Offering a helping hand to coworkers every day at work is a costly activity. Equally important, our study reveals that rejecting to coworkers’ help requests can also impose significant burdens on the individual, highlighting that the rejection of help requests from coworkers encompasses complex interpersonal and psychological considerations. This study delves into the consequences of help-request rejections toward coworkers, particularly how they impact employees' counterproductive work behavior through the lens of perceived interpersonal stress. Using a three-wave, multi-source field study and integrating transactional of stress and social exchange theories, we examine the intricate dynamics of help rejecting in the workplace. Our findings indicate that rejecting help requests can result in an increase in interpersonal stress. We also find that leader-member exchange can buffer the positive effect of help-request rejection on the interpersonal stress. We discuss the implications of our findings for both theory and practice.
