Good Job is Slate’s advice column on work. Have a workplace problem big or small? Send it to Laura Helmuth and Doree Shafrir here. (It’s anonymous!)

Dear Good Job,

When I was completing my Master’s dissertation a year ago, I asked my friend’s boyfriend, who was an English major, to review my final work. He did not ask for payment, and he did review my complete work (about 25 pages) and caught some minor grammatical errors. I was grateful for the help and took him and my roommate out to dinner as thanks. I thought that was that.

Fast forward to now, he has broken up with my roommate, moved across the country, and we have not been in touch. So I was surprised when he sent me an email asking me to help him pack all of his belongings that he left in my roommate’s room, which includes a couple boxes of clothes and a computer, and ship them to his current home—at my cost.

I politely declined and he replied quite angrily about how I owed it to him to help after the time he spent reviewing my work. I’ve just ignored this email and don’t really plan to reply. However, it did have me thinking if maybe I am in the wrong? Should I help him box his items and pay for shipment as a form of payment?

—Shipped Off

Dear Shipped Off,

Oh dear. I’m cringing at this man’s audacity! This feels like a classic case of transference—he’s really upset at your roommate, not you, but he doesn’t feel like he can confront your roommate directly, so he’s taking it out on you. Let me be clear: you do not owe this man anything. It was very kind of him to review your Master’s dissertation last year, but it sounds like you thanked him satisfactorily and took him out for dinner, and until the breakup occurred, there was never any indication that he was unhappy with the way you had expressed your gratitude. So for him to resurface a year later with a completely unrelated request and tell you that you “owe” him is not cool.

I would not respond to his email. It’s not your responsibility to get his belongings to him—he should have thought of that before he moved across the country without getting them first. You can let your roommate know that he reached out to you about his stuff and that you are not going to take this on; whatever happened between them is not your problem. That’s where I think your obligation to anyone involved in this drama ends.

—Doree

Classic Prudie

I work in a large, diverse organization. I have age-related hearing loss and wear hearing aids but nobody knows (I think) because of my own anxiety about ageism. I have to attend lots of meetings. One staff person is still wearing a mask because of their own health conditions. This is absolutely fine except for one thing: They are not a native English-speaker and have a very heavy accent.