My friend told me that her phone beeped last night at around 11; it was a message from a former high school classmate asking whether she could do a translation for her right away.

She said it was almost by instinct that she took the battery out of her phone and put it aside.

It's a new trick she just learnt a few days ago. If you just shut down your cellphone, people can tell it's powered off from the voicemail, but if you take the battery out while the phone is on, what others hear is: "Sorry, the number you dialed is busy now"

This actually makes a big difference if you've received phone calls you don't want to pick up, since callers will not think you are avoiding the calls deliberately.

People seem to have their own tricks to keep annoying demands at bay.

One of my friends usually tells the caller: "Sorry, I'm not in town right now."

His colleague once called asking him to join a dinner held near his apartment, but my friend forgot to mute the TV as he picked up the phone.

So, when he said he was out of town as usual, his colleague questioned him as to whether he was at home because he heard the TV.

"I'm at my aunt's home," he answered quickly.

As we progress in our careers and get to know more and more people, we are labeled by what we do, and requirements connected with our professions pour in from every direction.

An IT friend of mine was often inundated by requests from friends or colleagues, to build websites for them, or to hack the homepages of their competitors.

At first he felt quite good about being asked, even more so when he received praise and admiration after successfully fulfilling a request.

But, very soon, he found out how much time it cost him to remain faithful to friends in this way.

It was not until his boss caught him sleeping at work one day that he finally decided to refuse such requests.

What he didn't expect, was the reaction of his friends, who blamed him for not offering them help any more.

Later he told me he should never have done such favors in the first place, as people took his help for granted.

His story reminded me of a former colleague who was asked by a friend whether she could write a piece about bags, she equivocated for hours, until my former colleague finally got it. The woman wanted her to promote her newly-opened bag shop.

"You could create news, write things such as a day in my life," the woman insisted.

By the time the conversation ended, she was really upset that my ex-colleague couldn't cover her shop.

Later my old colleague regretted even entertaining the approach. She wished she had simply refused the woman by telling her: "I don't cover that beat."

However, if using excuses gets to be a habit, you might go too far and provoke people who have power over your fate.

And, one thing you don't want to forget is the little game you play, thinking others will thus leave you alone, may mean that they no longer come to your door at all.