Sometimes doing something nice for everyone else makes you realize how little they appreciate it.

So, what would you do if you spent hours planning a free family getaway, and at the last minute, everyone canceled for one reason or another? Would you cancel the trip? Or would you refuse to let your hard work go to waste and take the trip alone?

In the following story, one man finds himself in this very situation and chooses the latter. Here’s how it all played out.

AITA for booking a trip to go alone without my family and wife?

I (38M) have a job that comes with a lot of travel perks, such as free or heavily discounted hotel stays, theme park tickets, show passes, and even some dining credits. It’s a great benefit, and I genuinely enjoy sharing it with my family when I can.

Here’s the problem: every time I try to plan a trip for them, it turns into an absolute nightmare.

They’ll tell me, “We’re free whenever!” But the second I actually start booking things, suddenly no one’s available. One group can’t get out of work, another doesn’t like the date, someone else complains about the drive, it’s always something.

Every time he makes plans for the family, they get wrecked.

To make things worse, they refuse to take any time off work, so everything has to be on weekends. That’s when my comps are the hardest to get, which means I have to send tons of emails to hotels, venues, and parks just to piece something together. Sometimes I even have to pay extra because weekends are premium days.

Recently, I spent about four hours of my day off emailing back and forth, calling, and arranging a weekend trip. I somehow landed an incredible deal, everyone would get $250 in dining credits and extra perks at the park.

But when I told everyone, two people (my parents) said they didn’t want to go because they’d have to leave work early on Friday or drive late at night. Since they weren’t going, most of the group backed out, too, because it was supposed to be a “family trip.”

When they found out he went alone, they lost it.

After all that work, I was done. I told everyone I’d try again later in the year. But when the next window opened, I just… booked it for myself. I went alone, had a great time, got $500 in free play at the casino, and even won $200 cash.

Then the family found out and lost it. I got dozens of messages calling me selfish and a jerk for “going without them” or not at least saving rooms so they could still tag along.

I told them I’m not their free travel agent, and if they can’t agree on a date or work around my availability, I’m done spending hours trying to make everyone happy.

Unfortunately, his wife was one of the people he ditched.

Now they’re saying I’m wrong and that they don’t want me to “offer them anything ever again” if I’m just going to do things for myself.

To be fair, part of “my family” includes my wife. She said she couldn’t go that weekend either, so I went solo.

I do feel guilty about that, but at the time, I just needed to get away from the chaos.

AITA?

Yikes! It sounds like he has pretty strong feelings about this whole thing.

Let’s check out what the fine folks over at Reddit think about what he did here.

This person doesn’t see that he did anything wrong.

Yet another person who doesn’t think he was wrong.

According to this person, the whole thing is a nightmare.

Here’s someone who thinks he messed up by not taking his wife.

They kinda asked for it. It seems like he’s tried too many times, and it always ends the same.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a daughter who invited herself to her parents’ 40th anniversary vacation for all the wrong reasons.