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Comment by agumonkey | Hacker News Reader

Told that on Reddit few days ago. 70yo neighbor asked me to fix her laptop antivirus[0]. The thing was sluggish. I came back the following day (unsollicited) to show her a live linux so she can see her laptop full speed (no hdd or os cruft). When i left she asked me how much i wanted.

Social tissue is an odd beast. Friendliness is fragile and people dont like freebies. Also i suspect some Stockholm syndrom, since every aftersales ask a lot, they assume anything must cost a ton.

[0] which she paid for when things were back in order.

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I had this experience in the early 00s. I helped quite a few (of my parents) neighbors with PC and Windows-related problems. It didn't bother me to do it for free, I offered everything for free. One of their neighbors was, at the time, a reporter for the Columbus Dispatch. His power supply was on it's last leg and he was dealing with his machine randomly crashing. I swapped in an unused PSU that I had at the house and he couldn't believe that I didn't want to charge him $200 or something.

These days I'm lucky to even see my neighbors or get a friendly "Hello" back from them.

"These days I'm lucky to even see my neighbors or get a friendly "Hello" back from them."

this is why i very very reluctantly accept anything for free. Even if the person claims to "just being nice" there's an implied debt just like you state here.

I would much rather barter or pay cash up front and square the deal than breed resentment or the awkward "hey I need you to do something for me because you owe me.." conversation.

This is exactly the root of the problem, it's so ingrained in our culture that everything has to be done "for something" that you can't even grasp that someone might want to do or give something without asking anything in return. I do a lot of things or give without expecting even thankfulness.

I don’t know if it’s “our culture”, it’s part of it but personality also comes into play.

If you spend time and effort doing something for someone and expect nothing in return it’s only natural that many people will feel uncomfortable unless they believe they understand why you’re doing it. It’s not necessarily transactional; understanding the motives of others is how people make sense of human interaction. Their understanding doesn’t have to be correct! It just has to make sense to them somehow.

Some possible reasons a person is doing a thing for me:

* They like me, we’re friends

* They like doing the thing or keeping busy

* They have a religion (Christianity, GNU/Linux)

* They like to feel helpful or useful, to teach or to demonstrate expertise

* We have a group bond (church, neighbourhood, club, etc)

* They’re doing me a favour. I’m a useful person and I’ll be able to do them a good turn in future.

* They owe me something (loyalty, money) and they’re paying me back by doing this

* They’re trying to rip me off somehow or get something out of me

* I’m incapable and they judge that I’m clearly in need of help (charity)

More self-reliant people are the ones who seem reluctant to accept free help. I think it actually hurts their pride a little to have to rely on you and not be able to give something in return. Accepting some jars of jam or a bit of money in return seems like a kindness.

You have a point and I forgot to add that above.

I had many motives. I'm annoyed at society race for new and shiney when you don't have to. It was part of the reason the interaction wasn't super neat because it was a bit of a foggy subtext. Now it wasn't all, I wanted to show her what was possible with her machine, and relieve her of stress. But it's true that when we spend time with people, the faster you make sure there's no hidden agenda from your side, the better. I believe if your mind and heart is clear, people will follow rapidly. It's a trust issue.

> Even if the person claims to "just being nice" there's an implied debt just like you state here.

If someone gives me something for free, I have no problem accepting it on those terms and feel no implied debt. Probably because when I do/give things to others for free, I never feel that person owes me anything more than a "thank you."

I have encountered people who've done things for me with an expectation that I somehow owe them something, but I consider them as subverting basic social interactions, and will reduce my interactions with them.

I read that as a separate thought. When he was younger he knew his neighbors and helped them freely. Now neighbors don't introduce themselves. I could be wrong.

The thoughts were were loosely connected, but I wouldn't read too much into anything that I write (especially that early in the morning).

Mostly, I think it's that I'm sentimental and nostalgic for the period of time that I grew up in. It felt like, back then, in that time and that place, that people were genuinely neighborly and helpful for a sense of the greater good. I could rattle off hundreds of instances of personally helping neighbors out, as my parents did, and as other neighbors and family friends did to us in kind, and at least for my piece, I didn't expect a debt to be repaid and I never felt that coming from others.

Maybe it's just my own naivety speaking. Maybe people genuinely did implicitly create a debt in their heads for those favors or deeds. I don't think they did, but I don't really know. I do know that, by the time that computers were a household commodity, and I was able to help folks with theirs, that they absolutely expected to have to pay for _that_ sort of service.

More recently, I've only had the opportunity to help 2 or 3 people through all of the 2010s. Each of them were friends, or people that I was trying to cultivate a friendship with (it wasn't reciprocated, but that's fine, too). I've known the names of exactly 3 families that I've lived literally next door to since moving to California in 2008.

I suppose that I'm just longing for the loss of something that I can't quite explain nor properly articulate on a work day.

You know it took me a long time to understand this part of human nature and social interactions. And I believe it's one of the deepest force behind all the technological change and society evolution. We want to be able to do more without feeling indebted to someone. Today it's reached the point where we almost don't want to owe a hello to a cashier at McDonald's. We want to deal less and less with the potential randomness of people.

I believe we're doing away with the art of trust and replace it with a computerized world.

as long as it doesn’t spiral out of control into dependency, my normal response to someone demanding to pay me for some kindness i’ve done them is either a request for payment in kind (“you know, those pies you bake sometimes always smell delicious from next door...”, “hey, you’re an IPA guy right?”, etc.) or a request to pass it on and report back what they helped someone else with.

I don’t need to take money from neighbors, but i known how itchy it is to feel like you owe someone a debt, and there’s a barter/trade solution that works nicely here and is somehow fundamentally more human.

> I don’t need to take money from neighbors, but i known how itchy it is to feel like you owe someone a debt, and there’s a barter/trade solution that works nicely here and is somehow fundamentally more human.

This perfectly sums it up. There a human component we almost completely lost. Kindness has been made obsolete by money, or so it feels. But that's also a part of humanness that was traded away.

IIRC Graeber wrote quite a bit about how a kind of fuzzily-accounted, low-level, shifting, mutual debt can be a big part of close human relationships (relatives, friends) in his Debt: The First 5,000 Years. I recall in particular his using the example of a child "paying off" all perceived debt to a parent as a way of severing ties with them.

There are parts of the world in which paying off everything you owe to, say, a business partner, is a polite way of saying "i am about to cease doing business with you".

Someone suggested the pie trick too. This kind of idea is quite neat indeed.

It also prevents careless tech support requests. Win-win.

mutual aid is a wonderful thing

My experience from teenage/early adulthood as well. Neighbours knew I was the local "computer whiz", so they'd come to me and ask to fix / "devirus" their computers. They always tried to give me money, no matter how much I opposed.

They know they'd spend a small fortune at Best Buy or other retail service. And they don't want to be seen as a charity case or perhaps worse, a dummy.

I feel like a simple barter might be appropriate in this case. IT services for brownies. Or something like that. You still get the satisfaction of helping a neighbor and they get the satisfaction of paying you something, anything, for your time and knowledge.

I think this is a really important thing to realise, socially. People feel happy doing things for you. In a misguided attempt to be polite I used to turn down things people offered me even though I wanted them: drinks when I visited, lifts in a car, etc. Eventually I realised I was just making them more uncomfortable and that everyone wins if you accept.

That's a very important life lesson. Many people live unconsciously by a code of mutual obligation -- they will do something for you, motivated by feelings they would identify as generosity, expecting nothing immediately in return. It's rude to turn them down. They'll be hurt and feel rejected. At the same time you need to be aware that it's incumbent on you to return the favor eventually, in some form. I've seen a lot of, on the one hand, resentful feelings and on the other, baffled incomprehension, result when people who live by this code interact with people who don't.

In the real world, when someone offers something, they've already in their mind given you that.

If you turn it down, it causes an internal conflict.

This is culture-specific! I know a couple of cultures where it's polite to offer (without actual intention of following through), and the expectation is that the person being asked also declines - out of politeness. Think of it as the equivalent of the American "How are you?" scripted exchange.

I think India has (or had) a three level rules where the first 3 queries were just polite to show some kind of friendliness. After that your in honest/genuine interactions.

Unfortunately it's not quite that simple. The very same real world also contains offers that are customary given on the assumption that the other side says "thank you very much I will surely come back to you about this" as part of a politeness protocol but never even considers taking the offer seriously. "Please stay as long as you like" is how the last guests of a party thrown out.

And it's part of their growth learn to let go of the rejection.

I find that highlighting how asking for help meets the need of community and support, while providing it meets the need of contributing to life.

Both sides got their needs met. Everything else is extra. People aren't learning how to be grateful for themselves and their own vulnerability. I'm not going to take away that learning opportunity, especially by accepting things from them I don't want or need.

In my case what was odd is that I came on my own, she sollicited my help for the antivirus and paid me. I came back without her asking, just so she knows her machine is fine and there's no reason to worry or buy a new one.

Business shark me should have ride her fear and give her paid advice for a new machine while giving her a free 'recycling' service on her current laptop.

Remind your business shark that in the accounting world, "good will" is an acknowledged asset class that exists. It's not always a good idea to "monetize" all of it, even from a strictly homo econimus business shark point of view.

> in the accounting world, "good will" is an acknowledged asset class that exists. It's not always a good idea to "monetize" all of it, even from a strictly homo econ[omic]us business shark point of view.

Is this true? I'm familiar with an accounting concept called "goodwill", but as far as I ever learned "goodwill" is just the label given to prices that are higher than the fundamentals appear to justify. By that definition, in order for goodwill to exist, it must already have been monetized.

Another approach is to ask the person you're helping what they're good at.

As long as it's something reasonable, let them know if/when you need a hand with that later on, then they can expect a call in return. :)

I basically eventually set a rate for this, mostly because people kept asking. And because I both wanted to address people trying to give me as much as a Best Buy, and those who somehow still thought five dollars was useful in this day and age.

I think we're wired to want to reciprocate. By paying you for the favor she avoids having to think about ways she can pay you back in the future.

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