When you’re young, there’s nothing better than a birthday party. As a kid that meant a bouncy castle and a whole lot of sugar, perhaps even a disco with party smoke if you were lucky. But as you grow things become more sophisticated – a meal at a fancy restaurant, a dinner party, or even a picnic or barbecue. Because of course, to entice busy adults to a celebration, it’s almost vital to include food of some kind.

As you grow it’s likely that birthdays will begin to feel less special or important – you’ve had plenty of them after all, and as an adult you can treat yourself to cake every day if you want to (though this really isn’t recommended). Social obligations can begin to feel like another pressing demand on your schedule – but really, gathering with people you know and love in celebration is an important thing to do every now and then, birthday or otherwise.

Even though they are grown, the guy in this story decided to book a birthday dinner for his best friend, who agreed to the date and time. So imagine the shock of the party guests when, thirty minutes in, no one has seen or heard anything of the birthday boy. And when one person got to speak with him? Well, things didn’t go down so well.

Read on to find out more.

AITA for still having my friend’s birthday dinner even though they weren’t there?

Recently it was my best friends birthday, and I had coordinated a birthday dinner with all of our friends.

Everyone and including him were aware of the time and confirmed the day before.

We all arrived earlier than the stated time so we could be set up with all of our gifts and birthday cake.

I expected him to be late, but about thirty minutes after time, everyone was looking to me to see where he was.

So he decided that it was time to try to contact his friend.

So I called him and he sounded like he had just woken up.

I asked him what time he would be arriving and he was like, ‘well I was asleep and need to get up and shower so probably around 8pm.’

Note that it was 5pm and he only lives ten minutes away.

As I was looking around at about seven other people, I knew there was no way I was going to tell them we had to wait three hours before we ate – especially those who came out of town or had somewhere to be.

In the end, he decided to take matters into his own hands.

I explained to him, and asjed if it was possible for him to get ready faster, even it took an hour.

He was basically was like ‘no it’s my birthday, but I guess I don’t have to come.’ And that was that.

I didn’t know what to say. I explained to the table what had just happened, and we all agreed to continue our meal and had the best time. I even got a free meal because they all said it was my birthday.

Suffice to say after that our friendship slowly fell off until we didn’t speak anymore.

AITA?

Someone plans a birthday party for this guy, and he didn’t even bother to get out of bed in time?

Then he thought that it was okay to tell people to stick around hungry for three hours until he arrived?

This guy deserves to not have friends around him any more.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a person who abandoned their own D&D campaign when their friends stopped paying attention.

Let’s see how the Reddit community reacted to this.

This person agreed that the guy had been hugely disrespectful.

While others pointed out how poor of a friend that made him.

Meanwhile, this Redditor thought the friends could make the best of the situation.

If the guy hadn’t wanted a birthday party, all he had to do was say that. But rather than declining the event, he went along with it the whole time, meaning that all the folk in attendance would have gone out of their way to get there, maybe even buy him a gift, get dressed up and then show up on time – and even living ten minutes away, he couldn’t bring himself to drag his body out of bed to meet his buddies. All the time, he left them there, not even bothering to say anything until he received the call.

It’s like his friends’ time means nothing to him even though, as adults, time is in very short supply. The fact that he was so disrespectful of the time and effort his friends had put in to celebrating him says a lot about how he feels about other people – and it wouldn’t be surprising if this wasn’t the only friendship he lost as a result. Because while everyone is allowed to have flaws and make mistakes, this is not a simple mistake. This is just rude.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a man whose friends say he’s privileged for wanting to eat at nicer restaurants.