Woman asks roommate to cough up $10 every time he turns to her for tech help

In our tech-driven world, some people navigate gadgets with ease, while others struggle. While it’s fine to ask for help occasionally, learning to tackle challenges independently is key to developing essential skills. Technology is meant to empower, but when reliance on others becomes habitual, it can blur the line between seeking help and fostering dependency. A Reddit user, u/anonpinklady, shared her frustration with her 31-year-old roommate, who regularly sought her assistance with basic tech issues he could easily solve himself.

In her post, the woman described her roommate as a former college mate and close friend. They bonded over TV shows and card games in their free time, yet when it came to technology, they were total opposites. The woman was tech-savvy, effortlessly navigating gadgets and apps, while he was terrible to an "inexcusable level." She further revealed about her boyfriend, a 33-year-old IT professional who was equally passionate about video games. "We love to play video games together due to this, and recently, when he came over with his laptop, we logged into one of my favorite nostalgic MMORPGs," she added.

The roommate wanted to join in on their video game fun, but his lack of tech skills made the couple irritated. Despite being capable of Googling solutions or figuring things out on his own, whenever the roommate faced a minor challenge, he'd simply say he didn't know what to do and wait for someone else to fix it. "I've started to get harsher in telling him he can either Google it or log off because I'm not helping. I am so tired of this. He doesn't even try to figure things out on his own. Whenever I've talked to him about how frustrating this is, he tells me he never had a computer growing up and simply never got good at using them," she wrote.

Fed up with her roommate’s reliance on her for basic tech help, the woman finally gave him an ultimatum. "I finally told him recently he has 3 options when my boyfriend and I are playing video games: 1. Don't join. 2. Join and Google stuff, and stop being a chore for others to deal with because he's too lazy to figure it out on his own. 3. Pay $10 per occurrence of incompetence and asking for help until he gets tired of wasting money and figures it out himself." Additionally, the woman turned to others for advice, wondering if she was wrong in confronting her friend. "As long as he thinks he can just rely on others to do things for him, he'll never learn to do it himself, and I think this is a good way to make this behavior worth my time," she concluded her post.

Several people reacted to her story and shared responses in the comments. u/12_22_23 wrote, "People will abuse a free resource. The solution is to make it no longer free, which is exactly what you're doing." u/hostIndependent3703 commented, "This sounds exactly like a form of weaponized incompetence. As long as you keep helping him he will never learn and will let you do it for him. He must learn to figure things out by himself." u/animatordifficult429 added, "Let him sit there then and not be able to play."