About 2-3 weeks back, I spoke of some pros and cons of Facebook. However, I forgot to mention my major pet peeve.
It doesn't have so much to do with the site itself, but how people treat the site. In particular, how people treat event invites.
I am not counting the large, public events that a lot of times are celebrating something that mocks something in pop culture or the world in general (i.e. Post-Apocalyptic Looting following the end of the world on May 21st).
Rather, my beef is with the way people respond to event invites and how oftentimes, people will answer an event invite a certain way because they think the host would rather hear a certain answer for them.
"Maybe" = "No"
This is my secondary of pet peeves when it comes to event answer "faux pas". I can't put it as the primary because I know there are times where someone's answer is "maybe" because they have another event that day or something conflicting and they will try to make it to the event that you invited them to.
However, a lot of times, someone answers "maybe" because they are just avoiding the word "no" because it seems like it would be insulting to say, "No, I don't want to go to your party." For example, my last get-together of significant invites, I had 19 people respond maybe and 15 didn't come. In past events, I noticed a similar 80-90% ratio of "maybes" not showing. I spoke to my friend Jenny, who co-hosted a Memorial Day BBQ last month with three of her roomates, about this pet peeve of mine in a conversation. Their party had roughly the same 80-90% no-shows from the maybes, according to her.
Trust me, you're not going to offend me if you say you don't want to come to my party and answer with a negative response instead of the obligatory "maybe".
Sometimes I will initially answer "maybe" when someone posts an event. However, I will always go to change the answer to a definite "Yes" or "No" when I know for sure whether I am attending. Especially if it is something that requires reservations or the pre-purchase of something that requires a headcount of some sort.
When "Yes" is a "No Show"
This would be the biggest of the pet peeves. When I organize an event of some sort, I buy a certain amount of food that will cover the entire party. Granted, I usually go a little overboard (particularly when I win at the horse track the same day I'm buying the food/drink). However, I use the # of people who said yes as a barometer for how much I need to buy.
If 20 people say "Yes" to an invite, I expect those people to show up. Like the "maybe" answer, I'm sure there are some reasonable excuses for not coming if you answer "Yes". However, I consider the only reasonable ones are ones that are last-minute things that need to be attended to (i.e. babysitter not showing up, sickness, other family-related thing, and so on). If you answer "Yes" and don't even bother to let me know why you're not showing up, that is something that annoys me to no end. At least maybes don't make me think that they are showing up. Often, I know they are not, especially based on the given ratios that I've experiences with events that I've hosted.
When the aforementioned "Yes" goes to "No" with no explanation, I am much quicker to not invite said people to future things.
This article wasn't meant to offend anyone, but rather educate those who have poor etiquette when it comes to responding to things. If it offended you, then you are likely a culprit of the above behaviors and you should learn how to help those people out who are inviting you to events that many times require an accurate response for purchasing decisions.
Think about it this way - if you were sending out wedding invites to 300 people, of which 250 people responded yes, how upset would you be if 50 of those people didn't show up and you were stuck footing the bill for 50 dinner plates that didn't get touched? (Note: I've never gotten married, so I don't know if there's some sort of insurance or something that allows married couples to avoid this potential nightmare).
Not too often you will catch me quoting Nancy Reagan, but if you don't plan on coming to a party, "Just Say No".
Please don't make me quote her again. You've been warned.
