A woman on Reddit has sparked a serious debate after admitting that she no longer invites her “broke friend” on nights out. User KangarooOverall2147 took to the AITA sub to ask people’s opinion on whether or not she’s wrong for preferring to spend her social time with people who can actually afford to enjoy these excursions rather than having to foot the cost. The responses to her query have been mixed, to say the least.
- The friend does have a job, she’s just not able to go into work at the moment. The post begins by explaining that the friend in question had to leave work in October 2020 to have back surgery but should have gone back two weeks later. However, the friend has been out on disability for the past seven months and collecting payments for it. However, it’s unlikely that her disability payments cover the full amount of her normal wages.
- OP says she used to be happy to pay for her friend. As OP continued, her friend’s time out of work happened over winter when there’s not much to do, so the friendship group tended to go out for dinner, drinks, and some music every week. At first, OP was happy to grab her friend’s portion of the check since she knew her friend had been having a hard time through no fault of her own. However, it soon became a problem.
- The friend soon started to automatically assume that OP would pick up the tab. “I think at some poitn it had become assumed that I would pick it up every single time. The friend would do odd things when the check came like fake a phone call, go spend an awful long time in the bathroom, etc.” OP went on to say that the friend got so used to her picking up the check that she stopped even acknowledging it or saying thank you.
- OP has since stopped inviting her for nights out. While OP says she has still invited the friend for nights in or to activities that are free, the friend has turned every single one of them down. However, she’s upset that she’s no longer invited to the nights out the rest of the friend group enjoys every week.
- The responses were really mixed. One person claimed that OP and her friends should have expected such behavior since they enabled her sponging by paying for everything, no questions asked. “If it was me, she would come back from that phone call with the bill waiting for her,” they wrote. Another added that the best policy here would be honesty: “It’s time for a talk with the friend. It sucks to be the friend with no money but it sounds like you’ve tried to accommodate that. If you want to keep her as a friend try to be empathetic, there may be some depression in there as well and she may be acting p***y because she feels she can’t change her current situation.”
