@tsar God yes.
There was a GM who would stand me up and then reschedule the next week. Stand me up. Reschedule. Ad nauseum. Each time involved me waiting about for hours because, well, people are late sometimes. Things happen.
Having survived some serious abuse that was smothered in gaslighting, I take notes when people appear to be trying to tell me my memory is wrong. And I like logs. So, I was easily able to calculate that on average, GM would stand me up six times per time they actually showed. If snarling and giving immediate but unscheduled attention when I eventually developed a ‘tone’ in requesting to reschedule again counts as keeping an appointment.
I was the one accused of not understanding that other people have lives, denounced as a jobless basement-dweller who does nothing but MU, and castigated because expecting somebody with ADHD to keep an appointment is ableist bigotry.
Sometimes you’re going to miss scheduled MU events. Sometimes you’re gonna be late. Things happen, and MU events are low-priority in the scheme of things. But for fuck’s sake, don’t make a habit of it, and apologise when it happens. And if the reason was that you didn’t feel like it, LIE. And if you don’t feel like showing up for a scheduled thing you agreed to be there for, but do feel like RPing snugglebunnies with your bestie, it’s probably tough fucking luck. Maybe you can beg off, but at least show some fucking humility about it. The expectation that people will be just fine with it if you show up late for scheduled RP and then say, “Naw, I’m not going to do that tonight,” and go to RP playing dabo at Quark’s is damned overbearing.
Edited to add: @Aria, really when it’s not a chronic issue I find these kinds of things vaguely funny, in a ‘whaddaya gonna do?’ kind of way. Quite recently I scheduled an event where I weighted a certain player’s convenience above others because that player almost never gets to attend group stuff. So of course everybody showed up but that player. Who apologised later and we all shook our fists at life.
Edited again for typos.