from my friend that while the quotes came back much higher, which was tolerable for them, it was how long the wait was.

They just bought this house and wanted to move in ASAP, but it’s an incredibly busy time of year for the industry.

He passed.

It turns out that when companies you reach out to are drowning in work and you have a potentially convoluted and messy project, they aren’t chomping at the bit to get your business.

So now they are going to lose the trades they lined up because design would be a month or two out.

I passed on the request as I struggled to believe she would be kept in check and had no desire to bail her out. My friend didn’t care, saying it was nice watching her attitude give the consequences that actually affect her.

Wow! She’s going to have a hard time keeping any contractor.

Let’s see how the people over at Reddit feel about customers like this woman.

For this reader, the bridge needs another engineer.

Here’s someone who wants more bad customers to get fired.

Such a good point.

According to this comment, it was an all-around great story.

That was the best thing to do.

She needs to learn how to treat people, but it probably won’t happen.

If you liked that post, check out this story about a customer who insists that their credit card works, and finds out that isn’t the case.