'[I] got a $3 gift card to Sonic': 20+ Partiers who attended the worst soirées ever

Author image for Remy Millisky
Remy Millisky • Writer and Editor
Aug 28, 2023 11:00 AM EDT

Great parties are a dime a dozen, but a party that goes completely off the rails will be talked about forever. 

U/Swansatron had an intriguing query for the r/AskReddit community: "Reddit, what was the worst party you ever attended?" Every answer was a little different — some people shared the funniest things that ever happened, while others revealed they threw parties that hardly anyone attended. 

One party in particular that was particularly fraught was one guy who had just about the worst 18th birthday imaginable. That OP writes that their mom took them out to eat, but after the meal, she left without paying, leaving the OP with a big bill. Then, OP got home to find all of their belongings had been thrown into trash bags. That's right — they got kicked out of their own house on their birthday, just because they were legally an adult now. The mom just apparently decided, it's time to make her son, who was 17 yesterday, become suddenly homeless, for no reason! What in the world was OP's mother thinking? I hope that person has had many better parties than that by now — and Mom's not invited. 

Next up, this guy had an issue with his car, and an employee found a cheap fix for him, but this guy threw a fit instead of accepting it. 

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  • 01
    Purple - 'Office Christmas party... the budget was cut to $50 and everyone was told to bring their own food'
    via No Revisions on Unsplash
  • 02
    Font - Reddit, what was the worst party you ever attended? Was it yours? Someone elses? Mine was two Christmases ago. (few days before, for the party) All my friends said they'd be there. No one showed up, I sat alone for a while and kind of cried. I had thought I made friends, finally, but not one person showed, or even said they weren't going to show up. Eventually my brother and his friends dragged me out of there and we had a great time, all dressed in cheesy sweaters, having a good time and
    via u/Swansatron
  • 03
    Font - j4p4n Hmm... maybe this was my wost "party": I was working at a cpy company a long time ago in December, and we found out suddenly that our whole division was getting laid off like literally days before it happened. So most of us knew it was happening a day before the Year End party which would be our last working day before holidays and then we wouldn't be coming back. So we are all bummed... so then our manager comes in with a Christmas cake. He
    via u/j4p4n
  • 04
    Font - was going to be laid off too. And he says 'so at least we should have a cake to celebrate the season?' So we all kind of agreed; with broken spirits. But he didn't have plates or spoons or knives or even napkins. So we all literally just had to scoop out a bit of cake with our hands, and just eat it. All the while, a cloud of sadness hanging over us. Was quite depressing.
    via u/j4p4n
  • 05
    Font - milphey Office Christmas party where we were sent a stern letter saying if we dared to not stay an extra hour to make up for the time we spent at the party or didn't use PTO we would be at risk for being fired.. Oh ya, then the budget was cut to $50 and everyone was told to bring their own food... Yay company morale!
    via u/milphey
  • 06
    Font - Burning Monkey Second worst party: My own 18th birthday. My mother thought it would be funny to have everyone dine and dash, sticking me with the bill when I went to the bathroom. Then when I got home, the locks had been changed and all my personal stuff had been bagged up in garbage bags and thrown out across the street. That was really awesome. The joke was that since I was an adult I could pay my own way in the world from now on.
    via u/Burning_Monkey
  • 07
    Font - blackdragon8577 I had a friend from high school invite me and three other friends over for what he described as a "party". We thought that it might be a small gamer party with some nerdy board games or something as there were only the three of us plus him and his wife. His wife then proceeds to start an hour and a half presentation about Arbon and tries to sell female beauty products to a group of males between the ages of 19 and 22. I was astounded. TL;DR - Friend invited a group of male
    via u/blackdragon8577
  • 08
    Font - BinderStapleTape It wasn't THAT bad of a party or anything, I think it was like my 8th or 9th birthday party. My mom tried her very best to organize a fun, clean, safe party... So one of the games we played was that we had to peel and eat 2 clementines the fastest. Then she hung a clementine (peeled) on a string and the person that could take the biggest bite (no hands) won. Then we ate clementines. :( we were pretty poor.
    via u/BinderStapleTape
  • 09
    Font - For prom I asked a chick I'd never spoken to but had a huge crush on. After I had asked her out and walked ten feet away my friends gave me a loud cheer complete with multiple high fives and huzzahs. It was horrible. The next few weeks leading up to prom were also terrible. I tried to talk to her between classes but it just wasn't happening. Prom went terribly. My parents made me spend way too much on photos. I literally have a year book full of them, at least I look fantastic. She said s
    via r/AskReddit
  • 10
    Font - but she also apparently didn't want to talk so we spent the entire evening outside, cold and in silence watching other people dance. After that we went to an after party that neither of us were sure we were invited to. She didn't want to drink and had just given up smoking since her lungs were s so we sat and caught stray ping pong balls while straining at making idle chit chat. Then her ex boyfriend showed up and she decided she needed to go. She drove me since I didn't have my license.
    via r/AskReddit
  • 11
    Font - The whole ordeal was very painful but it helped me realize I need to get to know people before deciding to like them instead of just staring at their a all semester. My prom date turned out to have no personality and the humor of a six year old. I'm AT LEAST on the level of a seven year old. Proud to say I found the girl of my dreams now
    via r/AskReddit
  • 12
    Font - nastybacon My 18th birthday party. Crazy ex had just about disassociated me from any of my remaining friends I had. Long story but they were so sick and tired of her bulls and me sticking up for her as I was blindly in love, they wanted no more to do with us. Yet then she decided to add salt to the wound by inviting them all round to my 18th birthday party at her place. She sorted out a load of food, cakes etc and music. But of course none of my now ex- friends were going to make any effo
    via u/nastybacon
  • 13
    Font - So as you can imagine my 18th birthday party was her telling me "See, you call them friends? They don't even come on your 18th birthday party just because they don't like me!" She later admitted and confirmed my suspicion that she fabricated the whole thing on purpose, in order to make me realise that I had no one in my life other than her, and as such was unable to leave her.
    via u/nastybacon
  • 14
    Font - [deleted] Grade 5. Nerdiest kid in class sent out invitations to almost everyone in our grade. His mom had planned a huge pizza party, and had strung streamers and decorations everywhere, and we were going to go to Laser Tag after. I was the first one to show up, so we ate some gummy worms and watched Digimon while we waited for everyone else. Anyway, long story short, no one else came. She made us wait a couple hours before just driving us to Burger King and taking us home to play Ninten
    via u/deleted
  • 15
    Font - So, all in all it was actually a pretty awesome party because, you know, Burger King and Digimon and Nintendo. I even got to take home three treat bags after the fact, and probably would have taken more but wanted to look polite and not like a candy-addicted diabetic-in-training, you know? I would later hear from one of my other friends and a group of kids we were hanging out with that most kids had thrown out their invites or hidden them so their parents wouldn't force him to go hang out
    via u/deleted
  • 16
    Font - Moral of the story: kids are not adorable bundles of innocence. ing d Kids are fing
    via u/deleted
  • 17
    Font - [deleted] I went to the worst birthday party ever, once. Three people were sitting silently in various corners reading comics and occasionally glaring at people, refusing to participate in any conversations. The guy whose birthday it was said he was very ill, and went to bed early ostensibly to sleep, but when someone went to check on him he was playing Fallout 3 instead, at HIS OWN PARTY.
    via u/deleted
  • 18
    Font - No-one drank any alc hol except me, and I ended up having to make conversation with someone I'd had a massive falling out with a few years ago. That conversation was at least tolerable until she started in with her old tricks of passive aggressiveness and then blatant insults, at which point I said f it and went home.
    via u/deleted
  • 19
    Font - zip_000 Every party. I think I'm a cooler - I have never been to any event where anyone has had more than a token good time. In college I'd hear about these awesome parties, and I'd sometimes go to parties with the same people who had awesome parties, and I never saw an awesome party. When I'm around, fun and exuberance disappear. Sorry everybody!
    via u/zip_000
  • 20
    Font - [deleted] Co worker dragged me to a "Tweet-up". Imagine a party where no one talked to each other face to face, but talked to the person sitting right next to them using Twitter on their phones. Dafuq? That's taking social media to a whole new level of fail.
    via u/deleted
  • 21
    Font - aghrivaine I used to work for a big company - a very large and roundly hated cable provider. They were incredibly cheap, and pinched pennies in every way imaginable. One year they celebrated the anniversary of their founding with a mandatory company picnic. If we didn't attend, we'd be written up. No time off granted, so it came out of our PTO. So on a dismal Friday afternoon, we bundled off to the "big party."
    via u/aghrivaine
  • 22
    Font - Which our al the king of a bosses, he made the UK "Office" seem like the US "Office" - had scheduled for a park. Lo and behold, that park was directly across from his house. And this "park" boss - was a patch of grass next to a huge highway overpass. It started raining, but the "party" was not rescheduled, we were all told to attend. It was held under the overpass, with all the bums in their tent city. Who, by the way, ate better than us because we were each allotted either one burger or
    via u/aghrivaine
  • 23
    Font - The "highlight" of the "party" was a raffle drawing for what we'd been told were going to be really great prizes. This at least wasn't too improbable, since vendors from big companies would send us extravagant gifts to try and persuade us to buy their stuff. It turned out that the big prize was, in fact, pretty cool - an R/C car that was one of the ones that was like, gas-powered and pretty expensive and all that jazz. Everything else were little grab-bags full of company branded tchotchk
    via u/aghrivaine
  • 24
    Font - Naturally the as boss drew his own number - total coincidence, he promised! - for the big prize, which he took. There were exactly enough grab-bags for everyone there, except one. Naturally I was the only person who didn't get one. Mind you, I didn't care to have a company-branded t- shirt, but it was the ing parsimonious, cheap-a attitude that went with it that ped me off. That, and the a boss walking over, pinting and laughing at me whole- heartedly and brushing tears from his eyes, say
    via u/aghrivaine
  • 25
    Font - I seriously exercised some willpower, and just didn't say anything, and made to leave. He yelled after me, "You haven't been dismissed yet, you have to stay until 5!" And then pointed and laughed at me some more. Yeah, that was the worst party I ever went to.
    via u/aghrivaine
  • 26
    Font - therealabefrohman. I went to a depressing grad party recently. It was just my friend sitting in her garage with her grandparents. And me. This was an hour into the party, and no one showed up the hour I was there.
    via u/therealabefrohman
  • 27
    Font - [deleted] just went to the worst wedding, here are some of the highlights: • flowers falling down during the wedding, they had to break out duct tape during the ceremony to put them back up. • bride shows up 45 mins later to her own ceremony • no carpet down the aisle, so they roll out a giant sheet of cloth, more duct tape to keep it down. this is after all the guests were seated.
    via u/deleted
  • 28
    Font - • limited amounts of food during the cocktail hour, once it's gone, they didnt refill. so bye bye shrimp salad. • no meat option for dinner • priest said during ceremony something along the lines of doesnt matter if it's your 1st, 2nd, or 3rd try at it.... it was her 2nd wedding. • terrible dj/band. didnt play one good song. • told the father of the bride they didnt have the song he wanted to dance with his daughter to.
    via u/deleted
  • 29
    Font - the whole thing was just really poor planning. there is more but you really have to know the crowd to understand.
    via u/deleted
  • 30
    Font - [deleted] Me and a few of my buddies in college got invited to a party by this friend of ours, who was an upstanding guy so we thought "what the h who not?" Turns out the whole party is packed full of Koreans and myself and my two friends were the only white people to exist there. The music was Korean, the food was Korean takeout, and I might have heard two people speaking English the whole night; keep in mind, they were asking me to move so they could get to the keg. I guess it was a goo
    via u/deleted
  • 31
    Font - tejones Went to a girl's sleepover birthday party in grade school. Offenses include (but are not limited to) • an angry japanese mother who wanted silence from 10 kids • knock off brand candy • a group trip to the girl's grandmother's nursing home in the morning
    via u/tejones
  • 32
    Font - Burning Monkey When I was in college a pretty attractive girl in one of my classes asked me to a party. Turns out it was a "Bring the ugliest guy" themed party. In her short sightedness, she forgot that I was the curve setter in the class and that her source of notes and class details, was indirectly me. She failed a required class and that threw her off a year. :D WHO IS LAUGHING NOW, W
    via u/Burning_Monkey
  • 33
    Font - [deleted] In high school. The awkward kid threw a party and invited everyone in our class. Every. Single. Person. The party was at his home, which was by no means big enough to fit our entire class, but it went ahead. About 15 people showed up. The guy who was having the party was busy S ing his pants because he invited girls (we were juniors at the time. He lived a sheltered life, I guess.), while everyone else was playing some game with dice to break the ice. Eventually he had a wii box
    via u/deleted
  • 34
    Font - As the night was winding down I accidentally pushed a friend into his stairwell and broke one of the supporting beam things. Then when everyone was leaving, we each got to take an ornament from his Christmas tree. I don't know.
    via u/deleted

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teens awkward moments birthday birthday party teenagers cringe Awkward Party party hard party time partying worst socially awkward cringeworthy
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