A few weeks ago, I went on a group trip with some college friends. I planned the stay, handled the bookings, even picked places that everyone agreed on in the group chat. I’m the kind of guy who likes things smooth chill vibes, good food, a little exploring. Not chaos.
From the moment we got there, people started acting like it was spring break in high school. No coordination, no time awareness, and no respect. Drinking too early, loud arguments over nothing, trash left everywhere. I literally had to wake people up and drag them to things they said they wanted to do.
The final straw? One night, after I went to bed early (had a 6am hike I was excited for), they came back drunk, loud, and trashed the Airbnb’s living room. I woke up, cleaned it, left a note saying I was heading home, and bounced. Got my own cab, my own train, peace of mind.
Now some of them are calling me “dramatic” or saying I “ditched the group.” I think I just respected myself enough not to waste time and energy on people who didn’t give a damn. I didn’t yell, I didn’t argue, I just removed myself.
So tell me :-AITA for refusing to play babysitter to grown people who act like children?
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A few weeks ago, I went on a group trip with some college friends. I planned the stay, handled the bookings, even picked places that everyone agreed on in the group chat. I’m the kind of guy who likes things smooth chill vibes, good food, a little exploring. Not chaos.
From the moment we got there, people started acting like it was spring break in high school. No coordination, no time awareness, and no respect. Drinking too early, loud arguments over nothing, trash left everywhere. I literally had to wake people up and drag them to things they said they wanted to do.
The final straw? One night, after I went to bed early (had a 6am hike I was excited for), they came back drunk, loud, and trashed the Airbnb’s living room. I woke up, cleaned it, left a note saying I was heading home, and bounced. Got my own cab, my own train, peace of mind.
Now some of them are calling me “dramatic” or saying I “ditched the group.” I think I just respected myself enough not to waste time and energy on people who didn’t give a damn. I didn’t yell, I didn’t argue, I just removed myself.
So tell me :-AITA for refusing to play babysitter to grown people who act like children?
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OP has offered the following explanation for why they think they might be the asshole:
> 1) I left the group trip early without saying goodbye in person, just left a note.
2) That might make me the asshole because some of them felt like I bailed on them without giving them a proper explanation or heads-up.
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Contest mode is 1.5 hours long on this post.
Sounds like you’re young.
Getting way to banged up on vacation happens to lots of us.
Go on trips with people who like to do the same as you if you don’t wanna drink.
NTA – you actually cleaned before leaving. I would not have.
ESH
Their sin: trashing the AirBnB and not respecting the sleep of others.
Yours? You are not tolerant of other styles of vacation. It’s your way or you get in a tizzy. On top of that, you chose to babysit them. When someone doesn’t wake up on time for something, it is not your job to be their alarm clock. It is not your job to manage anyone’s schedule. They’re grown ass adults. Let them manage themselves.
And when you didn’t like how things were, did you talk to anyone about it? No, you up and left. That is in fact a drama queen move.
Please tell me this is satire…
INFO
I mean, you’re not wrong to bail on a trip that you’re not enjoying.
But “babysitting?”
> From the moment we got there, people started acting like it was spring break in high school. No coordination, no time awareness, and no respect.
And did anyone else have a problem with this? Did someone ask you to step in and make sure people got to events? Or was everyone perfectly content to just enjoy themselves without structure?
NTA. Find better friends.
NTA I got angry hearing about that
I’m going to say ESH. The way your friends were seems annoying to me too, but if they’re your friends, I find it hard to believe you weren’t aware of how hard they party. Also, did you get any input from them on the activities? Because it sounds like you didn’t. You just planned everything that you wanted to do, expected them to be ok with it, then got pissed when they didn’t want to do it. I sounds like you kind of set yourself up for failure with this.
Also, you said you had to wake people up and drag them to things they said they wanted to do. Why? Why did you feel the need to parent them? Why didn’t you just wake up for the things you wanted to do, and whoever was up when it was time to leave, great for them. Everyone who overslept didn’t get to go, oh well. It kind of sounds like you were a big ol’ nag for the entire trip. You don’t sound great to travel with. And that’s coming from someone who likes to plan her vacations down to at least the hour, if not the minute.
You learned a real lesson here – if you REALLY want to get to know someone go on a trip with them. Your idea of a fun trip and theirs turned out to be quite different. Good on you for being assertive and doing what YOU wanted to do. You aren’t their Mother. I don’t think your friends are assholes, but you probably would be wise not to go on a trip with them again until they grow up a bit more. NAH.
NTA. Why would they have you plan all this stuff if they didn’t want to do it? Someone could have said they wanted to play it by ear in group chat.
Not to mention, they went out without you, because you had an early morning, and then came back drunk and disruptive even tho they knew you had an early morning.
Sounds like they expected you to stay and constantly clean up their messes.
NTA
That said, if the booking was in your name and on your card, you may have REALLY shot yourself in the foot with this. They likely trashed the place again and left.
No, you weren’t overly dramatic, but you’re mentally an adult and they’re mentally teenagers. Nobody is wrong exactly (except for trashing the living room–that earned them asshole certification), but you don’t have compatible styles at this point in life. You didn’t handle it badly, but I hear your disappointment, and I think you did have unrealistic expectations.
Spring break in high school? Nah. Spring break in college. That kind of idiocy is normal for people getting away from their parents for the first time. (As a side note, if you were pulling these stunts in high school, it might explain why you’re mentally ahead of them. Most people’s high school spring break is with their parents, not getting drunk and loud in their own Airbnb).
Esh. You are obviously close with these people so you must know how they act. On the other hand, you took care of the bookings and they should have been respectful of the space.
ESH.
You’re not the AH for leaving, and you weren’t “dramatic” about it. But it seems like you’re annoyed (and were annoying) when people didn’t follow the schedule. Some people would say THAT isn’t “chill.”
They’re AH for not respecting your sleep, and not respecting the Airbnb.
Bottom line, you’ve just learned that these people aren’t compatible with you when it comes to vacationing.
NTA. I think you guys are just not compatible. Maybe you were different back in college. Maybe you’ve grown apart. But it really does seem like your ideas of having fun are opposite. This is just one of those learning opportunities. Never go on a trip with them again.
If you’re going to spend time with someone, make sure you’re on the same page as to what you will be doing together.
If you wake me up early on vacation, after a night of vacation drinking, YTA
Is it possible to be TA, and NTA at the same time?
Did you have good reason to bounce? Was it nice of you to have arranged things, and to have cleaned up the mess your friends made? Yes, and NTA.
But was it dramatic of you to leave – yes. YTA.
Following a schedule doesn’t sound very vacation-y to me.
NAH, but neither are they..
ESH – you can’t expect everyone to subscribe to your idea of “fun” on a vacation. Did you communicate your frustrations with them before you left? Maybe, if everyone else was drinking and having a good time, they might have thought you were the difficult person to be around – “omg, OP has such a stick up their butt, why don’t they like to participate in the rest of the group’s activities with all of our friends?”
Waking people up for plans they asked you to make IS annoying, but, as others have pointed out, if they don’t wake up on time, that’s on them! I’d be pissed about the trashing of the airbnb. There’s zero excuses for that, respect the space you’re in.
NTA! Good for you..
NTA how old are you all? Sounds like you have grown in different ways. Try again if you want but get hotel rooms so they are responsible for their own damages
ESH
You should not go on group trips.
I don’t, because I share your dislike for chaos. Your friends wanted to have one sort of vacation. You wanted something completely different. Because they did not shout your down in the chat, you pretended they had made some sort of iron-clad agreement but they did not.
Obviously trashing a vacation rental is not OK. I hope you are not charged a huge amount for the damages and I do think you should have stayed to make sure it didn’t get any worse.
Your exit was dramatic, especially if it followed several days of waking people up early on vacation and planning 6am activities. But I don’t know that you’re really compatible with these friends anyway so it doesn’t matter that much!
INFO: Approximate ages? Do you see each other frequently (trying to gauge if you knew they hadn’t outgrown college-style partying)? Why did you have to “wake people up and drag them to things they said they wanted to do”? It sounds like you and everyone else had a very different idea of what kind of vacation this would be.
NTA. Seriously
Good for you! If your travel styles aren’t compatible you aren’t required to stick around.
I was in similar situations SO many times with old college friends, I hung onto those friendships out of some kind of obligation. Thinking I needed to stay close with the people I met when I was 19 and 20, because if I didn’t it would be weird? Idk. Finally after a particularly bad trip in which I got altitude sickness and was damn near left for dead in a remote air b& b with no food and no help, I realized that there’s no way I want to keep spending time with these people who mainly just want friendship as a means of drinking & posting about it on social media. They were miserable and messy to be around on vacation just as they were miserable and messy to be around in general. I cut the worst of them out of my life for good and now I have minimal contact with only one person from that group.
NTA
ESH
They suck for trashing the place and keeping your from sleeping.
You suck for taking on the parent role when I am guessing no one asked you too. You will learn that even with the best of intentions, plans on vacations don’t always go as planned. I’ve definitely done some girls weekends where we all intended to go hiking early in the morning, but we all had more fun drinking and catching up with each other and stayed up too late. Sometimes that happens. It’s also OK to go with the flow. You don’t have to party as hard as them, but it’s also OK to be flexible with your plans. Stay up late and enjoy catching up! Sleep in the next morning. Sometimes you can miss out on the best of times if you have too narrow of expectations of how a vacation is supposed to go.
ESH – as someone who has been involved in many a group trip and summer share, I’ve learned not everyone travels the same. You had no responsibility to organize anything for the others but also no right to tell them how to enjoy their holiday. The only thing I’d say is the people that trashed the accommodations pay the fee that’s going to be charged for said trashing. In future, my suggestion is to make sure you talk to potential travelmates on how they like they like to roll before you commit.
YTA.
If you’re the only one who had an issue, for better or worse, YTA.
Also, it strikes me as odd you planned a whole holiday with people you apparently barely know, otherwise this becomes even more absurd that you know these individuals, allegedly know how they behave yet still got upset anyway.
NTA. My rule of thumb is that no matter the circumstances, stay exactly as long as you want to, not a moment longer, don’t feel sorry, just say bye and dip.
Nope NTA for leaving. Though you may be on the hook for the rental.
YTA. It doesn’t sound like you refused to play babysitter. You *did* play babysitter then got pissy when your friends didn’t go along with you nagging them on how to spend their vacation. I can see you getting annoyed if they were being loud and obnoxious all night, but you knew the people you were inviting. And if you went to a known party city like New Orleans or Las Vegas, what did you expect? Missionary work? If you had your own itinerary, you should’ve just stuck with it and saw them when you got back.
Sounds like you handled everything perfectly well👍👍👍👌👌👌👏👏👏👏Good job!!!!😎
NAH. There’s a lot of ESH here which I don’t get. Based on what you said, you left because you didn’t enjoy being on vacation with these people. There’s no indication you openly criticized them for how they decided to vacation or that you treated them poorly because of that. Simply removing yourself from a situation you aren’t enjoying isn’t AH behavior. If you were to insist on refunds for your share of the trip then that would float you into AH territory, IMO. And presuming your friends clean after themselves, they’re not AHs either.
Chalk this up to a lesson. It just seems like you all are incompatible vacation friends, or maybe incompatible friends full stop.
ESH, what I gather from the post is that you are the type who likes everything organized almost military style and your friends are not, but it’s your group of friends so it can’t be that surprising?. They definitely suck for thrashing the living room and not respecting quiet times, but you were overbearing (drinking too early???dragging people to things,…), the fact that you call it babysitting adults says a lot.
I feel you got over excited with the organization part of things and planned way too much not allowing for flexibility and without taking into account your friends more relaxed approach. I’d take it as a lesson, your vacation styles simply aren’t compatible, they might still be fantastic friends in other situations just not this one.
ESH
Friends are AH for being children.
You’re AH for SO strict schedules. 6 AM hike is quite tough for people who don’t like waking up early and/or hiking. I dunno.. I think if I was in the position, I’d just wake up, if others were still asleep, I’d just go by myself.
YTA sounds like they didn’t wanna do a calm trip with 6am hikes. Sounds like they wanted to party considering you’re the ONLY one who wasn’t acting like them.