AIBU to ask a friend’s guest not to join private breakfast?

[Ano1n]

Regular meet up on a weekend morning for coffee with a group of female friends - not a formal arrangement and anywhere between 5 - 10 of us.
End of last year one friend brought a former colleague with her - who is an utter boor who inserts, interrupts & talks over any conversation & added her to the group WhatsApp. This has changed the dynamics of the group & people privately message more rather than use the group message.
Yesterday morning I met another friend for breakfast & planned to join them for coffee after. Said person was early & went to plonk herself down when I stopped her by saying it was a private conversation & I would join them later. Cue a load of blustering, marching off & slamming down. Really couldn’t be arsed with it so we settled bill and left.
Last night the intro friend puts a message on the group how we are about women supporting women & bullying won’t be tolerated!!!
Have responded back a few times (not actually sent) as the theme is fluff off but am I in the wrong here? Is asking her to leave bullying or is she rude for plonking herself uninvited?

If i were meeting some people for coffee and one of them was already at that place with someone new i’d assume they were joining the group and sit down at the same table. I think YWBU and rude tbh, I’m not surprised she was confused.

Sounds like you were quite reasonable to me. It should have been obvious the friend was not part of the group and they were early. It's pretty rude to plonk your self in a seat in that circumstance. A quick hello and I'll see you in half an hour is appropriate.

Is it a mixed bag?

Arranging a private chat in the same venue where you were meeting other people was a recipe for this.

No idea why you couldn’t have explained without being unnecessarily abrupt.

Tbh I would feel weird about dismissing my private chat friend for the coffee group afterwards as well. I would just have had breakfast somewhere else so there would be no overlap because the friend i’m having breakfast with would either be told it was time to fuck off or I’d have to invite her once my coffee group arrived, both options would feel awkward to me.

That is absolutely nothing to do with anyone other than Op and her friend!

I agree,the whole set up seems a bit odd. Unless there's literally one café in town, surely best choice for keeping the two totally separate (as it seems OP does) is to have breakfast in one place, say your goodbyes and go on to the coffee meet?

Exactly this

The regular meet up is for coffee.

OP was there already 20 minutes before time, mid meal with someone unconnected to the coffee group.

Not difficult to get that it was a different meet up and not assume you can just join someone eating.

Be factual.
“No bullying: other friend and I had arranged to meet for breakfast to discuss something particular. Fully intending to meet everyone else at the agreed time. New friend arrived early and I asked that we finish our meeting. Not sure what the drama is”

Maybe they're hobbits 😂
Second breakfast style 😁

I think you're right.

I would go back to the WA and say that you're responding to the now-deleted comment, and that to your mind there is a big difference between asserting your boundaries when someone has inserted themselves uninvited into a private and important and time-dependent conversation, and bullying. And that attempts to shame you for putting the comfort of a third party acquaintance before that of your good friend could just as easily be construed as domineering or bullying behaviour.

That’s why the group chat is now private messages to each other.

Read the OP

I don't know why the OP is getting such a hard time here, she said in her OP that the dynamic has changed since this woman joined the friendship group and people were PMing each other rather than going through group chat. She was a bit cheeky to insert herself into the conversation with you and your other friend @Ano1n but still being with this other friend only 20 minutes before you were due to meet with this other woman and the others was a bit daft. You should have had a different meeting place, or a bigger gap between meet-ups. (At least 1 hour.)

I would have been a little bit annoyed if I were you, but wouldn't have said anything. I would make sure I do things differently next time. (Bigger gap between meets/different venue maybe 10-15 minutes walk away,) but it sounds like you do dislike her @Ano1n and aren't really sorry for upsetting her. You clearly don't get on with her and others do, so maybe distance yourself from the group for a few weeks, and meet up with some of them but not all.

Honestly though, this is why I CBA with big friendship groups. They all seem to want to be like Friends (the TV show) and all about empowering women, and are always championing all the socialising together. but they rarely end well. A big group breaks up into smaller factions and people turn against one another, and it turns to shit, most of the time. Sometimes two of them will fall out and people take sides and it gets ugly, or the group just fractures.

I haven't been part of a friendship group for about 10-11 years now, (my late 40s,) and I never will again. Too cliquey, always a Queen Bee, always a gobshite who likes the sound of her own voice, always a bitch, always a scrounger, always a cheeky fucker, and as I say, the groups nearly all turn sour.

If the chief of the group has had a go I'm not sure how you can come back from this @Ano1n without apologising and saying something like a pp said.... Like..

@GreenFootstool · Today 09:02
"Sorry for hurting your feelings Jane, but I was having a sensitive and private conversation with someone else at the time when you wanted to join us and I tried to be as polite as possible to protect everyone's feelings in the moment.

You are not a bad person OP, but I think you could have handled this a bit better. This woman's reaction was a bit OTT drama queen though, and she has clearly been tittle tattling about you to the others. Good luck!

I do understand why you’d want some privacy to finish off your conversation with your friend, but I can understand why the woman you don’t like came and plonked herself down with you both. How was she to know that you weren’t just there a bit early yourself and were also introducing someone new? If you were all due to meet there but sat in different places when you got there, it would be very odd.

I think you’ve hoisted yourself by your own petard now. If you’d commented on any of the rude things she does, you might have had a point and some support, but she wasn’t being rude by joining you. And now, any indication that you’re not listening to her, or not responding with enthusiasm or any show of irritation when she interrupts someone is going to be met by her running to your mutual friend with allegations of more bullying and that she knew you didn’t like her and how you’re making her feel unwelcome in the group. This has the potential to split the group in two, so I’d proceed with caution if I were you. Did I understand correctly that the post about bullying has now been deleted? Which would suggest that your friend no longer thinks it was bullying. So nothing to respond to. Let this go. Your friends presumably know you aren’t a bully. Keep your distance. Be polite but nothing more. Don’t give her the ammunition to force you out of the group and hopefully she’ll get bored and move on.

If you want a private conversation with someone, then don’t pitch up at the same venue where you’re due to meet up to 10 other friends an hour later, would be my advice! Is there only one café in town, op?

WA groups can be a nightmare. I have fallen out with a group because of posts on WA.

Group WhatsApp… Comment has been deleted - spoke to the friend who wrote it and was on a batshit version that included swearing and raising my voice.

Do you mean that the interloper told her pal that you’d kicked off rather than just said you were at a separate event and for her to please wait? If so, ouch! Not sure how that can be rectified.

The whole thing is awkward as hell, I can see why she thought it was okay to join you and also why you didn’t want her to do so.

This is kind of what I was saying.

Yes I was going to say the same. It was an innocent mistake by the person you aren't keen on and I can understand that they were probably embarrassed by your reaction. I think you should have been more polite. Also it does remind me of a similar situation where I'd had a longstanding group of friends that I'd meet and one day a new person came along... they were very chatty and each-time they 'intercepted' on that first meeting I kept thinking 'who is this new person changing things up'. The next time we met I wondered if she'd come and she did and actually went on to be a really fun central person to our group - we used to laugh about how she'd become an honourary member... just saying this as sometimes it's good to keep an open mind to change.

Understandable mistake on her part. Why on earth go to the same cafe when a misunderstanding was so clearly possible, and having gone there, why choose a table with spare seats? This woman obviously through this was the meeting. It sounds as though you were abrupt with her, so no wonder she was upset and probably embarrassed. YABU.

There isn't enough information here for me to really know what's going on

I wouldn't label someone a bully for this and this alone, but looking from the interloper's perspective, unless she knew for certain that this wasn't just where the early arrivers were sitting, I can see how she'd be embarrassed and unhappy at being sent away. How was she to know? It really depends on exactly how you reacted and expressed yourself, and as you don't like her much, you probably made that more obvious than you realised when you dismissed her.

However, I do have sympathy for the larger problem. It's annoying when someone unilaterally introduces a new person to the group and it changes the dynamics for the worse. (And I don't have much respect for people who jump to calling someone a bully because they dared to assert themselves and not just always go along with whatever someone else wants for the sake of 'being kind'.)

This group may no longer be right for you, if the rest of the members don't mind Interloper enough to do anything about the situation. Unfortunately, it's difficult to boot someone out of a group just for being a bit annoying. It feels too much like... bullying. 🙄 So your best bet may be meeting your favourite people from the group at other times—unless you're willing to brave out the awkwardness of being branded a bully and accept the Interloper's presence going forward.