If there's anything that proves definitively that hell is other people, it is surely childrearing. For instance: A couple of parents whose kid skipped out on a classmate's birthday party were recently invoiced £15.95.
That's according to the Plymouth Herald (via New York Daily News), anyway. Derek Nash told the paper that his son Alex was supposed to attend a party at the local Ski Slope and Snowboard Centre, just before Christmas. But at the last moment, they realized Alex was supposed to spend the afternoon with his grandparents. "By this time we did not have a contact number, email or an address to let [the boy's mother] know," said Nash. When he went back to school, "My partner looked out for [the friend's mother] to apologize for Alex not showing up to the party, but didn't see her."
A few days later they found the invoice in Alex's backpack, which the other mom had apparently gotten a teacher to pass along. The teacher was presumably pissed she'd been dragged into this mess, after Nash went to the headmaster and complained. The couple, meanwhile, are refusing to pay the money, even though (they say) they've been threatened with small claims court. The mom who threw the party and sent the invoice didn't comment besides telling the Guardian that, "All details were on the party invite. They had every detail needed to contact me."
This is a veritable layer cake of WTF. Yes, it's rude to RSVP yes and then no-show. But I doubt Emily Post would approve of invoicing the no-show. Not having a face-to-face conversation and firmly requesting the money, even—just going right ahead and sending an invoice home with the kid. And THEN, in response to the invoice, taking the whole thing to the local paper seems like rather drastic overkill. My God, none of these kids will ever want a birthday party ever again. Could it be that this is, in fact, a conspiracy to convince parents across the globe that large birthday parties for children are terrible and we should commit, as a species, to never throwing another? MAKES YA THINK.
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