My wife and I are friends with a couple who live in another city. For convenience, let’s call them the Roses. They’re actually more like relatives – Mr. Rose is the brother of my wife’s brother-in-law (that is, her sister’s husband’s brother).
We get along with them great, much of the time. But they have a deserved reputation for being flaky.
This flakiness used to be really, really bad. They’d cancel plans at the last minute – not just with us, with anyone. This was related to some of Mrs. Rose’s mental health issues. As time went by, however, she got better. (Not perfect, better.) They’d make plans and follow through on them more often than not. This was nice.
Now that Rose Jr. is almost 3, they’re socializing more again. So the last time we were in their city, back in early August, we invited them to come visit us in September. They suggested that the first weekend – this weekend – might work. Great, we said. Let us know if you’re coming.
A week passes. No response. We mention to my sister-in-law that the Roses may be coming up this weekend; SIL is happy because she can send a box to us with them. She talks to the Roses; they’re still undecided. We send them an email a week or so later saying we’d still love to have them, and just to let us know.
Fast forward to this week. Tuesday morning, Mrs. Rose leaves a message on our home voicemail saying that they’d like to come up this weekend, but Mr. Rose is trying to juggle his schedule because he’s supposed to work on Saturday and maybe on Monday. So they don’t know yet, but they’ll find out and let us know on Tuesday night.
They do not let us know on Tuesday night.
Nor on Wednesday, morning, noon or night. Nor on Thursday. We figure they can’t be planning on coming, so we’ve started making plans for the weekend.
Tonight, my wife is talking to her sister, who says that Mrs. Rose told her just this morning that they were driving up to see us on Saturday. This is news to us.
After a bit of discussion, we decide that we’re not going to call the Roses to confirm that they’re coming. Or, conversely, that they’re no longer welcome since we’ve made other plans. We’re going to see if they call before showing up, and if we’re home when they do.
Ay ca-fucking-ramba, Roses, if this weekend didn’t work out, pick another weekend. Or otherwise let us know what the hell is going on. We’ve come down to stay with you before, and we’ve never come within a week of our arrival date without confirming our intentions.
Why? Because it’s fucking rude! You’ve had a goddamn month to decide whether or not you were taking a goddman trip, and four out of five communications on this issue were us contacting you to find out if you were maybe coming.
So here’s the thing: when you show up on Saturday, we may not be home. The second bedroom may not be ready for you. You may not be welcome at the Saturday night party we just agreed to go to – we’ll check with the host. You can come to Bumbershoot with us on Sunday, but we’ve planned our schedule and you may not enjoy everything we’re doing.
That, or when you call and say you’re coming, we just won’t answer the fucking phone.
You’re lovely people, but you are a family-sized jumbo box of super-sweet extra-choco-frosted free-toy-inside part-of-this-nutritious-breakfast mini-marshmallow-coddling rot-your-teeth FLAKES.
(Sorry about the length of this. Just had to vent before I went off on someone undeserving, like one of our cats.)