It’s one of those days where you’re browsing Facebook at eleven o’clock at night and you see an event invitation from one of your friends. It ends up being the same friend that always invites you (and the rest of his friend list) to concerts every few weeks because he decided to take up concert promoting for a hobby. You might go, maybe, if you have nothing else to do–and that includes sleeping or catching up on Netflix. However, you don’t want him to forget you the one time he invites you to a show you actually want to see. So you hit maybe instead of not attending.
This is another aspect of our desire to avoid hurting people’s opinions about every little thing. We want to seem open to the idea of attending whatever so we say we will go even when we have no real attention of attending. And this is so ingrained into our response mechanisms that the invitation sender not only assumes that a maybe actually means no, but that a yes means maybe. It is as though the creation of those three little buttons turned everyone into noncommittal attendees. And this can backfire.
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My best friend got married last summer. The morning of the ceremony, a few of her relatives called and said that they were actually in town and were wondering if they could come to the ceremony and the reception. I was returning to her cabin with food when this happened and she gathered her mother and I for a conference. “Should they be allowed to attend?” “Did they respond to the invitation at all?” “No.” Her face resembled what I imagine chewing a lemon soaked in bitters would taste like. “You want to say no, don’t you?” She looked at her mother helplessly.
“They are family, it’s not a plated dinner, and we did order extra food.”
So her mother and I scrambled off to find extra chairs for the dining room and the ceremony. We succeeded and everything was lovely, but the audacity of some people astounds me.
When did making a firm decision become taboo? Is there really any person out there who will set a date on their own schedule and then proceed to be upset when it doesn’t end up fitting in with your schedule? Probably not. Consulting anyone else on their schedule, making a compromise, and then getting upset when the second person still doesn’t attend, conversely, is fair and reasonable. What is sad about this is that it began as a joke about behavior on Facebook and then seeped so much into our regular lives that suddenly people think it is alright to fail to respond to a wedding invitation and still attend.
Whenever I host events, I even tell my friends “It is okay if you can’t come and I’d rather you told me sooner if you can’t.” But I shouldn’t have to add that caveat. It is especially frustrating when they get defensive about whether or not they will attend and even saying “I just need a number for dinner reservations” never seems like a good enough reason to justify why you would need confirmed attendance. And it’s not as though they actually need a reason. They should want to respond in order to help the host(ess) in planning their event.
This is a call to everyone to start being more exact in their RSVPs. Out of respect for the people who throw events, we should be willing to say whether or not we are coming and leave the maybes for non-number specific events where we truly aren’t sure for a legitimate reason (i.e. not sure you have work yet).
True Life: I'm an Etiquette Nut 