To leave friend sitting in her car outside my house as she's arrived 90 minutes early

[youretooearly]

I invited my friend over to my house for a takeaway tonight. She asked what time and I said about 6pm. She responded to say she was planning to leave her house shortly (this was about 3.30pm) as she has never been to my house before and wanted to find her way before it got dark. She said not to worry she would just "hang around" somewhere and wouldn't impose. I assumed she meant she would go to a nearby coffee shop or something. I wasn't at home at that stage and told her so. I got home about 45 minutes ago and planned to use the time before she arrived to do more preparation for a job interview I have on Monday.

I walked into my living room about half an hour ago and noticed her car sitting outside my house! So she was here at least 1 hour 20 minutes early. I was shocked. I haven't acknowledged that I've seen her or invited her in yet. She's sent me a message 15 minutes ago "let me know when you're ready". I feel a bit angry that she's turned up so early! I said 6pm for a reason and now feel under pressure to let her in.

Agree 100
I wouldn't be able to concentrate on my interview prep knowing she was sitting there.. in my home
I would really resent it.
It's sooo intrusive

Isn't friendship meant to be a bit relaxed? She knows you very well, that's why she left early to get to your place because she didn't know where you live. You should cut her some slack and let her in. You are lucky you have a friend who can be patient with you and sit in the car for 30 minutes waiting for you to let her in. If it were me, I will go and that would be the last time you will ever see me at your door. If you knew you had an intetview to prepare for why did you invite her then?

Can't believe @youretooearly never came back to update this thread !

Are you really so entitled that you would expect your friend to ditch anything she needed to do, reduce the prep for an upcoming interview, and set all that aside because you decided to turn up an hour and a half early? Would you really be so incensed by her not being able to drop everything and accommodate you that you would end the friendship? Holy cow that's entitled!!

I had a friend who use to do this all the time, it drove me mad and got me so angry! To me this is just as rude as being late, the person is saying their time is more important than yours.

I totally agree with what you did, I would have done the same and have done so in the past.

This!

The reason shes asking is because she knows what she is doing wrong, she feels guilty and just wants someine to make he4 feel better. Did her friend make sny demabds on her? No, she is speaking from her iwn guilty conscious. Just to answer your qyestion, i am nit that cruel to my friends, even if i arriced early abd you keft me to sit in my car for 1hour 30 minutes outside your house, while you are in, we are not friends, sorry to disappoint you. I am that entitled. I wont come again. If we are friends, why can't you let me in offer a cup of tea and continue with your stuff while i wait for you atleast in comfort?

Are we supposed to be able to understand this?

You’re so busy and up against it you had time to ask Mumsnet. She’s come to early but leaving her outside is wild.

I could, it's only a few typos

Are you hard of thinking? Just the odd wrong letter typo, didn’t even need to look twice at any of it!

Hope she wasn’t sitting in her car scrolling Mumsnet….!

I find it funny all the people saying 'you'll be so lonely and have no friends if you treat them like this' regarding leaving the early visitor outside. Without realising that most people who hate suprise visitors to this extent will not give a single crap about that because they'd rather just not have the friend in their life at all than deal with a sudden intrusion.
It's the introverts, the autistics abd those with some types of anxiety.
We are happy to not have hundreds of friends if it means no one 'pops round' 'Popping round' or people turning up ridiculously early is a nightmare scenario.
No way would I let anyone in who did this. I'd also not feel as warm to them in a friendship any more.
Strangely I have a great many friends. None of them would do this because im pretty sure I've made sure my friendship group are all similar in nature to me. This would be their idea of a nightmare too!

What an absolute car crash of a post.

Of course you ask her in. Give her a tea and leave her to doomscroll. How on earth do you even need to ask this?

Sori but I feel your not a nice to your friend. So she arrived early. Probably so happy to see you and spending time with you..
If I'd been her and I knew you knew I was there is have gone left you too it.

Depends how close a friend. Although my closest friends wouldn’t have done that. I don’t like being put under that sort of pressure.

I’d have left it a bit and messaged ‘just getting a shower let me know when you’re here’ or something. Than responded again at about ten to.

And worse perhaps she’s dying to use the loo. If OP was my ‘friend’ and left outside in the freezing cold and could see OP inside in the warm and I’d massively over estimated how much time was needed to find her address (clearly the first time) in order not to be late then I’d think sod it Im going home and never bother with this inhospitable person ever again.

If she'd come from the other end of the country and had just finished a 12-hour drive, then fair enough. Her estimate might have been a lot out. But she hadn't left at 3:30, and was parked outside waiting by 4:45 (we don't know how much before that she arrived), so she was leaving at least double the amount of time needed. By parking outside rather than around the corner, and then the passive aggressive message, she was very clearly putting pressure on the OP to drop whatever she was doing which meant she couldn't meet until 6:00, and reschedule because she arrived on her terms instead. It's incredibly rude. Ruder in my view than arriving 90 minutes late.

If I've said, I'm free to meet at 6:00, it's because that's when I'm free. Before that I might be doing other things, having a shower, having an nap, wrangling children, doing work, whatever.

If she was 90 minutes late, it would have inconvenienced the OP in terms of her being hungry, but she wouldn't have necessarily had to reschedule her plans. Arriving early and passive aggressively. Pushing the other person into changing their plans is far more intrusive.

If you want to arrive somewhere an hour and a half early, crack on, but park around the corner and sit in your car, or go to a cafe. Don't sit outside putting pressure on someone.

This reminds me of a situation years ago.

My SIŁ and BIL live about 2 hours away from us. We (DH and then DS7, DD6) had arranged with them to meet at a seaside town close to them and then drive back to their city where we had a premier inn booked for the Saturday night and we were going to go out for lunch on Sunday before driving home.

Saturday then met us for about an hour but BIL back was hurting so they drive home. No offer for us to spend the evening with them (we planned to be at the seaside town until about 8 to see the lights, they left about 4pm).

Sunday morning, checkout is 10am. Our hotel doesn’t serve breakfast so we walked to a Sainsbury’s local, hardly anything was open, and got some pastries and a drink. We were sat on a bench with two young kids and nothing to do until lunch time. Messaged SIL to see what they were doing, told at the gym. We thought we would drive to theirs and wait until they returned from the gym and could hang out with them until we all went to lunch. We were parked outside their house for well over an hour, maybe 90mins trying to entertain the kids. BIL came home from gym, we got out of car and asked where SIL was, she had been home the entire time.

I don’t think it was deliberate, I just think they don’t have kids so it possibly hadn’t occurred to them that killing at least 2 hours (it was longer as we checked out before 9 to get breakfast) with kids would be hard. Even without kids though, they would know that there would be a period of time where we had no hotel room before we all planned to meet for lunch. If it was me I would have invited/assumed they would come to ours to hang out.

No, that's you being the issue here, not them. The plan was to meet for lunch, it's that didn't suit them the onus was on you to previously suggest meeting earlier, not just turn up hours before lunch and expect then to ditch any plans last minute - and yes she was at home but may have been busy.

What a strange thing to hang out in a car for hours with small children. Surely you'd go to a park, or for a walk, or to soft play, or a role play cafe, bowling, swimming or whatever. You must have known that you'd have a few hours to kill, and should have planned something.

Wow, kindness really seems in short supply these days. Would people honestly let anyone sit in a car for an hour and half because it would inconvenience them and they feel "uncomfortable"? Are we never supposed to do things for others if it puts us at any disadvantage. I despair.

OP has not posted anything since her original post do thinking this is not real

Not only is it almost certainly not real - but on the vague chance it IS real, it all happened two days ago. Why are people still telling the OP to invite her friend in? I doubt she’s still sitting in the car two days later!

Yet it still goes on!! ..😂..........