I say goodbye to the host and close friends who are there, then I'm out. I'm not going to interrupt everyone's conversation just to let them know I'm leaving.
And I hate the goddamned arguments you get "You're going???? Whyyyyy???" Uh, because I have to or want to. 2 or 3 parties like this is how I perfected The Vanish Act.
I've always known (and practiced) this move as the 'Irish Exit'. I understood it came from whenever it was the Irishman's turn to buy a round of drinks, he'd mysteriously disappeared..
But yeah, fuck the party goodbye. A friend of mine refers to it as 'doing a batman'.
Oh my god because Irish people drag out goodbyes forever. I swear I hate dding for my parents because we don't actually leave until at least 30 minutes after the goodbyes start
My friend taught me this term! He tried to leave a party once by quietly telling a few people he was heading out, saying he was "doing the Irish exit." So naturally, one of the first people he came up to yelled out, "HEY EVERYONE! ALAN IS LEAVING!"
Of course, this led to everyone making a huge deal out of it and he was stuck with the awful drawn-out goodbye for the next 10 minutes or so before he could finally get out.
The best part came about 45 minutes later when he had to come back and go through the departure rigmarole again because he had forgotten his backpack...
And literally you're going to say barring "[insert relative/close friend] just got rushed to the hospital" is going to be met with that groaning Nooooo stayyyyyy and then Nooooo you're no funnn.
Way easier to just dip out. Drunk people tend to forget who was there at the end of the night
Just last week I was hanging out with people, wasn't really feeling it, someone said "hey anybody want some food" I just said "yeah I think i have some at home" and walked out the door
still have a reputation from college for being the "Citrona guy" (if you remember the commercials) because i would constantly ditch parties when I got too tired/drunk and would just walk home. Apparently I missed out on a lot of good times but owell.
I'm guilty of doing that when I entertain and people start leaving, but its never an arguement. It's just fucking annoying if the first person leaves early, because people are lemmings and follow shortly thereafter. Entertaining is expensive and guests make the occasion possible.
Friends who I went to HS with used to call med "The Legend", mainly b/c I always just seemed to randomly vanish. Little did they know, they annoyed me quite often. You couldn't have normal conversations; it was just random blurts of nonsense and then awkwardness.
The Legend sounds cool as fuck tho, so I'll live with it.
That's the socially acceptable one. As long as you let the host know that you enjoyed your time and that it is time for you to leave, then you've been polite. Leaving without any sort of goodbye to the host is the socially unacceptable behavior. IMO announcing your exit to everyone is douchy, but so many people do it, I'm not sure if it's socially acceptable or not.
The worst is when you have to say goodbye to each individual person there before you leave. This is proper etiquette in my family. You can't just wave goodbye to everyone and walk out the door. You have to hug and cheek kiss each person. I fucking hate it.
Yeah not to mention you have to say good bye twice in my family.
The first time is when your mom says your leaving. And the second is when you're actually walking out of the door about half an hour later when your mom is finished talking.
Yeah that happened on Grad night.
I had two hours before the busses left for Knott's Berry Farm and we spent 5 minutes getting to a Jack's 30 minutes eating and 45 minutes leaving. That damn place.
This is really funny for me because I'm the type to just say "Welp, laters!" and leave, but my girlfriend is the exact opposite because of upbringing and personality. It usually leads to me standing waiting for several minutes looking like a jackass while everyone appreciates her sociability. Then when she's done I sling another "OK, byyyeeee" for good measure.
My family insists on this also and it drives me insane, I've started just saying personal goodbyes to my grandpa and mom and waving goodbye at the rest, if anyone wants to beat me to the door and get a hug, so be it.
This is exponentially more painful when there's 3 people you haven't spoken to the entire time. Now you have to do the weird awkward hello-goodbye conversation while being careful to avoid the big elephant in the room.
Reminds me of when i was a kid and i had to do the same or that would be taken as a non respectful act. However i kept doing it even if everybody (incl my parents ) would start yelling and stuff till i proved my method and nobody can tell me anything now.
You guys need a code word(s). My SO and I tried "the look" and one of us always fails to notice. We now go into social situations with an emergency exit strategy.
If it's a small party then we always thank the host for the invite and offer to help clean up. But at a big event (wedding, etc) sometimes it's best just to bolt.
Our decision usually goes like this:
Me: IGB? (Irish Goodbye)
Wife: IGB (nods head)
We both exit the wedding/party. If we pass the host we thank them and tell them we're off, if not we just keep going.
Yeah telling the host goodbye is polite, but I don't see any reason to have to say goodbye to everyone, either. As a kid, I'd be forced to say goodbye to every single person, no matter if there were 8 or 80 of them. The ones I never even said hi to, too. My dad still gives me shit if I just book it at family events.
I have an uncle that just ups and leaves at anything in a group larger than 5 people. Everyone in the family thought it was incredibly rude but I never really cared. Then again, when you go to a family reunion with 60+ people and every single damn one of them (even those you've never met before) expects a hello and goodbye as well as a 10 minute conversation at one point, It's no wonder he perfected the art of sneaking out. I want to do that sometimes too, but I happen to be really bad at sneaking in general (also my dad would kill me if I did that at a family gathering).
That's cause they have so many damn quirks. They are the only people who still think crocs are in style, they say duck duck gray duck instead of duck duck goose, and they call them hot dishes, not casseroles. Minnesotans are weird.
Edit: apparently crocs are not in style. My sources must be wrong. Or they are worn ironically.
Yeah lived here my whole life and I completely agree with you. Although I have to disagree with the crocs statement. We'll make fun of you for wearing crocs here.
Minnesotan here. It's funny that sometimes you can be having awkward conversation the whole night, until its time to leave. Then you talk converse passionately in the doorway for another 45 minutes.
My mom is good friends with the temple maintenance guy, so sometimes we end up walking out with him like 45 mins after the rabbi has locked up. It's a problem.
Not a bar mitzvah but I experienced this for the first time going to a friends house the other day and his whole family was over. Literally spent half the time leaving. They were crazy. Crazy awesome.
My friend invited me to her cousin's bar mitzvah and I got so drunk I collapsed down the stairs, hit my head and blacked out. So I didn't have to say goodbye to anyone.
Whenever I'm at an open bar, it's like I'm expecting them to close it any minute. I'm like "I'll have a gin and tonic... No a double... No I mean three double gin and tonics, and a beer." Next thing you know...
My family is both Persian and Jewish. We start saying goodbye at least 2 hours before we intend to leave. Sometimes a simple Shabbat dinner can drag on until 3 am because of these formalities
The last Jewish wedding I went to consisted of two halves. The first two hours of saying hello to everyone there and then the last two hours of saying goodbye to everyone there. I'm pretty sure you could have plotted progress on a graph.
My experience of a goodbye in Ireland involves announcing you are leaving, then proceed to have another conversation in the doorway for a further hour.
Y'know yer one who lives around the corner from the shop? The one whose mam worked in the school where yer cousins went? He worked for yer uncle for a month or so?
....
It's always a flat "(s)he's dead", never anything else. "Ohhh you know your auntie Maureen, always dancing at parties? She's dead. Yep, heart attack out of nowhere."
Watching my mother meet up with her family is always good.
YES. Just matter of fact, like. Usually followed by an "ah, pity".
My BF is Canadian (I'm first gen Canadian with Irish parents), and bringing him over to Ireland, or to any family events in Canada, is weird for him. He can't get over how much we talk about death. The bereavement notices on the radio really disturbed him.
My mom likes to give me the "highlight reel" as she calls it. She just lists off the people I might know who died in the past 2 weeks, and then talks about who's not well for a while so I have an idea of what next weeks' highlight reel might look like.
I feel like the Irish trade mass cards like it's a game. Like Magic: the Gathering, but Irish: the Wakening.
Ohh, you literally do get tiny little death cards, slightly smaller than a debit card. You typically have a picture of the deceased, a little poem or prayer and generally a picture of Mary, Jesus or similar. They are sent out to family members and such upon death. It's kinda morbidly funny. Could be a bit archaic now though, I live in the UK and I feel like I am cheating when I claim to be Irish as I am only half!
I currently have one of my mam in my phone. My granny has a row of them of the people who have passed that she was close to all lined up at the bottom of her mirror.
Ahhh all my family does this. People thought I was so weird at college for having mass cards on my mirror lol. (I'm 2nd generation American but my family has clung to all their little Irishisms.)
"Yep, see ya, I'll talk to ya later, yep, goodbye, goodbye, goodbye, yep, I'm going now, haha yeah, see ya, good night, yeah that's all the craic, yep, yep, good bye."
Exactly! My wife is Irish, when we're at family gatherings I've learned that I don't even have to get up when she says that we're leaving, it's more of a 'time for one last round of conversations with everyone'.
I've been at typical family parties where nobody can segway the conversation into a simple "We better get going" because they don't want to be the first ones to leave and say goodbye and be rude.
Imagine Michael Cera wearing a helmet, awkwardly and quietly saying goodbye as he wheels out of the party on a Segway that he has been riding the entire time.
My 2 older brothers and I have the whole "leaving the family get togethers" down to a science. I'm the youngest(26) no children. They are both 35-40 with a combined 7 children. So, when one of them wants to leave they come talk to me. I always want to leave, and since I don't bring kids for the old folks and women to play with, no one seems to mind when I do decide to go, but everyone knows, once someone has broken the "I'm leaving" ice, its every clan for themselves.
Gets me out of there, Gets them out of there. Baring any woman/child Fiasco, this works well for us.
Oh man, when my siblings and I wanted to get out of a situation growing up, we had everything from my little sister falling asleep, to me faking a body illness as an excuse.
Sometimes siblings can be awesome to have growing up. Now we just ride together (apart from parents); leave separately. "See you guys at home!"
See, my wife and I are the opposite. We use the kid as our excuse. Fuck no she isn't really tired, she took a nap before we left. Fuck no she ain't pissy, toddlers love hot dogs and attention. The truth is I AM TIRED AND PISSY AND FIND YOU ALL SUPER WEIRD AND ANNOYING.
I was at a dinner party once where everyone clearly was done and wanted to go home but was staying to be polite. The couple with a kid got a call from the babysitter and I was so hopeful, but then they STAYED. What kind of monsters?? I finally just said we had to go, even though we had no good reason and, by etiquette for that group, should not have been the first to leave.
This is my boyfriend's family, especially my boyfriend himself. When I want to go, I want to leave within five minutes. He will have half an hour long conversations with his relatives in the hallway while I stand there with my coat on. I really like his family but when I say I want to go home it's because I am no longer in the mindset to be social (especially since I speak a second language around them which wears me out after a few hours), and it's not like they live far away or anything so we see them often.
My girlfriend is exactly the same way with her mom. She'll complain that she wants to leave, I've said my goodbyes and sitting in the damn car, 30minutes later she comes out saying she finally got out of there after her mom's inane rambling.
I have a friend that just leaves without saying goodbye at all of our get-togethers. Especially if we're all crashing at someone's place, he'll just get up and leave whenever he wants. There's nothing wrong with it.
One of my friends does this too, the fact that he always hangs out for a good amount of time is what makes it OKAY, he just leaves when shit starts to die down or he gets tired usually.
Nothing worse than having a friend who won't chill for more than 30 minutes and just leaves without saying anything.
I have a friend like that. He's a really, really cool dude, so we don't hold it against him too much.
He never directly responds to invites, we just text him and maybe he'll show up. He can stay half an hour, or three hours, or be the one to shut the party down, but man can he ninja his way out of there when he wants to. Some nights he'll show up in the beginning, ninja out, then show up again 3 or 4 hours later. If it were anyone else it would be infuriating.
I am that guy but I'm pretty sure it just adds to my reputation as that asshole who doesn't like talking to people. Which is not exactly true, I'm just bad at talking, so I kind of go without saying stuff and it's not something that helps me in the long run.
Ugh, I wonder if our friend who does this thinks we are cool with it. It's annoying as fuck. Because there is always that period where you have to look around for the guy before e.g. moving to next bar, or whatever you are doing. Just say bye and walk off.
Agreed, the Irish Goodbye is the best. In reality, taking the time to announce to everyone at a party that you're bouncing is kind of a dick move. "Everyone please stop having fun for a minute and acknowledge that you will no longer be in my presence!"
a friend left my wedding without noticing or saying goodbye, I thought that was rude as my wife and I took pictures with every single guest before leaving... for other parties it's ok
Gah, yes. My husband is very extroverted and will be the last one to leave if it's up to him. By the time I'm able to drag him out, I don't care about saying goodbye to anyone.
I think your husband and my boyfriend may be the same person. He is afflicted with FOMO, and can't leave a party until it's over beyond reasonable doubt, because "what if we miss something cool?"
5.4k
u/KabukiBaconBrulee Jul 13 '15
Leaving a party without saying goodbye.