- If asked to do something like this, I quite often forget temporarily and then suddenly remember a little later, at which point I either do it straight away or construct a physical reminder (email, knot in hanky, mnemonic of some sort to tie it to an action I know I will be performing later) to make sure I don't forget again.
- I think we notice the times when someone says they'll do something and then doesn't actually do it, more than we notice the times it gets done as requested.
- It does slightly depend on whether the service in question is an asked-for favour, or an offered favour. If someone says "I know you have a copy of X, please could I borrow it?" I'd try less carefully to remember than if I happened to be talking to someone about X and offered to lend them my copy of it as part of the conversation. I would be annoyed if someone pestered me about something they'd asked for, rather than something I'd offered, IYSWIM.
- I can only think of one occasion when I semi-deliberately agreed to help out with something like this with no real intention of following through on it, because I felt slightly backed into a corner, and I still feel guilty about not having handled it well.
Mmm. I have occasionally suspected people of deliberately saying yes and not doing it, on the (presumed) basis that it provokes less argument than saying no and not doing it.
In the case where I said yes, the favour being asked of me was something I was rather uncomfortable doing for personal reasons, and I was being asked it in front of a lot of people to whom I really didn't want to have to explain why I didn't want to do it. So I said yes, thinking that I would just grit my teeth and do it anyway, but at the same time sort-of-knowing that I might not.
Afterwards, I realised I didn't care enough aboout what the asker thought of me to make me actually grit my teeth and do it.
If it was just something like lending a book, and I didn't want to lend it, I would just say no!
(One of the people I've tended to suspect of it is our once-mutual landlord, actually. Though the circumstances didn't exactly match the ones in this poll...)
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- If asked to do something like this, I quite often forget temporarily and then suddenly remember a little later, at which point I either do it straight away or construct a physical reminder (email, knot in hanky, mnemonic of some sort to tie it to an action I know I will be performing later) to make sure I don't forget again.
- I think we notice the times when someone says they'll do something and then doesn't actually do it, more than we notice the times it gets done as requested.
- It does slightly depend on whether the service in question is an asked-for favour, or an offered favour. If someone says "I know you have a copy of X, please could I borrow it?" I'd try less carefully to remember than if I happened to be talking to someone about X and offered to lend them my copy of it as part of the conversation. I would be annoyed if someone pestered me about something they'd asked for, rather than something I'd offered, IYSWIM.
- I can only think of one occasion when I semi-deliberately agreed to help out with something like this with no real intention of following through on it, because I felt slightly backed into a corner, and I still feel guilty about not having handled it well.
Afterwards, I realised I didn't care enough aboout what the asker thought of me to make me actually grit my teeth and do it.
If it was just something like lending a book, and I didn't want to lend it, I would just say no!