"My name is Rhoda Morgenstern. I was born in the Upper Midwest in the mid seventies, but I've lived all over the world. People love me or hate me, and it's nice knowing where I stand. I had a bad puberty, and it's still going strong. I'm a high school graduate, I went to a liberal arts college where I learned about writing and feminism and paternalism. If I remembered my ACT scores, I'd never admit it. You may remember me from Trainwrecks. I was the one with good grammar and occasional lazy spelling errors. I started Rhoda's Tact Shack as a side project where I could dispense tactful advise, both solicited and unsolicited, into the tumblr-sphere. Then I abandoned it. Now I'm back. Tumblr, this is your last chance!"

How to blow someone off, nuclear style

Dear Rhoda

A nightmare ex-roommate of mine from college has been sending out “I have an interview in ____! I know you live there! Let’s hang out!” messages. No one in my group of friends has responded because we all want to run and hide. When this particular person doesn’t get e-mail responses, she starts leaving semi-bitchy voice messages.

How to best avoid her while she visits and, godhelpus if she moves here? We’re all freaked that she’s going to leave nearby and we’ll actually run into her. HALP!

Anon

Dearest Anon,

If you’ve tried the old ignore and it hasn’t worked (not tactful, but effective when tact’s really not the object), here’s my suggestion:

Hit reply to all on her message. Copy the “cc” field and paste it into the “to” field. Delete nightmare ex-roommate from said message. You might consider changing the subject line to “I don’t want to see Nightmare ExROOMie and I have a plan.”

Send them the following message:

Dear friends,
Allow me to speak frankly.  I don’t want to hang with Nightmare Ex-Roommate (NER) and I certainly don’t want to deal with her further should she move to _______.  I’ve hatched a plan that could free those of us who want no further contact with her, while leaving anyone interested free to pursue a relationship with her.  I will “accidentally” hit “reply to all” on the message we all received from NER and tell her that I’m not really feeling getting together as a group.  Then I’ll talk shit about all y’all.  So please send me the shit you want me to talk about you.  Be creative.  In summary, I will be pretending to send an accidental reply all. 

Then if one of you would be so kind as to volunteer to reply all and out me for talking shit about NER, I would be ever so grateful.  Again, be creative or I’ll happily make suggestions. 

If your feelings are easily hurt and you’d prefer I didn’t include any smack talk about you, I completely understand and will accomodate your needs.  The whole idea is that she’ll think the group dynamic would be such a trainwreck that she will never want to see us all under one roof ever again.

Love,

Anon

Then sit back and wait for the fireworks from your friends. This is hardly a tactful approach, but when ignoring doesn’t work and the person really isn’t worth your time or bother, sometimes you’ve just got to hit the big red button.

In tact,

Rhoda

Comments (View)
blog comments powered by Disqus