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Oct 03, 2019, 01:14 AM
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Member Since: Dec 2018
Location: New Jersey
Posts: 6,008
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Hey @rdgrad15-
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Originally Posted by rdgrad15
I wasn't going to make her pay for the burger, I was just about to pay for it myself. So I don't know what went wrong there. She wound up paying for it and that was it. I felt guilty afterwards and felt like maybe I shouldn't have ordered at all. From that point on, anytime there was an outing and I went along, I would actually secretly eat some food in the cafeteria before even meeting up to head out.
I felt that maybe I wasn't supposed to order food with them after all or maybe I misheard or misunderstood something. A couple times, I didn't even go along because I was afraid of that happening again. I felt bad but at the same time, wondered if she was secretly wishing she didn't have to do it. I felt guilty since I felt she was doing it out of obligation.
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I think you are thinking about this example an awful lot without getting clarification. As scary as it is, why dont you call, text or email or take this person aside and be honest. Tell her you planned on paying for your food and understood she was paying for drinks and when she chose to pay for you in confused you and you are worried things got off on the wrong foot. I was wondering if she agreed to buy the drinks was she just going to give everyone some cash separately to pay for their own drinks? Or was it one order with all the drinks and she was paying all at once. If this is the case then your burger would have been included in that one purchase of drinks so she may have thought you expected her to pay for your food or annoyed that you didnt wait until this purchase was complete and then placed your food order. Am I making sense?
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Other times I’ve accepted a coworker’s offer to give me a ride. I offered to give gas money but she declined, saying it’s pointless since we live literally less than a minute away from each other on the same road. No back tracking either. I eventually came to find out she didn’t really like doing that and got irritable towards me. I stopped accepting rides from her. I don’t want to inconvenience her or anyone else.
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How did you find out that she didnt like doing this?
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I now wonder how to decide when it is okay to politely decline someone to do something polite. I find myself doing it more often now since I always worry people are secretly hoping I will decline. Is there something wrong maybe I am doing or do people tend to regret their politeness more often that I thought? Just confused and not sure if declining people's offers more often than I used to is the right thing to do or not.
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You have every right to decline any help whenever you want but you shouldnt do this because you fear THEY want you to decline. People should not offer help if they do not mean it. If you are offered help and you accept its not your concern whether they meant it or not. You have to take it at face value and stop looking for the subtext or hidden meaning. At the same time to avoid any bad feelings you are also allowed to say no all the time.
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There has been many other cases as well. I may be doing something alone or about to walk somewhere and someone will ask if I need help or a ride and if I said yes, they will give a sigh of annoyance.
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How can you tell annoyance from a sigh? I think you are reading way too much into this. You have no idea why they are sighing.
They would not have stopped what they are doing and asked you if you needed help if they didnt want to. And sighing is just sighing.
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President of the no F's given society.
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