Burnout with freeloaders
I don’t know if it’s just me or if every team is like this. In my team, there are a few people who are technically average but call me every single time they hit a problem — whether it’s work-related or some random corporate policy issue. I somehow became the “go-to” person for everything.
Then, during coffee breaks, the same people troll me — like I’m some kind of walking Wikipedia.
The worst part? One guy literally paid me monthly for 4 months just to help him with his technical tasks. He’d call me on Teams daily for 2–3 hours so he could finish his work.
All this has started to drain me badly.
Now I’ve become passively aggressive — stopped replying to messages, ignoring calls. And suddenly everyone’s doing politics around me.
How do you handle situations like this at work?
If you are getting paid for helping out then it's a good side hustle. I like your approach, charge people so only genuine folks will come to you, you can eliminate freeloaders.
Be upfront, your help or assistance will get them ahead, it's not wrong for you to take some benefit from that.
You are absolutely right, you will not have respect for giving free help, you are not some charity.
My HR used to do something similar. She would rope me into tasks, get stuff done and not give me credits. After getting the help she would much me for my "Detail orientation and perfection, oooo you can't let it off can you! Please do it fast dont probe too much..etc".
I got sick of it. One day she texted me "We need to finish this xyz task urgently."
I replied, "Oh okay, but my manger didn't tell me about it in the last meeting."
Done...she F off after that and never bothered me again.
Be strategic. Help when it matters. For other times maybe create a document if they are common team specific issues and share it with them.
But don’t help, if there is no learning involved for them and the sole purpose is to get the task finished.
Tell them you currently don’t have bandwidth and delay. Most likely they will find someone else like you 😂.
For politics part, strategically help.
