Dating is inherently risky. You’re putting yourself out there in the hopes of connecting with someone, but the spark doesn’t always take (and thank god for that—if it did, the world would be like a romantic comedy on steroids). Most people chalk subpar dating encounters up to the cost of doing business, but one guy in the U.K. wasn’t into that, so he asked for his drinks money back. Seriously.
Abby Fenton, a biomedical university student in the United Kingdom, tells the story in a brilliantly succinct way on Twitter. All it took was a screenshot of her text conversation with the dude, which basically went like this:
Him: “Give me my money back pls”
Her: “New phone who dis”
Him: “I’m that guy you met out, really, I’d like my money back”
Her: *string of amused emojis* “OK, sure”
Fenton, who hasn’t yet responded to SELF.com’s request for comment, captioned the image, “So this jus happened.” To date, it has over 15,000 retweets and over 39,000 likes. Here’s a photo of the action:
This is probably making such a splash because it’s a fair amount of effort to go through to get back the equivalent of around $9 U.S. It’s normal to be bummed that nothing came of getting a seemingly promising drink with someone at a club. It’s also totally fine to care about your finances, as the man in this scenario clearly might. But unless he’s a clueless young guy who is really strapped for cash, it seems like a passive-aggressive way to say, “Hello, I’m not happy with how things played out, you didn’t fulfill my expectations of buying you a drink, and I want my money back.”
After the reaction to her original post, Fenton put up a poll asking whether she should have returned the money. Out of over 18,000 votes, 83 percent said no, and 17 percent said yes.
In the cesspool that is the internet, those are quite gratifying results! But of course, debate raged on in the comments.
Sigh. A quick clarification: A woman doesn’t owe a guy anything just because he buys her a drink (or ever, really). Also, unless that upset tweeter has some knowledge the rest of us aren’t privy to, we have no idea if Fenton was rude, nasty, or walked away at all. OK? OK. Good talk!
