Want to back out from hooking up a friend with my workplace

[Standard-Fare]

Here's the situation:

 

A friend, who is a writer like me, asked me for some tips about freelancing. I casually suggested my current workplace (where I'm part-time) might have something available. He's completely qualified and talented. But I never followed up on that.

 

In the time since, I've realized that it would only hurt me to recommend any other writers to work at this place. I'm trying to go full-time here, it's a fragile situation, and I don't want to be involved in bringing any other people on board who might steal my potential work.

 

I ended up telling a white lie to my friend that I checked and there was no work available, but to be less blunt I said something like "That may change in the future." I was hoping he'd forget about it but he's been persistently hounding me. Now he's asked me to write a recommendation to my two superiors that he can follow-up with an email.

 

I've obviously made some mistakes here, but how do I tactfully resolve this situation at this point? I don't feel like I can be like "I can't help you out because it could end up b*ting me in the ass."

[worldexploded]

If you really believe your friend might take a potential job from you then be more direct about saying no. Or you could just be honest and emphasize that you believe he is talented and that you were afraid of competition. He might be flattered, who knows.

[preraph]

Tell him that lately, they haven't even had enough work for you and that you would like to go full time at some point, and so you don't want to bring anyone in until they get busier or you get your promotion or something like that. Tell him when you first started, it seemed busier, but now you realize you'd be shooting yourself in the foot if you encouraged them to hire more people.