Woman Says Friend Who Comes to All Her Dinner Parties Is No Longer Invited. Why? She Takes All the Leftovers

A woman had to put her foot down when it came to inviting her friend to dinner parties, but is now questioning whether she did the right thing.

In a post on Reddit's "Am I the A------" forum, the woman, 22, explained that she throws "a lot of dinner parties" because she loves to cook. However, she has one friend who refuses to leave empty-handed. 

"She takes all the leftovers," the woman wrote. "Every single time there's a scrap left, she takes it."

"I appreciate that she doesn't wanna waste food. That's not the problem," she added. "The problem is: I want some leftovers, too!"

Trying to nip the problem in the bud, the woman said that at the next party she addressed the situation while they were still eating. Although her friend said she wouldn't take anything home this time, the woman noticed at the end of the night that the leftovers were gone.

This left her no choice but to send a stern text: "If you can't stop taking the leftovers, I'm not gonna invite you anymore."

And yet, at the end of her next dinner party, the woman said she caught her friend red-handed.

"So I tell her that if she couldn't listen to a boundary I set, the clear consequence that I discussed with her was that she would not be invited to any more parties," the woman wrote. "She said that it wasn't fair that she couldn't have some, and she was only taking a bit this time."

Although the woman said her friend put the food back, enough was enough.

Still, the woman said that her friend might not have thought she was serious because she ended up getting "pissed as hell" when she learned she was left off the guest list for the woman's next party, arguing that since she ended up putting the food back, she should have gotten another chance.

"I think she might be right," the woman wrote, before asking her fellow Redditors what they thought — and they mostly took her side.

"I've never heard of anyone taking leftovers without asking first, and then to take them after being told to stop? I think she's taking advantage of you and she's only angry because she couldn't mooch more food from you," one commenter wrote.

Another stated that the woman had already been overly generous to the leftovers bandit. "I don't understand where her entitlement comes from to think she can take leftovers from a dinner party that she contributed nothing to financially," they wrote. "I would have never invited past the first incident."

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One person, however, suggested that her friend may be struggling financially. "As someone who has done some questionable things when hungry and hurting for money this doesn't seem far-fetched that she could be looking to subsidize a meal cost because she is hurting financially," the commenter wrote. 

The person suggested reaching out to the friend and trying to get to the bottom of the issue. "You could try gently asking her if she is needing some food or something. She might have been relying on these parties to cut back on some of her meal costs," they added. "And that's not fair to you, but her pride could be preventing her from coming clean about this. Depending on the relationship with this friend you may want to dig a little."