If Mr A feels that this person is a moocher and does not want to deal with them then not answering the door is one way of doing that. Everyone else has an opinion on how they would handle it but not everybody does everything the same. That does not mean it is right or wrong it is just different.
I have one friend who asks me to help him with his firewood fairly regularly. I used to sell his Dad some loads...nothing big, few 1/2 cord loads a year. He had always taken care of his own, but ran into some health problems and wasn't able to keep up anymore with his two stoves. The first load I actually took to him was just a goodwill gesture as his Son & I are fairly good friends. He refused to let me leave it without some kind of payment. We ended up at $20/load to "cover my fuel". He and I ended up becoming pretty good buddies. He passed away a few years ago. His wife still lives in their cabin and burns one stove. Now, to my friend, his Son. He ended up buying a place and had two stoves going, one for the house, one for the shop. He has 30 acre of hardwoods with it. He starts calling me for wood "for his mom's place". I scrounged some stuff up a couple times and took it down to her, this time, I refused payment out of respect for her Husband and she was very greatful. Fast forward a bit and her son is calling me in the middle of winter to go out in his woods with him and get some wood, which I did....twice. The third time he called I started asking "why don't you take care of this stuff in the summer, before you need it?" "It's been hard to keep up with my two stoves and my Mom's" he answers. I then proceeded to berate him for not "getting ahead of the game". I don't have 4 years worth of wood stacked, but am always at least one year ahead. He knows that he is responsible for supply for 3 stoves every winter. He works part time at a regular job, and does bodywork and such on the side meaning he has much more time for woodcuting than do I. The last straw for him came last year when I loaned him my Fiskars X27 and when I went to retrieve it, the blade guard was broken and the blade of the axe was chipped. I left the axe there effectively telling him that I had just learned a $60 lesson about loaning tools and went and bought another. Oddly enough, we are still friends, but there is not much conversation about firewood. In the end, if someone is willing to lighten his load of work, he's all for it, but I stopped seeing him come down to my place and help me out about 5 years ago. Friends are friends, but one thing that lights my fuse real quick is when someone is trying to take advantage of me. I know this fellow doesn't sound like much of a friend, but If I call you "my friend" that is what you are as friendship is nothing without loyalty. It will take more than the above to dissolve my friendship with him, but again...the firewood help is over. A guy I work with spent a lot of time last summer building up a pile of wood for his new stove. Old Craftsman chainsaw and a splitting maul. Asking permission to cut where he could. He managed to throw up a damm nice stack of wood for his first winter! He comes to work one morning work telling me that someone had called him and asked if they could have some "campfire wood". It is a friend of his, who is readily capable of procuring his own camp wood, but it is easier to just call someone and lean on a friendship to get wood for the weekend that you weren't prepared for. This guy "camps" several times a year and knows he'll need some wood for his fires. Why not have some ready? Oh, and when I say camp, I'm talking 35' travel trailer. My coworker was floored. "He wants to use the wood I'm going to keep my family warm with this winter to get drunk beside camping." I told him of my plight with my friend in these matters. He agreed with my position. Not forsure if he gave any wood away or not. These are my two "wood mooch" stories. The first was more of a labor mooch I guess. I cut & split for myself only these days. I have plenty of logs to go around, but rarely does anyone say to me "If I was to come help you with wood, do you think we could maybe fill up my truck too?" "Absolutely! You need only bring your favorite beverage." Is my answer.
My list of friends keeps getting shorter........ If you have one friend you're lucky, the rest are only acquaintances.
I think many people who don't cut much if any firewood tend to think of firewood as an almost free resource plus a little bit of labor. Course we all know it's a lot of labor even if the wood was free. Maybe that's why some folks are maybe a little bolder to ask for some for free or at a big discount? Us hoarders with several years supply on hand must make a tempting visual target for people to envy the stacks and think it's ok to ask for some. Human nature I think. Same reason I have friends always asking me "think you have enough firewood yet!?"
Yup. I have many acquaintances for sure. Only a handful of good friends left and I'm not yet forty. This particular fellow is OK. I think maybe since I used to help his Dad out that he automatically assumed I'd do the same for him. I have another friend who occasionally will come and help just for the "sport" of it. Those two and I were chainsaw opportunists back in our younger years. Need some stuff cut? Hell yeah we'll come help! We just wanted to run the saws...and had plenty of spare time.
Yep I have a sister In law that I do not care for because she acts one way in your face and then shoots her mouth off behind your back. She has asked me for firewood now about 4 times. I just smile and tell her when she is ready I will take her up to the mountains where I cut and help her get some. She also has a husband and a son that are fully capable of doing the same. She still has no firewood. Oh well.
Oh well is right. My grandson and I dug out a culvert pipe for a friend in the cold about 2 months ago. After about 4 hours as we were covering the new pipe with my front end loader he asked us if we could just get one side done so his son (21 years old and healthy) could drive out ( I thought he was away at school) His son was inside the whole time as my grandson (20 years old) shoveled and did the manual labor and I used my back hoe/front end loader. I didn't charge him as he is a friend. He tried to give my grandson $20.00 and I could tell my grandson was fuming as he said "No really I don't need the money" I was so proud of him for not losing his temper and acting like a jerk. Later as we hauled the tractor home he said "Pop I would have gone off on him but he is your friend, what kind of father let's his son stay inside while he and other's do all the work. It's a sad fact but it's the way the world has changed.
