the friend who leaves "maybe 🤔" on a wedding and asks "wait where are we going"
There is a person in your group chat who has never once, in the recorded history of your friendship, said the word "yes" before it was physically too late to do anything about it. She lives in the tab. She is a permanent, unresolved "maybe 🤔." Her name is Corinne, and she is the reason the caterer stopped answering your calls.
Let me walk you through the case file. Every date is real. Every timestamp is a war crime.
the wedding "maybe 🤔" that lasted four months
March 3rd. Your cousin's wedding invite goes out with a Paperless Post RSVP button so large a toddler could operate it. Everyone taps "joyfully accepts" like it's a fire alarm. Everyone except Corinne, who — and I cannot stress how deliberate this is — clicks the little "maybe" toggle and adds the thinking-face emoji. On a WEDDING. A legally binding celebration of human commitment, and she responds like it's a Sunday hang that might get rained out.
Four months. She held that "maybe" hostage for four months. The bride texted her privately on April 12th: "hey no pressure but need a headcount for the caterer 🙏". Corinne replied "omg YES obviously, let me just check one thing" — and then checked nothing. There was no "one thing." There is never a thing. The thing is a myth she invented to buy herself a season.
She finally confirmed on June 29th. At 11:52pm. Two days before the plated dinner. The couple had already paid the vendor deadline penalty. There was a $47 "final guest addition" surcharge and it had Corinne's name on it in the spreadsheet, in red, like a fugitive.
Corinne, a "maybe" on a wedding is not a vibe. It is a hate crime against a seating chart.
If your entire personality is a pending status, you might belong to a specific species we've documented at length in /for/flaky-friends. Read it. Print it. Leave it on her pillow.
the birthday poll she answered the night of
Now let's discuss the When2Meet incident, because it deserves its own tribunal.
You made it easy. You made it a POLL. Three restaurants, four time slots, one job. You sent it Tuesday. By Wednesday morning six people had voted and the plan had basically formed itself like a beautiful little democracy.
Corinne voted at 7:14pm. On Saturday. The night of the dinner. Which was scheduled for 7:30.
She selected "Osteria at 6:30" — a slot that had already happened. She voted for the PAST. She used a scheduling tool to cast a ballot for a moment that no longer existed. And when informed, gently, that we were currently sitting at a completely different restaurant with the appetizers already ordered, she sent a voice memo. Forty-one seconds. You could hear her putting on a shoe.
Here is a woman who treats a group calendar invite like a suggestion box she'll get to in retirement. The "going / maybe / can't go" buttons on the Facebook event have been staring at her since Monday and she treats "maybe" like it's the responsible middle choice. It is not the responsible choice, Corinne. It is the coward's choice with better marketing.
"wait where are we going" — a horror story in five words
And then. THEN. After the four-month wedding maybe. After voting for a restaurant slot in the past. After being personally texted the address three times — screenshot, pin drop, and typed out in plain English like a ransom note — Corinne sends the message. The one that ended a friendship in a lesser timeline:
"wait where are we going"
Sir. Ma'am. Corinne. We have been going to this place, at this time, in this reality, since Tuesday. The pin has been in the chat since 6:04pm. You reacted to the pin with a heart. You HEARTED the information and then asked for the information. That's like signing a lease and then knocking on the door asking if anyone's home.
She then followed it — and this is my favorite crime, the little cherry on top — with "omg driving now, order me whatever!!" as if her presence were a delightful surprise and not the thing 8 people spent a full business day trying to nail down. She Venmo'd $12 for a $34 order and captioned it "🥳 sry im chaos!!" No, Corinne. Chaos is a weather event. This is a lifestyle you have chosen, curated, and refuse to unsubscribe from.
the thing is, we still saved you a seat
Here's the part that keeps her out of jail: we saved her a seat anyway. We always do. Because Corinne, when she finally arrives at 8:15 with a bottle of wine she definitely bought at the gas station on the way, is genuinely, annoyingly, the best person at the table. She'll close down the bar with you. She'll drive four hours to help you move a couch. She would show up to your actual funeral early, weeping, front row — she just can't RSVP to the wake.
That's the whole bit. We're not mad at you. We're mad at the "maybe 🤔." We're mad at a behavior you could fix with one tap of a thumb, and we'd like you to know that we notice, we love you, and we have receipts.
If you want to say all this without a three-hour "are we okay?" conversation, we wrote the diplomatic version over at how to call out a flaky friend without drama. But if diplomacy isn't your ministry and you'd rather let an anonymous card do the talking — one that lands in her inbox with the exact timestamps and zero return address — you know what to do.
Stop leaving us on "maybe." Send Corinne the card she's been pending since March.