Is it wrong to refuse to lend money to a coworker?

Lending money to somebody is a pretty big deal. It’s something that ideally you would only do in dire circumstances, or unless you’re completely comfortable with never seeing that money again. That’s a good rule of thumb for lending money. If it would ruin your life to never see that cash again, then you should definitely not lend it out to anybody. Especially somebody who you don’t know that well, like a coworker. The coworker relationship should be kept to professional confines when it can. That doesn’t mean you can’t be friends, but that does mean that you probably shouldn’t ask each other for money. That is a pretty brazen crossing of a line, and you have to understand that people aren’t going to be willing to do that for you. The person in this story, though, didn’t quite understand that. Imagine working with somebody for a long time and then realizing that they wanted something from you that you couldn’t give. It would make things pretty awkward around the workplace once everybody figured that out.