I feel like I’m getting some footing with my job. Not like, stable feet on a stable surface by any means, but if you imagine me before, hanging from the edge of a cliff by my fingers, feet dangling and flailing, and then one foot finds a small ledge that allows THAT foot to take some of the weight off my fingers, so that even though I can’t climb up, I’m not on the verge of falling to my death either, you will have a pretty good idea of my relief. I’m not confident enough to go out and buy more scrubs yet, but I’m also no longer thinking, “I’ll just finish this shift and then I never have to go back.”

After experiencing several more clients and seeing how it went with them versus how it went with the one I’m struggling with, one possibility is that I should not work anymore with the one I’m struggling with. I’m reluctant to give up, and even more reluctant to tell my employer I can’t handle something—but it’s beginning to remind me of when a nurse/tech can’t get the vein and the rule is that he/she MUST call another nurse/tech after X (one? two?) attempts. It stops being about “Me trying to overcome obstacles and SUCCEED!” and starts being much more about not treating the client as a classroom mannequin for my own improvement.

…When I say it that way, it sounds like I’m breaking up with someone “because they deserve better”; i.e., like self-serving bull. And certainly there would be an element of relief in giving up / ducking out: it WOULD serve the self. But the other aspect is also one to consider seriously, as it is with blood draws. I was on my way home from a shift with the client I’m having trouble with, clutching the steering wheel and trying not to cry, thinking, “I’ll just keep trying! I’ll get it someday!,” and my brain said back to me, “Not so sure this is entirely about Your Journey, cupcake.” Like when someone keeps dating someone they don’t really want to be in a relationship with, just because there’s no one better at the moment or because breaking up would be unpleasant.

Another interesting aspect is that good caregiver/client matches are not a straight line of caregivers Best to Worst, and a straight line of clients from Most Desirable to Least Desirable. The clients have hugely varying preferences in STYLE of caregiver: some like the matter-of-fact brusque ones, and some like the sweet lovey ones, and some prefer chatty caregivers and some prefer quiet ones, and a-lid-for-every-pot and so forth. SOME caregivers would be objectively worse than the rest, but MOST of the caregivers seem to fall into a similar range of quality, but with different styles/strengths.

And it’s the same with “better”/”worse” clients. Some caregivers prefer Alzheimer’s/dementia clients, while others prefer the clients who are all-there mentally but have physical limitations; and some caregivers like to be super busy the whole shift, while others prefer the shifts where you sit and read; and some caregivers prefer the companionship role, while others prefer the physical-care role. SOME clients would be objectively worse than the rest, but MOST of the clients seem to fall into a similar range of quality, but with different styles/issues. So while it feels bad or princessy to bail on a “difficult” client, another caregiver would find this client easy and preferable—and the client they’d want to bail on would be the one who wants to sit and chat for hours about her grandchildren, and I’d snap that one up like a Triscuit. It’s self-serving AND client-serving, is my hope, is what I’m saying.

I can’t tell you how helpful the comments were on my third-day-of-work post. The fact that they ranged from “OMG, QUIT AND RUN AND NEVER LOOK BACK!” to “It is WAY too early to tell, and you should stick with it, and in fact all these things seem like GOOD signs” seems like it would be confusing, but it was both stabilizing and freeing in a way it’s difficult to put a finger on.

I think part of it is that when I encounter a situation where people have a lot of different takes on it, and especially when a lot of those takes are “I THINK such-and-such, but I’m not sure either,” it makes it clearer there’s no One Right Obvious Answer I can keep looking for. I think that must be one of my big fears: that there is a Clearly Right Way, and I’m missing it. If I say, “WHAT SHOULD I DO??” and there’s no consensus, it means that what’s not obvious to me isn’t obvious to us as a group, either. It makes me feel okay about not knowing, which is stabilizing.

It also feels massively supportive, which is freeing. That is, I felt like I could stick with it, I could quit right this second, I could give it a few more shifts and then quit, I could decide not to make any decisions yet—and all of those decisions had significant back-up. I know from popular culture that I’m supposed to feel confident in my OWN decision without caring what other people think, but I’ve never been like that. I’m not sure I even admire people who ARE like that. And in any case, that concept only works for people who DO have a strong, confident opinion about something. Wafflers can’t stride ahead confidently.

Anyway. The upshot is that each comment made me feel better in its own way, and snippets from them go through my mind whenever panic starts rising. I was going to give a little string of example snippets here, but every single comment I was looking at had at LEAST one snippet, and often SEVERAL snippets, so suffice it to say there are abundant comforting snippets. My decision for now is to not decide yet. “Give it some more time,” I say to myself. “Think of the scrubs.”

In the meantime, while waiting to decide, I played my own psychologist. “What would HELP?,” I asked myself, “And is that something you can HAVE?” What kept springing to my mind is that MORE CO-WORKER TRAINING would help. I wanted to follow someone on the same shift I would be doing, and see everything they did, and ask questions. This felt very embarrassing to ask for, but it had gotten to the point where I was thinking, “I will finish this shift, and then I will quit and never have to go back,” and when things get to that point it seems as if some risk is worth taking if there’s ANY hope that the job is salvageable.

I composed an email to my supervisor, then came back to it a few hours later and changed it around, then read it again the next morning and sent the final version. And she answered back saying absolutely, and I got to spend a whole shift following around a co-worker, and she told me a million things I didn’t know, and I asked her a million questions, and I took notes in my little notebook, and I watched her doing the job and absorbed some of her casual and comfortable attitude, and in general I ended up feeling a lot happier and hopefuller. ALSO, and this is another reason I think this training should have happened ANYWAY, the CLIENT ended up feeling a lot happier with ME: letting them see me WITH someone familiar really helped to break the ice.

My other answer to the “What do you WANT?” question was that I wanted some videos or illustrated instructions or something that would show/tell me how to transfer people (i.e., help move them from chair to walker, or from walker to bed), something I could watch/read again and again until I felt more comfortable. If I follow a co-worker, I can only see the maneuver once: obviously we can’t put Mrs. X in and out of her bed again and again until I get the hang of it. I want to STUDY.

So I emailed the staff nurse and asked her if she knew of any resources. And not only did she say she’d send me some links the next day when she was in her office, she also said that if she’d had any idea I’d be working with Mrs. X, she would have recommended more training for me, because Mrs. X is one of our more difficult clients. This gave me two huge wallops of relief. ONE, that I was thinking I’d been put with this client because she was one of the EASIER clients, so I was thinking there was no way I could hack the job if this was the easy setting—but it’s NOT! it’s the HARD setting! TWO, that I’m not silly to have asked for more training, and in fact if I want to I can imagine the nurse feeling considerable relief that I asked, since I SHOULD have had more training and that had slipped through the cracks. And third bonus wallop of relief: just the way she said “if she’d had any idea”—as if it were a little outrageous that I’d been put with this client. It was balm for my panicked soul.

When I took this new job, saying to myself, “I can always just quit,” I thought of that as mere anxiety-suppressing reassurance: I did not ACTUALLY think it would be such a failure I’d want to quit. I thought I was just helping myself over the hurdle.

I’ve NEVER quit a job in the first week or even the first month. I’m always anxious and upset at first: that’s normal. But I don’t make panicked plans to quit. On yesterday’s 5-hour shift, on my third day of work, I spent quite a bit of it mentally composing what I’d say to the employer. “It’s just not a good fit.” “I’d thought it would be great, but actually it’s not working out at all. I’m sorry.” “I hate it. It turns out it is every single thing I hate about everything.” “Please, don’t pay me for hours worked so far: you’ve had to go to considerable trouble and expense to background-check, hire, and train me, and I would feel awful if you also had to PAY me for this failed experiment.”

I’m not quitting yet. But. This job is so different from what I had in mind. Here are the ways:

1. I’d thought, “I will be keeping people from having to go to nursing homes when all they need is a little help with a few minor things and going to a nursing home would be ridiculous just for that!” I didn’t realize I’d end up thinking in some cases, “Wait. WHY not a nursing home? Because that makes WAAAAYYYY more sense here.”

2. In my fantasy, I was an expert at this. In real life, I am not. I am barely trained. My training was nine hours of educational paperwork that made me want to go to a fall-out shelter with 50 gallons of bleach, and four hours of following someone on their shift. That’s it. That’s all. That’s how trained I am. Hi! I can take care of your elderly loved one! I’m used to the CO-WORKER mode of training, where at first I spend all my shifts working with another co-worker who tells me everything and corrects everything I do wrong and shows me all the best ways to do things and is there for all my questions. I’m not used to this thing where I just…start working.

3. In my fantasy, I was comfortable with everything, an angel of efficiency and competence. In real life, I am not. I am IN SOMEONE ELSE’S HOUSE. I don’t know how ANYTHING works there; I don’t know where anything IS there. I don’t know where the sink-disposal switch is. I don’t know where the trash goes. I don’t know how they like a BLT made. I have never made tapioca before. It is everything I hate: trying to do the right thing when I don’t know what the right thing is and can’t figure it out and in some cases can’t even ask (and in other cases feel like I’m driving people crazy with too many questions); I have to guess. It’s my own personal nightmare. PASS THE TEST! YOU HAVE NOT BEEN TO THE CLASS.

4. Worst of all, if someone doesn’t want my help, or doesn’t like the way I do things, I take it personally. EVEN THOUGH I KNOW FULL-WELL I’M NOT SUPPOSED TO. If an elderly man doesn’t like the dinner I give him, and later rejects my help with the lid of his medication even though his daughter told me to help him, I TAKE IT PERSONALLY. I feel like he’s not rejecting help, he’s rejecting MY help. The caregiver I trained with was totally shruggy: “Whatever. Some days they don’t want help. Put ‘refused’ on the form.” THAT is the way to be.

Well. The only thing keeping me from giving up and quitting right now is the slim hope that even though I haven’t felt this way with previous jobs, this is nevertheless New Job Anxiety, and that soon I WILL feel comfortable and WILL know what I’m doing and WON’T get so upset about things. Well, and that it would be so embarrassing to quit, and that it was SO HARD to make myself go through this process and I don’t want to have it go to waste and/or have to do it again for another job. I’m not sure how long to give it, though.

I had my first real shift at my new job, and today I am feeling very low and sad, which is completely expected. I feel like I bumbled everything, like I radiated idiocy, etc. But that will get better. There is just no way to skip the newbie stage.

One of my major issues was that about 90% of the job is “you just have to know” as opposed to “it’s written on the sheet of duties.” So for example, “make dinner” is on the sheet of duties, but here are the things I don’t know:

1. What they like to eat
2. Whether they like the gravy on the mashed potatoes or on the side
3. Whether I should cut up the food
4. Whether they like a frozen dinner to be microwaved, or put in the oven
5. Whether they want condiments/salt/pepper nearby
6. Whether they use a napkin or a paper towel, and where the napkins are
7. What plate they like to use, and whether it can be breakable
8. What utensils they can handle
9. Whether they eat at the table or in front of the TV
10. Whether they’ll tell me if something is wrong
11. How to work this particular microwave
12. What they like to drink with dinner
13. What cup they like to use, and how full to fill it
14. If they generally eat dessert afterward
15. How much warning they need that something is hot
16. How to know if they’re done eating
17. Whether they’d clear their own dishes or if I’d do it
18. How dishes are done in this household (this is a huge multi-part unknown thing)
19. Whether leftovers are saved and, if so, in what and with what markings?
20. And if leftovers are NOT saved, are they trashed or sink-disposal’d?

It was completely exhausting. I felt like I didn’t even know how to cook. Like I was new not just to the household, but to ADULT LIFE.

And there were many, many other things like this. Such as that the client likes to have a glass of juice poured and left in the fridge before I leave, and that I should close the curtains in the living room, and that I should leave a light on in the stairwell. None of these things are written down: the caregivers just learn to do them, and then they Just Know. (In my case, a member of the family was there and told me.) I think they should be written down, but I can see how that would be difficult to do times two hundred households.

Paul points out that if I’m in this situation, that means EVERY caregiver is in this situation with EVERY new house. That IS somewhat comforting. It’s not that I alone am inexperienced, it’s that the system is set up so that even a caregiver with ten years of experience will come into a new household just as bumbling and dumb as I am. Whether it SHOULD be that way or not is irrelevant: the upshot is that it’s not just me.

Then there are ALSO the things I don’t know because I in particular am inexperienced. Things like, don’t close the toilet lid, and keep fresh gloves in my pocket, and make sure there are no wrinkles in the absorbent pad, and call the office if this or that or this other thing happens. I’m not even smooth yet about when to wear gloves and when not to.

This is what I miss about working with co-workers. In all my previous jobs, I worked WITH CO-WORKERS, which means someone is always right there to ask, or to volunteer a correction, or to show a trick for doing something better or more efficiently. Working on my own, I feel like I have to figure out everything from scratch—and there’s no one to ask. It takes “fake it until you make it” TOO FAR, I think.

What I would LIKE is to be allowed to follow around some other caregivers on their shifts, but I don’t know how to ask my boss for this. It feels as if they’ll think (1) I must be a poor fit for the job, if I need more training than they usually give, and/or (2) I’m trying to get paid for more training, instead of for real work.

I am extremely happy: for my new job, it turns out I get to wear scrubs. SCRUBS. Long have I waited for this day. Back in my daycare years, my co-worker was working on her nursing degree and she brought in a scrubs catalog one day, and I remember the envy that suffused me: SHE was going to get to wear SCRUBS. We co-workers pitched in to buy her a set as a graduation present, and it was so fun to CHOOSE: there were so MANY! TONS of fun patterns! TONS of pretty solids! MIX-AND-MATCH FOR MILES.

Scrubs look so MEDICAL. I remember when I got to wear a white coat for my pharmacy job, and people mistook me for a pharmacist. In scrubs, I might have nursing training! I don’t, but I look like I do!

Plus, I was freaking out about what to wear, and now I don’t have to worry anymore! Because I’ll be wearing scrubs!

Better still, I MAY wear complete sets of scrubs, but I may INSTEAD wear my own pants (even jeans!) with a scrubs top. This is great. It’s just GREAT! The perfect thing.

The company gave me two sets of scrubs to start out with, but they’re the leftovers of a failed experiment to have company scrubs, so there wasn’t much choice of color (i.e., none choice). Also, they’re unisex sizing, so the tops fit me so tight in the hips I can barely tug them down, and so loose in the shoulders and waist I look like I’m wearing a deflated balloon. Also, the office manager said apologetically that all of them “ran small” and we should take one size up, but the highest size they had was my actual size. (Not because they are cheeseheads who don’t recognize the full range of body sizes, but because it’s been years since these were ordered, and the higher sizes ran out way before the lower ones.)

BYGONES! This means more shopping. I went out and bought two sets of extremely cute scrubs, and I will be buying more soon. I didn’t want to buy too many all at once, in case I find I prefer one style or type, or in case I find unexpected shortcomings in the ones I bought (“Wait!! These don’t have POCKETS!!”).

Oh my glob, I cannot believe how much busier I am with this new job, and I am only TRAINING, which means I’m only doing two hours here, one hour there, doctor appointment here, form-filling-out there, reading-employee-manual here, watching video there. Well. I will just trust that I will get used to it, and that New Thing stress is part of what makes it FEEL busy. And the good news is, I now NEVER sit at home in my house thinking, “It is stupid to be bored like this. Anyone else would make good use of this time.”

I do my first real, just-me, not-training shift in a few days, and I am kind of nervous, kind of excited. Sixty-forty, probably. My guess is that as we approach the actual day, the nervousness will take over a larger portion.

Also! Guess what! I have NEVER known what “Lift with your legs, not your back” meant! NEVER. It’s like “Steer into the skid”: it seems to make sense to the person saying it, but it never makes sense to me. I’m NOT lifting “with my back”! I am using my hands and arms! Except apparently I AM lifting with my back, and now I’m going around the house practicing not doing that. It’s surprisingly hard to remember, and surprisingly hard to do. Also, I feel like I’m sticking my butt WAY out, which makes me feel self-conscious.

At a recent check-up with my primary doctor, she asked a question about a vitamin/supplement I’m taking. “Why are you taking this?,” she said, with a skeptical look. I said that my gynecologist recommended it, and explained what for. My primary doctor used her face to express doubt/disagreement about this, and then said that recent studies have shown vitamins to be ineffective. Well, except for the vitamins/supplements she has recommended for me. Those are different.

I don’t know what I’m supposed to do, when two of my doctors disagree. A level further: I don’t know what my DOCTOR expects me to do, when two of my doctors disagree. Does she expect me to disregard the other doctor’s advice? Is that what she would want me to do with HER advice, if I were talking to the OTHER doctor? How about the two of THEM duke it out, and then get back to me?

A level further: I don’t know what ANYONE IN THE HEALTH AND MEDICAL COMMUNITY wants us to do when EVERY SINGLE THING they say, recommend, suggest, advise against, lecture about–EVERY SINGLE BLESSED THING–is contradicted by another faction of their community. Or, in fact, by the SAME faction, if we wait a little while.

My dear plus-sized friends, where DO you shop for clothes? I went out today to buy a few Nicer Casual things to wear for things such as employee orientation, and felt appalled and discouraged. I am narrow shouldered, plump-armed, small-chested, small-waisted, much bigger from the waist down: classic pear, I guess. And long-waisted, so that shirts are usually too short and pants are usually too long (but petite pants are too short). I look terrible in anything sleeveless or v-neck.

Really, I was applying my most generous standards. I looked around FIRST, at several many-people gatherings, and observed what other plump women were wearing and how they looked. I thought, “Can I see lumpiness/plumpness? Yes. Do I care, or feel like it ‘looks wrong’? No. Is there anything she could wear that would make her look thin instead of plump? No.”

So then when I put on various clothes myself, I tried to pretend it was someone else wearing the clothes, and tried to ask the same questions. And I still hated everything. All the lower-half stuff sat way too low and baggy at the hips, then lumped out tightly and unattractively, then dragged on the floor. All the upper-half stuff seemed weird: big gaps through which my bra clearly showed, or see-through so that I would need to buy TWO shirts to do the work of one. Lots of slippery materials that felt icky and hot. I even tried on some sleeveless things and v-neck, but no. I look WRONG in them: they emphasize my narrow shoulders, plump arms, and small chest, and make my lower half look even larger.

I’ve heard lots of recommendations for online places, and then I click through and have ZERO IDEA what to even TRY ordering, or in what sizes. So much of it looks like plumpwear/elderwear even on the beautiful models, which seems like a bad sign. And considering that I can do four 6-garment trips into the dressing room and come out with NOTHING I’m even TEMPTED to buy, it’s hard to imagine having success WITHOUT trying things on.

We have a Lane Bryant within a doable distance (40-minute drive), but I find that store difficult. For one thing, it’s the kind of store where you’re not really supposed to pay the tag price for anything: everything is always going on 40% off, 50% off, buy-1-get-1-free, etc. But that means going there regularly, and I’m not going to do that: it’s in a mall I hate going to, and the drive there is unpleasant. I’ve been buying the jeans I like on eBay, just because I get tired of the constant sales-that-are-not-really-sales.

I thought Target’s new plus-size line AVA & VIV looked promising, but the stock was so patchy: I’d see a shirt I liked, and they’d only have it in X, or have my size only in black (an additional layer of Plumpness Woe: not looking good in black). Or I’d see a skirt, and they’d have it in X and 4X and nothing in between. I could try on only a handful of things. In some cases I tried a size bigger or smaller, just to get the idea, but sometimes that’s worse than unhelpful: the wrong size can make something look terrible when it would otherwise be cute. Other times, they didn’t even have a size within TWO sizes of mine, so I didn’t bother.

My favorite t-shirts and lightweight hoodies come from Old Navy: their plus-size tops are wide and cropped on me, but their XXL Tall works just right: narrow enough in the shoulders, but long enough. I’ve bought one or two other XXL Tall things on clearance, just to see, but nothing has been a success so far; still, I am not too discouraged to try again. I tried their plus-size jeans and the fit was completely wrong: it was as if they were made for someone with a waist the size of my hips, and hips the size of my waist. It was like when I try to wear men’s/unisex t-shirts: WAY too wide where I’m narrow, WAY too snug where I’m wider.

Tell me, have you had ANY luck? It seems hopeless. Every time I read someone saying “Don’t buy anything you don’t LOVE,” I think, “She is not shopping plus-sizes.”

I’m frustrated because I want to recommend some cute earrings, but something is weird with WordPress: my toolbar is gone in Text mode, and visible but non-functional in Visual mode. The “Add Media” button isn’t working, and dragging the picture over to the post isn’t working; in short, I can’t include a picture. So I’m just going to have to give you a link (I know just enough HTML to do it, which is good because the link button isn’t working either), which is unsatisfying. Perhaps later, when things are working again, I can come back and edit the post to be right. Anyway, here are the cute earrings: Beaded Drop Earrings. I think the smaller/thumbnail picture of them gives a better idea of how they look on the ears.

[It is now the future, and I have fixed the problem, and here is the picture:

(image from ChildrensPlace.com)

These are children’s earrings, so when I ordered them I thought they might be wee, but they’re way too big for Elizabeth to wear, and perfect for me. The beaded loop part is about the size of a quarter. I like them even better in person than in the picture. The colors are more intense than they look in the photo on my monitor: classic red rather than candy-apple red, medium purple rather than lilac, teal rather than turquoise. They look great with practically everything, even colors not included in the beads: my favorite combination so far was with a bright green shirt.

I like them so much, I ordered TWO MORE PAIRS, which is a little crazy. But I was getting upset at the thought of losing one or breaking one, because I don’t think I’ve ever seen any like these before. I figure that if I get sick of them and regret buying additional pairs, I’m only out $6; I can live with that.

Downsides, so you are forewarned:

1. On one earring of my pair, the inner loop doesn’t move freely within the outer loop as it’s supposed to. It can probably be bent until it does, but I messed with it a little with no success. It’s as if one of the little silver pieces holding everything together is just a fraction too big, making it nest snugly instead of loosely. This is another reason I ordered more pairs: if just one earring is glitchy, I can substitute another.

2. Where the end of the French hook touches my skin, it is just slightly itchy. Not enough to make me not want to wear the earrings, just enough to be something I would mention. Probably this too can be fixed. I seem to remember reading something about clear nail polish.

3. If I don’t wear one of those little rubber grippy backings that goes on a French hook, they periodically fall out of my ears. I’m willing to use the little rubber backings, but I didn’t used to be, so I will understand if this is a deal-breaker for you.

P.S. I just noticed when I clicked through to check my link that there is free shipping on every order today (AT LEAST today, that is). So we could be earring twins for $3.16, with no shipping!

P.P.S. Oh! And coupon code 15PLACE2 gives you another 15% off! $2.69 to be earring twins!

If there are one million things the internet has taught us, one of them is that people can feel completely differently about the etiquette of a situation. “I can’t BELIEVE someone would do X instead of Y!!,” someone will rant, leaving others saying, “What?? I thought I was SUPPOSED to do X! I was doing it ON PURPOSE in order to do the RIGHT thing! I thought it was rude to do Y!!”

For example, there are assorted rules covering table manners, and we weren’t all taught the same set. Certain things are clearly wrong (chewing with mouth open, for example), but many things can receive the benefit of the doubt: the “polite” way to hold a fork, the “polite” way to spoon up the soup, whether or not it’s okay to have elbows on the table, etc. There are plenty of rules where some of the population is taught that the X way is polite and the Y way is rude, or that X is hugely important and Y is outdated, while another part of the population is taught the exact opposite. It would be a mistake to judge someone else’s overall politeness or one’s own superiority by standards that aren’t universal.

However, I have been thinking LONG AND HARD, and I can’t think of ANY UNIVERSE in which it’s okay not to RSVP. Can you? That is, I allow for the possibility that I have overlooked a segment of the population that has been taught specifically NOT to RSVP, that RSVPing is rude. But I’m guessing I have not overlooked anything like that.

The only thing I can think of is that I suppose some people might think it counts as RSVPing if they tell their invited child to tell the birthday child that they can/can’t come—but aren’t we all familiar with children and their sketchy reliability? There’s no way for the birthday child’s parent to know if the invited child’s parent was involved, if the invited child accurately reported, if the birthday child accurately reported; there’s no way for the invited child’s parent to know if the message got through. It’s like playing Telephone, and also it ignores the instructions on the invitation for the manner in which the RSVP should be sent. Still: I can see how this could qualify as intending to RSVP, and not being aware that the attempt is failing.

I also know that sometimes a child crams the invitation in the backpack and doesn’t bring it out for days or weeks. In that case, it’s not failing to RSVP, it’s “See also: not letting children be in charge of carrying the RSVP messages.”

I do know, from experience and from thinking, that there can be reasons to postpone an RSVP: sometimes an invitation arrives three weeks before the event, and the family’s plans aren’t yet made, and maybe there’s a known event that is still up in the air but may very well be on that day: a game that will be that day if they win the other game this weekend, family possibly coming from out of town that day, etc. I have myself fallen victim to the “I can’t think about this right now,” put-it-in-the-pile-on-the-counter error. Ever since throwing my first kid party eleven years ago (this is a boring digression, but with Rob the plan was a Friend Party at age five and at age ten; please don’t tell the other children), I’ve avoided this—but it requires active remembering not to do it. (If I really couldn’t RSVP without waiting for more information, I would RSVP that that was the case: that is, “We got the invitation to Noah’s party. Jacob may have a game that day, if they win their game on the 17th. I’ll be back in touch as soon as we know.”)

I also know that there can be mix-ups. I am always a little worried that when I leave a message on an answering machine or send an email/text, that I may have dialed the wrong number or typed the wrong address or maybe the email got caught in a spam filter: what if someone THINKS I didn’t RSVP, when I DID?? *CRINGE CRINGE CRINGE* (This is why, although I wouldn’t go so far as to call someone back to say I got their RSVP, I do answer a text or email to say “Great! See you then!”) So with a certain percentage of failed RSVPs, I make that assumption: I assume that someone DID in fact RSVP, but that it didn’t reach me.

But all these things together don’t account for the number of people who just…don’t RSVP. Just, CHOOSE NOT TO.

I’ve heard that many people feel awkward about RSVPing a no, because it feels bad to reject an invitation, and I can see that. It IS harder than a yes. But which feels worse: telling someone they are sorry they can’t come but they have something else scheduled then, or being a no-show at someone’s birthday party? One of Elizabeth’s friends had a party recently and Elizabeth was the ONLY GUEST who came. The family could have adjusted for that if they’d known, but they didn’t know. Disappointed child, nearly-wasted party-place rental, wasted party bags, wasted pizza. We all made the best of it, but it would have been so much better to have some advanced warning. There were other adjustments that could have been made ahead of time to improve the party, if the parents had known.

Or, let’s be frank: there could have been second-string invitations. If the child is allowed to invite, say, six guests, and five of them RSVP a prompt no, then there is time to invite five more people. If there are a lot of uncertain guests, or the RSVPs of “no” come very late, there is no time.

Maybe people are thinking it doesn’t really matter to the host if one single guest doesn’t RSVP: they’re assuming everyone else is doing it, so they’re the only one who isn’t. And there are types of parties where it probably doesn’t matter if only one guest fails to RSVP: maybe it’s a big cook-out with the whole class invited, so if twenty-two of the twenty-three kids RSVP, the one uncertain guest falls well within the number of extra hot dogs and hamburgers that would be on hand anyway. But if five of the twenty-three guests RSVP, there is a HUGE DIFFERENCE between “food for five guests” and “food for twenty-three guests.”

In some cases, the host can call and nag. It’s pretty unkind to the host to make him/her do this, but at least they have an option. For Rob’s five-year-old friend party, where I’d allowed him to invite two friends and neither one RSVP’d, I was able to painfully, agonizingly, awkwardly call, because the kindergarten gave out parent-contact lists. I suffered, but at least I got the answers. But for Edward and Elizabeth’s parties, there are no parent-contact lists. The only way to get the invitations out is to send them in with the child (see above re: bad idea); the only way to get the RSVPs is to have the parents use the contact information provided on the invitation.

In short: RSVP! RSVP!