“Sorry, I’ve got a headache/sore finger” or “The dog ate your dinner” are mainstays, “A can of baked beans landed on my big toe” is a new one.
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Try this link. That website has an overactive hotlinking defense system.
I could have found that, I just wasn’t that interested…
Actually, I think appropriate excuse is: I’m not fat, I’m just drawn that way.
When it’s in reference to an invitation to a sporting event or something else I have absolutely no interest in, I tell them “Sorry, but I have a cake in the oven. Or an arms deal in Tangiers. I don’t remember which.”
Like when Zotti invited me to help move cinderblocks from his basement to his back yard.
Perfect! “Oh, I got a new phone”
“but you have a SIM card, it transfers over…”
I don’t know, guys should just understand it is a euphemism and not try pursue some girl/woman after the rejection, then go around saying “why do the jerks get all the girls”.
In virtually every documentary/story about a band that is no longer super popular we’ll get the “we recorded an awesome album and the label refused to promote it”.
To all the people bemoaning bullshit excuses to social invitations and/or pick-up lines: why won’t you just accept the socially smoothing lie? Everyone involved understands that the real reason is, “I think you are repulsive and being near you makes my skin crawl”; do you honestly want to heat that spelled out?
I don’t get it.
Greg Brady used “Um, something suddenly came up.”
And then there’s “We were going to invite you, but we reached our limit.” That’s not gonna fly if you’re over the age of 12 or so. Plus, anyone over the age of 12 should know that you’re not supposed to discuss invitation-only social activities in front of someone who knows they’re not invited.
Tell that to my former coworkers! Five years of listening to social activities that I was not invited, some of them which I wish I could’ve been.
FTR, the one party I “crashed” was one of the best parties I’ve had (and no one cared).
“I think I might maybe be coming down with something contagious.”
I worked at a restaurant when I was in college, and one evening, I figured out that some of the people I was working with that night were going to go out after work, and didn’t want me tagging along. I had occasion to say, “Look, I know what’s going on here. You’re all going out, and don’t want me with you. You know what? I wouldn’t have gone if you had invited me, okay?”
I liked most of my co-workers, but not this particular group.
More recently, I was at a meetup and the people there insisted that “this place is saved” and said I could sit at the table next to them, but not with them, and it wasn’t the first time I had been subjected to passive-aggressive behavior from this group. I said (and made sure the whole restaurant could hear me) “If you people don’t want me here, just tell me and I’ll leave.” Some other people at the meetup asked me to sit with them, but anyway, if middle-aged women are going to act like junior high Mean Girls, they’re going to be treated like them. The next day, the woman who headed that meetup sent out an e-mail to everyone on her list stating that this particular group was being dissolved effective immediately. I asked if I was the cause, and never got a straight answer.
Oh, and one other thing: The person that place was allegedly saved for never showed up. :rolleyes:
I am on a few garage sale-type pages on Facebook where I sell stuff. It normally goes swimmingly. However, over the past two weeks, I cannot tell you how many people are in the hospital/have a boyfriend in the hospital/had their grandfather admitted to the hospital. Yes, these were all the excuses last week. I suppose they COULD be the truth, but I have a hard time believing that–especially when all these “events” happened on the exact same day we were to meet and do our cash/product exchange. IRONIC!!
Also, my personal favorite: I didn’t get your text message? Did you send it to XXX-XXX-XXXX?
Uh, yeah. Of course, if the text is about a favor or a request, they didn’t get it.
Would you have really preferred for them to say, “We don’t want you to sit here. Move along, move along…”
It seems to me that Mean Girls would have told you straight-up not to sit there. They wouldn’t have bothered with an excuse.
Maybe Nice Girls would push their discomfort to the side and invite any and everyone to sit with them. But the social world isn’t dominated by either Nice People or Mean People, but just Normal People. Most Normal People aren’t trying to hurt feelings or be rude. They’re just trying to get along the best they can. Convenient excuses aide them in this endeavor.
Even if you had been the type who wouldn’t have minded brutal honesty, there are other people who would. On a message board somewhere, these folks are saying, “They could have at least said they were saving the seat for someone else!” Normal People can’t win.
In this case, it was dripping with attitude, and like I said, not the first time I had been subjected to p/a behavior. There was another woman who, every time I spoke, would butt in, cut me off, and start talking about how her kitchen was decorated. 
She stopped coming, although for reasons that I don’t think had anything to do with me, and there were other people who didn’t like her either.
“You hate ____s because you’re one yourself.”
PS: am presently embroiled in a thread about homosexuality, and I’m straight.
Let’s not say “entitled” so much as (for my 17-year-old self, and many years after) “would like it to appear less arbitrary and unfair”, and admit that in those days my sights were set rather lower than sex, with “not being treated like a weirdo” a more modest goal too often going unachieved.
At my age I’m rather past caring, but for the sake of a miserable young man I remember from years ago I might offer the following analogy, spoilered for TLDR:
[spoiler]From time to time you are set a math test. You receive no other math education apart from getting the results of your test back, and you will be told that you have either passed or failed the paper. You will not be given any feedback on your answers or told which questions you got wrong, or even if you got any right (you should be able to read as much as you need to from the vigour with which I have written the word “FAIL” on your paper). Next time, the questions will be different, possibly even radically different, but that’s your look-out.
People pass the test all the time. You can see people around you who have passed the test. They are having fun on the strength of it, and they have career opportunities that you don’t. Don’t you wish you could pass the test? Your family certainly wishes you would. Your mother not-so-tactfully asks if you’ve passed your test yet every time you’re ringing home, although she never gave you any math instruction apart from “Don’t divide by zero” in a rather embarrassed voice and a vague apprehension that she hoped you weren’t one of those people who liked spelling tests instead.
If you ask why you’re not getting feedback on your math tests, you’ll basically be told not to whine, although I might deign to elaborate some time and tell you that I have had, or I have friends who have had, or I know by reputation of people who have had, too many painful conversations with people I or they have just failed, and I’ve already decided that you’re going to spend ages going “But whyyyyy?” and I’m not prepared to put up with it. You’re not to find this insulting, or it’ll be just one more thing to scold you for. Don’t give me any of that crap about how you want to learn so you can do better next time you’re set a test; you’re just trying to make me feel bad for failing you. If pushed, I might appear to think furiously for some time before saying “Errm… I don’t pass students who don’t use a ruler”. Next week you will see me passing Johnny McNoRuler, holder of the all-time record for never using a ruler.
In fact, you’re meant to keep me sweet no matter what. It’s not my fault you’re no good at math, even if you’ve had your spirit crushed by years of failed tests and are now convinced that you’re doomed to failure even before you try to solve the first question. Rumour has it that math teachers know lots of other math teachers, and we might introduce you to one who would pass you one of these days. Then again, maybe not; we don’t want to waste our friends’ time on people who are no good at math. What are you, entitled or something? We hate that.
You’ll live to see the day when you’re scolded for doing extra homework, too. We like students who do extra homework, and we tell them they ought to do it, and they might even get the idea that extra homework is the way to pass their test. We call people like this “Scholars”. Notice that capital S! Teachers like “scholars” with a small s, and we like to keep several of them about the place for when we want some math done; some of them pass their test and we’re delighted for them. Capital-S “Scholars” though, they’re the worst! They act as though mathematics was a vending machine that you put homework coins into until a pass certificate falls out. As if. If these so-called “Scholars” were as scholarly as all that they’d be putting just as much enthusiasm into their chemistry, physics, media studies, geography… hell, why don’t they go off and compose a doctoral thesis on 14th-century Lithuanian ceramics? Don’t want to? Well, hey, look who’s only interested in studying as long as it means they pass their math test! :rolleyes:
Eventually you might find someone who’s prepared to sign you a pass certificate, endorsed “For career options only” and then only because they have a particular career in mind for you. Don’t whine about missing the fun part. You should have been better at math. Hurr durr, math is hard. [/spoiler]