When going over a guest list for dinner, many aspects must be taken into account.
One of the main issues is food allergies.
In this day and age, messing around with food allergies is life and death.
So because of that some people might get left off the list.
Then chaos ensues.
Case in point…
Redditor notpickyaita wanted to discuss her experience and get some feedback. So naturally, she came to visit the “Am I The A**hole” (AITA) subReddit.
She asked:
“AITA For excluding someone from a dinner because of their food allergies?”
The Original Poster (OP) explained:
“I (31F[emale]) am part of a friend group that meets up for dinner about twice a month.”
“There’s 6-8 of us that go together, depending on schedules, and we take turns picking restaurants we want to try and for the most part we seem to have similar tastes.”
“Last year, one of my friends (Jen) asked if we could include a friend of hers (Kate) that just moved to our city.”
“Jen knew Kate from college and since Kate was new in town, Jen thought this would be a nice way for her to develop social connections without too much hassle or pressure.”
“Turns out, Kate is really nice and funny and is now good friends with all of us.”
“However, Kate has a pretty serious seafood allergy.”
“Like, not just shellfish or just fish, all seafood.”
“She’s not deathly allergic, more like break out in hives type allergic.”
“This hasn’t really been an issue since we live in the Midwest and there’s not a lot of seafood specialty restaurants near us.”
There are a few that we tried before Kate moved here, but none of them were worth risking Kate’s allergy to go back to.”
“That was until a new sushi restaurant opened up about 4 months ago.”
“My husband and I went and it was amazing.”
“We then went on a double-date with another friend and her husband and they loved it too.”
“So, when it was my turn to pick the next restaurant, I suggested that we go to this sushi place.”
“A few other women spoke up that they’ve been wanting to try that place too.”
“But then Jen spoke up and reminded us of Kate’s food allergy and asked if I could pick a different restaurant.”
“Unfortunately, the sushi place doesn’t really sell much of anything that isn’t seafood.”
“Yes, they have some dumplings and edamame type stuff for appetizers, but that’s pretty much it.”
“Not exactly a full meal. But, I did the nice friend thing and picked a different restaurant that we could all eat at.”
“The next week though, I asked the other girls who wanted to try the sushi place if they wanted to go with me and they accepted.”
“It wasn’t part of our normal scheduled dinners, just a few of us.”
“But, word got around that a smaller group of us had gone to the sushi place and didn’t include everyone.”
“Jen, Kate, and another friend were upset that the rest of us had gone somewhere without them.”
“They felt that we were purposely excluding people.”
“But, to me, this isn’t middle school.”
“We are allowed to do things as friends outside of the full group.”
“And since Kate has a food allergy, it makes sense that she doesn’t attend a meal like this.”
“We still have our normal scheduled dinners, just this time a smaller group went to a restaurant that another friend could not eat at.”
“Like, if I wanted to exclude Kate I could have just stood firm on eating at the sushi place to begin with.”
“But I didn’t.”
“But Jen and Kate specifically think I crossed a line by going behind their backs to eat with a just a few of us.”
“And that I’m trying to create division in our group.”
“Now people are taking sides and pointing fingers and it’s a whole mess.”
“AITA?”
Redditors shared their thoughts on this matter and weighed some options to the question AITA?:
- NTA – Not The A**hole
- YTA – You’re The A**hole
- NAH – No A**holes Here
- ESH – Everyone Sucks Here
Many Redditors declared our OP was NOT the A**hole.
Let’s hear some thoughts…
“NTA – You picked a different place for her with the whole group.”
“You just decided to go with the interested group of friends to that restaurant later on.”
“They can’t expect you to never eat seafood just because one person in the group can’t.” ~ alreadystrong
“Jen comes off more like Kate’s mother than her friend.”
“When multiple people expressed interest in the seafood restaurant Jen should have backed off.”
“Kate is a grown woman.”
“She can decide for herself if she wants to go to the restaurant and just eat a few seafood-free appetizers or sit this one restaurant out.” ~ reallyephemeral
“No, I think it was nice of Jen to advocate for Kate in this little way.”
“Kate’s new to the city, Jen invited her to join their dinner group as a way to make friends, everyone likes Kate.”
“And Jen reminded them of Kate’s allergy so Kate didn’t have to feel she was making an imposition on people she doesn’t know very well.”
“Seems like decent, socially aware behavior all around.”
“It drops off at the point where people in their 30s start getting hung up on the premise of a ‘friend group’ and, yeah, act like it’s an affront to make plans with different configurations of friends.”
“As OP pointed out.”
“Groups are nice.”
“But as people reach a point of adulthood where they are busy.”
“Relationships live or die on their own merits and can’t be sustained by a social context where everyone’s available or interested in a proposed activity every single time.”
“Honestly, to that end, the productive (not who’s-right-or-wrong, but productive) way to address this might be for OP to invite Kate to coffee and actually strengthen that friendship.”
“Hell, I wonder if Kate even feels the way OP thinks she does.”
“So many things get lost when a situation becomes ‘drama’ and you can only sort them out by communicating.” ~ yet_another_sock
“I think the OP was insensitive to suggest it as the next venue for the regular dinner, which means that when she went out (I’m assuming unannounced) with the smaller group it might have looked exclusionary.”
“If the OP had dropped a message into the group chat, including Kate, and said something like ‘there’s a great new sushi place, it’s not suitable for our regular dinner because I know not everyone eats seafood, but if anyone wants to go, message me’ I bet there wouldn’t have been a problem.”
“Having said that, I don’t think the OP did anything wrong except optics.”
“And I do think the others should have done nothing except roll their eyes and move on.”
“So I think the OP is not TA.” ~ hdhxuxufxufufiffif
“I have a seafood allergy that sounds very similar to Kate’s.”
“It’s not deadly, but extremely inconvenient nonetheless.”
“I just avoid seafood places altogether so that I don’t have to worry about cross-contamination.”
“In this situation, I would be very grateful that the ‘regular’ dinners cater to this allergy.”
“So I wouldn’t need to miss out because of something out of my control.”
“A few friends going to this seafood place on their own account would only make me feel less guilty about the whole situation! NTA.” ~ foxglove-love
“As someone who is highly allergic to all seafood I personally would have been ENCOURAGING my fish loving friends to go eat the Sushi without me!!”
“OP NTA… you did absolutely nothing wrong and did not exclude anyone.” ~ huntressm00n
“I agree that as long as the group dinners that are scheduled always take into account allergies it’s ok to meet up outside them.”
“I’d rather OP had insisted on her choosing night going to the sushi place.”
“I’d probably vote she was an a**hole but since she course corrected for the group dinner I think it’s fine.” ~maggienetism
“Also you did invite everyone; but Jen said no on Kates behalf.”
“In order to not be rude to Kate, you invited the other people who wanted to go at a different time and didn’t mention it.”
“You invited her, she refused (or Jen refused for her, but that’s not your fault).”
“Did she expect you to never go to the sushi restaurant again because it would be excluding them?”
“Even though it’s not excluding if they declined your invite.” ~ usernameemma
“NTA – but be careful with these two, OP.”
“I also have had experiences with people in my friend group who told us ‘we don’t want to do X’ so we didn’t do X with them, we did it in a smaller group, and they got angry for doing it without them.”
“When they’d explicitly said they didn’t want to.”
“I’m thankfully not friends with them anymore.” ~ sandlinna
“NTA. I have an anaphylactic fish allergy.”
“And I wouldn’t be upset if my friends wanted to go for sushi without me, as long as I’m still invited other times!”
“I developed my allergy as an adult so I know how good sushi is and I’m not going to keep anyone else from it.” ~ Schwarzer-Regen
Well OP, Reddit understands your invitation choices.
It seems like you thought you were doing your best.
Hopefully you can all sit down soon and hash this out peacefully over a meal.