Why do parents not even bother opening an evite?

[Anonymous]

Many people don’t use email. Call, text, send paper invite if you want them to show up.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Because if I don't have my calendar handy when I open it, I will forget about it and it will sink to the bottom of my email. So I wait until I can check the calendar before responding, and if I have an unopened email, I am less likely to miss it.

You can read an email and then mark it as unread. You're welcome.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you open an evite then the sender can see that. When I don’t want to be bothered I just never open until I have a solid excuse. That way the sender thinks I just haven’t opened - meanwhile I’m coming up with a reason not to go because some people just can’t take a simple no

This.

Or, if it’s an event I do want to attend, I don’t want to seem like a desperate weirdo who RSVPs 5 seconds after the email comes in. So I wait and then it gets buried in my inbox even though in my head I’m planning on coming all along.

Seriously? Are you a grown up?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Some of these answers make me so sad. So many rude, entitled, self-absorbed people. OP, I hope you are realizing that you and your kid are so much better off not having these people attend.

OP here. I don't even care if they don't come. I just want a headcount so I can plan accordingly! That's why I mentioned to one parent at school the other day. She said she may have missed it. Wouldn't you at least go look for it after a parent mentioned it to you???? And it isn't like our kids aren't friends. She always invites us to their parties. I promptly RSVP yes or no.

I don't know if this happened with your friend, OP, but it's happened twice to me now with evite so I'll pass it along in case it's a possibility. In the last couple of years, two invitations haven't made it to me, even to spam. Two separate friends, each who copied and pasted my correct email address into the form and said that evite was showing it as delivered but unopened. Each asked a couple days before the party if my dd was going, but they needed to screen shot the invitations to me because I didn't have the evite at all.

Hopefully it's something like that and not your friend being rude. I'm all for the instant RSVP - then it's done! No one's going to think less of you for being excited about going to a party, for goodness sake.

This has also happened to a friend of mine. I could see on the evite that her child was invited. We live next door so I thought we could carpool and asked if her kid was attending. She said she hadn't gotten the invitation, checked her spam, checked her trash, and no email anywhere. I showed her my evite and we could see her with her correct email address. The host had no idea what had happened.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Some of these answers make me so sad. So many rude, entitled, self-absorbed people. OP, I hope you are realizing that you and your kid are so much better off not having these people attend.

OP here. I don't even care if they don't come. I just want a headcount so I can plan accordingly! That's why I mentioned to one parent at school the other day. She said she may have missed it. Wouldn't you at least go look for it after a parent mentioned it to you???? And it isn't like our kids aren't friends. She always invites us to their parties. I promptly RSVP yes or no.

I don't know if this happened with your friend, OP, but it's happened twice to me now with evite so I'll pass it along in case it's a possibility. In the last couple of years, two invitations haven't made it to me, even to spam. Two separate friends, each who copied and pasted my correct email address into the form and said that evite was showing it as delivered but unopened. Each asked a couple days before the party if my dd was going, but they needed to screen shot the invitations to me because I didn't have the evite at all.

Hopefully it's something like that and not your friend being rude. I'm all for the instant RSVP - then it's done! No one's going to think less of you for being excited about going to a party, for goodness sake.

This has also happened to a friend of mine. I could see on the evite that her child was invited. We live next door so I thought we could carpool and asked if her kid was attending. She said she hadn't gotten the invitation, checked her spam, checked her trash, and no email anywhere. I showed her my evite and we could see her with her correct email address. The host had no idea what had happened.

I wonder if there is crossover between these lost evites and the posts that say “my kid wasn’t invited to his bff’s bday party, should I hate them for life?”

[Anonymous]

People generally assume that everyone thinks the same way as you. So you assume that people who don't open the invite have some type of active feeling about it, that there is a conscious decision to overlook it and that they are knowingly being rude because you, OP, if YOU didn't respond to an evite or open an evite you would be doing so actively. Because you see these things and take care to respond to them as a rule. And because you're really upset when people don't open them and think that upsetness is also universal and that everyone seeing unread evites is distressed.

I tend to not really pay that much attention because I don't care when people open it, or if they don't respond. I kind of figure they'll get around to it, or if not no big deal. And when evites come into my inbox, they get added haphazardly (if I saw it at all) to the list of things I need to think about in my brain. And I get around to it eventually. And I know I have good intentions when I go through this, so I just assume everyone else has good intentions too.

You cannot imagine ignoring or forgetting about or simply inadvertently overlooking an evite and that having good intentions, so you think badly of them.

Anyway, just all to say, its likely got nothing at all to do with how they view you, or how much they care, its just about how good or bad people are at managing tasks and scheduling. And that is a BROAD spectrum.

[Anonymous]

This is why I don't send evites anymore. If I really want someone to attend, I send them a text.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:TLR but can answer. We had a death in the family. A big time news/social/important death. After three days of hell getting family ready and dressed for the funeral, and after several days of grieving and trying to get post-funeral things right, and putting family on planes and straightening all the messes, I had a parent from our Private call me and berate me for not responding to a birthday party invite I had never seen. I was flabbergasted. I didn't know about said birthday. I guess it was in an email somewhere - along with the 600 other incoming condolence emails? I had no idea. I barely squeaked out "Well we had a death in the family, it WAS on the front page of the Wash. Post" when parent continued to berate me for not responding to evite or email. I tried to continue to explain that we had no idea of kid's birthday or party, but the dad just kept at it. I just kept saying "I'm sorry". What else can you do? Be better, be kinder. You have no idea what the other person is going through.

Most of us aren't as important/self important as you. Did you embalm the deceased? Did you dress the deceased. All you had to do was wear something dark and attend funeral.

Yes yes yes and OOS. Many flights to organize. Relatives coming in to state. No, I was the organizer. Be better, be kind. Don't judge.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If you open an evite then the sender can see that. When I don’t want to be bothered I just never open until I have a solid excuse. That way the sender thinks I just haven’t opened - meanwhile I’m coming up with a reason not to go because some people just can’t take a simple no

This

[Anonymous]

My friend sent out paper invitations for her kids party and almost no one RSVP’d so I don’t think there is a “superior way to do this, as some weirdos might suggest. There are a million reasons why some people don’t respond or open an evite which are already mentioned: wrong email, spam, people are entitled jerks with zero empathy, etc. The reminder feature is good because the vast majority of people (if not all of them) usually just need a reminder or more time to sort things out before they RSVP. If it is a good friend of your kid- just contact the parent to check to see if they got the invite in the first place via text or in person.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I check my email like twice a week generally. But sometimes I have the flu for a month while one DD has walking pneumonia and DH just had knee surgery and the dog is dying and our 7 yr old is basically running the household for us. So we let a lot slide that month. Sue us.

Uhhhh, maybe you need better control of your life. - not op

This. Why do I think you will notice when I drop your kid from the invite list? Also not OP here.

[Anonymous]

Because I can see it on my screen when it pops up. If I'm not sure if we want to go, I don't open it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I get that sometimes you miss the email. Why not even open it to just glance at the details after a parent mentions it to you? I wish people could just say no.

1. Because they forgot by the time they got to their email.
2. Because they couldn't find it.
3. Because they got sidetracked while checking email.
4. Because you already talked to them.
5. Because they're checking the calendar.
6. Because they're checking with the other parent and/or caregiver.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Instead of evite, why not simply email or text the invitation details? We’ve done that, but our kids are likely older than most in this forum.

Do people just not read their emails?

One family is very involved at school. They never miss anything yet they won’t open my evite??

Some parents are just jerks. We had sent an evite out 3 weeks prior and then another classmate who was their close friend also sent an evite. They responded the very same day for that friends evite (evite was an open one and I could see it when I clicked to respond). That person responded No finally the day before our party. She could have done that right away.

I sometimes don’t respond if we have tentative plans. I at least open the evite.

See that is understandable. Its the ones who selectively open evites that are annoying. How would they even know when the party is if they don't open it?

Because someone else (including their child, told by your child) told them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote: We got a paper invite from a classmate recently (we don’t know the family, the kids aren’t good friends but are in the same class). I promptly sent a nice text message saying I’m sorry she’d be missing the party, we were out of town that weekend. The other parent responded: OK

Like, not even a “Thank you for letting me know.” Even a thumbs up on the message to show it was read would have been better than “OK.” Clearly they were peeved that we had the audacity to have a family reunion

Do you just walk around getting offended by everything all the time? She said “ok” and you think that means she was “clearly peeved” that you had a family reunion!? You sound straight up crazy.