Etiquette tragedy hits as RSVP lows reaches a new high

IF YOU have recently been invited to a cocktail function, business breakfast, friend’s birthday party or a wedding, chances are the invitation came with a clearly affixed RSVP stamp. 

RSVP is short for the French phrase “répondez s'il vous plait”, which translates to “respond if you please”.

It is a fair request. After all, the event organiser wants to provide enough food and drinks to please guests. 

And overlay the hospitality with today’s COVID-19 requirements, which means your host also has to consider the venue size and ensure guests can and will adhere to social distancing.

In recent times, though, you could be forgiven for thinking RSVP was a secret code that allowed those invited to unleash a level of rudeness to leave even the most hardened event organiser marinating in misery.

Ask 50 people to an end-of-year bash at your place and only about half will accept or decline – everyone else will remain stubbornly mute, regardless of their intention to turn up or stay away.

Wishfully, you think that sending out a friendly reminder will deliver a deluge of RSVPs flooding into your inbox.

If only that was true – and if only it meant the end of this relatively new etiquette tragedy.  

RSVP rudeness has reached giddying new heights across our working and personal lives, with a standard non-response morphing into a whole raft of invitation-related and ill-mannered behaviours.  

Take the client who tells you they will be coming to your presentation. Yet even as your talk grinds to an end, they have not surfaced. 

Known in the industry as “no-shows” or, less flatteringly, “flakes”, these people brim with enthusiasm when accepting an invite but always fail to front.

“No shows” are not confined to work functions, birthday parties and weddings.  

Think of the thousands of restaurant diners who make bookings for two, three or four and then fail to show. Restaurant owners increasingly have knives out for those wannabe customers, especially during these times of tough trading conditions on top of space limits and restricted seating.  

And how many times have you booked a day of annual leave to meet with a tradie to get a quote for a minor job – only for the tradie to flake out on you.

It is not just those who remain silent and no-shows who raise our eyebrows and take rudeness to new levels. 

There is also the friend who politely responds with an RSVP for one before rudely bringing along his brother, brother’s partner and brother’s partner’s sister to complete derail your careful planning.

Worse still are the “surprise guests” who are invited and fail to RSVP but turn up anyway.

And let’s not forget the serial canceller – the person who is always first to RSVP but develops a reputation for regularly reversing their “yes” for a “no” only hours or even minutes before an event.   It leaves hosts asking themselves if a better offer appeared at the last minute or if their invited guest simply could not be bothered on the day.  

Experts weighing in on our declining RSVP standards have mixed views on the reasons for this ridiculous spike in rudeness.  

Some believe that our failure to RSVP might be because many invitations now arrive via email or social media and somehow feel “less real” than a cardboard invitation delivered via the postal service.  

Others argue that it appears to have become quite acceptable to ignore an invitation if we think a better offer might turn up. We delay our RSVP and then completely forget to follow up with a “yay” or “nay”. 

There is also a train of thought that suggests some of us have failed to learn the art of saying “no”. 

We really do not want to go to an event, celebration or function because it is not “our thing”. Rather than saying no – and causing upset or offence to the host – we choose to remain silent in the hope we will be forgotten about.

A variation on the same theme is the “double booker”, or those among us who have already committed to an event when we receive an invitation for another. Fearing that turning down a second invitation might mean they will never be asked again, they end up “double-booking” and saying yes to both events knowing full well they will be a no-show at one of them.

People will always have legitimate reasons for failing to RSVP or being a no show.

But have we become so numb to the meaning of RSVP that we have exchanged this once basic courtesy for gross impertinence?  

Those who have become increasingly blasé about responding to an invitation in a timely manner should be warned – it will end up reflecting on you personally and professionally, especially if you are a serial offender.    

The fix is simple. 

Armed with a reinvigorated RSVP respect, respond to an invitation at the first available opportunity.

If you commit to going, make sure you go. And if you say you won’t be attending, simply don’t.