A “friends” drama involving a serious travel disagreement has gone viral, eliciting some 5,000 reactions on social media plus nearly 3,000 comments, with those weighing in clearly taking one woman’s side of the issue over the other.
“My best friend and I recently went on a trip to the U.K.,” wrote a woman describing herself as just 20 years old.
“I actually have a U.K. passport since my dad is British,” she added, “but my friend had to get a U.K. visa.”
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She said the two friends “were supposed to take two flights, one that would arrive in France and a connecting flight that would fly to the U.K.,” she noted on the Reddit page known as AITA (“Am I the a–hole”).
“However,” she went on, “the second flight ended up being canceled. The next available flight wasn’t until 2 p.m. the next day, so we would have to wait around 17 hours.”
She said passengers “were allowed to stay in nearby hotels for free.”
Yet “this didn’t apply to people like my friend,” she added, “who wasn’t legally allowed to leave the airport because she didn’t have a visa for Europe.”
This is when matters became strained between the friends, as the woman’s account noted.
“I had the option to stay with her, but I chose to go to the hotel instead.”
The friend without the visa for Europe “had to stay within a specific area of the airport that had these bright ceiling lights that would stay on 24/7. There was construction nearby, so there was this extremely loud drilling noise every so often.”
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The writer added, “All the available seats were taken by other passengers, so my friend had to sleep on the floor. Plus, earlier that day, water spilled on our phone chargers, and her phone was only on 40%.”
The woman continued, “I had the option to stay with her, but I chose to go to the hotel instead.”
The friend was “furious” at this, said the woman, and “accus[ed] me of being a fake friend.”
She also “told me she was scared of being alone in a creepy, unknown place and wanted me there to comfort her,” said the writer, “and I assured her that [I’d] be back by the morning.”
The woman was accused of being “a fake friend.”
The friend found little consolation in those remarks.
“She said I was acting selfish for not even spending one night with her, but I hadn’t gotten any sleep in over 24 hours and I didn’t see why both of us had to suffer,” the woman wrote.
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She asked others for their opinions — and received a flood of thoughts.
The top upvoted response to the drama itself received some 13,000 reactions.
“That was a really sh—- thing to do,” wrote the commenter as part of a much longer response.
“On a smaller scale, it reminds me of a friend who told me she wanted me to go to a certain touring Broadway show with her and how excited she was to see it with me. I couldn’t afford the $300 seats she wanted to buy and told her, but said that I could afford the $100 seats about 15 rows back.”
The commenter added, “She just brushed me off and said, ‘Well, this is where I’m sitting.’ She was very surprised … when I told her she would have to enjoy the show alone, then.”
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The same person added, “We are not friends anymore. That was 20 years ago.”
She added to the young woman, “Consider the fact that what you did was even worse. It wasn’t just wanting to sit away from [the friend] in a better seat, it was abandoning her in a foreign country where she was scared. Major AH thing to do.”
Said this same commenter in an attempt to school the user, “I know you’re only 20, so I’m willing to give you a tiny bit of leeway due to that, but please learn now that your whole ‘why should both of us suffer?’ attitude will not serve you well in life.”
She went on, “You’ll lose many more friends than you make, you’ll be alienated at work, and you’ll find yourself alone more often than not. Selfishness like yours isn’t attractive, not even to other selfish people.”
Wrote another responder, eliciting plenty of reaction as well, “You don’t just abandon your mates and leave them on their own, especially not overnight and in a foreign country. I wouldn’t leave my friend to walk to a corner shop alone at night, let alone overnight where she’s expected to sleep on the floor, miles away from home, surrounded by strangers and unable to leave this room to get herself anything to make it more comfortable.”
Another person wrote that apparently “one night of discomfort” wasn’t worth the “friendship to you.”
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