The friend who wants your professional skill for free

Everything below about being asked to work for free comes from what actually happens rather than from what is supposed to.

Why these requests grow

A request for professional help usually begins as a quick question, which is genuinely quick and creates an expectation that the next one will be too. The follow-up questions arrive over weeks, and because each is small individually there is never an obvious point at which to object. There is also no defined finish, since a paid piece of work ends with a delivery and a favour simply continues until somebody stops responding.

Revisions are the specific problem, because a friend who has not paid still wants it right and feels awkward asking, which produces a slow, apologetic drip. The result is frequently more total hours than the paid version would have taken, spread across a longer period and at worse moments.

The particular trades this hits

Anybody whose work is portable and can be described in a sentence gets asked, including designers, lawyers, accountants, developers, photographers, builders and health professionals. The pattern is worst where the request sounds trivial to somebody outside the field, since a quick look is rarely quick. Regulated professions have an additional problem, because informal advice may carry professional risk regardless of whether money changed hands.

Anybody in that position is entitled to decline on those grounds alone, and saying so is usually accepted immediately. Health and legal questions in particular are better redirected than answered, since a casual answer without the full picture can do real damage.

Deciding what you actually want

Some of these requests are a pleasure, and doing a piece of work for somebody you love is one of the better uses of a skill. The useful distinction is between a defined piece of help and an open-ended relationship in which you have become somebody's unpaid supplier. It is worth deciding in advance how much you are willing to give, since the decision is much harder to make halfway through.

Willingness also varies by person and by year, and it is legitimate to help one friend and decline another without that being a judgement. Nobody is obliged to explain why they are unavailable, and a reason invites negotiation in a way that a plain no does not.

Saying yes with a shape

The version that works is a bounded offer, naming what you will do and what you will not, delivered lightly at the very start. An hour of advice, one look at the draft, or a phone call to point them in the right direction are all complete and finishable offers.

Saying that you will look at it once and then they are on their own is not unfriendly, and most friends are relieved to know the limit. Where the job is larger, referring them to somebody who does it properly is more useful than doing a compressed version yourself.

Offering your professional rate with a discount is also legitimate, and being told a price is far less awkward than most people fear.

Saying no

A short refusal without an invented excuse is the most durable form, since excuses can be solved and a plain answer cannot. Saying that you keep work and friendship separate is a complete reason, and it is one most people recognise immediately.

Across a decade, offering something small in its place, such as a recommendation or a single question answered, keeps the warmth without opening the arrangement. Where somebody responds badly, that reaction is information about the request rather than evidence that the refusal was wrong. It is easier to decline early than to withdraw later, and most of the difficult cases are ones that were never bounded at the start.

Families differ so widely that any general rule survives only until it meets yours.

When it has already gone too far

Ending an open-ended arrangement is uncomfortable and is best done as an announcement about your capacity rather than as a complaint about them. Saying that you need to stop after the current piece gives a clean finish and does not require anybody to be in the wrong.

Offering a handover, such as the name of somebody who can take it on, makes the ending practical rather than personal. Some friendships absorb this easily and a few do not, and the ones that do not were usually running on the arrangement rather than on the friendship. Where money is owed for work already done, that is a separate conversation and it is worth having plainly rather than writing it off silently.

The takeaway

Bound the favour before it starts, because an unpaid piece of work has no delivery date and nothing else will ever end it.

Nobody keeps everyone. Choose the few and be serious about them.