Am I a bad person?

[Artanis_Neravar]

I'm going to tell a story, and then I would like you (anyone who cares to weight in) to tell me how terrible (or not terrible at all) a person I am. So here it goes:

Recently I went to a nerd based convention with a group of my friends. Jack (my best friend) Sarah (his wife) Ellen (her best friend) and Mike (a friend). On the way to the convention someone asked Ellen what she do if we ran into her ex. She responded with something along the lines of "oh god, no".

We get to the con and Ellen, Jack, and Mike make a beeline for the bathroom, while Sarah and I wait in the lobbyist area for them. Ellen comes speed walking up to us says "that's him, let's go" and then speed walks away. We were still waiting for the other two to get back (and I was a little confused as to who "he" was) so we didn't move. Ellen's ex then walks up and starts talking to Sarah, she introduces me and after saying hi, I walk off to find Ellen. After I find Ellen we wait for a bit until Sarah, Jack, and Mike catch up. Sarah then tells us that Ellen's ex asked to have lunch with the group of us the next day, and Sarah had agreed. Sarah told Ellen that she did not have to join us if she didn't want to.

Come Saturday ad it is approaching lunch it becomes clear to me that I am the only one who remebers that we are supposed to have lunch with this guy, at which point I made the concious decision to not mention it to anyone.

The lunch never happened, and when I brought it up a couple hours after lunch Sarah's response was "sh*t. Well he has my number he could have texted me."

Am I a terrible person for not bringing it up when I realized that no one else remembered?

[reboot]

No. You did not make the plans, Sarah did, so as arranger making sure it happened was on her. Also, I take it that Ellen's ex is not your friend or acquaintance, so you had no obligation to manage his social plans.

I may be reading too much into this, but I get a wiff of Geek Social Fallacy from Sarah's acceptance of lunch plans. Ellen, who is in your group, is actively avoiding her ex. Sarah makes lunch plans for *all of you* with said ex, probably because he asked and she did not want to be mean and say no. I wonder if she actually forgot, or pretended to get out of a sticky situation without having to overtly ditch the ex or tell Ellen to amuse herself while you all went to lunch with the ex.

[reboundstudent]

I may be reading too much into this, but I get a wiff of Geek Social Fallacy from Sarah's acceptance of lunch plans. Ellen, who is in your group, is actively avoiding her ex. Sarah makes lunch plans for *all of you* with said ex, probably because he asked and she did not want to be mean and say no. I wonder if she actually forgot, or pretended to get out of a sticky situation without having to overtly ditch the ex or tell Ellen to amuse herself while you all went to lunch with the ex.

Total honesty here: that's exactly what I would have done if I was feeling particularly socially awkward that day. Agree to a lunch with the ex ("Oh yeah, we should totally hang out for lunch!") then conventionally forget to text him for confirmation. Plus she's right, he could have texted her. So my guess is the lunch plans were kind of a social politeness on both sides; one of those "Let's get together" plans that absolutely no one intends to follow up on, but agrees to in the moment because that's the polite thing to do.

[eselle28]

Yeah, I agree with Marty's interpretation of the events here. If she really wanted to have lunch with him, she would have remembered. If he really wanted to have lunch with her, he would have gotten in touch to ask where she was. It sounds like this was one of those convenient social lies that people sometimes feel like they have to tell, and which generally just make things more complicated. This wasn't your interaction to watch out for, so I don't think it was on you to make sure this lunch happened at all.

Though, I think it's worth saying that even if you had done something wrong (and again, I don't think you did), there's a difference between making a mistake and being a bad person.

[Izmuth]

Agreed with the rest in principle, except if the plans were already detailed.

Was the time and location already set? If it was, I personally would have thought it was more decent to really cancel to make sure he wasn't waiting for you guys.

If either the time or the location was not yet agreed upon, it seems like both parties told a social lie the day before, because they both "forgot" to call each other to finalize the plans and you did nothing wrong IMO.

[Artanis_Neravar]

I do not believe the plans were datailed at all.

Thank you all, this makes me feel better. I tried asking some of the guys I work with about this, and I was immediately remineed why I avoid discussing anything like this with them.

Also, I told Sarah that I may have purposefully not reminded anyone about the lunch, and she thanked me for helping her stay a good person while still being a better friend to Ellen. So all well that ends well I suppose.

It might also be worth noting that I didn't feel bad about not mentioning the lunch, and possibly leaving this guy out to dry. But I did feel a little bad for not feeling bad, and a tad worse for (at least in my mind after the fact) taking the decision away from the people that probably should have made it.

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