Despite assurances, Sarah did not arrive by 7:00 p.m., only sending vague updates like “I’m almost there!” After waiting for over an hour past the required boarding time, the group proceeded without her, informing her she would need to catch up later if she still wished to attend. Sarah arrived shortly after they left and became extremely angry, accusing the user of being selfish and abandoning her, leading to a division within the friend group regarding the user’s actions.
So, this happened last weekend, and now my friend group is split over whether I was justified or a total jerk.
I have a friend, lets call her “Sarah” who is *always* late. I’m talking, “we tell her to be there at 6 knowing she’ll show up at 7” kind of late. The rest of us have learned to tolerate it, but last Saturday pushed things too far.
We were all going out for a friend’s birthday and had rented a party bus to take us to a few spots. The bus was booked for a specific time slot, so we all agreed to meet at 6:30 p.m.
to make sure we’d be on it by 7 p.m. Sarah swore she’d be there on time. Guess what? 7 rolls around, and Sarah is still nowhere to be found. We texted and called, and she just kept saying, “I’m almost there!”
After waiting for over an hour, we decided we had to go. I texted her that we were leaving and she’d have to find her own way to meet us if she still wanted to join. Well, she showed up about 10 minutes later and was FURIOUS that we’d left.
She called me selfish, said I “ditched” her, and made the entire night all about her being “abandoned.”
Now, half the friend group says I did the right thing, while the others think I was way too harsh and should’ve waited since I “know how she is.” But it was everyone’s night, not just hers, and I feel like it was fair after all the waiting.
AITA? Should I have waited even longer, or was it time to finally put my foot down?
Conclusion
The user is caught between upholding a necessary boundary regarding punctuality and group commitment, and maintaining harmony within the friend group, especially given the history of Sarah’s tardiness. The central conflict is whether the user was justified in enforcing the time constraint for the sake of the whole group or if this action was overly punitive towards a friend known for being consistently late.
Considering that the event involved a fixed schedule and a collective experience, was the decision to leave on time appropriate enforcement of group respect, or did the long-standing tolerance for Sarah’s lateness mean that leaving without her constituted an unfair and overly harsh response?
Here’s how people reacted:
In this particular case, she made the guests *at her own wedding* wait 1-1/2 hours because she wanted to buy a few things for her wedding night, and had her dad take her to the lingerie store.
With people like this, it’s best to set hard boundaries after the first few instances: “We’re meeting at 6:30, the bus will be leaving at 7:00. Text if you miss the pickup and we’ll tell you where we are.”
And then give it 5 minutes and leave
She’ll either learn to be on time like everyone else, or she gets dropped from the friend group
Because unless she’s ALWAYS late for work, she can be on time she just doesn’t want to, she doesn’t respect any of you that much is clear, and you as a group have tolerated her disrespect for too long
I am the friend who is always late(unless it is a super important event, then I’m ridiculously early). I know it, my friends know it. I don’t expect them to wait for me. I’m a big girl. I can make my own way to wherever we are going and meet them there. She’s a grown up, she needs to start acting like one🤷🏼♀️
With cell phones, it’s possible to meet up later. So no, you’re NTA for leaving. She could have caught up to y’all.
Getting left behind is how I learned to show up on time. A couple times of my friends taking off without me and I learned my lesson.
my answer would be “go F yourself. you have not an ounce of respect for anyone of us or our time. You can find your own way too or from events from now on. Don’t expect me to ever wait for you again.”
The group should have left after the first ten minutes of waiting.
NTA.
She held up an ENTIRE GROUP of people and YOU’RE in trouble?!
That’s some BS.
NTA
INFO: If everyone agreed to leave, why are you the one taking the brunt?