Man Takes His Wife On A Trip To Celebrate Her Birthday, But When He Doesn’t Have Cash To Pay At The Parking Lot, It Ruins Her Day
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Imagine taking a trip to celebrate your spouse’s birthday. What would you do if you made a big mistake during that trip that ended up wasting a couple hours during the birthday? Would you consider the celebration over, or would you try to salvage the rest of the day?
In this story, one man is in this situation. He knows he messed up, but he wishes his wife would at least be willing to talk to him about it. Instead, she’s sulking, and he’s wishing the vacation was going better.
Keep reading for all the details.
AITA for assuming that contactless payment is an option in multistorey car parks across Lisbon
My wife (30, F) and I (31, M) decided on a trip to Portugal last month in order to celebrate her birthday and also relax and enjoy our time together.
Our work rosters have been swamped and a quick getaway seemed a great idea to escape London and our jobs respectively.
We landed 2 days ago in Lisbon and collected our rental car straight away.
Everything seemed smooth sailing until earlier this afternoon.
Let’s see what happened today.
Since it is my wife’s birthday today, I was buzzing with excitement to take her out so we got into the car and drove down to cais do sorde.
Frustrated with the lack of vacant parking spaces I found an underground car park.
My wife, being the cautious and foresighted person that she is, asked me to inquire regarding the terms and conditions of how payment is taken.
I ignored her and drove inside thinking that contactless payment is surely an option.
It was great until they went to pay for parking.
We toured the area, clicked many photos, had brunch and I bought her a gift so it was time to get into the car and leave.
Surprise, surprise, the contactless payment option was out of order and this is where the issue began… neither her nor I had our wallets or physical debit cards on us.
I am personally used to paying everything using either apple pay or my digital contactless card.
I went to ask the people working there of what we can do and they said “cash only”.
Workarounds seemed complicated.
I tried pressing the help button on the exit barrier hoping to be connected to someone who might lift it and allow us to pay the fee by phone.
No one answered.
Then I went outside and tried to contact the car park office, no answer.
I thought of withdrawing money using a cardless ATM, a quick internet search said you can do that but only with Portuguese cards.
The solution was less than ideal.
Meanwhile, during all this time, my wife was seething and sulking.
We had no choice but to go back to our hotel and pick up my wallet.
All in all, we wasted just over 2h travelling on the bus and walking up and down.
I honestly felt like I have ruined her birthday and she seems to think so too.
His wife doesn’t even want to talk to him.
Now we are back in our room, everyone on their phone, not much happening.
My attempts of having a conversation were all futile, she is simply refusing to speak to me even though I had another place in mind where I wanted to take her.
Before she clammed up she said this has been the worst birthday ever and gave an implicit statement that basically our day is done.
Here’s some more context about their relationship.
Worth noting that her and I were in LDR for 3 years, married for just over an year and living together for 7 months.
It is technically our first time spending her birthday together, in the flesh.
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She has a habit of shutting down emotionally and those silences only strentch in length. Now I am unsure of what to do since I have tried many times to talk to her.
AITA? This holiday became from the best for me in a long while to a pretty ugly one
He tried to make his wife’s birthday awesome, but one big hiccup ruined everything. Is his wife overreacting, or did he really ruin her day? How can they move forward?
Let’s see what Reddit suggests.
This person thinks he should apologize.
Another person calls him delusional.
This person thinks he should’ve brought his wallet.
If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a daughter who feels hoodwinked after finding out the sick father she’s been supporting has plenty of money of his own.
Everyone agrees that he messed up.
“I’m sorry” won’t fix it, but it’d be a start. He should’ve listened to his wife instead of ignoring her suggestion. That’s probably one reason she’s upset. The other reason is obviously the huge hassle that resulted from him ignoring her.
The lesson here is to always bring your wallet.
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