New member super nice and helpful but I find her so irritating!

[Bleachmycloths]

Some details changed/not included to avoid outing.
I am in a hobby club. I love it. Members are lovely and we have an enjoyable relaxed time. Leader is great and makes meetings enjoyable.
New member ticks all the boxes for being nice: chatty, smiley, makes tea, talks to everyone, asks them questions to show an interest in their lives, helps to clear up. I feel a bit guilty because I find her a PITA and I am getting grumpy about it.
To avoid drip feeding:

• At the discussion part of the meeting she tries to draw everyone in by posing a question then asks each person what they think. Some members are shy and I can see they don’t like this.
• suggests we all go out for the evening to get to know each other and to not to talk about hobby. I joined for the hobby, not to go out for meals.
• every meeting she announces she can’t remember names and points to each one in turn and gives them their name, often wrong, then she gives them a nickname eg “ Mrs Cake” “Mrs Lovely Red Handbag”

I have other examples but this is already too long. I worry thatI am simply intolerant because I just want to say “Oh, fuck off with your helpfulness and friendliness and leave people alone!” Finally, she is not covering up shyness. She is confident and thinks she’s the bees’ knees. I know this. I am not guessing. AIBU for being intolerant and grumpy? Should I accept her as well meaning and that other people and their behaviour are part of life?

Extroverted doesn't mean attention seeking. Everyone is different. It would be rude for her to call the more introverted ones "boring" so it's not fair to be shamed because we aren't all the same.

She doesn't sound annoying to me. Maybe you've left out too many details. She just sounds friendly, lonely, and a bit scatty.

I had a newbie join a group once and it took me a while to accept her behaviour and status as perceived queen bee. In all honesty, maybe I'd secretly viewed myself as that! I was actually jealous too.
I got taken down several pegs and now we are good with each other.

Not saying this applies to you OP but it could be an opportunity to look at yourself honestly and work out why she bothers you so much.

Is this in response to the other thread, where a new member of a group was spoken to about their enthusiasm?

Having read the whole thread, I really do think that applies to the OP.

'Nose put out of joint by newcomer' is a frequent thread topic on Mumsnet.

No, that was just rude. Maybe that person does have something wrong with them, like that condition where you cannot recognize faces. I have a friend who has this and when we meet up I have to tell her it's me. But regardless of that, there's no need to be rude to people like that.

I'm in a newish (to me) hobby, and I try to remember names and luckily I'm fairly good at it and after a couple of months I've probably got about thirty (attendees come and go, it's not compulsory to come every week).

But I have literally NO issue with people not remembering my name and asking me again.

You could suggest you all wear name badges :)

Give her a break. They do say what qualities we dislike in others are ones we have ourselves…

Not surprised, your friend sounds horrible. Not "brave" or hilarious as op suggests. Just nasty

Refreshing response!

Until the quiet ones just quietly stop going as they are no longer quietly enjoying the hobby club thanks to this new comer.

I would be beyond irritated by the name thing. That's lazy and rude

If she wants people to go out for a meal it sounds as though she is wanting a new friendship group. I find your attitude about that very strange to be honest.

Divisionoflabour89, The OP is not the leader of the hobby club. These are the second and third lines of her post — which you didn't read:

I am in a hobby club. I love it. Members are lovely and we have an enjoyable relaxed time. Leader is great and makes meetings enjoyable.

The woman who is making up new names because she can't remember the established members' names is new to the group.

OP, I would try to engineer a quiet one-to-one with the irritating newbie and say 'I really don't like being called Mrs Cake. Just because I once bought a cake to a meeting I don't want to be labelled Cake forever. Please call me (whatever your name is).' That will give her the opportunity to realise how offensive she's being. If it turns out she has some neurological issue with learning names you can all wear name badges to help her. If you can't have this conversation, ask the leader to have it. It's rude and also, I think, a dominance move, to rename you all to suit her.

I was guilty of your first bullet point during lockdown. I was invited to join a social group that met online a couple of times a week. I didn't know everyone involved and some of them were extremely quiet. In a bid to be fair and give everyone airtime if they wanted it (some participants tended to dominate) I would sometimes ask a question of one or other of the silent people — until one of them messaged me to tell me she didn't want to speak and would I kindly not address her in the group.

The quiet ones have voices and failing that, they have a group leader.

The OP is using them here to mask her own envy.

Should I accept her as well meaning and that other people and their behaviour are part of life?

Yes.

This is not a “good confident woman”. This is an attention seeker who cannot see she’s making others uncomfortable by her actions.

I still don't get why inviting out for dinner is wrong. If people don't want to go, they can say no? That's what I do.

Whilst I think you're being a little bit mean. (Only a little,) as I think she is probably just trying to be friendly and trying to fit in it and is probably a very nice person, I also understand where you're coming from. It can be quite annoying when somebody is really full on and keeps asking you multiple questions, and keeps wanting to talk.

I used to be in a village group. It was just a 'ladies group' that used to meet every third Wednesday ... about 15 to 20 women there usually. Just having coffee and chatting and playing board games, and playing bingo sometimes... There were always two or three in the group that talked more than anybody else, and kept prodding you to talk - and to answer questions.

And when I first started, for the first three or four times I was there, I had a couple of women asking me about 15 to 20 questions each, really personal questions, like about my children, about my husband, about my marriage, about my parents... What family did I have? Did have any siblings? Was I in touch with them? When I said I didn't have much contact with my brother because he moved abroad, they started questioning why, and wondering if there's something wrong there, really prying. (There is nothing wrong, we just have very little contact as he moved 1000s of miles away...)

Also, the woman that ran the group, although she was friendly, she was quite bolshy as well. And she got 10 out of the 20 of us to put our phone numbers into a little basket. And then the other 10 would pick a phone number out and who's ever phone number those other ten picked out, they had to call that person over the Easter holiday and meet them for coffee..., Even though some of the people had only met two or three times and were actually quite shy. Sort of OK in the group, but calling someone they didn't know to meet for coffee was just odd, and it all felt very manipulative.

I picked someone's number called Carol and she just frowned and said, 'oh, so you'll call me over the next week or two, will ya?' And I said, 'Oh yeah, okay, then.' I did not really her like that much. She just never smiled and seemed quite grumpy. She was about 15 years older than me, and I had absolutely nothing in common with her.

So I didn't call. And because of that, I ended up not going to the next two meetings because I felt so awkward about it. So yes, people being really over the top, and trying to push you into being friends is just not that great. Friendship should be organic and they sometimes take a long time to form.

I wasn't keen on my next door neighbour when she first moved here three and a half years ago. But over time, especially over lockdown, we became quite friendly and quite close, and we're now quite good friends. But it took like probably 8 to 10 months before we started really speaking properly. You can't force these things.

As others have said @Bleachmycloths just have a quiet word with the group leader... if this woman doesn't calm down after a couple of weeks.

Start calling her "Mrs Inappropriate Nickname" - see if she takes the hint.

I disagree.

Confident man = Strong and confident.

Confident woman = Attention seeker.

The OP's petty post about the dinner speaks volumes here.

It's what most adults do.

Of course you disagree. Probably because you’re one of them.

I would say the same if a man behaved like this. He wouldn’t be being confident, he’d be an attention seeking arsehole.

That's not how quiet ones usually work though - they just quietly drift away. I've left groups in the past when they've been "taken over" by the confident dominant types. They take all the pleasure out of the activity for me and as they have as much right to be them as I have to be me, I will usually just remove myself from the situation.

Clearly you are one of the loud ones.

I think there’s a hint of bullying about the OP’s posts. It’s OUR group and we don’t like NEW people joining. All very school playground to me - grow up.

She sounds really annoying, and the name thing is extremely rude. She should set up her own group if she wants to set the agenda or do things differently, not try to shake up a well run group. 5 years ago I couldn't find a particular interest group locally that was run the way I wanted, but I'm not the sort to join an established group and then try and call the shots, so I set up my own.

I'm guessing your group is creative writing or a book club.

Choose your battles.

The key one for me would be group discussion and trying to draw people out. For the protection of the group dynamic this needs to be stopped, albeit it's the role of the leader to facilitate group discussion and I'd leave this one to her. As someone who regularly chairs conference panels, I'm aware there's a skill to keeping a Q&A flowing, and this can sometimes be a fine balancing act. There are polite, non-pointed but assertive ways of ensuring one person is not allowed to dominate the floor, and 'drawing people out' is certainly in no one's remit. It might help to have a set of ground-rules or unspoken set of expectations: in my case these are that no one exceeds their 20-minute presentation slot and as Chair I'll impose this limit strictly, Q&A waits until the end, and I'll take questions in the order in which they're presented. We don't wait until one person goes round the entire room requesting answers to one question.

Making these expectations clear from the start - possibly of each meeting - is good expectation management. A key expectation here, clearly, is that everyone participates voluntarily; there is to be no putting people on the spot. Any deviation then needs nothing more than a polite reminder as to the agreed etiquette.

If one person is altering the dynamic, it might be as well to readdress that dynamic and come to an agreed consensus, not on resolving that person as a presenting a problem, but as to how all members want to get the best out of the group. This might be a positive exercise regardless of any new group member.

As far as I'm concerned the silly nicknames thing might be grating, but this comes under the category of 'don't sweat the small stuff'. If it grates, simply correct her each time until she gets the message. And if you're invited to eat out and don't want to go, decline. This sort of thing is easily handled.

When the group dynamic shakes down a bit and, hopefully, makes each side more receptive to the other, she might come up with some good ideas and prove to have her uses!