I'm wondering how I could've handled this differently.
I volunteer at my DS's school and through volunteering I met another parent, let's call her Jane. Jane is the type of person who loves to talk at you and will spend ten minutes telling you the ins and outs of their life without asking you anything about yourself - a nice enough person, but extremely self-centred.
I saw Jane a few days ago at school and to make conversation as we were walking to our cars I asked what she was doing on the weekend. She said she was going to a local event and I happened to mention I was going to this same event with some friends who I'd invited, who live some distance away. We left it at that and it didn't occur to me that she'd think anything of it.
The day of the event rolls around and Jane messaged me to say that she's there with a few friends. I replied saying I'd be there soon, but left it vague because I had no intention of actually meeting up. But Jane messaged me again to say where she was so I could find her, so I felt trapped into going to meet her briefly. I decided I'd just go say hi then leave to go meet my friends as they hadn't arrived yet.
We met up, and Jane was with a few friends of her own so we spoke for a few minutes and I thought we could then go our separate ways. But Jane's friends then said they were leaving so I was left alone with her. I then said, ok, I'm going to meet with my friends, are you going to hang out here or head off? (I.e thinking she was going home.) Jane then said she would come with me to meet my friends - I thought this was a bit weird, but whatever, I thought she maybe would just say hi then go do her own thing.
But no, she then proceeded to hang around with us for several hours, right up until my friends had to leave to go back home. I was so annoyed because I hadn't seen these friends in months and they'd come all this way to catch up, and we couldn't have a private conversation or talk about personal things at all. I could tell my friends were annoyed but there was nothing I could do short of actually asking Jane to leave and of course I wasn't going to do that.
I've never hung out with Jane outside of our volunteering before and she knew I'd arranged to meet up with friends from out of town because I'd mentioned it in our initial conversation. AIBU to think people shouldn't just invite themselves along to a pre-arranged meeting? If Jane had genuinely been interested in being my friend I would've felt differently, but she's never shown any interest in me other than talking about herself at me and I'm pretty sure she was only hanging out with me because she was bored and had nothing else to do (her DS was with his dad). I'm so annoyed because I had a whole day planned out with friends I never get to see and I didn't get a single moment alone with them from the time they arrived until when they left! To me her behaviour was thoughtless and I would never have done the same because I would've felt so awkward to insert myself into a situation like that with people I don't know very well, but that's just me.