Friend helped herself to my birthday cake - is she ill or rude?

[Topofthecliffs]

I had a birthday party as a fundraiser for a charity on Saturday. I invited all my favourite people plus a friend who has been behaving oddly and has been rude and abrupt recently.
We had a live band and planned a cold buffet during the interval. Timings were band started at 7pm, supper at 8pm then more music and dancing.
At 7.45pm the strange friend approached DH and told him some people were very hungry and the food should be served now! He explained it would be soon.
I took the covers off the buffet at 7.50pm. She happily dived in and filled a big plateful. At 8.45pm the band played happy birthday, I blew out the candles, and took out a knife to cut the (huge and beautifully decorated) cake. I went to fetch some napkins to serve the slices on. As I turned to the cake I saw SF pick up the knife and hack a big triangular slice for herself from the front. She made off with it to her table. We were all astonished and have been trying to understand why she thought this was appropriate behaviour.
For info she is 70, a highly educated professional, but socially awkward. She has been becoming increasingly impatient and anxious in cafes and hotels at meal times wanting to get in as soon as the doors are open and wanting to be served first. She sometimes takes other people’s orders if they arrive before hers eg a cappuccino
AIBU - yes she is unwell and you should be compassionate - no she was rude and behaving like a greedy toddler.

OP hadn't yet cut the cake. Her friend hacked a great big slice out of the cake herself.

If people can't wait until 8.00 pm for the buffet, they should either decline the invitation or eat at home first.

I’m with the cognitive decline camp, something I would have scoffed at a few years ago. My mum lived to 90 and had small vessel dementia, which became all of who she was at the end of her life.
In her 70s, unknown to me at the time, her funny behaviour and these sort of little ‘oddities’ became more apparent. Her social graces were declining and she sort of developed a ‘me first’ approach to life, which I totally celebrate for older people, but mum’s approach had a bite to it. It was a bit like she’d push in front of all the kids waiting to be served by the ice cream man. That didn’t actually happen but, you get what I mean. She lost her sense of consideration at times. Combine this with a parade of UTIs over the past 20 years and it was a perfect storm.

I wonder if people spend much less time with elderly relatives and neighbours these days? Not everyone goes through this, and not everyone seems elderly in their seventies at all, but this is certainly the kind of behaviour we would have made an affectionate joke of at most, growing up, modelling our behaviour on our parents and grandparents who seemed aware that loss of inhibitions (eccentricity) came with advancing age.

It was a genuine "be kind" situation. If she's your friend, just try that or else let her be. Hope she has a good social circle.

My youngest child knows not to do that

this is a adult so she knew what she was doing

Might be dementia

Adults control themselfs! Even many kids would act like she did!

Tell me about it! I think I have ADHD traits. The impatience of waiting for things is real. I get quite anxious. I never do what this lady does, but as I get older I anticipate it will get worse. With behaviours like this which are beyond your control you really hope that the people around you will laugh it off and cut you some slack (and a very large slice of cake!)*

*Unfortunately, I haven't found this to be the case. People just get annoyed and angry, which heightens your anxiety and, thus, the impulsivity.

Does she have any good points. She sounds awful

Not necessarily. In my family nobody would give a shit about someone helping themselves to a piece of birthday cake. I appreciate in some circles it would be considered rude but she may have genuinely thought that now the cake has been done it's fine to take a slice.

It would probably more helpful for the OP to actually talk to her friend about it instead of talking about how ghastly her friend is with people who don't know her.

It's a buffet, so she helped herself. Poor thing was probably starving, and having paid for the privilege, helped herself to some cake.
The birthday rituals being complete and all ...

Yes this. Other comments are pointless really. It’s this which OP should be focussed on.

The timing of the dinner is a red herring. Most adults would be able to wait patiently in a social situation until food was served without comment, no matter what time it was. (We are a family who never eat supper before 9.30pm, so this wouldn't bother us, but anyone who is not ill would be able to wait a bit until the food comes, even if they do feel hungry, without being rude). Also, she had her supper so her attack on the cake was not due to hunger anyway.

My bet would be on incipient dementia, or as someone has said, some kind of infection or other acute illness compromising cognitive function. I am presuming she wasn't always like this or you wouldn't have found it worth remarking on? If you know members of her family I would gently ask them if she is OK.

As OP put the time that the buffet would open on the invitation, people who think it is too late for them to eat should either decline the invitation or eat at home beforehand.

You don't hack into someone's birthday cake without asking.

I think Age Concern etc could do with a raising awareness campaign. A lot of people are aware of “ mental health” as an issue…but don’t really know what it means. And most people have heard of Dementia, but don’t really get what it means. The aging brain deserves as much respect as any other compromised system.

OP, my mum would have done something like this. And she’d believe she was in the right.
She always thought herself and her way of doing things were the right way.
x

Could it be dementia or something like that

my dad has dementia and is increasingly fixated on eating and vaping. So if you go to a cafe he will be v impatient until his order comes, food will be eaten v quicky.

a symptom of dementia is also failure to recognise social norms ie she didn’t realise helping herself to the cake was a huge social faux pas

This resonates with experiences I've had with elderly relatives with dementia. They find it almost impossible to consider the needs or thoughts of other people outside themselves, and lose any kind of social filter or emotional regulation. Which makes sense really because the brain is losing function and those are higher level functions, because very young children don't have them.

I'm really sorry about your mum, that sounds like a really difficult later life for her and you.

No, age is not an excuse to be rude.

OP, dump the bitch.

Of course it's rude, how can any of these previous posters say it isn't? It's not polite to hack off a wedge of birthday cake and make off with it. FML 😂

This, but of course we'll get all the 'how dare you not let her do what she wants!!' posts.

I think it very obvious this is some kind of cognitive decline or other health issue.

I found it quite sad that you refer to her as 'strange.' And am also not sure why her behavior came as such a huge surprise if she has already been behaving impatiently in cafes, being rude and abrupt etc..

Personally, I would have given her a plate of food when she told me that she was hungry.

Fucking hell, she took a bit of cake.

What do you mean, the cake had 'been done'? It had been baked and decorated?

No, that they had sung happy birthday and blew out the candles.

This is a really important detail.

OP might want to edit her post to explain this - there's a huge difference between taking a slice of cut cake and deciding to cut it yourself!