To think my friend is treating me like her maid

[Grabhands]

For context, this is a friend who I have known for years, haven't seen since before COVID. We booked and are on a 7 day all in beach holiday in the Med.

Meals are buffet service, tea service and cakes etc at certain times from a pool bar and a bar where you can go and get alcoholic drinks etc. At meal times waiters will bring you water for the table and you go to bar for anything else. Bar a few mins walk.

At every single meal we have had since arriving, she tries to send me to the bar to get her a drink, if I am going anyway absolutely fine, otherwise get your own!

She also keeps taking food from my plate to try it, with fingers , and then says can you go and get me some of that.

When I get desert, she gives me a list and asks me to bring back plates of various things.

Tea, she doesn't want to go to bar to get cakes, in case she misses some sun so again even though I don't want anything asks me to go.

I know its petty, and I'm usually easy going but after 3 days I have just said you go, you have legs too, and please stop taking food from my plate.

She is now very offended and huffing and puffing!

Am I being a cow?

Your post has really tickled me though @SquirrelSoShiny. I'm sitting at my desk working from home and having a good old laugh at how a post suggesting how the OP could negotiate her way to getting home might have been taken to mean something completely different.

Hope you manage to get home @Grabhands.

When you hear about a National crisis in aviation and your one and only thought is OH NO! OP WILL BE STRANDED AT THE AIRPORT WITH MRS DEMANDY-PANTS!!

@StaunchMomma - make that an international crisis.
Ryanair has just posted on X (formerly Twitter):
Some delays/cancellations likely to/from the UK today (28th Aug) due to UK ATC failure.
All affected passengers will be notified of their options to change flights (free of charge) to another Ryanair flight or receive a full refund.

The OP said she was travelling with a budget airline, I hope it's not Ryanair or if it is, to change to a flight leaving for Dublin and then find your way home from there by ferry/train (perhaps).

I do think you should say something to her before resuming your friendship, whether it’s before or after you get back to the UK. She needs to know that her behaviour was a problem. I can see you possibly letting things lie as she’s acting normal

Um

I don't think they are friends anymore.

Good point...!!

I saw this on the news and thought of the OP straightaway.😁

Far too invested in this thread, the friend was leaving me raging!
I couldn’t be friends with someone who has zero emotional intelligence that even when OP tried to discuss it and even moved hotels and they still couldn’t see they were behaving terribly

Ah, man! So much fun in the sun... not! Sorry your holiday is being wrecked by your friend. At least you know not to go with her again.

I hope that you have a relatively stress free journey home OP, all things considering! I hope your friend has thought about her demanding behaviour but I seriously doubt it sadly.

Flight home cancelled!

Fingers crossed get a flight back tomorrow, I booked a hotel near airport earlier and can work from there tomorrow until get details of next flight!

Should have been home just after midnight, that plainly won't happen

Friend is not talking about my move, seems to have brushed it under carpet so to speak, and I'm not bringing it up right now. When we got transfer bus I didn't sit next to her, and it seemed like she had befriended a very young couple from the original hotel so that was ok.

Didn't realise the extent of flight chaos till we got to the airport, just thought might be delayed a bit

Couldn't abandon her at airport as its chaotic, so she is with me now, only talking about how to get home, nothing else!

I had a horrible feeling that you'd be caught up in this disruption.
Miss CF is very lucky that you are such a good person to be looking after her. I wonder if the young couple have been running around after her at the hotel?

This trip will be the making of her!

Make sure she pays her half of hotel and food! Assuming you haven’t been given vouchers from airlines.

Young couple very sweet, barely in their 20's!

Would be too much to avoid my friend at airport, it was really awful there. Better to be together. I can wfh and have laptop so just hope we get home tomorrow.

Nothing!!

Make sure you keep receipts for food and accommodation and demand compensation for this!

Are you home now and ok @Grabhands

Sorry hasn’t seen your updates! My goodness you’re unlucky!
hope you get a flight tomorrow and your friend pays her half of everything x

>Couldn't abandon her at airport as its chaotic

Why do you feel responsible for her? Did you adopt everyone else from the airport too? Take them all to your hotel?

I am happy for you OP, that you had a few days away from your aggravating friend and were able to get the space you needed, and salvage the rest of the holiday. OP, you seem to be a good person but I am sorry to say, you also are non-confrontational to the point of your detriment. That's why you will find yourself in the same position again and again. To be nice to the same people who encroach your boundaries (I said this before and I will say it again)

And to all the posters who hotly argued against my posts saying that if OP runs away from every situation it will happen again and again to her in the future, don't bother to reply. You clearly do not have my experience as an ex-people pleaser who used to be just like OP, so just don't bother to lecture me on how wrong I am, because OP is proving to us all on live time how so very non-confrontational she is, she will not bring up the unpleasantness of her friend that nearly ruined her holiday that OP had to check out of the hotel and incur financial loss to get away from her and will instead pretend nothing is wrong, now is back with her friend again in the same hotel (talk about going back to square one), be her pleasant friend like before and pretend play that everything is alright. Anything but confrontation!

*is back with her friend again in the same hotel

Not in the same hotel, but in the same physical space, co-habituating together, with OP feeling responsible for her friend, and thus taking on the role of a pseudo parent.

Agree.

Hmm I rather think this trip should be the making of OP. Friend now got exactly what she wanted - a parent figure to take care of her. It's the OP who is back to the same situation she took great pains to avoid.

Thank you.

Now I wait for those posters to lecture me about how it's the right thing to do for OP in this situation where all flights are cancelled, that there is nothing wrong in showing kindness to the friend in an emergency 😌

It's not like they're trying to survive in United Nations tents after a tsunami.

They're not trying to make sure they get a bowl of gruel and a cup of water so they don't die.

OP your friend has been inconvenienced, just like thousands of other people.

It's not your job to fix that for her.