Why do some people expect things for free?

[Catcherintherice]

I sometimes makes cakes as a hobby, and pass them on for fundraising; school fetes, charity raffles, etc, or share them with friends/ neighbours.

I very rarely make a cake I want to try that I don’t already have a ‘home’ for, and will then offer it on social media for a donation to cover the cost of the ingredients. Although my kitchen is of course clean it has not been hygiene inspected by the local council, so I don’t sell cakes for profit.

I recently advertised one on social media and a few people asked me to make one for them. I explained that I don’t make cakes to order and recommended a few good local bakers.

One woman gave a tale of woe, appeared to be friends with someone who had previously had a cake from me, and against my better judgement I agreed to make a ( fairly basic) cake for her. I had to be home that morning anyway for a heating engineer.

I told her how much the ingredients would cost.

She sent a few messages. One changing the flavour and another asking for an extra filling. Both increased costs a little but I didn’t alter the cost to her.

She then said she didn’t drive and wanted me to deliver. I don’t normally deliver. If I am just recouping the cost of ingredients it doesn’t give me much leeway for fuel or indeed accidental damage to the cake, but for the same reasons I initially felt sorry for her and agreed to make the cake, I also agreed to deliver.

It then occurred to me that the heating engineer might need to turn off the power as I had had a problem with the thermostat, so I decided to make the cake the day before.

I turned on the oven and the RCD tripped. I reset it and it happened again several times. I called the cooker cover plan company and they said they would arrange an appointment within 5 days.

I sent her a message apologising that I couldn’t make her cake and explained why. She had mentioned having a supermarket delivery the next day, so I suggested amending her order to include a cake. The message showed as opened, but she did not reply.

I next heard from her the following day upset that I had let her down and she didn’t know what to do. She clearly hadn’t ordered a cake for delivery.

She asked me if I could buy some sort of cake, similar to what I would have made.

My nearest supermarket is over 10 miles away ( approximately 7 miles from her), and I was waiting in for the heating engineer, but my friend was in town and she picked up a pretty decent cake. It cost £1 more than the cake ingredients I quoted.

Once the engineer had called I drove 3 miles to deliver the cake, intending to just charge the original sum ( whilst making a mental note to never agree to make a cake under similar circumstances). When I got there she was quite off with me, strongly implied that I had let her down and getting a replacement cake to her was the least I could do. She went on for some time before I realised that she didn’t intend to pay.

I know I said I would do something that in the end I couldn’t do, but she knew that I agreed as a favour, and not as a business. I don’t know why she thought I should be out of pocket. She’s not a friend, just a random person who contacted me via social media.

Totally agree.

Sure I don’t disagree but honestly I’d rather be neither. The woman behaved appalling, but the op showed she lets strangers bully her and has no boundaries. Neither are a positive. Yes one is worse than the other, but it’s not a race to the bottom

@EveSix completely agree with you! Being kind and doing something for others is not "people pleasing"

This thread has brought out some very unkind and self centred attitudes.

It's lovely to bake cakes for people.
It might be a bit precarious giving them away to strangers online. As we have established, there are some odd people out there.

But please don't stop being nice and doing things for other people. It's how communities flourish. You sound like a lovely person op!

@Jf20 and others, it may do you some good to consider why you are so judgemental of someone being nice?

Op you sound like such a lovely person, I wish everyone were like this!

Op you sound absolutely lovely.

It's easy to think you would say no with the facts written here, but when you're in the situation there's a bold up and you don't really notice it spiralling.

In a similar vein, back when I was on social media, I used to make memory boxes, sometimes I would make them for raffles and things to do with a couple of charities I support, sometimes for friends too, and I would often get tagged.

I used to end up with dozens and dozens of messages from people just trauma dumping in the hope I would make them one.

Telling me all about their losses in great detail.

Two of my own children had died, I really didn't want to be opening messages from people telling me all about their losses too. They really didn't think about the person on the receiving end of their messages at all.

InTheShallow

The OP may well be an absolutely lovely person, but that isn’t anything I’d conclude from her actions as recounted on this thread, where she self-presents as a craven people--pleaser who only stopped herself buying and giving a complete stranger a cake for free because said stranger’s rudeness (which had been evident all along) and refusal to pay was finally too overt for her to ignore.

Agreeing to make a total stranger on SM a cake for ingredient costs only, on the grounds of a sob story and having to be at home to wait for a tradesman anyway (so I might as well work for free???), changing flavour and filling at the request of this stranger but absorbing the cost herself (so now she’s making a loss, even leaving aside her time and the cost of the gas/electricity required), agreeing to deliver although she doesn’t usually deliver, then deciding she needed to bake the cake the day before the tradesman in case her power went off (so now she’s not even doing it to kill time while waiting for a heating engineer), then apologising when her oven breaks down and suggesting a solution, and, incredibly, when the random internet stranger fails to act on her advice to include a cake in her supermarket order, tells her she’s let her down and tells her to BUY her a similar cake to make up for letting her down, the OP gets her friend to buy her a cake and meekly drives three miles and delivers it to this stranger.

Only when the stranger is, unsurprisingly, rude on delivery and tries to grab the cake without paying does the OP walk away with the shop cake.And even then, it sounds as if this was largely down to a text message distracting the weird cake requester.

None of this makes the OP sound ‘lovely’. It makes her sound like a mug with no boundaries. She may well be a ‘lovely person’, too, but this quite strange series of decisions shows a worrying passivity in the face of a stranger giving her instructions.

It sounds like the people in the Stanford experiment who gave what they believed to be lethal electric shocks to someone else because they were told to.

@InTheShallowTheShalalalalalalalow, I’m sorry for your losses.

What a CF. There are lots of them online. Definitely FB seems to encourage them! I've had a few that wanted me to deliver an item that I was giving away for free!

But this isn't about 'being nice' it is about being incredibly naive and potentially even putting herself in danger.

There are so many ways to 'be nice' without behaving like this.

I agree with what @PlasticOno said.

I offered a double buggy travel system, through a charity, to a woman down on her luck expecting twins. We exchanged messages and she was a bit difficult on some reasonable points - wanted me to measure so she was sure it would fit through her door type of thing. Which I did. Then she wanted me to deliver so I said no (I didn’t have a car either!) and that she would have to collect it. We agreed she would come round at X time.

X time came and went. I messaged asking if she was running late as I had things to do and she said she would be there in a 15 minutes. Then a taxi turned up and said he was here for a pick up. It turned out she’d sent a taxi driver on his own without her to collect. Which would have meant me schlepping down the three flights with the buggy on my own leaving my own DC in the flat to load the buggy in the car (and, I realised after, not actually being sure who was really getting the buggy). She had not at any point indicated that she would not be there to pick it up - in fact her language was deliberately deceptive.

So I sent the driver away without the buggy.

I learnt from that that anyone who is getting something from you for nothing should be the one jumping through hoops and if they aren’t, then withdraw the offer right away.

@NewName24 you sound so aggressive in your irritation at the op being taken advantage of. It's just not coming across as very pleasant.

Some people may be more vulnerable than you. Had you considered this?

Which is exactly why people should be made aware that this isn't sensible behaviour.

There are so many places you can donate a cake to if you want to.

Yes but honestly people having go at the op im this thread comes across as incredibly mean spirited.

It's great to have boundaries of course. But we are all different and have different life experiences. It's also a nicer world to live in if people are tolerant of others and do nice things.

And I don't mean that to sound like #bekind. Just think about how you're coming across. And maybe reflect on the fact that it takes all sorts.

Have a nice weekend everyone 💕

I think that most human beings want to see themselves as good or generous people. So, if we are acting on our own, it can be easy to be led into actions that over reach, are not effective or don’t even reach the right recipient. Then we feel hurt and less inclined to give in the future.

Or worse still, misguided individuals doing things like driving their mates van full of random stuff across Europe in order to help Ukrainian refugees. But which probably simply adds an influx of inappropriate stuff and unskilled people to an already chaotic situation.

This is why I am a big believer in professionally organised charitable initiatives, both large and small, as they protect both parties.

Want to give away baby clothes? Local baby bank.
Want to give away household goods? Charity shops.
Want to help refugees In Ukraine or another war zone? Donate money to a charity like Unicef already working in that country.

It was lovely of you to offer the cake @PotatoPuddingand I can see why you got sucked in to doing more as the situation gradually unfolded, each bit of madness just being a small change that added together to make craziness. You've learned from the experience so all good. It made me laugh that you walked away with the cake you bought, I'm so glad you never gave it to her.

FWIW I sometimes offer items for free on the local Facebook group, when they are too good to chuck or not right for the charity shop. Usually people are lovely and show up on time with chocolate or wine that is totally not required but very nice. I've only ever once had an entitled CF. It's nice to put kindness into the local community.