CF guests

[Gennz18]

We are on holiday, staying at our beach house with another family (my best friend from high school, her DH and 2 DC who are matey with my kids). Our kids range in age from 3-9.

A mutual acquaintance of ours (we have both worked with her at different organisations), A, is at the same small beach town - saw her on a walk and said “we must catch up for drinks”. A is staying with a friend B and B’s husband at B’s husband’s holiday house. We don’t know B.

A contacts us saying we should catch up for drinks - yes come over I say. This somehow morph into A, B, husband of B, plus a third couple who we’ve never met - C & boyfriend, plus C’s son aged 7 coming over for a bbq.

We were starting to feel stitched up but told them to come over for drinks and a basic bbq at 6. We thought they’ll arrive at 6, we’ll have a couple of drinks and a sausage and they have a 7 year old so that will set the curfew.

They arrived at 6.45 - ours kids had already eaten - their 7 year old hadn’t. Kids play nicely together but Child of C is clearly hungry and hasn’t eaten by 8pm and has been up since the early hours of the morning travelling. We get the BBQ cranking and by 9 everyone is fed, our kids are going to bed, it’s getting dark, the plates they brought are washed and ready for them to take home.

We are making “thanks for coming” noises when C (who I don’t know from a bar of soap) packs off her partner with her son and settles back in with another glass of wine. A, B and B’s husband also seem to be settling in for the long haul.

Cue panicked conversations between me and best friend about how to evict them and our husbands giving us filthy looks and disappearing to kid’s bedrooms under the guise of “bedtime stories”.

BFF starts offering cups of tea and we eventually get rid of them by 10.30pm.

BFF says we should’ve set clearer boundaries I.e. set a leaving time (which is right I think).

BUT AIBU to say this was general pisstaking by the lot of them.

TL;DR it’s cheeky fuckery to invite yourself + 5 strangers over to someone’s house, arrive late and then ignore natural cues and fairly obvious hints from your hosts to call it a night?

Basically, I think your friend was a CF to add a bunch of extra people to the invite. Or that was a genuine misunderstanding. But from that point on the evening was doomed, because you were clearly feeling put out enough by the extra guests to have very unreasonable ideas about how a relaxed evening BBQ should go. Apart from C being unreasonably tedious, everything else they did sounds reasonable to me (ok, 45 mins late is not ideal but I would assume 30 mins leeway for an event like this - telling people to come at 6 and planning to serve food at 6.15 is pretty weird)

I don't think op is weird at all
It is frustrating that A interpreted it as inviting all her friends she was staying with (strangers) OP didn't know

I'm not nz but I do invite friend families with DCs like me for early bbq but I call it a "tea time bbq at 4 to eat at 5pm as we all have young DCs and early bedtimes" if I don't want a late one. So I think op was doing arrive at 6pm to eat by 7pm type thing

Anyway who brings 5 extra guests to a small family bbq and turns up enpty handed? I'd expect As DH but not her friends family she was staying with!

Does sound like it was made worse by how annoying C was. Had C turned out to be a fun and helpful guest who brought food and joy, rather than boasting and entitlement, it might have been more easily forgiven!

People from the UK are now going to be super wary of inviting any Kiwis to BBQs after this thread

I am having a BBQ tomorrow. I don't like people, so it will just be me, DP and our cats attending. Happy days.

@FabriqueBelgique

I’m quite happy to say “Right, sorry guys, I’m going to have to chuck you out now, I’m afraid! It’s way past our bedtimes.”

Yep. That's also my approach to people who don't get the hint. 🌹

God what I wouldn't give for a sausage in white bread with onions and a good splodge of Watties. Do they still do these at the Warehouse too?

Surely they’d eat when the food was ready. If food wasn’t ready until 9 then 10.30 is reasonable. It feels rude to eat and leave and I guess they thought that 10.30 wasn’t late to be leaving for the evening if invited over for drinks and food.

Learn from the experience and stop inviting people over, meet in a neutral spot so you can leave when you want to.

I think it's rude to bring random strangers without asking.
Might not be the done thing but next time if you want to catch up with friend A, arrange to meet elsewhere e.g. A cafe. Then you avoid this problem altogether.
I accept bbqs are probably far more casual affairs in NZ than where I am in the UK.

Crossposted with Fairylights

I invited A (who was the only one we knew) and she interpreted it to include the other 5.

I've read the whole thread before replying and notice that no one has picked up on the way this invitation morphed

• from drinks to a BBQ
• from one person to five
• the start time

We are quite sociable people and have often had some of our best parties quite spontaneously.

Can you work out how the event morphed from drinks to BBQ? A BBQ takes a lot more prep than drinks, so you would need to know in advance.

I like to think I would have kept to drinks for the first 'Meetup' but it might be that these people are quite 'clever' at pushing boundaries so the lessons learned might just be to resist people unless you know you enjoy their company.

Id encourage you to get more comfortable with sending people on their way.

Level one is would you like a cup of 'x' before you go because it sets the tone easily. If they don't get the message that time round, the next level is 'thank you very much for your company, we have enjoyed this evening' while crucially handing them their coats and moving them towards the door.

Being able to get them out is a key skill. Enjoy.

@Luckyducky75

They do sound awful but you did invite them at the end of the day. All of them, she didn't just turn up at the door with them, if it wasn't ok for them all to come you should have said when making plans 🤔 45 minutes late is a bit much but I'd be surprised to arrive at a BBQ 45 minutes late to find everyone has eaten and the hosts are waiting for us to leave!

This. Why had everyone eaten by 6:45?

It is rude to invite strangers to someone else's drinks!
I would avoid having friends like this, as they are clearly not respectful.

Trying not to be jealous of all this BBQ walk as the wind and rain batters my windows :)

Talk not walk!

Yes they were rude but if you're bbq'ing at 6pm, why did I take until 9 for everyone to be fed? If you're bbq'ing at 6pm that means the bbq is hot and ready to cook then, with the food starting to come off soon after. It doesn't matter if people are late as the food is cooked by the time they arrive and they can eat straight away without delaying anyone.

I think you made the issue much worse yourselves.

2022 resolution, state things.
You now Invite some and you have an in joke. Make sure you come alone, then explain thus situation. The joke will run for decades.

Ok to respond to the important points raised:

@Queuing4Fergs yes I think they do still do them at the Ware Whare although Covid levels may have put a stop to them.

Yes definitely Watties tom sauce only, DH came home with Pam’s the other day 👎

@violetbunny clearly I’ve revealed myself to be a massive misanthrope so that sounds ideal. In my defence can I just say BFF has been staying for a week with her husband and kids and it’s been fantastic so I think there is hope for me to be reintegrated into society

How it morphed into a BBQ with 6 randoms - A texted to say “let’s catch up”, I said yeah absolutely come over for a drink and we’ll chuck a bunnings sausage on the barbie, she responded “ok great, what time should we come”

At this point I could’ve been more directive I suppose but I assumed that by “we”, she was just referring to B who she was staying with- I’ve met B once and she is preg so I thought would be fine again for a relatively low key catch up

I said we’d be back from the beach by 5.30 and would get bbq on for kids round 6 so come then & we could have a couple of drinks & a sausage

At which point she said “ok it will be me, B+DH and our friend C and her partner and her DC who is the same age as yours”

At which point I was WTF but said weakly “oh great the kids can play with each other”…. This was clearly the point I should’ve been a bit more instructive and where I started getting annoyed.

Then being 45 min late and C being so annoying made me turn into an intolerant psycho. A+B also weren’t exactly singing for their supper in terms of being great company so didn’t cancel out C 😂

If they had all turned up and been great fun the expanded invite + minor lateness would’ve been forgotten.

In summary I think on the face of it I was U but there were mitigating circumstances 😂

I don't know if they were CF. 'CF' on here tends to mean someone taking advantage or using someone. I don't think they conspired to deprive you of some cheap sausages. Presumably they have their own beach house to sit in and their own food to eat. They just wanted to socialise with you and assumed you felt the same.

I think they sound a bit socially awkward, but that's it. You had a dud evening because you didn't click with them, I don't think that makes them CF. As you say, if they'd been good company it would have been the more the merrier.

Where you went wrong was in not wrapping up earlier. 'It's been great having you, but we all need to head to bed soon. Massive day tomorrow, sorry to rush you out.' If you wait for some people to take a hint, you'll be waiting forever.

@DifferentHair your post is absolutely fair and I agree with most of it, but I feel the need to point out that the sausages were quality snags. HOWEVER the white bread they were wrapped in was pretty indifferent (Tip Top but actually quite middling)