A man has started a debate after boarding a plane without his wife after she went to get a coffee, leaving her at the airport alone as he jetted off to see their daughter. No, really.
The 47-year-old man, who lives in the US' Pacific North West region, was going to visit his 21-year-old daughter at college on the East Coast with his wife, 43.
He decided to give his family members the code names ‘Jess’ and ‘Meg’, as he proceeded to explain what had happened in a Reddit Am I the A**hole (AITA) post.
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“Let me start by saying that traveling with my wife is not a great experience,” he said.
“I am very type a, I like to have everything organized and make sure that we get where we need to be early, especially when traveling.
“My wife is the opposite, very ‘go with the flow’ and ‘we will get there when we get there’. I do my best to meet in the middle, but not when traveling by plane.”
The man recalled a separate occasion when he and his wife were going to visit their daughter for a parents’ weekend at her college, to provide a bit of back story.
“Our flight was at 10am,” he said.
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“Our airport isn’t huge, but not a tiny airport either. I told my wife that we needed to be at the airport 90 minutes early, and we live about 30 minutes away.
“This being said I wanted to leave at the very latest by 8, since we would also need to park and walk a little bit.
“I of course got up at 6, to make sure everything was ready and accounted for.”
His wife, however, does not like to get up early, saying it took him ‘attempting to wake up 5 times’ before she got up at 7.40am.
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She then wanted to ‘make coffee, shower, and eat a bowl of cereal’, with the man saying: “Let’s just say that we didn’t leave the house until 9. It ended up being busier at the airport than normal (likely due to many colleges having parents weekend) and it took so long to get through security that we missed our flight.”
The airline refused to refund their ticket, and the parents were forced to get new tickets the next day, leaving Jess feeling ‘disappointed’.
Fast forward to the most recent occasion, when he and his wife were returning to see Jess to help her move – this time a journey that involved two flights.
They landed at their connecting city with about 25 minutes to start boarding the next plane.
“We had to take multiple rails to get from where we landed to our terminal,” he said.
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“We got to our terminal and had about 15 minutes until our plane was set to board.
“My wife tells me that she wants to get coffee. There was a little market next to our terminal that sold hot food and coffee. I asked if she wanted me to go grab it for her.
“’No I want Starbucks’ she said. Well Starbucks we a rail ride away, and a little bit of a walk. I told her we couldn’t do that, we didn’t have enough time.”
But the wife went off to get her coffee, promising she’d be back in time.
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Naturally, she wasn’t - and the man tried to call her several times as they called boarding groups.
He waited by the gate, but was eventually told by the flight attendant that it was the last call, and he had to make a decision.
“I tried to plead with her to wait a couple of minutes but she insisted that she couldn’t. So, I boarded the plane.”
He had to tell his wife to buy a new ticket, and that he’d meet her at their daughter’s.
She got to Jess’s school and seemed unbothered by the whole situation, didn’t even really talk about it,” he said.
“I thought maybe she realized it was her fault and just wanted to drop it.
“Boy was I wrong. We are now home and she hasn’t talked to me since the trip, over a week ago, and is insisting that I am an a**hole. So, am I the a**hole?”
The Reddit post garnered thousands of comments, prompting a huge debate about timekeeping and respect.
One person wrote: “This. She is causing you tremendous stress and she doesn’t care at all. That is telling. So what if you have to wait a few minutes at the gate. That’s the least she can do to not cause you to very reasonably stress out. She owes you a big apology for all the lack of consideration and for the petulant follow up.”
Someone else agreed: “She is disrespectful of other people's time, she believes that everyone should and can wait for her and she need to make no effort to meet time deadlines or to change because in her mind she is right.”
A third said: “Your wife is very selfish. Imagine missing time with your child because you thought coffee was more important?”
Jess Hardiman