Any parent planning their child's birthday party can worry about making it special and wanting everything to go perfectly, but one set of parents have taken planning too far, according to one Redditor.
A post on Reddit has revealed that one set of parents 'reserved' tables in their local park for their four-year-old's birthday, by decorating them with table clothes and leaving a 'passive aggressive' note which has been slammed online.
The note read: "Reserved for a birthday party. Please respect the space we've set aside and do not use our tables. This is for a four-year-old's party, don't be the one to mess it up, thankyou."
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One angry park user posted a picture of the empty tables on Reddit where they aired their annoyance as they slammed the note which they labelled 'entitled'. They wrote: "Busy public park on a hot Saturday/Labor Day weekend. Seems super entitled. Park has been open for four hours and no sign of them. All the other tables are full."
They added that tables remained empty for six hours before the 'very rowdy' party arrived playing music on a loud speaker.
The angry Reddit post continued: "The rangers had to come and have a very long chat with them, after that they settled down."
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The post revealed that while others seemed as annoyed, nobody did sit at the tables but instead sat nearby on picnic blankets and seemed as angry at the reservations.
Reddit users responded as many agreed and also slammed the note. One response explained: "It’s just like people reserving pool chairs at 7am and not showing up to the pool until 3!"
"As a parent who has gotten up at 5am and sat at one of these to keep it reserved, please just use the tables! How rude of them!," said another.
"Unless stated by officials and with the officials sign and paper work, all public benches are first come first served basis. Most reservations at parks are usually gazebo style buildings with lots of tables in them. Other then that you have the right to throw that sign away," said a third.
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Some had little sympathy as one fellow parent said: "I am also here with 10 kids doing a party, and we got here when the park opened to make sure we had space for all our guests. Silly me. The fact that the note was written aggressively while also depending on other people’s decency to allow them to bend common courtesy that i found annoying. Its rude and mannerless. I would not respond in kind of course."
However some tried to see it from the party's point of view as one wrote: "Several people could have used the chairs and left by the time they even showed up. Do you think this is entitlement or an extreme lack of awareness? I guess both types of people probably do this."
Another shared: "I understand them wanting to make sure they have seats for a party they want to throw in a public park, but preventing everyone from using them all day when they're not even there yet wasn't a great choice."
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Some added that adding a time to the note would have been better as one response shared: "Yeah, I really want to be on their side because I know even when you reserve tables at the park, sometimes people refuse to move, but without a time on the note, the note is just useless. 'We're having a birthday party for our four-year-old at noon. Feel free to use this table until then, but please leave it by noon so we can celebrate this special day with our family.' Something like that."
Niamh Spence