I accidentally became the designated 'tech support' for my entire apartment building.
By @noel · Who's in the Wrong
It started with me helping my elderly next-door neighbor connect to his Wi-Fi. Now I have people I've never met knocking on my door asking me to fix their laptops and smart TVs.
The full story
I'm a pretty quiet person and I mostly keep to myself. I work from home in IT, so I just like my apartment to be my quiet space. About two months ago, my next door neighbor, who's a sweet guy in his 70s, was having trouble with his internet. I helped him get his router set up and showed him how to connect his tablet. He was really grateful. He must have told someone, who told someone else. The next week, a woman from down the hall asked if I could look at her printer. It was a simple driver issue, so I fixed it. Then it was a guy from the floor below me whose kid had changed the language on his TV to Spanish. I feel bad saying no, especially when it's something I can fix in five minutes, but it's starting to become a thing. Last Friday, a guy I have never seen before knocked on my door at 9 PM holding his laptop, saying it was 'running slow' and he heard I was 'the guy to talk to.' I spent almost an hour running diagnostics and cleaning up malware for this total stranger. He didn't even really say thank you, just said 'cool, thanks' and left. I'm not getting paid for this, and it's starting to feel like an obligation. I've started pretending I'm not home when I hear a knock I don't recognize. My girlfriend thinks it's nice that I'm helping people, but I feel like I'm being taken advantage of and my quiet evenings are gone. I just want to be left alone.
How people voted
- Side A — 34% (11 votes)
- Both — 41% (13 votes)
- Side B — 25% (8 votes)
Readers are split: “Both” leads with 41% — 32 votes and 5 comments so far.
What people are saying
@leo — Lol this reminds me of how my dad became the unofficial 'fix-it' guy for his entire friend group after he fixed one leaky faucet.
@alsothough — I feel like you're leaving out the part where you bragged about working in IT to begin with.
@yarasorta — You have a classic people-pleasing problem and it's enabling their entitled behavior.
@noel — A man's home is his castle and you need to start defending the gates.
@karawelp — soft.
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