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‘Help! My colleague keeps borrowing money from me’

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Dear A&E,

My colleague keeps borrowing money from me – but never pays it back and it’s driving me mad. It’s the odd £10 here for lunch because ‘I’ve forgotten my wallet’ or ‘Can you put £5 in the leaving card for me, I’ll owe you?’  But she never does. She’s a nice person, but I’ve added it up and it’s now £100. I don’t want to appear tight, but how do I approach the subject of paying it back?

 – Love, Careful

Dear Careful,

Gah! Money! Was there ever a thing that blurred the boundaries between fact and feelings so insidiously? Brilliant, if you are one of those who are not in a complicated relationship with money, but a lot of the time it sets off emotional alarms in people like those pesky car alarms that trigger in the wind. Right now, a lot of us are in money-panic mode, what with the cost of living crisis and the threat of recession, on top of our general money worry settings.

In many cases, it isn’t merely about budgeting and scarcity, it’s about how you feel in relation to the borrowing and the borrower. And that’s the funny tension with money – it is never just about the money. Instead, it’s often about perception. Is this person taking me for granted? Are they genuinely forgetting or treating me like their own personal cashpoint? And, on the flipside, why am I tying myself in knots over this? Why can’t I just ask for the money back? What is wrong with me

Lending money feels simple and harmless but it’s got the potential to be complicated and harmful. Once you find yourself in a negative loop about asking for it back, it can become yet another a hook to hang our anxiety on. “What if they start telling everyone I am mean, or tight, or uptight, if I ask for the money back?” “What if they get angry and shout at me?”

So hold on to this thread of sanity: it is your money. If your colleague borrowed your chair for a minute, and at the end of an hour you were just left still standing in front of your computer, you would feel vulnerable, exposed and a bit of an idiot – but you would also just go and get your chair back. Time to get your chair back.

We have a few suggestions. The one thing all conflict resolution manuals have in common is advice around finding neutral territory for the conversation: no looming over desks or loitering in office doors, and whatever you do, don’t send a “we need to talk” or “can I have a quick word?” email which only put people on the defensive, and should be banned.

Wait until you bump into each other in the corridor or by the communal kettle and then have the conversation. You can do it in two ways. First is the direct approach with a side of emotion thrown in: “I’m taking budgeting seriously at the moment (aren’t we all?) and I noticed that you owe me £100. I would really appreciate it if you paid me back.”

Or you can try a slightly vaguer approach along the lines of “I’m feeling a bit strange and I don’t know the best way to approach it with you – because it’s only money and I really like you – but over the last few weeks you’ve borrowed £100 and I would love it back”.

With trusted friends there comes a point where you stop counting because of the reciprocity – it’s a drink here or a cinema ticket here; the shared experiences make the maths work. But this doesn’t seem at play in your case: your relationship is purely professional and we think you need to treat it accordingly.

The office environment, like the family one, is another space where we tend to have roles forced on us – like the office mother or the naughty, hungover one – and we can see why you might have initially enjoyed being “the fixer” but now don’t want to be assigned the role of “the Scroogy one”.

Neutralise the emotional tension and the fear of judgment because otherwise it will begin to take root. Her financial flimsiness might be a problem  – but it’s not your problem. Time to put on your big girl pants, Careful, and retrieve what you are owed.


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