Did you ever want to leave a friend’s party but didn’t know how to excuse yourself? a lot of people are straight up about it. “I have to go, bye!” And then there are those that come up with all sorts of excuses to leave the party. Some may sound acceptable, and some are just too awkward. In this article, people share the best excuses they usually use to leave an event.
[Source can be found at the end of the article]
“My home alarm was triggered and I need to go back to make sure everything is okay.”
Never used this myself since I don’t own a home or a security system, but I heard someone use this once and thought about how great an excuse it was. If they ask later you can say it was a false alarm and if anything they will be relieved that everything is okay instead of mad that you left.
-eDgAR-
“I just got a call that I’m a donor match from the bone marrow registry. I have to go save a life!
hobbes_shot_first
Unobtrusively pressing the button on my volunteer ambulance service pager that replays the last saved page. Sometimes I’ve gotten out of something with “head-on collision between semi and small car,” and sometimes with “elderly woman that is constipated.”
Either way, no one dares to say, “But you can’t go. You’ve just got to stay.
kevlar6
My husband has diabetes so when I give him the signal he says “I have to go home and take my insulin.
biscuit272
Always have a plan before you go. Preface the acceptance with, “Well, I can’t stay because xyz, but I’ll come by for a while.” Then, if you’re having fun and want to stay, you can act like you worked something out for xyz and now you can stay.
GalacticHeimat
I, like many others suffering with the condition, can sense a migraine coming on minutes before it hits. If I can get to my medicine and darkness within the next few minutes, I’m solid. So I occasionally say I need to go RIGHT NOW or I will have a debilitating migraine and throw up everywhere. It cuts out the long, drawn out goodbyes and people don’t argue.
BoopsForTheSoul
A friend of mine actually uses the “I’d love to stay and chat, but I’ve got ice cubes in the freezer.
Charrawazt
I like “We’d love to stay but we really don’t feel like being here anymore.”
It doesn’t work all the time of course but when it does the shocked looks you’re given are worth it.
HimOnEarth
I always throw my parents under the bus and they’re cool with it, I just say “My mom wants me home now. No, I don’t know why, she’s being super unreasonable. Yeah I wish I could stay too.
jon_snowbender
I say an alert came in I have to look at.
One of the few plusses of being a IT security analyst. I can just look at my phone and don’t have to provide details because I “signed a confidentiality agreement” and can only work on the alert in an isolated place.
If the person I flaked on tries to follow up in 30 minutes or so, I can say that it’s snowballing into something else and I have to focus and do overtime, etc.
It helps to pepper in little comments throughout my visit ( well before the excuse) about how me hanging out with them is one of the few days I got off etc.
checkerboardvans
I don’t sleep a lot and I work third shift, so I’m tired like all the time (3 of 4 last events that have taken place at a friend’s house I’ve fallen asleep randomly at).
So I just tell people I’m tired and it’s a long bus ride home.
fxkmehxrder
I usually use a babysitting excuse as well for the most part, or if my child is with me I will use the excuse “it’s way past their bedtime.” (Tonight) My neighbor just goes on and on and on. He didn’t care about my fake dinner was burning on the stove either. But he offered me a 50 inch flat screen TV! So I just let him continue to talk even though it was 11pm and way past my bedtime.
Yes, I will go next door tomorrow to make sure he remembers tonight’s conversation about the free TV.
Kill3rKitty
“Going to the restroom, be right back!”
Or alternatively, “Going to get another drink, be right back!”
I never go back. One of my good friends started to catch on. I was pretty confused recently, when she hugged me and said goodbye the last time I said I had to pee. I really did just have to pee.
PrincessBabyMuffin
I get everyone’s attentions. State that, “I don’t know half of you half as well as I should like; and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve.” After the confused, awkward silence, I awkwardly state that “I uhh…. have things to do… I’ve put this off for far to long… I regret to announce this is the end… I’m going now…. I bid you all a very fond farewell. Goodbye.
Micotu
“Youll never guess. I just got a message from my landlord. Apparently my apartment flooded. Something with the sprinklers.
dexpie42
I have diarrhea. Really anything fecal. And I have a history of defecation issues. But I have no shame of pooping in strange places myself, but this is almost as ingrained a feat as arachnophobia or fear of heights in people. I play off this fear to excuse any and all actions of mine when I want to leave somewhere.
fart2swim124
I think Lyft/Uber have revolutionized this interaction. You call the Lyft on your phone, which nobody will notice, and then when it arrives and you say, “My Lyft is here”, nobody can really do anything about it.
iliketoast714
We call it a tumbleweed. You start by saying thanks/bye to the host then you can wave bye to anyone in passing on the way out but don’t stop for anything!
I’ve heard it called a stealth exit too.
PossumMagic
My favorite is a Better Off Dead line.
“My grandmother dropped acid and she freaked out, and then hijacked a school bus full of penguins. So it’s kind of a family crisis.”
I usually use it on friends who get my humor and know I’m just trying to make leaving not awkward.
Also I once said my then girlfriend had the runs, which she overheard. We didn’t stay together much longer after.
FirearmsKill
The one I’m using at the moment is “I have to give my cats injections every four hours and their next injection is due in 15 mins. They have something with a long name that I can’t pronounce but thank god it’s not contagious.” Obviously you can’t keep that up forever though.
exsentrick
My roommate in college invited some girls over to a “party” in our dorm room one time. It was really just a few dudes chilling and drinking some beers. When the girls finally showed up they came in and looked around and the one said: “I’ll be right back, I have to go tie my shoe” So all three of them walked out and my friend looks at us and says: “Bro, she was wearing sandals.
B3nAll3n
A few years ago I was at a miserable family gathering- a cousin was picking fights with everyone and I was super anxious. So I hid in the bathroom for like half an hour and heard my dad finally ask if anyone had seen me. He knocked on the door, and I opened it and said, “hey, I puked” with a big wink. He stared at me, said, “ohhhhh” and announced that I was sick. Me and my parents split and spent the rest of the night eating pizza and watching 30 Rock.
Spiralbones
“We’d love to stay but we have to feed our cat through a tube at 2 hour intervals”.
For reals, we had to make our excuses at a friend’s engagement party because my cat had pneumonia.
Mindless_mike
If it is someone weird at the door, say hey dude we need to go to the store before it closes. You don’t have to leave. Hopefully you didn’t get a stalker.
If you’re at a party, hey dude I have to finish typing that report. Then apologize.
With friends at lunch, basically anything. Stop being a little bitch and just say you gotta go.
I understand, everyone is trying to be creative.
But the best excuse is to simply state you have to go. Make sure you have an excuse, meeting, kids, food shopping, diarrhea, whatever but y’all too obvious up in here.
Anonymous
In college my room mate used to be straight up addicted to World of Warcraft. His clan had raids twice a week. It didn’t matter what was going on, he wasn’t getting off that computer for four hours unless it was during one of their scheduled breaks. We’d have parties in the house and he wouldn’t leave his room.
One night we’re having stormy weather and the news says a tornado touched down near us. Everyone runs to the basement like we’re told to do. Except him. He just basically ignores us. Finally I hear what sounds like a freight train upstairs, so I run upstairs, see a sideways tree across the street, and yell at him “IT’S HERE GET DOWNSTAIRS!!”
He realizes he should go, so he types “gtg tornado” and just runs with me. Apparently the etiquette in this game is that you NEVER just abandon your clan during a raid, so they were all freaking out in surprise.
The power went out about 30 seconds later, so he was quitting whether he wanted to or not, but “gtg tornado” became his nickname.
Narren_C
My husband and I once told his friend (who was a guest in OUR home) that WE had to leave because my brothers car died and he needed to borrow our jumper cables. We finally got him and his date in their car, so we made a loop and came back home… to find them still there, in our driveway.
We pretended we forgot… something, got it and left again. We drove back by our house about 20 minutes later and they were still there. It was over an hour later when we finally got to go back home.
The guy seriously did NOT know how to take a hint.
sillystephie
This reminds me of my cousin, who is severely autistic. We were once at my aunt’s house for I think a birthday or something, and it was reaching his bedtime that his routine dictates he must keep to, and no one was making any moves to leave. So he just stood up, shook everyone’s hand, and announced “This has been lovely, but I’m very tired and I don’t want to talk to you any more. Goodnight!” Then just walked upstairs and went to bed…
IOwnAOnesie
I usually just say “I had a long day, and if I stay any longer my conversational skills will be reduced to yawns.” People get tired, that’s perfectly understandable.
On the other hand, when I’m somewhere I no longer want to be due to some unpleasant reason, I say “got to go, need to cut my toenails” or something equally unimportant.
naxcissique
My dad is a surgeon and from time to time he’ll text me asking to call him in 10 minutes. We then have this dialogue where he pretends to talk to a nurse that needs him to come to the hospital as soon as possible. I’m pretty sure a couple of people he knows have heard this fake dialogue more than once.
glutexo
“I’m so sorry, but my medication is going to wear off soon, and I need to be home when it does.”
(-I’m narcoleptic, and I tend to crash pretty hard once my meds wear off. But the crash is not exactly immediate and because no one really understands the disorder, This is almost always a sure-fire way to get out of nearly any social event. They’d just rather let me go, than deal with me sleeping on their couch or guest bed when the crash does inevitably come.)
KTills1776
(Source)