Arseholes Who've Ruined Groups And Hobbies

[EineReiseDurchDieZeit]

Moved house last year, then COVID happened.

I am CEV and so have done loads of shielding and joining a hobby group I was looking forward to post move hasn't happened but I am on their mailing list. For this specific thing they are my only option locally.

Get emails from the mailing list regularly and having had my interest piqued googled the social media presence of the named sender.

They are clearly an arsehole, a massive, tedious, arsehole with very "set views" which I imagine would need to be agreed with by any incomers, which is not going to happen. (They are a group organiser)

So potentially that's this group out the window...

Which made me think, MNers, were you / have you ever left a group style hobby you really enjoyed because of That One Arsehole and

What did they do? How bad was it?

Actually a local women's empowerment group has a few members who are passionate antivaxxers/Covid deniers and think you can cure cancer with guava and meditation etc etc. Admins have decided it's not in the spirit of the group to say anything negative to one another so they just rave on and on and no one challenges them. Hence the group is just a bunch of women sharing wet motivational sayings, MLM adverts and the occasional psychotic antivaxx post. It's pathetic.

@WannabeOT

Hasn't made me leave but some people in yoga class (men) who don't get that deep breathing doesn't need to be audible to everyone else.

I think we attend the same yoga class.......

Is he an older man who insists on 'his' place in the front row, right in front of the instructor?

Love this!
The Roy's, Barry stories!

I met one at the weekly stay and play at the children's centre. It was a lovely centre, brand new, different messy arts and crafts set up (no need to do them at home then), lots of great toys, and best of all a sensory garden, included a singing session and snacks in the £1 price was 2hrs and fitted in perfectly with start of nap time on walk home afterwards. Was wonderful, I just couldn't understand why there were only childminders there and hardly any mums until I met the competitive one!

My ds was late at sitting up/crawling, was happy rolling about. She'd come and ask how old he was every week and say that at 8m he was late at developing and perhaps I should consider assessment for autism, lots of 'ahhhh bless' and 'what a pain' when I carried him around the garden or propped him up with pillows to sit up for snack time.

DS then one week decided he'd stand up and very quickly moved to walking round holding on, all within a week while he was 8m, he bypassed crawling completely. Her ds was of course still crawling so I took it upon myself to say 'ahh bless' and 'what a pain' when he was crawling in the garden while my ds walked past. She couldn't leave fast enough!! Lots of mums joined/rejoined after that as they'd heard she'd gone.

I bumped into her a kids gym group a few months later where she proceeded to tell me that my son covering his ears in the waiting area (very noisy) was a sign of autism and I should get him checked out

Someone in DH's hobby group sort of bragged he impersonated a police officer on occasion. From what I can remember he did have previous connections with the police, may be in a voluntary capacity.
DH and I were not sure what to do. We reported him. Put DH off the group though.

I think I've been very lucky with my groups and hobbies compared to everyone else. My crochet class does have one very negative woman, she doesn't dominate in any way but if she doesn't like an aspect of your project, eg the colour, then she says so. The rest of use would comment on the neatness of the stitches or the complexity of the pattern and just not mention that runny-bum brown isn't our favourite colour. When I started the class there was a woman who ended up sitting next to the negative woman most days and getting the brunt of the 'advice', the lovely teacher suggested at the start of class one day that she move to sit next to me. The teacher said "why don't you two young folks sit together?" I was 50 at the time.

One year the class using our room after us was an ancestry class. There was half an hour between our class ending and the next one starting to allow for changeover time. On the first day of term about 10 mins before the end of our class the door flew open and a man (possibly named Roy) strode in. He looked at everyone sitting around crocheting and said "Is this not the ancestry class?", the teacher said that the ancestry class would be after our crochet class. Roy said "OK, I'll just set myself up here and wait" and went to clear the front desk which was covered in books and patterns for our class to reference. Fortunately the crochet teacher worked as cabin crew until she retired and clearly had plenty of experience of dealing with arseholes in a firm but not antagonistic way, the man was hustled back out the door before he knew what was happening. The following week he was standing outside the door waiting for us to leave, but unfortunately for him he was in our way and got repeatedly bumped with our project bags. I didn't see him again after that.

In a craft group we had a lady who joined not long before I moved to another area due to DH's job. She was very opinionated and bossy, got up people's backs and said some very hurtful things. People were getting cheesed off but eventually she moved on.

I joined a similar group in the new area and lo and behold another bossy, overwhelming character eventually joined and more feathers were ruffled. A few years later I returned to the previous area/group. It's been peaceful so far. Here's hoping it stays that way.

@LadyCounterblast love the —vogon— poetry reference 🤣

@ShesMadeATwatOfMePam

This reminds me of the episode of This Country where Big Mandy the local scary hardcase joins the book club and takes over

Yes I thought of that too! I love This Country

Every group I've ever joined has been ruined by a horror eventually.
I got very seriously bullied out of the scouts by 2 men who quite clearly had many issues mostly that they needed to be in charge. All the good people left. I had been very heavily involved and was pretty distraught at what had happened. Terrible management further up the tree allowed one of them to do it over and over again at different groups.
School PSA was great, sensible enough that the more strident people could be absorbed, until this man came in got elected chair and started his insidious bullying, ruined it for everyone.

Local sports club and community centre is run by a woman volunteer who hates everyone and bullies people she doesn't like.
All of these people are known to do this and even if there's a structure to the organisations noone seems to deal with it because they are volunteers. The amount of bullying that goes on is shocking.
Our food bank is run by the local church on behalf of one of the food bank trusts but it is run by a group of elderly church women and they drive out younger volunteers who aren't a member of the church.

I was brought up to get involved in community things but I just don't have the patience to put up with the idiots anymore which is a shame as good volunteer groups can do a lot of good.

I was invited by a friend to join a women's singing group in her village and to bring my guitar, she was sure they would like a guitar accompaniment and I have a reasonable voice etc.

I went along and there were about seven women, with one obvious dominant personality who kept banging a bongo drum regardless of the song.

Got my guitar out and started strumming along to Blue Moon (which I do actually know the correct chords for, as my dad sings it)

Bongo woman has an absolute meltdown, screeching at me that I'm "turning it into something it isn't" and ruining the song. I'd only been there five minutes, never met any of them before in my life and was so embarrassed I didn't know where to look. Everyone else just sort of looked away. I stayed the rest of the session but put the guitar away and tried to fade into the furniture.

In hindsight I should have either left there and then, or replied that I must have missed the bongo drum accompaniment in the original version

Loving these stories.

I used to go to the Body Attack at the local gym (remember them?!). There was one woman there who was ultra competitive. Everyone else was nicely enjoying the class and working up a sweat, but she was taking every single element to the next level. If you could jump high, she could jump higher. If you could do ten reps, she could do twenty. When it came to the group moving round the room, she would sprint past and lap the group. I was exhausted just watching her.

I make clothes and joined a group online. You were allowed to show what you'd made or were working on only on a Tuesday! If anyone dared show something without the method or the pattern then God help them.

I no longer participate. The other members were all lovely, but the organiser had some hidden agenda.

A friend and I took our toddlers to a playgroup. We only lasted 2 or 3 visits as the leader seemed to think she was running a dictatorship. She spoke barked orders to the adults as though they too were children who should immediately jump to her bidding.

My friend's DC injured himself during the last visit due to something that the dictator leader could and should have prevented, and she and her cronies couldn't have cared less as they were more concerned that the end of class schedule was adhered to. We took the kids (her son was bleeding) and left before being subjected to yet anther tirade about the vacuum cleaner not being put away in exactly the right spot each week.

I will never ever join any group activities again as I have had so many of these experiences. It’s very sad that these arseholes spoil it for others. I attended an art course at a well known North East arts venue. Some of the others on the course had attended courses with the tutor previously. I had not. They were behaving like groupies fawning over this guy. He sat us all in a circle and pointed at each of us in turn, shouting out what he thought our star signs were. I sat quietly till he got to me he pointed at me and shouted a random star sign at me. Fair enough, strange but pretty harmless. He then proceeded to say that I had a manic personality ‘very up and down’ ! I had only just met the guy and hadn’t spoken a word ! Some weeks later I was in the cafe at this venue with a friend and saw him with the same groupies having coffee along with a couple of bemused outsiders to the clique.

One of the FB quilt groups that I belong to has quite a weak/absent admin structure. In the six months coming up to the US election I was 'hiding all' from up to 10 posters a day because Trump has fuck all to do with quilting (it's an international group with over 70K members, but the only political posts were Trump related). I kept thinking that I must have blocked everyone as I'd done so many, but they kept coming. Fortunately it's all died down since the election.

DH is in a very niche hobby group. They have a WhatsApp group he has had to mute as 2 blokes have decided they are the experts and spend all day sending pictures and commenting on other major work. DH says they are absolutely shit at it but they wind each other up to think they are brilliant.

There used to be an exercise class in a local venue. I loved it but the teacher just full on ignored me to the point of being ridiculous. At one point it was on 3 times a week and I was going because it was hard and I was fit.
At the start though all the teachers drinking mates came too and they would giggle and mess about during the lesson and she would join in. Eventually I stopped going but so did they, the novelty wore off. She then started complaining on Facebook about no one going and she was going to cancel (she did). Not before someone wrote that she should just invite all her mates to spoil it again.

I joined a meditation group that turned out to be a recruitment drive for a group of wiccans/pagans and white witches. Lovely people and the guided meditations were very restful - but I drew the line at joining them for their ceremonies in the forest.

@ProfessorPootle

I met one at the weekly stay and play at the children's centre. It was a lovely centre, brand new, different messy arts and crafts set up (no need to do them at home then), lots of great toys, and best of all a sensory garden, included a singing session and snacks in the £1 price was 2hrs and fitted in perfectly with start of nap time on walk home afterwards. Was wonderful, I just couldn't understand why there were only childminders there and hardly any mums until I met the competitive one!

My ds was late at sitting up/crawling, was happy rolling about. She'd come and ask how old he was every week and say that at 8m he was late at developing and perhaps I should consider assessment for autism, lots of 'ahhhh bless' and 'what a pain' when I carried him around the garden or propped him up with pillows to sit up for snack time.

DS then one week decided he'd stand up and very quickly moved to walking round holding on, all within a week while he was 8m, he bypassed crawling completely. Her ds was of course still crawling so I took it upon myself to say 'ahh bless' and 'what a pain' when he was crawling in the garden while my ds walked past. She couldn't leave fast enough!! Lots of mums joined/rejoined after that as they'd heard she'd gone.

I bumped into her a kids gym group a few months later where she proceeded to tell me that my son covering his ears in the waiting area (very noisy) was a sign of autism and I should get him checked out

Choice Wanker. She sounds terrible.

@Tehmina23

Pre Covid & after first lockdown I've been paying quite a bit each month to go to a good gym in a large hotel with lots of equipment.

I enjoyed doing weights especially and was beginning to get fit & tone up, some colleagues from the hospital where I work also attend so it's nice to see them.
I like to get a coffee in the coffee shop or a Coke Zero at the pub in the hotel & had made some friends.

However had a suspicion all was not right... then found out that a small group of men who I was getting a bit paranoid about because they keep looking over, basically like to look at my chest & I heard them making comments.
It's very cringe for me as I do feel my chest is too big and I'm self conscious about it.
I wear a good sports bra plus a top.
I have a mental illness where I get paranoid but unfortunately I'm not just imagining things this time.

So. When lockdown is over - Do I ignore this small pathetic group or do I stop going to the gym I enjoy??

@Tehmina23 I would be very sad if you were forced out by pervy men. Can you speak to the management? I had a similar experience and the gym team tackled it.

Another knitting one!

Lovely group of about eight, really supportive, one older woman who could be a little negative but was diluted by the group.

Another older woman started and the two of them paired up. It was non- stop endless bitching and moaning. Talking about crap telly, talking over everyone else and waiting for tea to be made without taking a turn.

Other members dropped out until it was just me and these two. The final straw was when one of them called me Thingy after being in the group with me for over a year, no apology.

Before lockdown, the two of them were still going and complaining together.

Trump Has Fuck All To Do With Quilting.

Sentence of the day!

@Tehmina23 Don't stop attending because of them, it's your gym too. Can you speak to management as pp mentioned? If you've seen and heard them making comments I'd definitely mention it to someone at that it's sexual harassment.

A WI one. Moved to a new town and was struggling to meet new people. Heard about a new ‘modern’ WI being set up by women my age (early 40s), some of whom I knew of through my DC’s pre-school. They claimed they were going to be open and friendly and ‘modern’.

Went along to the first meeting. I didn’t know anyone there. The committee all hung out in a clique and didn’t talk to anyone they didn’t already know. Everyone else there seemed to know each other from school. I stuck it out for two sessions but after the ice-breaker session that made me nearly die of cringe (and I’m not a shy person) and the announcement that forthcoming sessions were on flower arranging and crafting, I beat a swift exit.

I was asked to join a book club It turned out it was a splinter griup formed from an exisiting bookclub in the village that was run by an overbearing woman who only wanted to read Santa Montefiore novels and got shitty if anyone made other suggestions.

So 3 split off and asked me to join. Then one of the members unilaterally invited 4 others much to the annoyance of another member. One of the new members then dominated every book and would sit sullenly and cross if anyone suggested a book she had not suggested so four of us have splintered off again and I am now in two book groups, keeping the existence of the newest splinter group a secret from the other.

It's been most exhausting.