A former colleague was recently terminated from our division. He lost his mid-level development position due to several factors, all of which could be summed up to poor job performance, misuse of company resources, serial time theft, falling asleep and snoring loudly during important meetings, and general misconduct. Despite this, he was personable, and having both graduated from the same small college (30 years apart), we had some rapport, though I've always found him to be a little repugnant. Well, he's been reaching out to a few of our team members via e-mail asking for help with updating his resume. They must have all denied him, because he reached out to me via LinkedIn messenger asking the same. He specifically asked me to copy and paste the section of my resume for this employer. I have a few issues with this:
• I've been with our company for twice the amount of time as him, so that would make it seem like he worked on more things than he actually did
• We held different positions, so I can't articulate what he was responsible for
• Because of his poor performance (more detail below), I can't possibly do this for him because I'm the one who actually completed his tasks for him
• I am quite busy, and while copying & pasting from my resume would only take a few seconds, I just don't have the desire to do this
• This doesn't seem like an appropriate request
• I also just don't really like him or want anything to do with him
Some background and a few things that complicate this situation:
• He is an older African American man - there aren't many African Americans in our branch of IT
• I'm a double-minority in this field - African American, and a woman. I ordinarily wouldn't include this, but it's relevant in this situation because women tend to be socialized to avoid disappointing or upsetting people, and in my culture specifically, we are socialized to venerate the older generation. I'm no exception, and I am worried about coming across as disrespectful if I don't help him.
• Former colleague is close friends with the professor of a course I plan on taking in the next couple of weeks. I'm worried about what he might say to the professor that could potentially harm my performance or experience in his class.
• Former colleague is also completely inept. It was clear that his resume was fabricated from Day 1, because he was completely unable to handle even the simplest tasks. Most of his work was delegated to me, and because of that, he spent his time employed here asking me to perform tasks for him, which I'd do because I didn't want to appear rude.
I'm worried that helping him with this one task will open the floodgates and have him think he can always reach out to me for assistance... or even worse, ask for a recommendation. I cannot in good faith recommend him to do anything of importance, and want to close this door - respectfully.
My question: how do I respond to him? I do not want to help him, but do not want to be disrespectful or rude, despite the fact that I don't really like him.