![The 'Need-A-Favor Neighbor' Who Just Won't Give Up [Block Talk]](https://nixpet.com/wp-content/themes/bravada/resources/images/headers/mirrorlake.jpg)
ACROSS AMERICA — The “need-a-favor neighbor.” Perhaps you’ve met this person. Boundaries? They don’t exist when this person asks, at least sometimes, for you to do them a favor. Right now. Regardless of whatever else might be going on in your life.
We asked readers for Block Talk, Patch’s exclusive neighborhood etiquette column, how to politely turn down neighbors who constantly ask for favors, assume it’s no imposition, and also assume that if you did it once, you’ll do it again.
“Thank you for this topic,” said Rorie, a new Patch reader. “Very much needed.”
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Rorie may have had the neighbor from hell — with or without favors she said were expected but never explicitly requested.
Normally, she said, “if a neighbor is normal, kind and friendly,” she is happy to oblige requests for favors.
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“But now, I’d probably say no because I’ve had ‘neighbors’ be hostile for no reason that I caused and, sadly, they are not available for me,” she said.
One neighbor dropped off her two kids “without a please or thank you and made it sound like it was an emergency.”
“I later found out she got her hair done,” Rorie said. “It was without any offer for payment, and it was very presumptuous for her to think that I didn’t have anything better to do.”
Rorie said she agreed to watch the neighbor’s kids a couple of times out of kindness before coming to the realization the woman “was lazy and a taker.”
“She was waiting for me to pull into my parking space near my condo with her arms folded and exclaimed that I was late!” Rorie said. “I simply said I had other plans and kept walking. It was not fun!
“She was a selfish, lazy, self-entitled formerly married person. She acted like I owed her an explanation why I would not do it. I work as an ICU RN and was exhausted. They were not my kids. Kind of stupid to tell someone they are late coming to their own home.”
It gets worse.
Roxie said she hadn’t talked to the neighbor in need of child care for a couple of years when she suddenly showed up and “attacked me at my door. … and then pushed in my door, yelling at me and calling me unacceptable names, with part of her body inside my entryway.”
“Yes, she was aggressive and inappropriate, but I didn’t provoke it, and I had to call the police on her,” Rorie said.
Marie, who reads Joliet Patch and Homer Glen-Lockport Patch in Illinois, has some advice: Shut it down at the get-go.
‘Sorry, I Am Unable To Help You’
“Don’t be afraid to say no,” she said. “It’s not as if you’re losing a good friend.”
She feels Rorie’s pain, though.
The most annoying favor her neighbors ever asked was for “us to pick up furniture since we owned a truck and they didn’t want to pay a delivery fee,” Marie said.
It didn’t work out so well for them, though. “A chair fell out onto the road in transit,” she said.
“Another favor was to ask us to drive out and pick them up when their car stalled in the middle of the night,” Marie said. “We were already in bed.”
Nunya, who found our survey on Across America Patch, had a neighbor who constantly asked to borrow expensive machinery. “They have lots of money,” she said, “and can buy their own expensive machinery.”
The best response, Nunya said, is, “Sorry I am unable to help you with this.”
Beep Means Bring In The Groceries
Gina, who reads Brick Patch and Holmdel-Hazlet Patch in New Jersey, has started avoiding her neighbors.
“Every time they came home from the grocery store, or any store, they would stop in front of my house and beep their horn and yell ‘GROCERIES,’ letting me know they needed me to come bring them inside their house,” Gina said.
“They stopped after my husband got involved,” Gina said, without elaborating.
Homewood-Flossmoor (Illinois) Patch reader Nary made it clear she wasn’t her neighbors’ personal chauffeur.
“A neighbor asked me to bring her and her husband to the store when their car was in repair,” Nary said. “I finally had to tell them I work all week and need weekends to take care of my own needs. They never spoke to me after that.”
Another neighbor treated Nary like a babysitter — “didn’t ask, just sent her kids over after school and they told me I had to watch them.”
Patch reader Ruth said the favor one of her neighbors wants is to use her good name and standing.
“My neighbor drops my name whenever she thinks it’s to her advantage,” Ruth said. “Most recently, she needed an attorney and used my name to try to persuade a prominent attorney I know that he should take her on as a client. ‘I said that you referred me,’ she said.
“She’s sketchy — maybe not a criminal, but a shortcut-taker — and I feel like I should call the attorney and tell him to stay far away from this cesspool.”
Getting The Last Laugh
Ruth was even more annoyed by the neighbor “who asked to borrow my car to drive three states away in a blizzard at Christmas because he wasn’t sure his would make it. He said that since I was hosting, there would be a lot of cars if I needed to go somewhere.”
“I told him it was asking too much and that my insurance company would have a cow if he wrecked it,” Ruth said. “He told me I was selfish and stomped off in the snow.”
Thanks, Ruth, for sharing what happened next. It is a little delicious for anyone who has or has had a relentless need-a-favor neighbor.
“I laughed out loud when he slipped and fell on his butt because he was so worked up,” Ruth said. “He got up and kind of slunk away.”
About Block Talk
Block Talk is an exclusive Patch series on neighborhood etiquette — and readers provide the answers. If you have a topic you’d like for us to consider, email [email protected] with “Block Talk” as the subject line.
Catch up on Block Talk.
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