How to tell a colleague that I want to stop sharing the ride?

Question

A few months ago, we hired a new temporary worker, Joe. Joe does not have a car so I offered to share the ride with him 4 times per day, which is about 45 km daily. I asked for 4€/day. Joe's salary was 28% higher than mine.

Joe then negotiated a new salary which is now 39% higher than mine. And I now feel like a driver.

Joe doesn't have a driver's license or a car. He said that he had no utility for a car nor time to learn.

To address some questions in the comments:

Q: 4 times a day?
A: home->work->lunch->work->home

Q: Do you want to stop carpooling under those conditions?
A: Yes, I want to stop.

Q: For how much money would you be willing to continue driving? €10? €50? €1000?
A:No. At Joe's pay grade most people can afford a big house, a good car. In fact the sympathy carpool stop around my paygrade."

Q:Jealousy, envy?
A: No, it's simply a mental switch. You carpooled a temp worker, 6 months later you discover it's a Rockefeller. Cool cool, so the driver is not needed.

Q: Consider carpooling for ecology.
A: This one fell too far from the question.

Answer 1

Joe doesn't have a driving license nor a car. He had said that he had no utility for a car nor time to learn

He does have utility now. He found a job that is more than 20Km from his house. He found somebody to drive him that charges far less than the cost of public transportation.

The idea of car pooling is to share the costs of commuting. In many cases people take turns driving, so that the gas usage is similar as is the impact of wear and tear on their cars. In cases where shared duties isn't possible the non-driver should be expected to pay more than a token amount.

You mentioned that you drive him 4 times a day, then you mention in a comment about getting something to eat. If you are driving for food because of your coworker, that is the easiest one to stop. If you don't need to go out, you aren't obligated to drive them.

As to the morning and evening commute, don't mention his salary. It shouldn't make a difference. Tell them that as a permanent employee now is the time to adjust the arrangement if the driving is to be a long term activity. Then discuss how a fair price should be determined: actual costs, saved money, compensation for schedule adjustments.

Answer 2

How to tell a colleague that I want to stop sharing the ride?

Provide notice

Allow for a transition period, ending your car sharing.
Starting, for example, Friday two weeks from now.

Simple state your goal

"I want to stop the ride sharing, soon."

Avoid negotiation

Given your situation, there is little for you to gain.

Avoid salary discussions

It is not part of how to end the car sharing. It may be part of your "why", but it should not be a part of how you end it.

Do not change any existing sharing costs

Just say its time to stop and provide a grace period to allow your rider some time to adjust.

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Remember this is also a business relationship. Someday, you may find professional value with this temp's contacts. No need to burn a bridge, just stop paying the toll.

Answer 3

Just tell him you do not want to share a ride anymore. Do not mention the salary gap. If he asks for a reason, say that you do not feel like it. If he is rude and pushes the subject, say that you want the freedom and to be alone in your car.

You are certainly free to do this whenever you want. You can, but do not have to, offer to continue the arrangement until the end of the week so your coworker have time to research other ways to get to work.

As for your daily fee, I think it sounds fair (maybe a bit low). Joe should at a minimum pay half of the real costs associated with the drive, including fuel, insurance and depreciation.

Answer 4

If it's your car you can just tell him he'll need to organise his own transport. No explanation is needed.

Answer 5

Don't go any extra mile for him, but let him ride

If I get your question correctly, the problem is that you feel like a personal driver. In a comment you say that the way is 90% shared.

I suggest you stop picking up your colleague at his place and instead pick him up at a bus stop that is on your way to work anyway. Do not adjust your schedule for him. You drive when you need to wake up/ leave the company, not when he has to.

Obviously, you should make these changes with reasonably warning period that he can adjust to them (See the other answers).

This way you probably will no longer feel like his driver but like an equal colleague who does a friend a favour.

Answer 6

Consider this from his perspective.

• He's temporary.
• He has no driver's license, so this means that he is a first time driver. As a first time driver, his insurance rates will be higher and he would require more coverage unless he has the income to purchase a car outright, depending on where you both live. Presumably, it also means that he has less credit unless he's built his credit up via other means.
• Regardless of his salary, he presumably would feel that he only owes the minimum to cover the cost of gasoline and wear and tear. If he was the CEO of your company, I would still say that covering the minimum is fair enough.

It makes no sense, financially, for a temporary worker to get a car simply for the purpose of temporary work. Suddenly he's going to add a heavy burden to his monthly expenses for temporary work where after that work is done, he'll still have to bear those costs and he'll be less mobile in his decision making processes. It may be that he was aggressive for his salary because his work is temporary, and he's making sure his financial status isn't compromised.

Perhaps you can consider this before you stop sharing your ride.

That being said, since you mentioned getting food, I would suggest stopping that. It's nice enough to bring him to work. You're not obligated to take people out for lunch every day. Of course, you're also not obligated to take someone to work, either.

To answer your original question, you can arrange someone else to carpool with him, or you can continue to ride with him and give him some time to adjust. Depending on the duration of the drive, perhaps Uber or public transportation would be okay, and your employer could also possibly give him a voucher for those, which is a separate conversation.

Answer 7

Firstly, it is your car and your time. If you don't want the other person to ride with you, you can do what @Kilisi suggests.

Secondly, consider being a little just and honorable and rise above this petty thinking. Instead of denying the ride to another person because he now earns more, you should try to learn good negotiation from him.

I must emphasize, I'm not telling you to become his driver. Only telling you to not act small.

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The problem is not what he is/was earning. The problem is in your way of thinking.

Answer 8

I hope you realize that getting out of the current carpool situation will lose you money (4 euro/day).

You mentioned that you feel humiliated (like a driver) with the current situation. So, if you absolutely cannot set aside your ego for this money, then absolutely get of this carpool.

How? You rather make Joe get out of the carpool. Just like he renegotiated his work contract, you renegotiate this carpool deal but demand more than any reasonable person would agree to pay.

Hey Joe, starting from next month, you will have to pay me thrice the current amount.

If he asks for a reason,

I had to do car maintenance & I forgot to factor that in our original deal of 4 euro/day.

If Joe's agrees, then congrats, you renegotiated a better deal for you. That will cheer your ego a bit.

If Joe goes defensive & tries to negotiate a better deal for him saying

Look, I can only pay 6 euro. Anything more is out of my budget.

You should stand your ground & say

That is not OK with me. If I agree to anything less, it would feel like I am doing you a favor & that might cause resentment in me later on & spoil our professional & personal relationship. I would rather have 0 euro & a healthy relationship with you. Thanks but No.

Answer 9

Step 1 - Try to remove the emotion from the discussion.

Look at it from the other person's point of view before proceeding. They needed a ride, they talked to a friendly-looking coworker and he agreed to do it for 4€/day. OK, fair enough! So you ride with him, talk to him, tell him about your new raise and other personal information. You go to lunch together every day for months. You consider him a work friend.

But then apparently the other person nurses resentment in his heart, without telling you, and due to his envy over your 9% raise, freaks out and terminates the arrangement without notice.

Do you really want to be that guy? It'd be one thing if this person had done anything at all improper or rude, but he's not really responsible for the emotional issues you've developed on the side.

Also keep in mind how this looks in a professional environment. This can be interpreted as envy and spite, and that would concern others working with you at work. In every workplace "job roles" and whatnot are only 50% of the story, everyone either goes a little extra to help each other and collaborate and such or they don't. If someone else's team gets a little more budget, are you going to refuse to work on things they ask of you? You put those thoughts into their minds if you handle this carelessly.

Step 2 - Decide what you want.

Do you just want to stop this arrangement under any circumstances? Or do you want to renegotiate? If you want to renegotiate, what conditions are you willing to accept? If he was paying 4€/day previously, what do you think is fair now?

Proportionately, if he went from 28% higher salary to 39% higher salary, then math says it's 4.34€. But I suspect that's not really what you want.

I get it. I wouldn't give someone a ride every day for any amount of money, I'd find it too constraining on my schedule. But everyone's different. Do you just want to stop, period, whether he was offering 4 or 5 or 10 euro? Do you want it to be 4 days a week instead of 5? What, exactly do you want?

Consider what else you're getting out of this. A work friend and ally? Company on the drive? Heck, you could apparently learn from him how to negotiate a higher salary...

Step 3 - How to negotiate professionally.

If you want to negotiate the terms, you just say "Hey man! I've enjoyed our rides together, but I really didn't anticipate the impact on me. I can't come and go as I want, I'm going out to eat when I wouldn't sometimes... Is there any way we could change our agreement a little?" Then discuss whether more money, or only doing it 4x/week, or for only 3 more months, or whatever it is you want. Under no circumstances mention his salary, it would reflect poorly on you.

Make sure it is something you can live with, as going back to re-re-negotiate in a short period of time would come across as grasping.

Step 4 - How to bow out gracefully.

If you decide you just absolutely don't want to do it, or you can't come to an agreement on a change, you just say something similar. "Well, I've been happy to help you out for the last couple months, but I really want to start just driving by myself. Can we say next Friday will be our last drive together? No hard feelings. Let's keep meeting up for lunch!" or similar. Be open to doing it up to 2 weeks as a considerate gesture.

The friendliness and grace period means there will be very little chance of resentment or work fallout unless he's a colossal ass, and you say he's a nice guy.

You can come out of this as "the nice guy who helped me get to work for the first couple months and is now a work friend" and not "the unreliable jerk" to him (and others in the office) if you handle this with thoughtfulness. The Internet Tough Guys are happy to advise you to just tell the guy off and leave him on the side of the road, but I imagine you do care how you're perceived afterwards.

Answer 10

It looks like you feel into the "Too nice" trap, and it's very difficult to get out of it. Let me explain you how I avoided such situations:

• When I was studying, one of my fellow students (who had a room next to mine) decided one year he would not buy a bicycle: if he needed one, he would just borrow from some other person in the block. So one day he came to me and asked to borrow my bicycle, to which I answered "No! If you want to use a bicycle, you need to buy one yourself!". The guy started shouting and slammed the door, but the next time I saw him again he was very gentle and the next week he had bought his bicyle.
• When I was working already, I proposed a colleague to carpool, but this meant that he needed to get to a common meeting point, where I could pick him up. He refused, but proposed me to drive seven kilometer further and pick him up. I refused. (I thought by myself: if you think I'll drive a total of fourteen kilometers, just for your pleasure, you can forget about it).

You see: you seem to be a good person (having proposed your colleague to drive him around), but some people are indeed extremely rude and take everything for granted. The only way to stop being treated like that, is by telling that you don't want to drive him anymore. You can say something like "I don't feel well anymore driving you, and starting from tomorrow I won't be doing that anymore.". At that moment, from his reaction, you'll see what kind of a person you're dealing with: he can be friendly and understand your point (after all, it's your car and you do with it whatever your want, and besides that, what if you hadn't proposed this in the first place? How would he have managed then?). He can also be rude towards you, on which point you say nothing at all: you just drive him to work and at lunch break, you simply refuse him to enter your car.

Good luck

Answer 11

It seems like you have a lot of answers and although they have merit they seem like they could make things unfriendly at work or even possibly hurt your career.

• You were helping a new coworker out.
• You don't want to do this anymore.
• You don't want to make coworker mad as he seems to have decent clout at company
• You don't want to piss off other coworkers who might think of you as vindictive for stopping the help because he got a promotion.

So how do you get out of being his chaufeur (it's not carpooling if you are doing everything) and keep your standing with this coworker and others at your work. I am assuming if you act like an ass to the coworker he will gossip - this seems like a logical way a person would act when they are too lazy to even attempt at making their own transportation.

So my advice... lie... fib.

You need an excuse to get out of this. No way you should mention salary increase or promotion - don't even kind of hint at it.

You need to be somewhere in the morning or right after work, at least two days a week and rather soon - maybe in 2-3 weeks. I will give you an example but you can tailor this more to meet your personality and lifestyle and bonus if your friend does not like the things you choose.

"Hey Joe, I am starting a new gym in two weeks and will be going there in the mornings at least twice a week. Unfortunately it is not near where you live and I feel bad but you will need to get a ride these days."

Now Joe can go all different ways with this. He could just buck up and understand you are not his ride anymore because you want to work out and you are 100% good with Joe and coworkers.

Joe could do something leachy like say "I don't mind hanging out at the gym." You have to be all in on this. So tell him that you are going at some ungodly time in the morning. Hell you might have to go once or twice then. I mean it could literally be anything so do something you enjoy. Make Joe's feel like he is having to live your life - which he should if he is bumming a ride this long (paying you gas money is no excuse). If Joe wants to keep this scenario up... well going to the gym in the morning makes you hungry... need to stop at a supermarket on the way home... shoot forgot to mail that letter, post office too.

The fact is you don't have a choice here because you don't have a good excuse other than you think that Joe is leaching and you are getting jealous of Joe. If you tell Joe this in the nicest humanly way possible you can still greatly offend Joe which may cause problems at your workplace.

You need a "reason" and that can be whatever you want, that you are unable to keep giving Joe a ride. And you can act as thoughtless as you want. It is far better that Joe whines to people about you being thoughtless and not thinking of him when you joined the gym (will probably make Joe out as the whiner and you the prince) than Joe making fun of you for being his jealous cheufeur. Just make sure you not giving him a ride is about you and not about Joe. Be selfish or thoughtless but don't diss Joe personally.

Answer 12

Since you say the cost is in Euro, I'll assume you are in Germany. There, cost for going to work can be deducted from tax at a rate of 32 cents per km, which would be €14.40 per day. (I don't know how happy the tax office would be with you driving back home for lunch, but it's about the cost only).

So at the very least he should pay €7.20 per day, but that doesn't take into account that you are doing all the work and he isn't. There is also no reason for you to give him a favourable rate, since he is making more a lot more money than you do.

So you just tell him "Look, I did the numbers, and this doesn't work out for me. €4.00 per day just doesn't look fair to me. The rate that the tax office says is correct €14.40 per day, and that doesn't take into account that I do all the driving. So I would say that €10.00 a day is a much more fair amount". That's if you are willing to drive him for that amount. Yes, it's a lot more than the cost of petrol, but if he buys his own car he will figure out that the cost of driving is a lot more than the cost of petrol.

If you don't want to drive you stop at "€4.00 per day just doesn't look fair to me, so I want to stop this". You can always wait for a counter offer. You're a lot cheaper than any taxi, and a lot more convenient and probably a lot cheaper than public transport.