Man Asks If He's Wrong For Being 10 Minutes Late For Picking His Wife Up From The Airport — 'I Did Not Miss Her'
He was confused about why his wife was mad when he showed up late.
Olena Yakobchuk and Roman Samborskyi / Shutterstock A husband has sparked a debate on whether or not he was in the wrong after showing up late to pick up his wife from the airport.
Posting to the subreddit "r/AmItheA--hole" (AITA) — a forum where users try to figure out if they were wrong or not in an argument that has been bothering them — he explained that his wife had been flying home after being away and asked if he would pick her up.
The man admits he showed up 10 minutes late to pick up his wife from the airport.
In his Reddit post, he revealed that his wife had been flying into one of the most populated airports in their area. Her flight was set to land somewhere around 8:50 p.m., so he told her he would be there to pick her up at 9 p.m.
"At about 8:05 pm, she apparently started calling my phone but unfortunately I didn’t see [and] hear the calls until 8:15 pm. This is because, like her, I keep my iPhone with the little 'silent' switch on at all times so that it just vibrates," he wrote.
Since he had been gaming with his headset on, he was unable to hear his phone vibrating and hadn't thought to check his phone as he didn't think his wife would be calling him since she was on her flight. When he finally glanced down at his phone, he saw his wife calling him.
When he picked up, she told him that her flight had landed early, and told him to leave now to go and pick her up. Agreeing that he would leave now, he proceeded to hang up the phone and get back on his gaming headset to finish with his friends. He ended up leaving 10 minutes later.
"I drove to the airport and there was a ton of traffic and I didn’t pull up to where [she] and her friend were waiting until about 9:05," he admitted. "As fate would have it, that was pretty much the original time we had planned on picking her up."
His wife was immediately angered at him for showing up late to pick her up.
As soon as he pulled up to the airport and found his wife and her friend waiting, she argued that they still had to take her friend home, though he pointed out that she didn't live that far from them and it wouldn't be too out of the way.
Photo: Olena Yakobchuk / Shutterstock
"Everything was fine until after we dropped the friend off. Then, my wife showed me how upset she was that I 'made her wait an extra 10 minutes,' and that there was a 'huge difference between waiting 30 minutes and waiting 40 minutes.'"
At first, he laughed off his wife's annoyance but felt irate himself, thinking to himself that he drove out of his way to an incredibly crowded airport to not only pick up his wife, but her friend as well. He and his wife began to argue but eventually decided to just agree to disagree.
"I feel like this isn’t an 'apology-worthy' event. You can’t just land almost an hour early and expect your driver to drop EVERYTHING they’re doing and come pick you up immediately, right?" he questioned.
Some Reddit users agreed that he was in the wrong for not going to pick up his wife when she told him her flight landed early.
"Picking her up at the airport is you doing her a huge favor? What a chivalrous husband you are," one Reddit user wrote. "She told you her plane landed early, but rather than leave early you played an online video game? That's super important. Good grief."
Another user added, "Your wife isn't really mad that you were 10 minutes late, she's mad that you prioritized your game over her. And maybe also that her friend witnessed it."
"While she should appreciate the favor of you picking her up, it's kind of on par with someone making you dinner but burning the crap out of it... thanks for the thought, but the execution's a bit hard to swallow," someone else said.
The husband responded to those who found him in the wrong for not rushing to pick her up because, as some users believed, it means he didn't miss her. "We’re adults in our 30’s and we’ve been together for almost a decade," he wrote, explaining that one night away is nothing in the grand scheme of things.
However, some other people didn't see the big deal with him being 10 minutes late.
"So most people here would pay to park at the airport just to pick someone up? You show up, they get in the car and you leave. I've been picked up loads and people don't show up early and wait around," a fourth user pointed out.
Another commenter agreed, writing, "Doesn’t matter if it's [a] video game, [watching] TV, or eating. 10 minutes isn't really that big a deal. [The] flight landed earlier than expected so you were already doing something else."
"If you were supposed to get her in 30 minutes and it was 2 hours that [is] a massive problem."
Nia Tipton is a Brooklyn-based entertainment, news, and lifestyle writer whose work delves into modern-day issues and experiences.