Reply to SIL emailed me asking me to apologize for bringing my own picnic food to her home

Forum Index » Family Relationships

Reply to "SIL emailed me asking me to apologize for bringing my own picnic food to her home"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]While you might have been fine to bring your own food, I will say that if [b]I invited someone over to be my guest at a meal, spent time preparing something nice for them and figuring out to manage a socially distanced serving, and then found out that they never intended to eat it?  I'd be annoyed[/b].

Why didn't you clarify this?  It is uncommon to bring your own food to someone else's event, so I don't know why you didn't ask them.

I would apologize for not letting her know. [/quote]

At the time you issued  the invite you should have made your intentions to cook for them clear so they could say "Don't be an idiot - we are not going to eat food made in your kitchen. We'd like to see you but we will bring our own food!" and then you could have said "I find that highly insulting. Are you saying we're not clean?" and then you could have both agreed to not get together.[/quote]

So, up until this year, no one would have wondered whether "We'd love to have you over for dinner" meant that the host was providing food.  That's just how it went.  If someone invited you over for dinner and said "and by the way we'll be serving food", you'd have been scratching your head.

Yes, some people have decided that they feel safe going to someone's house, and taking off their masks to eat while together, but not eating the other people's food. There are other people who have drawn the line in other places.  It's not a fair assumption that an invitation doesn't include food.

The conversation could easily have gone

"We'd love to have you over for a cookout"

"That sounds great.  We've decided to bring our food everywhere we go, so don't worry about cooking for us."

"Oh, thank you for letting us know.  The kids are so excited!"

Instead it seems to have gone

"Here's the food we carefully prepared for you."

"What no, we're not eating that."

"Why not?"

"Because of covid, how could you have thought we'd eat your food.  No one who is careful around covid shares food. It didn't even occur to us to tell you because everyone knows people bring their own food."

Inside their head "Wow, that sure sounds like she thinks we're not careful, and that we are stupid and don't know things that 'everyone' knows. I won't make a fuss now.  Besides maybe they told DH and he didn't tell me".

Later, after checking with DH, emails OP. [/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics