AIBU not to lend friend £50?

[CordeliaChasex]

Context: left an abusive relationship last August. Ex was a coke addict and borrowed money off me constantly for various reasons/excuses. I was a mug and felt like one, hated myself for saying yes.

Now: made friends with a guy at work. He seems nice, bought me a cinema ticket when I was feeling down and I had a nice time. He's also complimented me a lot. Don't know if there's anything romantic there. We've probably been friends for about a month at most, before that we were colleagues.

Today he messaged me asking to borrow £50 and it's set all these alarms off in my head. He wants to borrow until Monday (payday). Affording it isn't the issue, I'm more suspicious of why he's asking me and what this means.

Am I being overly suspicious or is this weird behavior on his part?

We are both doctors but I'm part time, so he earns probably £5k a year more than me on average.

I think that's all the relevant details.

FWIW, I really don't want to lend him any money. I'm just feeling put on the spot/guilty and unsure how to say no.

Wow I had no idea, shocking!!

I would refuse but if you really can't say no..tell him you can manage 20 quid!

It’s an important political and social issue that junior doctors have been campaigning about for many years - you may remember the mass protests when Hunt was health secretary in 2012.

We would all do well to ‘dissect’ the hours and working conditions that junior doctors work. On the face of their contract they are only allowed to work 48 hours a week but in reality many are pressured to work 50-90 hours a week. One of my friends, a junior doctor, did a 48 hour shift on the back of two night shifts in a row because there simply was no one to cover the ward. Was she meant to just go home and leave the patients and nurses with no doctor?

Please educate yourself further about junior doctor’s plight, including their salaries, before we lose all our junior doctors to private healthcare, to Australia and Canada, or to better paid professions such as law and banking.

This is a political and social issue that is important for the public to get behind in order to preserve the future of NHS.

We are still qualified as F1s, we just dont have full GMC registration yet. I can prescribe anything (not sure what you meant there?). The only thing I can't do is discharge a patient based on my own decision, so I couldn't work in A&E and unilaterally decide to send a patient home.

I can prescribe, order and interpret scans, assess and manage deteriorating patients and all the things an SHO can do.

This is harsh and somewhat unnecessary. Victim blaming is never a good look.

Op you are absolutely right to question this, it is a red flag. Say no and keep your distance going forward.

Wants to borrow £50 until Monday?Is nhs pay day not next Thursday so I reckon he'll be back for more OP

My trust pays on the 25th.

YANBU - trust your instincts.

Off topic but can you really become a surgeon without working full time? I thought surgery was full-time and then some.

Yes, but it will take longer and there will doubtless be prejudice and barriers along the way. But people do make it!

It always bewilders me that, faced with the choice between doing something you don't want to do at all or dealing with the discomfort of saying no, is solved by so many PP by offering some kind of insane 'compromise'.

OP has said it's not the £50, which she could afford to lose - it's the inappropriateness of the request itself, & being made to feel guilty for refusing that is stressing her out. She does not want to lend this man any money! So how on earth is it any better - for HER - to advise her to lend him money, & imagine she'll now feel fine about it, because it's a different amount?

Bogeyes, if I asked you to stand still while I punched you in the face, you'd feel dreadfully uncomfortable & unwilling, wouldn't you? You'd want to say no, but at the same time you'd be wondering WTF was wrong with me & what my wider intentions toward you were.

You wouldn't offer a compromise, by telling me you didn't want to be punched, but will be ok with a slap, would you? You'd already be running away, shouting NO. Because you do not want to be punched, you do not want to be slapped, in fact you do not want me to touch you in any way whatsoever.

OP does not want to lend this man any money whatsoever.
The propensity for women to scrabble to find solutions for unreasonable men, to their own detriment, still amazes & appalls me, & this is 2022 ffs.

Yes you can. My surgical mentor is a consultant has been on mat leave twice, has come back LTFT on each occasion. It is less usual in surgery but becoming more normal.

Lets be honest here and say that if you can’t trust a doctor then who can you trust?

Funniest thing I've read on MN in years.

Just like to say OP that after reading another thread about wages, I am absolutely shocked at the start wage for a trainee doctor. Honestly my jaw dropped!!!

Back to the question - no just a polite response saying sorry struggling this month - all the living cost rises ect

Feel free to grind on all you like - my point was that t has absolutely zilch to do with the thrust of the OPs thread which was to discuss her discomfort at a colleague aka new friend asking for £50. Discussing her financial situation with shock and horror is virtue signalling. I'm sure she is already extremely well informed about salary levels and doesn't need you and others pointing it out to her and derailing her question, how best to deal with a sponging colleague. Haven't you heard the one about if you haven't been asked for advice, don't give it, it is not needed.

Discussions about the injustices of junior doctor pay levels is an important subject for a different thread.

A cuple of years of a salary still more than many people, then after a couple of years rising to twice that.

It doesn't rise to twice that after 2 years... a CT1 is £40k. That's after 5/6 years at uni and 2 years postgraduate training, plus the cost of all the portfolio items required to get a CT1 post (costing several grand).

Aldi manager salary is £48k.

many people are not paying back an £80k tuition loan & finding £20k additional on-the-job costs, for their equivalent salaries @me4real

& if you think twice that is such an attractive prospect, how about training for 5 - 8 years, & taking it up yourself?

It's piss-poor remuneration for the expertise level. And that's before the outrageous hours, extra tuition costs, several hours of self-imposed 'homework' every week to keep up with theory & development, huge compliance & risk management arseaches, & little thanks for doing an exhausting job from an often ungrateful public & a traitorous (to the nhs) government.

And compulsory GMC registration fee, insurance, union fees...

Presume you're going to apologise for such bullshit?

Gosh you poor thing, there is no way a friend of one month should be asking you for money! Especially if he’s just taken you to the cinema, that’s bad budgeting on his part!!! You have no responsibility towards him at all he needs to look after himself. I’d say “I was thinking of asking you for £100 actually as I’m broke this month, can you spare it for me?” Ha!

@LovingTheAbbreviations This thread is 8 months old, why comment?!

ZOMBIE!