Not particularly deranged, but SO awkward. When I bought my first condo at age 27 my next door neighbors were a very sweet French couple right around my age. I would only see her in the hallway or elevator, we didn't actually know each other, but she was very polite. Maybe a week or so after I move in, she invites me over for dinner one night.

When I get there, they had a single guy "friend of the husband's" there, and he and I realize over the course of the meal he barely knows them either and we think they are trying to set us up. So I very politely brought up my boyfriend at the time, who I guess she just hadn't seen yet. And her response "Oooooh! But I thought you had NO FRIENDS. I have never seen you with anyone!!" Other guest dude cracks up and tries to hide it.

Needless to say, we didn't get close after that.

Anonymous wrote:Wife was an associate at a big law firm. The team had a weeks long trial in Federal court out of state and won a huge victory for their corporate client.

Anyways, in big law firms, not uncommon to have couples form and end up marrying.

So everyone at the party was either at the trail, an attorney at the firm married to someone at the trail, or an associate that was single...at the trial. My wife was there, but I don't know much about the trial.

Anyways the partner and his wife host in their condo and there are maybe 20 people there. And everyone knows every intimate detail about the trial.... except me. Further, the hosts were foodies (I am not, though I like good food), and every small plate was choreographed with a video from a part of the trial. Think: "this witness admitted this about some highly technical software technology -- here's a random cheese that rhymes with his name". Meanwhile, I have no idea about any of this. I try to make small talk once or twice, but everything is about the trial.

This went on from 6:00-11:30 PM. The hosts found a random middling, stale beer in the back of the fridge and gave it to me because "that's more his speed". I'm an attorney too, mind you.

I think I had two bourbons and ordered a greasy steak and cheese when we got home around midnight. This was prekids and in my 20's.

That is amazingly obnoxious! I believe it.

My MIL kept hinting that she wanted my ‘help’ with cooking for her rehearsal dinner to husband #2. Dinner was for about 60, I was about 28, this was pre-Epicurious/food network or other easy recipe sources and all her spices were so old they didn’t have bar codes. She ended up springing it on me and my now-DH that we were actually doing ALL the cooking around 6 pm. Thankfully DH can cook decently and follow instructions brilliantly and so dinner was late (9?) but everyone was fed decently well. We pulled off a proper Caesar salad, beef loin, salmon and a couple sides after getting about 10 minutes notice to start cooking…

In our early 20s, my then-boyfriend, now DH invited his boss and boss's wife over to our incredibly humble studio apartment in the Palisades straight out of 1978 for dinner.
The guy was really chill, but his wife looked like she would have rather been at the dentist. She sat on one of our IKEA chairs that BROKE and she fell onto the floor and we had to get her an ice pack. Then she saw a photo of us in New Mexico -- where we'd recently vacationed - and went ON about how she only vacations internationally. I was considering law school at the time, and after some wine, she told me that law school was competitive and I should find a different career...not sure what she meant by THAT but at this point her husband looked like he wanted to die. Meanwhile my DH cooked a horribly overdone steak on our crappy grill that tasted like shoe leather gone rancid. The wife got even tipsier and proceeded to pick a fight with her own husband about his salary in front of us.
The whole thing was mortifying, like a bad play. They ended up sending us flowers the next day to apologize and I found out later that he left her!

I was a TA in grad school and another TA invited us over to the old monastery he lived in, and when we got there he assigned us all dishes to make and we had to go to the grocery and get ingredients to make them in his communal kitchen. Super weird!

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I went to a work lunch with 20 other people and the manager in charge only ordered 5 large pizzas- he limited us to 2 slices each needless to say we were all starving and some people who came late didn’t even get any pizza slices.

How much of a fattie are you all? At two pieces of pizza I would be stuffed. How the hell many pieces do you normally eat in one sitting? My max is 1.5, regular is 1 (usually with a salad).

Ugh nothing worse than a limited pizza slice party. It reminds me of end of the year parties in elementary school. Never enough pizza.

I usually eat 2-3 slices (depends on the size) but I hate the feeling that there is not enough for everyone. Terrible.

We visit our in-laws for a few days. They prepare and serve meals with “exact” portions, which rarely was enough for our family of four. ILs would say “but you already had one egg” to my teen son or “you want a second cup of milk?” So we always decided a plan to go out before/after the meals and had non-perishable snacks. I forgot this also pertained to coffee- so we always had back up caffeine options. .

I didn’t know starving at in-laws was a common thing. Mine sleep in past 10am and don’t provide food for breakfast. They also eat dinner very early and then there’s no food after because they retire to rooms at 8 or so. And lunch is “make your own” but no food around except bags of grated cheese, soda, potato chips, cookies, and random staples like eggs and milk that are actually off-limits because in-laws have just enough to make whatever casserole or hot dish they have planned. Nowadays most of my packing involves food and not clothing.

A friend once called me up because she had this friend who she wanted me to meet.

Her friend needed my legal advice, I was told, but I was still supposed to meet her, and - by the way - I should know she was very pretty! And since I was single at the time, didn't I really want to meet her for coffee and desert? (and give her free legal counseling?).

My younger, foolish, self agreed and met up with her at a restaurant.

We talked for a while; even hit it off. Then she let me know she had also invited her boyfriend, and then he joined us for the remainder of the meal, which suddenly became really awkward.

These stories are all about GOING to bad dinner parties. I threw one!

I invited my grad school advisor over for dinner with her husband (also a prof). My bf and I planned to make them dinner. I hadn’t really cooked before but my bf seemed to be good at it, so I let him take the lead. He’d lived in France and elsewhere and made me decent food when we ate in (this was in the early 90s).

As usual, we were so late and disorganized in planning this meal that I think we went SHOPPING for the ingredients just a few hours before they were to arrive. My bf said he had in mind a pork roast with prunes- French? It was an elaborate recipe from some old book. I was like cool- I was eating ramen most days- and went with him to the store. They didn’t have the kind of pork roast he wanted/needed, so he got some enormous other cut of pork and said, it’ll be fine, it’s cool. That all took so long I didn’t really plan a dessert or anything else. I bought a tub of ice cream- that was it. In my mind I was like, this pork prune French thing will hit so big no one will even need dessert!

They arrive. The roast is not done. One hour later? Still no. Two? We pull it out anyway and serve “the parts that are done”. They are awful- tough, both gamely and yet still tasteless.

We run out of wine - turns out my advisor’s husband is an alcoholic. He also smokes like a chimney. They left hungry, I’m sure.

I still can’t remember this without laughing and being embarrassed.

I married the bf. But now I cook. 🤣

The first time I attended a dinner party at my ILs (DH and I were newly engaged at the time), MIL's best friend literally walked up to me and asked me if I was a virgin, and if not, would I dare to wear white. She didn't even say hello or introduce herself first.

MIL was somehow very surprised when we did not invite this woman to our wedding.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My boss tricked me and my fiance into a dinner party at his house. His whacko girlfriend showed us around his condo- she had taken over the whole place with her weird smelly candles that she tries to sell. Food wasn't ready for hours and we had to have awkward small talk with the boss, his GF and another couple from work who are total dorks. I was STARVING the until dinner was served at like 9pm. My fiance even tried to bail on me and the party with a lame excuse about a flood in his apartment. Our boss tried to get us to invest in his GFs candle business!! RUDE!

Then the GF started getting drunk and they started arguing about a neon beer sign being in the living room. And I think the GF once had sex with her assistant who is an aspiring musician. She put on his demo and kept swaying around the condo.

It was epically horrible and cringey and I couldn't wait to leave. The cops ended up getting called because the drunk GF broke our boss's TV. I was still hungry so we had to get takeout afterwards!

Try doing that on your zero dollars a year salary, BABE!

Just reading this and imagining Steve carell’s delivery has me cracking up all by myself. What I would give to see this episode for the first time again!

I've been to a few bait and switch parties. 1) a friend of my boyfriend just got back from a long backtracking trip around Asia. Wanted to try out some recipes he learned along the way. Then played and narrated a 3 hour long slideshow of his thousands of pics. We left before it was even over, it just kept going and going.

2) invited to a "cookie party" at a coworkers house. I went with 2 other coworkers. Turned out every other woman there, including our hostess, was Mormon, and they expressed a lot of concern that we, the coworkers, were 22-24 years old and not married. And kept assuring us we weren't too old, that maybe we'd get married soon. Lots of praying too.

3) Bait and switch parties, come for the cocktails and apps, oh and here's my friend to talk about her CAbi spring wear! Or MaryKay, or Arbonne, or whatever the hot MLM is. With no warning.

Anonymous wrote:My boss tricked me and my fiance into a dinner party at his house. His whacko girlfriend showed us around his condo- she had taken over the whole place with her weird smelly candles that she tries to sell. Food wasn't ready for hours and we had to have awkward small talk with the boss, his GF and another couple from work who are total dorks. I was STARVING the until dinner was served at like 9pm. My fiance even tried to bail on me and the party with a lame excuse about a flood in his apartment. Our boss tried to get us to invest in his GFs candle business!! RUDE!

Then the GF started getting drunk and they started arguing about a neon beer sign being in the living room. And I think the GF once had sex with her assistant who is an aspiring musician. She put on his demo and kept swaying around the condo.

It was epically horrible and cringey and I couldn't wait to leave. The cops ended up getting called because the drunk GF broke our boss's TV. I was still hungry so we had to get takeout afterwards!

Try doing that on your zero dollars a year salary, BABE!

Invited to dinner by some people in my grad school program. I showed up with a bottle of wine, as one does, they cooked a nice dinner-and then asked all the guests to chip in $10 each because "the ingredients were expensive."

Invited to dinner by a couple who were new friends, it became increasingly apparent that they were looking for more than friendship (and I was not).

We were happy to meet a bunch of new couples when our DC started preschool, so much so that we started hosting a monthly rotating dinner party with 4 other couples.

While most of us were fine to just eat, drink and chat about normal stuff, there was one wife in the group who was always throwing out provocative questions that we would need to go around the table and answer individually.

" If you could have sex any celebrity, who would it be?"
"If you could have sex with any other husband at the table, who would it be?" (none of us answered this question)

And finally, the one that ended our dinner parties altogether,
"Has anyone ever experienced a Level 4 relationship?"

After explaining the levels, with Level 1 being the worst, to Level 4 being intellectual, spiritual, and sexual nirvana, she went into great detail about her Level 4 relationship. Except, it wasn't with her husband. Who was sitting next to her.

The evening ended with dinner guests choosing sides, lots of tears and yelling.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We had a toddler and got invited over at 6pm to a friend's house for dinner. We assumed we'd be eating shortly upon arrival -- they had elementary-aged kids.

Instead, we chatted, then around 7:30pm they _start_ making dinner. We're all starving. We had food for our toddler but now it's getting close to her bedtime. She cried half the way back on the 30-minute drive home, after dinner. I think we finally started driving back at 9pm, way past her bedtime.

That’s a completely reasonable time-frame for a dinner party. It’s strange that you expected something different. I get it that that’s hard with a toddler but then you shouldn’t have accepted the invite. Parents of toddlers are beyond annoying snd uptight and that’s why I wouldn’t invite any over for dinner. Signed - Mother of 2.

I don't have kids and I assume when you invite me over for dinner, we will be eating around the time we arrive. Not hours later. We have one friend who we now know will do this - has us over at 7, starts cooking 45 minutes later, dinner's not out till 9. Then wants to talk for hours after that. We like this friend a lot, and her food is good, but this time frame makes me crazy and I try to get her to meet us at restaurants instead. A nice tight 1.5 hours.

I would think that’s rude. I would invite someone at 6, have drinks and nibbles, eat around 7. If you have people over on a Sat evening one would assume it’s about a 3 hr event unless planned otherwise in advance. I get the toddler bedtime thing but if that’s your issue you need to specify in advance.

We don't need to derail this whole conversation - but to me, three hours is about an hour too long. At least half an hour. Also, as I said, and as the PP said, the friend didn't serve dinner an hour after we got there - but started cooking an hour after we got there. That's another hour till it's ready. Then two more hours to eat and talk.

Anyway - this horse is good and beaten, I think. We disagree, and in any case this hardly qualifies as a deranged dinner party.