To be fed up with DH's friend "helping" us

[anxietyaunt]

We're doing some work on our house. We need some wiring done and as it happens one of DH's friends is a sparky. So he's agreed to do it in exchange for my husband (also a tradie) doing some work on one of his jobs. So it's an even tradeoff.

When he first came after after the agreement he told me how much it would cost for the "free" work he's doing on our place. I said we were very grateful and asked if it was part of the reciprocal agreement he had with my DH to which he replied it is. Thought that was the end of it.

However, every time I see this guy he's carrying on about how much he would have charged for the work he did. I cut him off last time and told him we'd just pay him for it then. So he says: "No, it's fine. DH will do some work for me."

But, it's never the end. I don't know what he wants exactly. Endless appreciation? I suggested we just pay him and that would be it. He stays for dinner (rather invites himself and I am left to scramble to fulfil his MASSIVE appetite). He's already had my husband for more hours of work than he spent here. The guy is doing my head in.

AIBU?

I think he wants you to feel indebted to him. Free dinners! More work out of DH! And if he's not doing it in front of your DH, you need to start disavowing him of the illusion that you agree with his bullshit.

@ClaryFairchild

Reply options:

"And? You want a medal for it?"

"And how much would DH's work at your place cost you? About the same or even more than that?"

"Why exactly are you telling me this again?"

He has no social skills, and doesn't understand subtlety. You will need to be blunt.

Oh and next time he comes over dinner ask him to bring some wine with him.

He came over once and my husband told him to bring wine. DH doesn’t drink. I drink red. He brought his favourite bottle of white, filled my glass once (while I was cooking) and made a strange little joke about me being a wine guzzler (don’t think I’d ever had a drink around him before!) and proceeded to polish the rest of the bottle off double time.

He’s an arsenal. Pay someone else

Arse*

You need to get DH to deal with this.
It's really annoying. He wants your attention for some reason.
Tell your husband that in future you want to get employ an electrician properly.
I'm not a fan of these "I'll do this if you do that" kind of arrangements as they often cause problems between friends.
My ex was an electrician and he had no end of bother with this kind of thing but in his case he'd do hours and hours of work and then when the time came for he other person to return the favour they'd suddenly be unavailable.

He brought his favourite bottle of white, filled my glass once (while I was cooking) and made a strange little joke about me being a wine guzzler (don’t think I’d ever had a drink around him before!) and proceeded to polish the rest of the bottle off double time.

Does DH know what an arse this person is being? He's being very disrespectful towards you and it needs to be stopped.

He sounds a right knob jockey. Is all the work on both sides finished now? if so and he brings it up again tonight I would say ... right, can we do a deal where we don't talk about this again as it's getting boring!

And I would seriously bring up the parking, as in, don't park on our drive, block our drive etc, I have a child and you're making it difficult, if he's brazen enough to do it, you need to be brazen enough to bring it up and tell him to stop :)

God, your DH needs to ditch him.

You have to tackle this head on. You've had a lot of good suggestions, or just a straightforward:
'You're constantly mentioning this. How many more hours does DH have to work for you before you stop talking about how grateful we should be?'. And then just silence until he responds. He's bound to come back with something jokey/arsey, so just reply 'Seriously. How many hours? I want a number.'

At this point, I wouldn't care about offending him. I'm annoyed for you!

@fflelp

You need to get DH to deal with this. It's really annoying. He wants your attention for some reason. Tell your husband that in future you want to get employ an electrician properly. I'm not a fan of these "I'll do this if you do that" kind of arrangements as they often cause problems between friends. My ex was an electrician and he had no end of bother with this kind of thing but in his case he'd do hours and hours of work and then when the time came for he other person to return the favour they'd suddenly be unavailable.

This is a point of contention between my husband and I. He’s very generous and has been taken advantage of a lot before. I’ve said I don’t feel comfortable with a certain friend/family doing work before but he seems to want to keep things in “the family” as it were. Example was a family member cleaned our house once and was paid for it but did a shit job. So it hasn’t happened for a while. But now this. It’s exasperating.

Your DH needs to stop inviting this man into your home. He’s been incredibly rude, really disrespectful to you with the wine comment and is engaging in weird power plays with your parking situation.

Get him to do the work that remains, pay him for it fair and square and then tell your DH that the man is not to be invited into your home again, ever.

Definitely call him out on it. Tell him the work he does isn’t worth the hassle. Either he’s happy with the trade off or he’s not, which is it? Then when he’s gone, tell your husband you don’t want this idiot round for dinner anymore and you’d rather pay someone else to do the work in future.

I'm with Flamingolingo.

I lean't a while ago that in order to get what I want/ make my life easier/ save me money, sometimes you have to do a Penguins of Madagascar and "smile and wave".

Work out if what he is doing is actually saving you money or helping you out. Then, I'd suck it up and be out of the house, busy or whatever when he was there. Buy frozen pizza if he has to stay for dinner.

Park in front of your own driveway before he arrives for dinner so he has to park elsewhere on the road!

This is extortion of your sanity, OP. You've paid, alright. I feel all ragey on your behalf. I have a friend who doesn't live by me but walks her dog at a local park near mine. Free parking everywhere... for miles around! Even the park has a car park... FREE parking. But she will park her car across our drive, blocking us in (DH mainly because I just cycle everywhere. I'm a terrible driver- that's for another thread). She'll actually text us to let us know she's parking at ours. Anyway, DH and I just stare at her car, parked across our drive, while the entire road is available to her and we always just sit there, exasperated, wondering "Yeah but why block us in when you clearly don't have to?"She doesn't even stop in to visit (which would almost be more of a reason to block us in... sort of?). We don't confront the issue because, well, I guess neither of us has the guts to. But it's a good 2 hours that her car is there.
She too has said, "Oh I've seen Vanguard put it away. She can outdrink all of us."
I'm teetotal.

People can be sooo weird and so invasive. I don't know... for your own peace of mind you'll have to find the courage to say, "Work is done! Enough!" How to say that is the hard part. Good luck! I really feel your plight! The cooked dinners... ugh... that would annoy the hell out of me. It must be driving you up the wall and back down again. And the thing is, you could make him a terrible meal of like poo nappy-dog hair lasagna and I bet he'd still eat it off a sore leg... with a bottle of headachy white! It's always the way!

I hate these situations! Once you're done with this work hopefully you'll have learned the lesson never to have
friends/acquaintances/colleagues etc. do you a "favour" in any way. I've seen this happen so many times in my life.

My parents once ended up spending many thousands more on some house renovations that my DF's good friend (a building contractor) had practically begged my DF to let him do for us. He supposedly was doing the work for a discounted fee and you can guess how it all ended up. He was very slow and far behind schedule throughout, he'd drop the work to go off and do other jobs which my DM accepted as she thought we were getting a steep discount but it turned out we were barely charged less than a regular contractor. In the end he bailed on the job and became impossible to contact so my DPs had to pay someone else. The end of a friendship obviously (ironically his wife was my godmother, strangely I haven't seen or heard from her since I was seven years old...)

I myself was the victim of a friend's "kindness". I'd just moved overseas with my partner and I needed to get used to driving on the other side of the road and get used to all the different traffic rules, which was a small thing but I was nervous initially. A friend of my partner offered to take me out a few times to drive until I got comfortable. He offered as a friend and I was grateful but everytime we went out he would go on about the time it was taking from his day and somehow we always ended up driving to restaurants where I would take the hint and buy him a takeout meal. I got tired of this pretty quickly so I stopped it and only then did I find out from my partner that he'd been paying the friend to take me out driving so this guy was getting paid, complaining and getting free meals several times a week.

I will never ever mix "friendship" with any service I need taking care of ever again.

If you honestly feel it’s a power play then you need to pull him on it while your husband is present so that there can be no further room for ‘misunderstandings’ on his part (“husband, Pete has mentioned to me several times how much this work he’s doing here would cost if he was charging, haven't you Pete, and I’m not sure he’s quite clear on how the arrangement with your time is working so let’s get it all cleared up now while we’re all here and then we all know exactly where we stand and it doesn’t need to be brought by anyone again. And then Pete can pop to the shop to get a nice bottle of red to go with this last dinner that I’ve cooked for him.”), park your car across your drive so he can’t park there, and then just walk away from him every time he starts with his crap. Don’t feed his behaviour.

@bumbleb33s No, the work isn’t done. He’s only doing it in dribs and drabs. Is supposed to arrive at a certain time and knock a heap of the job off but instead comes late, does a bit then leaves/stays for dinner. Husband isn’t bothered as it’s not urgent work and he likes to see his mate. I’m bothered though. Obviously.

Just tell him to shut up or he's not getting any dinner. He's a big boy, he can handle it.

This is definite power play. I'd not stand for it any longer.
You've got 3 options:
Tell him yourself.
Get your DH to tell him.
Go out.

Absolute twat, dont stand for it anymore OP! What a CSF!
(Cheeky sexist fucker)

This guy is an arse of the highest order.

If your husband isn’t going to find his balls and stand up to this “friend” then I’m afraid you’re going to have to! At least people like this usually back off pretty quickly when they’re at the sharp end of a retort because they can dish it out but they sure as hell cant take it.

Either be direct (“You’ve had more than your money’s worth in food, the amount you put away every time you’re here!”) or sarcastically agree with him (“Yup that’s me, lush extraordinaire!” when he makes a comment about drinking). They can’t push against an open door.

He sounds like the archetypal Nice Guy - only nice because of where it gets him and you can be damn sure what he feels he is “owed” with be totted up, over calculated and used for all it’s worth.

I’ve learned the hard way that it’s often cheaper to pay for something than get it free!

Right, so I’ve just got home. He’s parked in the driveway (no surprise there) but parked only juuuust far in that I can’t fit my car behind him. Arse. Hat.

I’m off to face the music. Will report back.

He’s clearly a sexist moron with a fragile ego getting off on aggravating a woman to get his own back for the fact women can’t stand the tiresome twerp.

Op what is your husband doing for him and what’s he doing for your husband? I do wonder if there is a discrepancy there?

Its an absolute power play.

Taking your space by blocking you in, eating your food, bigging himself up to his friends wife - hes being The Big Dog.

Don't expect this work to be done within the next year, he'll be stretching it out as long as humanly possible because what you're really paying is a day-rate of him feeling powerful at both your expense. It might not even be anything more malicious than him not really knowing how to be friends and have relationships with people beyond the schoolyard light bullying but that doesnt make it any more ok.

Next time he starts going on about his time, cut him off and start bigging up your DH. Could just be "oh don't these jobs take forever! Lucky for me DH is such a fast worker or I'd never see him! I don't know how he manages it, everyone says they're so happy with his work too, he's so skilled!" but the important thing is to redirect your focus to your DH whenever he starts trying to peacock around in front of you.

Can you park on the road but block him in op. So when he needs to leave you have to move your car. I'd have a glass of wine in the meantime and make him move it