I work at a mid-sized cafe, been there about two years. There's another person on my team, I'll call her Dana, who I've always gotten along with fine. We're not close friends but we chat during shifts, no issues.
About six months ago Dana started asking me to cover for her occasionally when she had things come up. I said yes a few times because that's just normal, people have things come up and I didn't mind when it was occasional. The problem is it stopped being occasional.
Over the last three months I've covered for her probably eight or nine times. A couple of those I genuinely didn't mind. But it started becoming this pattern where she'd text me the night before or sometimes the morning of, always with a reason, always with "you're literally a lifesaver." At some point I realized I was rearranging my own plans around her schedule pretty regularly. The thing that got me was last week. I overheard her on the phone with someone saying she had the day off because she "knew she could always count on me as a backup." Not in a grateful way. Just matter of fact, like I was a system she'd set up.
I let it sit for a few days and then told her I wouldn't be available to cover going forward unless it was a genuine emergency. She seemed surprised and said she thought we had a good thing going. I said I think the arrangement had started feeling pretty one sided.
She hasn't been rude about it but things are a bit cool between us now. My partner says I handled i t fine, but part of me wonders if I was too blunt. AITA?