Hyper-polite translation: "No, I can't intro you to my famous friend"

March 18, 2025 9:30 AM

I'm close friends with a well known leader in my field, let's call her Sage. I know a ton of people who want to advance in my field, and they're eager to network with Sage, so they ask me to connect them. Can you give me some extremely gracious scripts to nicely tell people to just contact Sage themselves and leave me out of it?

About once a week, someone asks me to connect them with Sage, hoping she'll mentor them, collaborate with them, attend their events, endorse their projects, or take on low-paying speaking appearances at their orgs. My true reasons for saying no are:

She's a generous person who wants to help everyone, but she literally cannot. And, she's a Guess Culture person who feels terrible when she has to say no. She already has hundreds of her own friends making these types of requests, let alone all of THEIR second and third degree friends, and many many strangers, all trying to grab her time. So, even "just asking" is actually an imposition, because it costs her time to research and consider all these requests, and it costs her happiness to say no to all these people.

When she gets official requests or social media DMs, she can just ignore them or let her team respond, which costs her much less energy. On the other hand, when a request comes through a friend, I know she feels pressure to give it extra consideration, respond with more emotional labour, and perhaps justify her reasons for declining. In the past, against my better judgement, I have forwarded her some of these requests. I can tell she absolutely hates them, because she politely ignores them, which then tarnishes our friendship because she avoids me afterwards. I can take a hint! And I really don't want my friendship with her to become another place where people extract labour from her. It makes me feel like a user, and it damages our actual friendship.

Given what I know about her current projects and priorities, I actually don't think any of these opportunities would interest her. And honestly, if the person were actually ready to work with someone at her level, they'd have their shit together enough to reach out to her properly. She's also the type to admire someone more if they were brave and prepared and reached out themselves with a great ask, rather than just leveraging a connection.

Sage does have a proper team, and public social media accounts, so anyone can do a little easy legwork to reach out to her directly.... Which she often ignores, and then that person can't take the hint and comes back to me.

The blunt and truthful answer is,
"I'm declining to forward your request to Sage, because I don't want to leverage my friendship to pressure her to take on opportunities that have minimal payoff for her, just to help strangers advance their careers. Plus, you'd better earn her respect by reaching out directly. I hope you won't socially penalize me for declining your request."
or
"I don't want to pass on a follow-up message, because the most likely reason Sage didn't respond to you is that she didn't like the ask, but felt bad saying no. This is between you and Sage, and I don't want to leverage my friendship to pressure her on your behalf. You've already gotten one "no". My best advice would be to either let it go, or drastically improve your offer before you ask again. Please don't penalize me for declining."

Welp, can't say those. So, please give me extremely nice polite kind sweet friendly encouraging brief and non-abrupt scripts to tell my friends and their friends to just contact her themselves. Obviously I know how to lay it out truthfully and directly, so that is not what I'm asking for.

An added layer here is that my friends have certainly already bragged, "Oh! I know someone who's close friends with Sage, I'll get my friend to ask her!" So my friends will now be embarrassed too, and thus feel mad and weird at ME for declining. I would prefer not to suffer any social fallout myself.

This whole thing is very annoying and unfair since it puts me into a situation where I'm guaranteed to be seen as an asshole, either by Sage if I bother her, or by my own friends and professional contacts if I don't bother her. I'm in this field too so the fallout of saying no has a professional cost to me as well.

So I need extremely gracious scripts to handle these asks, so nobody feels rejected when I reject them. Tact, diplomacy, flattery, empathy, and extreme social skill, please.

posted by vanilla.extract to Human Relations (25 answers total)

"That's not the kind of relationship we have." is a nice way to say, "I don't pitch more work to Sage for other people because it messes up our relationship."
posted by advicepig at 9:45 AM on March 18 [54 favorites]

"Oh no, unfortunately I can't. Sage is always snowed under with requests for her time and I don't want to add to her burden." I mean, if they're going to ask for a favor, they'll have to take no for an answer graciously. Or not! Out of your hands!

If they've promised something on your behalf, that's their problem.
posted by chesty_a_arthur at 9:45 AM on March 18 [16 favorites]

"We have a friendship pact not to be work liaisons for each other!"
"Honestly, I think going through her team etc is the way she prefers to do business."
"I think she's pretty swamped these days, which is why her team handles all this stuff."
posted by Charity Garfein at 9:48 AM on March 18 [13 favorites]

You actually don't want to be too tactful here. People are overstepping and it does them more harm than good to pretend they're not. And going into a long delicate speech is going to make people way more uncomfortable than a brisk "Oh, I'm not the right person to talk to about that, you'll need to get in touch with her via [correct channel.]" If you make it a big deal, people will be embarrassed and upset! So make it not a big deal, keep it breezy, and never, ever say yes.

If they press (because they haven't gotten an answer or think you have more leverage or whatever) then just "I know she's super busy, but her team is the right place to go with that sort of thing." If they press further, then they are being incredibly rude. And at that point, they know it! You can just raise an eyebrow and change the subject.

I'm actually "the team" for a couple of my friends (professionally, as in, I'm paid to deal with this.) One of them in particular is constantly being bombarded with requests for her time and attention, and even I don't promise anyone anything until we've talked it over. And sometimes someone goes to her directly (or via her agent, or some other channel that I'm not on) and it actually screws up our coordination! So it's a pain in the ass for the requests to be coming in from more than one channel. If you really feel like you have to, you can explain that to people, but really, keep it light, keep it brisk, and don't give people room to make a huge deal about it.
posted by restless_nomad at 9:49 AM on March 18 [44 favorites]

It is perfectly acceptable to answer that Sage gets many requests for assistance and takes requests through her official contact methods.
posted by AlexiaSky at 9:49 AM on March 18 [8 favorites]

Make a statement of policy, not opinion or feeling. "We have an agreement that I don't pass along introductions to her. It just became too much. There are other channels where you can reach out to her. Good luck!"
posted by Winnie the Proust at 9:52 AM on March 18 [19 favorites]

Yeah seriously just a 'As you can imagine, she's extremely busy and can't field personal requests. All requests have to go through her team, here is their info'.
posted by greta simone at 9:55 AM on March 18 [19 favorites]

"I get a ton of requests for this sort of thing and I've just had to decide that buttonholing Sage on behalf of friends/colleagues/acquaintances is something I don't do. I'd suggest you try her official channels."
posted by slkinsey at 10:00 AM on March 18 [2 favorites]

You actually don't want to be too tactful here. People are overstepping and it does them more harm than good to pretend they're not. And going into a long delicate speech is going to make people way more uncomfortable than a brisk "Oh, I'm not the right person to talk to about that, you'll need to get in touch with her via [correct channel.]"

Strongly agree. I mean yes, be kind, but don't be too kind. I think the scripts Charity Garfein has provided are great in that they are short, clear, but not judgmental of the asker.
posted by coffeecat at 10:01 AM on March 18 [6 favorites]

"Nope. Sage asked me not to do that sort of thing. Sorry."
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 10:24 AM on March 18 [6 favorites]

Best answer: I work with these sorts of people professionally.

There are a few different requests I see, such as personal requests. These are often heart wrenching. The second is direct requests to me to get around the official channels.

I have hard boundaries for both, I will never go outside of protocol regardless of whether the request is worthy or has merit.

The common structure in my responses is as follows:
1. Start with a recognition of the request and empathy for the situation.
2. Declining the request.
3. Offering an alternative.

Example: "This sounds like a fascinating project, however I'm not able to help/move this on/pass this on directly. However, the best way to contact X or achieve this is via Y."

Y = social media channels, email address, website. This is the most important bit! You've passed the ball back. Stay polite but firm!
posted by socky_puppy at 10:27 AM on March 18 [12 favorites]

Oh lord, I have gotten these for my ex-husband (who is geek-famous) in the years since our divorce.

"I'm sorry; I can't help you" is my go-to, said forbiddingly enough that so far no one's tried to argue with it.
posted by humbug at 10:29 AM on March 18 [5 favorites]

How you answer this probably depends a little bit on how much you are authorized to speak on her behalf vs want to keep it clear that you are the one declining not her.

Have you ever actually talked to her about this -- in a general sense, not about a specific request -- and asked her how she would prefer them to be submitted and if there is a message she would like to get out there? For example, if she was okay with you saying something along "Oh, Sage and I have agreed it is better that I don't pass along these requests. She really wants her team to vet all the requests in an unbiased way, not be swayed by who she's already friends with, so it is better if you go through official channels. Here they are: ..." that could work, but obviously only if she's on board.

You could say something similar that takes on a more cooperative tone if you give off the idea that you are giving them advice along with the no. "Knowing what I know about Sage, I always tell people to go through official channels. In my experience, she'll be more likely to say yes if your proposal comes in through her team and is properly vetted than if I bring it to her and I don't want to hurt your changes of working with her."
posted by jacquilynne at 10:48 AM on March 18 [4 favorites]

I once, inappropriately, asked a friend to ask HER friend, who was extremely famous, whether that friend might do a certain favor for an organization I worked for. She responded as follows: "The only way I can maintain even the most tentative relationship with [famous person and their spouse] is to avoid asking anything of them, even in the gentlest way." Feel free to adapt.
posted by beagle at 11:06 AM on March 18 [10 favorites]

There are some great suggestions above, and I agree that keeping it short is key. But I would not couch it in terms of what *your* relationship is or is not with Sage, or mention anything about how your relationship with Sage may suffer if you obliged these kinds of favors. This will seem like you are declining based on you not wanting to lose what your personally gain from the friendship – which may be true, but is not the main reason and also, not their business.

I would say something like, "we have a policy about these kinds of requests, and it's best to go through the official channels. Good luck!" No other details are necessary, and this keeps you and the friendship *out* of the conversation, where it belongs.
posted by Molasses808 at 11:35 AM on March 18 [11 favorites]

My advice is that your friends are taking advantage of you and the best response is simple and direct. Sage has a request page at link. Sage gets a large volume of requests and the vast majority are declined, but do fill out the form, as your request may be of interest; I can't really assess that. Requests outside this channel are not welcomed.

Being extremely nice polite kind sweet friendly encouraging brief and non-abrupt to people exploiting your friendship is not healthy. A cordial and honest response elicits more respect, and weeds out the insincere. If you are in sales, where not-very-sincere friendships are a resource, you could flower it up.

You can also respond with information and resources that are useful and non-exploitative if you can easily do so and feel it's worthwhile.
posted by theora55 at 12:18 PM on March 18

Agreeing with the rest here. I have another idea for an angle for a possible script, though -

"Oh, Sage and I don't ever talk about our work lives, so I wouldn't even know what her workload is right now. Her team would, though - that's actually your best bet, and it's the people I would be passing YOUR info on to in the first place."

You know? These people are clearly thinking that they can do an end-run around Sage's EA because they think they can jump the line by speaking to her friend, and you're telling them that that's not how it works; you're Sage's friend, not her employee, and they need to talk to her employees, the end.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 12:25 PM on March 18 [5 favorites]

So I used to be close friends with a regional celebrity here and at one point I was managing her fanmail. I had people straight up try to be MY friend only so they could get access to her.

I'd tell them it's not my place to pass on contact details but go through the fanmail address and we'll see what happens. At one point my friend pretended to be me so she could turn down a request that came through email - that was a surprising message to see, but it did show that it was an effective enough filter.

But yeah, check in with Sage and see what capacity she has, or even if there's anything she is explicitly actually interested in.
posted by creatrixtiara at 3:57 PM on March 18 [1 favorite]

I would avoid giving a reason because then people have something to argue against. “Oh, gosh, I’m not able to do that. You can reach out through (typical channels).”
posted by bluedaisy at 7:36 PM on March 18 [1 favorite]

"Oh dear, no, I'm sorry. That would upset/annoy/distress/bother Sage. But it/you sounds like SUCH a good... etc."
posted by Jane the Brown at 5:14 AM on March 19

"Hey I'm really sorry but all the requests have to go through her team, it's a whole thing. Here are the contact details of the best way to connect there, and I hope they're receptive!"
posted by DarlingBri at 12:50 PM on March 19 [1 favorite]

"Sorry, but my relationship with Sage is a personal one, not professional. They do however have a team dedicated to helping them manage their professional schedule, so your best bet would be to reach out to them via their IG" (or whatever their socials are)
posted by cgg at 2:43 PM on March 19

I agree with the idea that somebody who would ask this of you and then get angry at being rejected has no interest in being your friend.
In that light, I'd say, "Sorry, I can't do that." Or, "I don't do that".
posted by signal at 3:48 PM on March 19

I don't get a lot of requests like these, because I don't usually talk about my notable connections to people who might want something from them. But I have worked in an industry where people hope to make end-runs around formal processes for submission and review of various requests.

My standard answer when someone would try to submit something to me directly instead of through the ticketing system was always "Oh sorry, I know it's annoying but I will absolutely forget about this later today if you don't open a ticket for it. Also more people than just me look at that ticket system, so it's more likely to reach someone with time to work on it!"

I always spun it as an advantage to them to go through proper channels, and make it seem like the weak part in all this was my memory or bandwidth rather than their lack of patience or decorum. It just worked out as the only way to politely get people to do the right thing, and also kind of covered me for some task falling on the floor because they didn't do their part correctly.
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 6:52 AM on March 21 [1 favorite]

Oh, I think you misunderstood - I don’t work for her. You’d have to go through her professional channels for that request. Good luck!
posted by Jubey at 1:17 AM on March 23