The Highway Forums General Discussion Open Forum Etiquette In Friendship

Senario:
A young couple, Janice and Brett, are about to get married and are planning a wedding. Janice has a friend, Sarah, who owns a small catering business. When Janice announced her engagement and upcoming wedding to Sarah, Sarah, in all the excitement, said that her business would cater Janice and Bretts' wedding free of charge. Janice gladly accepted this offer.

On the wedding day, Sarah and her employee Maria suffered several setbacks in setting up the catering which is a nice way to say, it was a disaster. It was a trying ordeal for Sarah and Maria to try to get back on track, and Sarah became very frustrated because in the back of her mind, she was aware that while her costs were going up, there would be no compensation for it. She regretted being so rash as to offer her service free and soberly remembered that a small business such as hers could easily sink with just a few setbacks like this one. Instead of this agreement building her friendship with Janice, it served as a hinderance.

The Moral Issue:
Many people's idea of friendship is to have friends "hook them up" with free or highly discounted services from their area of profession. Friendships are like bank accounts where we are either making deposits or withdrawls. Deposits build up friendships and increase their longevity. Withdrawls, if there are too many in succession, weaken friendships and eventually end them.

In Janice's case, she was caught up in the excitement and was not thinking clearly, much like Sarah. She didn't consider what a toll this would take on Sarah's small business and failed to take the more mature path of rejecting Sarah's overly generous offer and announcing that she and Brett would pay full price for Sarah's services and that she would show friendship by preferring Sarah's service over that of her competitors, not by trying to get something free. Jesus reminds us that a laborer is worthy of his hire and that is great advice, even within the trusting confines of a friendship.

The Fix:
Though Sarah was in no position to say anything because, after all, she offered this, Janice was. Janice realized her mistake and took Brett aside and explained it tearfully. Brett suggested that they pitch in and help Sarah and Maria. As guests arrived, they too were immediately given tasks to perform and they were more than glad to help out in a trying situation like this. After the wedding, Janice asked Sarah for the bill. Sarah protested but Janice would not take no for an answer. She now saw that their long term friendship was at stake and insisted on compensating Sarah in full for her service.

A lesson was learned.

One more thing I might mention is that the difficulties that arose during Sarah's catering are likely because Sarah set about this in a lackadaisical manner. After all, this wasn't a "real" customer, just a friend she's helping out. If this were a paid service from the start, Sarah might have set about it differently focusing on assiduous preparation and flawless execution like she does with all her paying customers.

Just another thought.

And this is the key. In retrospect Sarah should have told Janice, "I would love to cater your wedding. Here's my card. Please give me a call if you would like a quote." And leave it at that. But, as you say...lesson learned.

The founder of the business where I am a partner today left us with many of his Bargeisms.The one I was prompted to think of after seeing this post is where he said,"You will have to make money off of your friends as you don't really think that you will make any off of your enemies ,do you?"

I prefer to approach such things from a biblical perspective rather than from examples from life's perspective, i.e., coming FIRST from the teachings of Scripture and then apply them to life rather than taking things from life and trying to formulate "lessons" for life.

In the example given above, Scripture teaches us that we as children of God and who are the recipients of His unmerited grace are the only ones who know that all things are from God and are to be used as such. In short, believers are to be good stewards with God's earthly blessings.

Secondly, Sarah wasn't wrong in principle in offering to cater her friend's wedding at no cost. If one concludes this to be true then this would prohibit doing anything free gratis, which is hardly in accord with biblical teaching, e.g., being a cheerful giver (2Cor 9:7). We can see this clearly illustrated by the communal giving of earthly goods to others (Acts 2:44,45; cf. Ps 112:9; Prov 11:24; 19:17; Isa 58:7-12; Matt 25:34-40; 1Tim 6:18,19; Jam 2:14-16).

Thirdly, Sarah sinned in a couple of areas: 1) Setbacks are part of life for the LORD directs all our steps. But Sarah forgot why she offered to do the catering in the first place, out of the goodness of her heart for her friend. Her spirit of generosity waned and she began to regret what she had done. Was her original reason for making the offer truly genuine? 2) She failed to 'count the cost' of her generosity. Was she really able to pay for the service offered; food, equipment, employees' wages, etc.? Perhaps she should have offered to do part for free or to offer to cater the wedding for a discounted price. Bottom line, perhaps she was not a good steward. Her friend was not naked or poor and thus her offer need not have been so sacrificial. There are times when such sacrifice is warranted and a true sign of grace (cf. Matt 12:41-44; 19:21,22).