Coworker asks to borrow $6000 from colleague, stops speaking to him when he declines: 'We're not even friends'

JR Atkinson • Writer and Editor

Jul 28, 2026 10:00 AM EDT

Is it wrong to refuse to lend money to a coworker?

Lending money to somebody is a pretty big deal. It's something that ideally you would only do in dire circumstances, or unless you're completely comfortable with never seeing that money again. That's a good rule of thumb for lending money. If it would ruin your life to never see that cash again, then you should definitely not lend it out to anybody. Especially somebody who you don't know that well, like a coworker. The coworker relationship should be kept to professional confines when it can. That doesn't mean you can't be friends, but that does mean that you probably shouldn't ask each other for money. That is a pretty brazen crossing of a line, and you have to understand that people aren't going to be willing to do that for you. The person in this story, though, didn't quite understand that. Imagine working with somebody for a long time and then realizing that they wanted something from you that you couldn't give. It would make things pretty awkward around the workplace once everybody figured that out.

A coworker asked me to borrow him $6000 for a car and I said that I can't give him this money. He stopped talking to me afterwards.

I say hi to him out of politeness but I simply don't interact with him the same as before. Am I an a h le for not helping him? The thing is, we're not even friends. 6k is a lot to give to a coworker. And to be fair, I need that money.

IOnly ReadTitles26 Never lend money that you are not willing to give away.

Training Low9079 NTA. Never loan money you can't afford to just give away.

Excellent_Problem753 In 23 years of working, I've never asked a coworker to borrow money. Now, I have been asked to lend money, but the amount has never exceeded enough to reasonably cover a single utility bill and could be paid back over the course of a single paycheck. I think anything outside those parameters would be odd.

sneezhousing You did the roght thing don't loan him or any coworkers. even 10. You will never see that money again if you do.

LocalGoat81 You definitely did the right thing. 6 dollars, maybe. But 6000, no way would I ever loan that much money to a coworker.

No matter what you do in that situation, it can be pretty hard to get out of. Either you say yes, and you wind up losing money and losing your trust in someone, or you say no, and you risk the working relationship. Either way you're taking a big swing, and possibly a big miss. The worker in the story wasn't quite sure what he should do. He made the same choice of saying no to lending money to somebody, especially such a large amount, but he was left to deal with the consequences. You don't want somebody else to ruin your job for you. It can be very hard to find a new job, and you probably want to hold on to the one that you have for as long as possible. But this coworker was making that very hard to do. Keep scrolling to see what happened here and then see what commenters had to say about it.