How do you deal with people letting you down socially?

I'm much the same as you, i have some flakey friends and by now i'm just used to them being unreliable and though i do like them and enjoy spending time with them i'm never particularly surprised if they pull out of whatever arrangements we'd made at the last minute. It can be annoying but i guess some people are just like that for whatever reason.

I have the same kinds of friends who occasionally back out at the last minute, to be honest after i while i find that i don't bother inviting them to things as i know that at some point they'll back out.

It bothers me a huge amount. I can't stand the thought of being entertainment for someone if they haven't got a better offer.

I had some flakey friends, but they got culled recently.

What Dooby said.

Grr.....this is a pet peeve of mine as I seem to have exceptionally flaky friends. An example, on Friday night H and I were supposed to be meeting a few friends at 9pm for drinks, then going to a club. Two of them texted just before 9 to say that they'd be late, and then when they arrived for drinks an hour late, announced that they actually weren't going to come to the club because they weren't in the mood. Another, we couldn't get hold of at all in the evening, and when I got hold of her the next day said she'd fallen asleep at home!

I think texting/mobiles in general have made flakiness much more common. It now seems to have become acceptable (to a lot of people, not me I might add!) to text ten minutes in advance to say you're running 45 minutes late for something, or a couple of hours in advance to say that you actually aren't going to come to something. I'm sure that before most people had mobiles and it was a choice between meeting when you said you would, or standing someone up, people were a lot more punctual. Really winds me up.

Completely agree. It just seems par for the course these days. Not wanting to sound whiter than white, but my H and I are really punctual and the amount of times we end up waiting for up to an hour for others to turn up at a pre-arranged meeting place is unbelievable. Could understand if it was an unavoidable delay, like traffic etc, but most of the time it's just 'oh we only just got out of bed' or 'so and so took ages to iron a shirt'.

I think you're right about texting. Before everyone had mobile phones you had to make the effort to call whoever and explain that you're able to come along or going to be late or whatever and because you couldn't call their mobile this call had to be made much earlier in order to catch the person.

Now it's far too easy to simply send a text at the absolute last minute and so avoid any awkwardness in talking to the person and having to explain yourself.

I agree but on the plus side of mobiles/texting - I had one friend who used to always be late for meeting up - usually would leave home a bit late and then get caught in traffic. I would wait and wait and wonder if she was coming, should I leave where I was to call her at home on a pay phone to find out if she'd left or should I stay in case she arrived ... it was so frustrating. At least now our flaky friends can text and say "stuck in traffic - be 10 mins late" and we can wander off to a shop or something to pass the time!

Very true bookgirl and seeing (despite our best efforts) me and H tend to run late that's defnitely one positive thing about texting!