Friends Got into a Huge Argument After Not Accommodating Vegan at Their Dinner Party

You might want to take a deep breath before you read this story from Reddit's "Am I the A-hole?" because it's kind of unbelievable. The poster explains that he and his wife have been throwing dinner parties a few times a year "for as long as we've lived in our current city." It sounds really nice! They "go all out and cook elaborate multi-course meals," so understandably, they only invite a few close friends.

It's become an awesome tradition in their social circle and it sounds absolutely amazing if I'm being honest. I would want to be in their circle of friends if I didn't know how this story progressed. But I do, so...

The poster explains that their friend James started dating Sarah about a year and a half ago. When they started inviting Sarah to their dinner parties, they were made aware that Sarah was vegan. Instead of saying, "Cool! We'll make sure to have at least one dish she can eat at our next party because we are reasonable and normal human beings," they "thanked James for letting us know and said she was more than welcome to bring her own food so she would have something to eat."

Reader, my jaw dropped. You are hosting a dinner party for your friends. If your friend was gluten-free or had a peanut allergy, you wouldn't include those ingredients in at least some of the multiple courses of food you served. You don't have to create an entirely vegan feast just for Sarah, but she is a guest at your dinner party! Don't make her bring her own food, you heathen!

But evidently, James didn't think that request was weird, or he was too taken aback to say anything, so he agreed, and they've been attending the dinner parties for a year without saying a word. During the most recent party, though, "Sarah was very quiet and looked like she was about to cry." 

She dodged questions asking if she was OK, but later, James took them aside and told them Sarah is feeling hurt because they never provide any food she can eat at their dinners and it was starting to feel like they were "deliberately excluding her." I would think that, too! If I was Sarah, maybe I'd understand if there weren't any dishes for me to eat at the very first dinner party I attended. Maybe the menu was already set, and I wouldn't want to cause trouble. Fine. 

But it's been a year of these parties, and they haven't — even accidentally — provided one vegan dish she could eat? No side salad or veggies that weren't slathered in butter? Who are these monsters? I am so fired up about this. 

Of course it would seem like they were deliberately leaving her out! James stood up for Sarah and said he thought the hosts were being "rude and inconsiderate," which they were! But the poster got really mad about that, and they got into a huge argument. Now, his wife feels appropriately terrible that Sarah was upset and apologized to her and James, but her husband, the guy who posted this story looking for validation, doesn't believe he did anything wrong. 

"I like Sarah very much as a person and I don't have anything against her dietary choices," he wrote, "but I don't believe it's fair to expect us to change our entire menu or make an entire separate meal for one person." No! One! Is! Asking! Him! To! Do! That! Just offer one dish that's vegan-friendly. Or put aside some Brussels sprouts before you pour bacon all over them. How hard is it to see that you should do this nice thing for your friend when you are already doing a nice thing for your friends by cooking for them in the first place? You're halfway to Nicetown! Go the rest of the way!

Luckily, everyone else agreed that these people are lunatics for not making an effort to accommodate Sarah. "I could actually understand OP's side for maybe the first dinner if they were caught a little off-guard by being told she's vegan," one commenter agreed. "But to exclude her for over a f---ing year without making a single vegan-friendly dish is absolutely huge a--hole territory."

Others in the comments were just as baffled as I am that they didn't even accidentally cook a vegan-friendly dish. Lots of dishes that non-vegan people cook and eat regularly are vegan just by default, so I totally understand how Sarah felt like, by not cooking any vegan food, they were malicious. What they have been doing is patently absurd.

Now I'm like... do these people not understand what it means to be vegan? Do they think they have to do something special to the food they're cooking to make it vegan? They do know that you can roast vegetables in olive oil and lots of spices and garlic and that's still vegan, right? You can make a salad with tons of veggies and nuts and fruits and make a delicious vinaigrette (and maybe put the cheese on the side) and that's vegan, too. It's not hard to make something vegan! 

Another commenter brought up that if they didn't want to accommodate her, they could have just not invited her. Yeah, that would be horrible, too, but it might be preferable to "inviting her to your house so that she can watch you eat." That poor girl. I want James and Sarah to dump these crazies and go live their vegan-friendly lives with people who aren't total barbarians!