At that point, your friend might counter, “Tell you what. Help me for the first hour and then you can leave.” And on and on it goes, back and forth. You can short circuit this process by describing your day to your friend and explaining why you don’t have enough time to help. For example, you might say: I’d be glad to help on any other day. But today’s bad for me. Check out my schedule. I have two big projects due at 5:00 p.m. Each one will take me two hours to finish. I also have three
