The "I'm happy to do similar efficiency swaps for you in future" bit is important.
It isn't a phrase you'd use towards a chance met passerby in London who you wanted directions from.
Think of neighbours / acquaintances as having credit accounts with each other. If they lend you a car jumpstart lead when they're not using it, that uses up 5 minutes credit with them. If you lend them a car jumpstart lead, when they can't find theirs and they're late and desperate to leave, that gains you several hours credit with them. Many trades are not quite that efficient. "You paint my house and I'll weed your garden" (if they are professional painters, and you love gardening) might be a good deal, but still only a '1 hour for 2 hours' type deal.
If you have this type of arrangement, of swapping favours with someone, and you're both reliable about staying in the black (should be easy, as it isn't zero sum), then it is obviously to your advantage to build up your credit using swaps that are efficient for you. Since the efficiency of a swap varies with the particular friend you do it with (and artiritic old person who hates gardening would find weeding a garden very much harder than a young fit gardening fanatic, for example), it is to your advantage if someone (with whom you WANT to build up further credit) alerts you to opportunities to help them out that will be particularly efficient for you to do.
If someone keeps asking you such favours every day, when you never ask them any, then they are more like viagra spammers, repeatedly offering you an 'opportunity' that you're not interested in taking up. There are many reasons this can happen. Some people with a poor memory for stuff you've done for them may have a broken model of how how 'in debt' you are to them. Some people with an ego problem may think they are doing you a favour just by letting you bask in their presence. Some people are just freeloaders or beggers who want charity, and know they have no prospect of paying the favours back (some think their unstated gratitude for what you do for them is obvious. some are embarassed and humiliated by being 'forced' to ask, revealing their penury, resent you for helping them, and hope that you'll hold up a pretence that they do their fair share around the place). Some have a unix file access permissions mental model, where either an acquaintance is untrusted (in which case no favours done), or an acquaintance has root access, in which cases their expectation is that everyone in the group will do small favours for everyone else in the group, no accounting needed, 'for the common cause'.
I think there was some research done on chimps about this sort of stuff - evolution of various mental capacities, and utility of reciprocity and strategies to cheat on it or utilise is.
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It isn't a phrase you'd use towards a chance met passerby in London who you wanted directions from.
Think of neighbours / acquaintances as having credit accounts with each other. If they lend you a car jumpstart lead when they're not using it, that uses up 5 minutes credit with them. If you lend them a car jumpstart lead, when they can't find theirs and they're late and desperate to leave, that gains you several hours credit with them. Many trades are not quite that efficient. "You paint my house and I'll weed your garden" (if they are professional painters, and you love gardening) might be a good deal, but still only a '1 hour for 2 hours' type deal.
If you have this type of arrangement, of swapping favours with someone, and you're both reliable about staying in the black (should be easy, as it isn't zero sum), then it is obviously to your advantage to build up your credit using swaps that are efficient for you. Since the efficiency of a swap varies with the particular friend you do it with (and artiritic old person who hates gardening would find weeding a garden very much harder than a young fit gardening fanatic, for example), it is to your advantage if someone (with whom you WANT to build up further credit) alerts you to opportunities to help them out that will be particularly efficient for you to do.
If someone keeps asking you such favours every day, when you never ask them any, then they are more like viagra spammers, repeatedly offering you an 'opportunity' that you're not interested in taking up. There are many reasons this can happen. Some people with a poor memory for stuff you've done for them may have a broken model of how how 'in debt' you are to them. Some people with an ego problem may think they are doing you a favour just by letting you bask in their presence. Some people are just freeloaders or beggers who want charity, and know they have no prospect of paying the favours back (some think their unstated gratitude for what you do for them is obvious. some are embarassed and humiliated by being 'forced' to ask, revealing their penury, resent you for helping them, and hope that you'll hold up a pretence that they do their fair share around the place). Some have a unix file access permissions mental model, where either an acquaintance is untrusted (in which case no favours done), or an acquaintance has root access, in which cases their expectation is that everyone in the group will do small favours for everyone else in the group, no accounting needed, 'for the common cause'.
I think there was some research done on chimps about this sort of stuff - evolution of various mental capacities, and utility of reciprocity and strategies to cheat on it or utilise is.