At work I tend to get people asking me to do things in unorthodox ways, so they dont get billed for it, or they get it done quicker. More often than not I say yes. Whilst they will get up getting billed for it, I do tend to prioritise these things over arranged work. Which I know I shouldn't, and I'm getting irritated with doing it. Unfortunately I'm getting more and more work load from doing so, and its making my life very stressful.

Also tonight my gf sent me a text to inform me that she might want to be picked up from the next town after a night out. I said that would be fine, having just finished my first beer of the evening I tried to sober myself up. Having heard nothing, because normally she wants to be picked up by now if shes having a crap time, I phoned her. She didnt want to be picked up after all. Effectly I put my night on hold, trying not to get into anything incase I have to go and get her.

I'm seeing over and over again that similar things to the 2 above are happening to me. I just can't decide what I should do about it. Do I cut my losses, start living for myself and refusing to do things more often, or am I just being a nice guy and I need to come to terms with it?

I know what you're probably thinking; I'm clearly a complete sad bastard asking a load of quasi-anonymous people, on the internet. Sadly I seriously have no one better to ask right now.

Angry,
I see that you live in Bath...that is not THAT far to commute to Oxford, so what I would suggest is to come and work with me driving buses in Oxford, and I will teach you how to be a miserable jobsworth bastard like me; somebody who can quite happily tell a little old lady that she cant get on the bus, even if it IS pi$$ing down with rain, because her pass has expired 3 minutes ago! Or..making somebody walk 4 miles down a road at night because he has a petrol can, and its his own stupid fault if he ran out of petrol!
The best part of it is the daily competition of how many cyclists you can knock off, or saturate if it happens to be raining and there are loads of nice big puddles!
I can teach you how to get a sadistic degree of satisfaction out of being a miserable git.
If you need a reference, just ask '_Rob_' he is getting first hand experience of the sheer bloody-mindedness of us Oxford bus drivers!

Karl, I dunno what to suggest. You sound like me, once upon a time. I recognised it, just as you are doing, and I chose to do something about it.

It's interesting, reading the first two posts. One from a self-confessed soft-touch, and one from a self-proclaimed hard-nut. It's immediately apparent to me, though, that the two are not mutually exclusive, and you don't have to become a hard nut in order to prevent the current situation continuing.

It's not fair on you, the way things are. There's a feel-good factor to doing favours for people, but if the cost of that short-term feeling is an increasing feel-bad, or feel-worse, then I think you have to consider introducing "no!" into your vocabulary.

There are lots of reasons people resist becoming assertive, but most of them revolve around a sense of self-worth, and resulting self-confidence. For example, fearing the consequences of saying "no" to your girlfriend when she asks you this kind of favour, will result in you saying "yes" almost automatically.

Your girlfriend is looking out for herself - and she should. This does not necessarily mean that she doesn't factor in the effect on you. She may actually assume that, if you'd planned to get ratted tonight, you would have said so when she asked for a possible lift. I've no idea if that's the case, but if you haven't either, I'd recommend finding out as a starting point.

As for work, internal and external customers always look out for themselves/jobs/companies very selfishly. They're like lab rats.. they learn the route that works the best, and they always follow it. You have to close the door occasionally, and force a change in their route/routine. There are two advantages to this. Firstly, your workload drops down to levels you can cope with, and secondly you begin to gain some respect. When you're not always available, the times when you are, you carry more value. You have to regard your time at work as currency. People never actually appreciate the value of money until they're short of it.

If you're salaried, work your hours. Anything outside of those hours, make THEM work for it. BE busy at weekends (even if you're not). You don't have to make any excuses or give any apologies to anyone for growing a social life that consumes every hour that 9-5 doesn't. You don't have to be unreasonable about any of it. You just have to get a little greedy with your own needs, and give them higher priority.

[to continue, insert £0.02 in slot]

Quote from SamH :

..... and one from a self-proclaimed hard-nut. ....

I was only kidding really!..I'm not THAT nasty, although that is the 'stereotype' of the standard bus-driver in Oxford... I do try to help people out IF (and only if!) it doesnt increase my workload un-necessarily, or get me into too much of the brown mucky stuff!
I agree totally that Karl needs to find the strength to say 'No' occasionally, I have found from experience that people will appreciate your help a lot more if it is not given out all the time!
Only tonight, I had a party of 10 people at Gatwick that had to get back to Oxford because the minibus they had ordered had broken down on the way to the airport...at normal standard rates, the fare SHOULD have been £199.50 for the 9 adults/1 child, but I 'bent' the rules a bit, and let them all travel for £140...

wish I hadnt now, because the miserable gits only gave me a fiver tip, yet I had saved them £60!!!!!

It's the stereotype bus driver all over the planet, I reckon. The green brigade will never overcome the stereotype and convince us to move over to public transport. Why they even bother, I dunno!

Bladey

for me:

First of all, there are no "maybes".

second, if someone tends to say and then take back, every time this happens, he loses more and more credibility for me and if he loses all credibility... i will just say "no".

Sometimes people tend to see you with more respect if you show them that you do not do favours *easily*. If you value your time, others will value it too.

or something.

WHERE'S MAH BEER

No-one can really tell you if your being walked over. We dont sit their all day
next to you like supernanny and tell you where your going wrong. You have to
work that out for yourself.

Genuinly, I used to say yes all the time when asked to do something for someone,
but, now i can tell the difference between a "David, can you help me? I'm really
stuck on this part of something" and a "David, can you help me? I really cant be
****ed to do this and want someone else to do it for me" If their genuinly
stuck, i try and help out, make it easier for THEM to do the work like break it up
or whatnot. I dont do the work for them, tell them what it is I done and they
take the credit. One way to find out is to say no to them and see what they say
or do. From their reaction / answer / tone of voice etc you should be able to
work out if they are walking over you or genuinly need the help. Thats what i
did.

As for the GF it seems to be a normaly girl to me (well, in comparison to
mates GF's and sisters and general girl mates) Although, again, you can try
and say no to a request of hers and check body language / tone of voice blah blah blah and work it out.

And I personaly think asking for advice on a large forum is a good thing! You
got thousands of people on here. some may be able to help, some might not
but if you dont ask, you wont know.

Being a geek raised by women I grew up to be this super nice guy who'll help anyone, because it's the "right thing to do", now I know at times people take advantage of that (also why I never drive a car, I don't drink so I know I'd always be asked to be the driver). So these days I tend to have a list of people who to help no matter what, and those who will get help if I have the free time.

It's just a matter of working out whos worth the help and who isn't, though putting your night on hold for someone seems to be asking a bit much, if it was me I'd expect some sort of favour in return to make up for it.

A few days ago I was slowly helping someone over MSN fix her computer, we finally got the job done and I spent about 6 hours on the job, so as a thanks she got me a little gift. I never asked for anything, but it was nice, as such if she asked for help I'd give her it. But a guy from university would ask for help all the time and half the time wouldn't even give me a "thank you", so I tend not to help him much.

But you need to be careful that people don't take advantage of your niceness, because they will and do. So although you don't want to turn into a bus driver, you can be nice and just say no to people.

Now in short, yes, you are a walkover.

Different situations should call for different responses. Try and sort out which are the more pressing things which are important and need to be done (by you) from the stuff which isn't.

I consider myself a nice guy and will usually try to help whenever someone's in need but these days I try not to put myself in the position so much where I'm instantly available- mob' phone on 24/7 for eg. If someone rings the housephone and I don't feel like answering- I don't, because if it's truly important they'll leave a message. Little changes in behaviour can net you some much needed 'me' time and more importantly some well deserved rest. It's amazing how much simple rest is undervalued these days. Sometimes you just gotta fight for yo' right!

What goes around comes around. I don't do favours for people based on whether or not they'd do the same for me if the boot were on the other foot, but my own perception of people's respect for me is usually based on whether or not they try to treat me as a doormat.

I often do go out of my way to assist people without reward, and I don't have a problem with that, but I'm more likely to do that for people who I think or have proven that they would do the same for me.

In the workplace I try hard to maintain a balance between being seen as a decent hardworking bloke who'll do a bit extra and being the mug in the corner who can have anything dumped on him. There are no hard and fast rules to what I'd do/not do, so it's difficult to put anything concrete into writing, but Sam's lab rat analogy is sound, it's just up to you to decide when to say no.

Relationships are a very difficult matter to consider in this context. My girl is often the person who's doing the cooking, putting the washing machine on, or coming to find me to bring me something I've been too stupid to take with me, so I would have been quite happy to interrupt my evening to fetch her from somewhere and would have just accepted that circumstances had changed if she then didn't need me to. I guess that's because our relationship is give and take all the time. I don't know how your's works, and you're not me, so I guess again I'm left with saying "you should do what feels right to you" again, even though that does sound pants.

I suggest reading more maddox.

Also, change the music you listen to to metal. You'll feel the difference in a matter of days.

First off thanks for replying everyone I appreciate the advice and words :up:

Quote from axus :

I suggest reading more maddox.

Also, change the music you listen to to metal. You'll feel the difference in a matter of days.

Maddox is the biggest cock in the world, imho I do listen to a lot of metal though, so there goes your argument

Quote from RoCkBiGdAvE :

No-one can really tell you if your being walked over. We dont sit their all day
next to you like supernanny and tell you where your going wrong.

You've got a really big point there. I guess I'm just looking for someone to give me a push and force me to get on with being a hard bastard.

Quote from SamH :

It's interesting, reading the first two posts. One from a self-confessed soft-touch, and one from a self-proclaimed hard-nut. It's immediately apparent to me, though, that the two are not mutually exclusive, and you don't have to become a hard nut in order to prevent the current situation continuing.

Striking that balance is going to be pretty interesting..

Quote from Bladerunner :

Angry,
I see that you live in Bath...that is not THAT far to commute to Oxford, so what I would suggest is to come and work with me driving buses in Oxford, and I will teach you how to be a miserable jobsworth bastard like me; somebody who can quite happily tell a little old lady that she cant get on the bus, even if it IS pi$$ing down with rain, because her pass has expired 3 minutes ago! Or..making somebody walk 4 miles down a road at night because he has a petrol can, and its his own stupid fault if he ran out of petrol!
The best part of it is the daily competition of how many cyclists you can knock off, or saturate if it happens to be raining and there are loads of nice big puddles!
I can teach you how to get a sadistic degree of satisfaction out of being a miserable git.
If you need a reference, just ask '_Rob_' he is getting first hand experience of the sheer bloody-mindedness of us Oxford bus drivers!

Your post really made me laugh Bladerunner. Something one of my old bosses said has always stuck with me; he wanted to be a bus driver to piss off as many people as possible. Sounds like its a globally accepted behaviour of a bus driver.. I should clearly change jobs, if only for week

Man, you're making me feel bad for asking you for that favour now.

A shame you didn't have your night though, I was out in town for a bit last night watching all the loony toons all dressed up. One guy even went as far to put the full predator outfit on, which did look impressive (even if it looked tacky as hell close up). I'm assuming similiar shenanigans would have been going on even somewhere as posh as Bath.

OK this post didn't really answer any questions for you, I just wanted to ramble about my first night out in like 4 months.

when ever you fell down just think "captain slow loves me".

but on a serious note theres nothing wrong with helping people. the thing is when helping other people starts to take over the majority of your life, or put alot of it on hold. the key is finding the fine line between being selfish and nonselfless. (i think those are the right words.) but then agian im only 16 so i probs dont know wat im talking about.

I like to think of myself as a "nice guy." I often go out of my own way to help others, no matter who it is. Also because I'm 6"4, built like a brick lavatory and 16 (which for some reason seems to give people the impression you now have this evil power that pre-16 year olds don't have yet.) The look on peoples faces is funny when they realise someone with this somewhat masculine exterior can be this kind.

OK, I can't drive people aroung (too young) but I am known by everyone as a funny guy that will always put a huge smile on your face and will do anything for you, I liked this 'reputation' but I never let people walk over me. You will find most people are more than happy to return the favour, if not...it's not worth doing anything for them. Once a nice guy always a nice guy. You will know as much as anyone the personnel satisfaction you get from helping another person, so I dont think cutting your losses is the right way to go, but if it does get to you or is making your life stressful, then dont stop being the nice guy, but be the nice guy is regular boosts. People won't or shouldn't take offence from you saying "Sorry mate, I got aload of my own work to do, you know I would help yop if I could" or "Sorry hunni, I didn't realise you needed me to pick you up, I've had a couple if cans"

So, my $0.02 is, start living for yourself, but moderatly help others aswell, when you can.

Signed,
I very sore index fingered,
General Lee

Quote from tinyk :

Personally I think the world needs more people like you.

~*~*~*~tinyk~*~*~*~

I think that the world needs more people like Tiny, preferably at least ONE Tiny per LFS racer, that way we can all have our own personal Tiny to cherish!!



(Bladey in dreamland again!)

isnt tiny a truck driver called george? at least thats what i head in some thread.

Quote from Bladerunner :

I think that the world needs more people like Tiny, preferably at least ONE Tiny per LFS racer, that way we can all have our own personal Tiny to cherish!!



(Bladey in dreamland again!)

Single?

Just be happy you're one of the nice people in this world and not one of the grumpy miserable sods that do nothing but for them selves..

I wish there were more people like you here dude!

I think the main question for you TAA, is: is it a problem for you? When I started at uni some years ago (>eternity) I had the habit of doing my homework assignments properly and then I gave them to other people who wanted to copy them. It wasn't really a problem for me, until one day half of the class (around 40 or so) people had copied my homework . It wasn't really a problem for me, but my papers got lost in the process so I didn't have any homework to give back. After that I shared my vast information only with couple of friends. When some still wanted to borrow my homework, I just said that I'm not giving them because I lost them once in the process and don't want to risk it again. Female students are of course a different thing, but let's not get sidetracked

So I'm just saying that there is really no point to change the way you do your stuff unless you want to change your way of doing this. Of course in the end it is down to prioritazing things and to be able to say no.

Quote from Bladerunner :

I think that the world needs more people like Tiny, preferably at least ONE Tiny per LFS racer, that way we can all have our own personal Tiny to cherish!!
(Bladey in dreamland again!)

The world is scary enough having just one lol

Quote from Captain Slow :

isnt tiny a truck driver called george? at least thats what i head in some thread.

Don't forget the deep truck driver voice.

Quote from The General Lee :

Single?

Are you hitting on Bladey? lol He's my teamie and very married. He does have a daughter who races LFS though but we keep her under lock and key.

now to unhijack this

@ TAA - You've always been a total sweetheart and sadly those are the people that tend to get taken advantage of. Personally, I'd say don't change who you are because other people get a bit selfish or greedy. If it's the same people that are taking advantage of you... then you have to decide is your kindness to them worth the stress and sadness it causes you. Start with one and learn to tell them no sometimes and explain you're very busy and can't do it that one time. It'll get easier to say no and for them to accept it without causing you even more hassles.

With your girlfriend... did it upset you more you didn't get to have a few more drinks than you did... or the fact you feel she didn't respect you enough to let you know she didn't need a ride? I'm guessing the 2nd one and if that's the case... a "honey I love you, but" conversation may be in order. You know her and probably how she'll react better than I will, but if she cares (and I can't see how she wouldn't ) then she'll take your feelings into consideration before she leaves you 'hanging' again.

~*~*~*~tinyk~*~*~*~

Quote from tinyk :

a "honey I love you, but" conversation may be in order.

BAD IDEA(tm) for how to start a conversation.

Quote from george_tsiros :

BAD IDEA(tm) for how to start a conversation.

lol it was just an example. He'll have to choose his own wording.

~*~*~*~tinyk~*~*~*~