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April 14 A lot of fuss over nothingI recieved this message from a 27 year old sister of one of my friends. Im posting it here because i find it unbelievably entertaining!
"Right that's enough now danielle! I don't think u realise who ur messing with! I'v bin calm up until now but u jus can't seem 2 get it thru ur childish little brain that sam has decided not 2 go 2 rome wi u lot coz the atmosphere wud b horrible coz of small mined people like liz. It was not a minor disagreement as u keep putting it! Ur feelings 4 liz r very clear with regard 2 friendship & u can not c passed her side. if u was ne kind of friend u wud not giv sam grief over this. Cut the jealousy act dani!"
I shall start at the beginning, more so for my benefit than yours becasue if i don't i'll lose track of the roller coaster of events and sooner or later will either crash into ground or shoot off into sapce, neither one would be advantageous.
In january somebody, I believe it was Ryan and I came up with a plan to on a short break to Rome. Sam since claims it was her idea but no matter. Sam asked us to go mid August so that we were in Italy for her birthday. It seemed a lovely idea and I was already looking foward to it. I decided not to start formally organising it until after my dissertation was completed (prioritise the accademics for once), im not a patient person and so it got to the middle of March and I couldn't wait anymore. Sam asked me to look into booking things soon so that we could take advantage of cheap flights which made sense.
Liz posted a website for a hostel, it look OK, not the best but cheap and in roughly the right place. For ages there were 8 people on the guestlist and here is where it may get a little tricky:
Me
Theresa
Louise
Liz
Richard
Stephen
Ryan
Sam
I put the event on facebook and asked people to confirm whether they were going or not. At this point Ryan dropped out so the guestlist read
Me
Theresa
Louise
Liz
Richard
Stephen
Sam A nice number of people, everything looked set. Hannah had been invited but at that point had not confirmed and after we had mostly agreed on the hostel decided she did want to go and if possible to bring her sister Ellie so the guest list looked like
Me
Theresa
Louise
Liz
Richard
Stephen
Sam
Hannah
Ellie
Hannah raised some concerns that the hostel was a bit outside Rome and was there the possiblity of staying somewhere closer to the sights, so i started hotel searching again.
Sam asked if her sister Helen could join us as she wouldn't get a vacation this year. we all agreed so the guestlist became
Me
Theresa
Louise
Liz
Richard
Stephen
Sam
Hannah
Ellie
Helen
At this point, over the course of just one week the group were shown seven or eight different hotels all within the £60 - £70 price bracet within 15 minutes of the sights. We also discussed the option of an appartment. It became obvious that pleasing 10 people was going to be difficult, concerns were raised from all directions about the prices, the distance, the facilities, the room organisation, you name it and i'll bet somebody in the group had said it. Finding a hotel was proving problematic.
Sam found us what looked like a perfect compromise 30 minutes out but with good bus / metro links £55 for the three nights with a lift in the hotel and airport transfers. Ideal. It concerned me at this point that Sam said that if the group couldn't decide on a hotel then maybe it would have to split. I mentioned that the hotel was a way away from the centre and may be problematic for Hannah, Ellie and Liz but i felt like Sam had set her mind on this hotel and that given her point about splitting the group this would be the result if we didn't stay in the hotel she had selected. This may or may not have been her intention. We all agreed to stay in this hotel.
At this point i asked for monies!! £110 for flights and hotel deposit to be with me in Swansea by 14th April.
This is where i get confused so bare with me. I suspected that now that monies were due people may begin to have second thoughts and i was right. Helen was the first to raise the "i can't afford it" card, followed by Sam, claiming they had to budget for Donna's hen do. Fair enough but a little disappointing given Sam's earlier enthusiasm and input into the planning process.
While i was away in Cambridge Liz posted a message on my wall, she wrote that people could be ignorant about asthma and she explained why she was making a fuss about distances and lifts so that people didn't just assume she was being difficult for the sake of it. She referred to a post made by Sam earlier on my wall about her experiences of having to walk up 10 flights of stairs with a suitcase. The post stated that it was ok for some people to do that but not everybody could. This post has caused some controvecy but Im not entirely sure as to why?
Helen again was the first to raise the concerns in relation to this post, claiming Liz was making unnecessary and offensive comments about Sam, which from the post, i couldn't see. Sam and Liz have not directly spoken and while I have later found that Sam did take offence to the post im wondering whether the idea that it was offensive was put into her head from outside sources or whether it was her interpretation of the situation, given that she and liz have not spoken and that it was another who has made the only comments on it, either way it is just another drain on my enthusiasm to go at all. Sam and Helen dropped out of Rome leaving the guest list at
Me
Theresa
Louise
Liz
Richard
Stephen
Hannah
Ellie
Helen and Sam have stated several reasons for not going, i personally believe that isolated these concerns are minor and shouldn't discourage them from coming, the problem I have is that they both flittered between excuses and their reasons for coming seemed to change everyday, this is just my perceiption and may not be how they felt and probably isn't. What got to me the most is Sam's decision to book a last minute holiday with Helen instead, while I have no problem with two sisters going away together (have fun ladies) i do have a problem with one holiday being sacrificed in order to make another possible. It seems such a waste, given that it was Sam's birthday we were celebrating and the fact it was supposed to be a sort of reunion weekend for the girls (this would be unaffected by the pressence of other people before anybody raises ths point). Without Sam the holiday didn't seem so appealing. This is how Hannah felt also, and decided if Sam wasn't going then neither was she so the guest list became
Me
Theresa
Louise
Liz
Richard
Stephen
so from 8 to 7 to 9 to 10 to 6, everybody still on board?
Since then there has been pressure put on sam to change her mind, so be it, it is not because i think Sam is silly for taking offence at what Liz said, im not taking Liz's side. Sam would have enjoyed Rome and to assume there would be more problems is creating agro where none need exist. It seemed an excuse not to come and not a reason. here is teh funny thing Helen and Sam, Liz offered to drop out so you two could come instead if she was the main reason you weren't going - didn't know that did you? Unfortunately a better offer had been placed on the table and we became second best. I realised at this point that I was being forced to chose between friends and that it was Sam and Helen putting me in this position, so i refused. I wouldn't ask another friend to choose between her friends so i won't do it. If Sam was going to come she would come if Liz was there or not, nothing I said at this point would make any difference so why should i offend Liz at this stage to achieve nothing.
Helen couldn't leave it alone, after I had decided to drop the whole thing, like i said nothing could be gained from any more discussions with sam and hoping she could come. I wrote a message saying those of you who want to come, welcome aboard those who don't its your loss. Helen questioned, why is it our loss? err r because you won't be coming to Rome with us so you'll miss out? I wrote this on her wall and decided sarcasm wasn't going to achieve anything so deleted it. She read the wall post from her email and wrote the above message in response.
And this is where we now stand. I know who im messing with and im clearly not phased by it. I do not have a problem with Sam or Liz and my feelings towards helen are irrelevant, not everybody is going to get along are they, would make life very dull if they did. I may have suggested that it was Helen who put the idea of a last minute holiday into sam's head, either way it makes no difference the idea was there, it made no difference in the long run who suggested it, a better offer was on the table and yet again I lost out. It may seem to you that im jealous that Helen gets Sam and I don't but that is a false perception based on assumptions about a person without really knowing them. How I interact with my friends is between me and them and is nobody elses business. I am disappointed that Sam won't be joining us, and of course Hannah and Ellie, it would have been a lot of fun! I am totally fed up of the mess that which has been caused over one post on facebook? Facebook should never be taken seriously, its a website, there are not inflections, expressions or body language, you can't assume a person's words are how you read them, you're missing out on vital verbal and non verbal communication signals that can change any phrase from good to bad and from bad to good. Helen does raise one good point in the midst of her poor grammar and bad spelling though, if i was any kind of friend I would be nicer to sam in one respect, I'd ignore Helen alltogether and let her have her misguided rant about the situation, responding to the message above will only lead to further confrontations and potential problems between me and Sam, I am a better friend to Sam than a lot she has had in the past and i will continue to be her freind whether she likes it or not.
Morals of the story:
never assume anything - it only gets you in trouble
don't judge people without knowing them and once you've gotten to know them only then judge them on their actions, words and decisions if you want to be judged in the same way by them.
Don't get involved in an argument/ discussion / conversation that doesn't involve you - mind your business
Don't take facebook as fact, would you assume wikipedia was accurate?
and lastly
never ever ever try to organise a group holiday - its a headache, one which can be avoided. Comments (1)
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