Decline in one sentence and move on

Decline in one sentence, with no reason attached, and move on. The uncomfortable request is not a hard decision, it is a decision made at a bad moment, and the technique is to have made it earlier, in writing, so the message resolves against a list rather than your nerve.

What makes people say yes to things they did not want to do is almost never agreement. It is the pause while they work out what to say.

Write the limits before you need them

Sit down once and write, for yourself, what you do not do. Formats, content, tone, anything involving a third party, anything requiring you to appear, anything you would not want screenshotted.

Then put the sellable half of that list into your listing, in the scope box, as plain statements of what a job includes. A limit published in advance stops most of these arriving at all. This is one of the quieter arguments for a scope box written as a list rather than a paragraph.

The private half stays private, because publishing your reasons mostly gives people something to argue with.

The reply

One sentence, no reason, no apology, no counter-offer unless you actually want the work.

That is outside what I take on, but happy to do [the thing you do offer] if that is useful.

Warmth is fine, length is not, because every additional clause is a handhold. "I would, but" invites a negotiation about the but. "I am not really comfortable with" invites reassurance. A stated limit invites nothing, which is the point.

If the buyer pushes, repeat the same sentence, shorter. Do not upgrade the explanation, because a second, better reason implies the first one was negotiable. The mechanics of a quick clean refusal are covered at more length here.

When to stop replying and report instead

There is a category above uncomfortable, and it has a different answer.

Anything involving someone who has not consented, anyone whose age is uncertain or claimed to be under eighteen, anything soliciting content that would be illegal to produce or hold, and anything that shifts from a request into pressure or threat.

For these, do not reply. Do not explain, do not warn the person, do not decline politely. Report through the platform and block, in that order, because reporting first preserves the conversation as the platform received it. In the UK, Ofcom's illegal harms codes, in force since 17 March 2025, require platforms to let users report illegal content and complain about how reports are handled. Requests that cross a legal line are their own subject.

Persistent unpleasantness that is not illegal sits in between, and the block button is the appropriate tool far earlier than most people use it.

The cost of getting this wrong

Taking a job you did not want comes back as a delivery you resented producing, which reads as one, which is a mediocre review at best. It also establishes something: a buyer who talked you past a limit once will open with the same move next time, and so will anyone they mention it to.

The other side of this exists too, and buyers who do not know what is normal to ask for are usually asking in good faith - the etiquette notes on the commissioning side set out what a reasonable brief looks like, and most awkward asks are ignorance rather than intent. What a buyer should and should not be sending in the first place is covered from the photo side. And the reason not to move a difficult conversation to your personal channels, however much simpler it feels, is that everything you disclose there is permanent in a way that a platform thread is not.

Platform-side reporting tools differ, and knowing where yours are before you need them takes two minutes; on Rate Cock the judge account pages carry the current version.

The limits list is worth rereading every few months, not because it changes often, but because the jobs you have taken since will have quietly moved it and you should notice that on purpose rather than by accident.