I’m a chronic social committer.
If I make plans with someone, I stick to them, barring a natural disaster or me ending up in hospital (which has actually happened… often).
But while I always follow through on my plans whenever humanly possible, I’ve noticed other people… don’t.
And the disturbing part is, it’s becoming more and more common.
A quick scroll through Instagram usually turns up at least one meme which reads something like: “I can’t wait to make plans so I can cancel them.”
Um, rude much?
Since when did it become not only socially acceptable, but cool and supposedly funny to bail on people?
I get it, we’re all increasingly busy, and most days, we’re too exhausted to even commando crawl from the couch to the comfort of our bed, but if you make plans with someone, you should absolutely stick to them.
I’ve even pulled up friends who are notorious for cancelling our plans.
Just recently, I sent a friend a message saying, “I understand you’re tired, but this is actually the third time in a row that you’ve cancelled on me, and I actually find it really rude and disrespectful.”
It really helped her to see things from my perspective, because it honestly hadn’t crossed her mind that I was being affected by her persistent bailing.
It was especially annoying, because she’d often send me a text message half an hour before we were due to catch up on a Saturday night.
I know sometimes there’s nothing more you’d rather do than go home and watch Netflix under a blanket, especially when the weather is cold and wet. But if you’ve made plans with someone, at the very least you should put in an appearance.
Top Comments
I used to run social club events, but I ended up giving it away due to this. Having a whole group of people RSVP to an event, and spending all your time wondering how many will actually turn up. Organisers would have events where no-one would turn up.
Some organisers actually got one up on this. On their events they would state something like: If you are only RSVP'ing for this event seeing if you feel like it on the day or waiting for something better to come along, then please don't bother.
To me, if you say you are going to something, the only reasons you would not go is either if you are unwell/contagious of if something family/work related has suddenly come up.
I don't know, I often lean to John Mulaney's opinion on cancelling plans. In one of his stand-up specials, he said "in terms of instant relief, cancelling plans is like heroin."
And honestly, that's been true for me more than once. Sometimes I'm nothing but relieved when someone cancels on me. Sometimes I say yes to a thing weeks in advance and then the day comes and I can think of nothing worse than actually going to the thing. So when someone cancels and I don't have to go to the thing, I feel amazing. I always feel guilty for cancelling, so I rarely do it unless I have to. But I'm often quite happy when someone does it for me.