Have a flaky friend who doesn’t show up to scheduled activities on time? The refundable “social activity” deposit will fix your friendships!

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Background:

Frequently, a person planning an event (e.g. a party) will have a hard time pinning down the guests as to whether or not they are definitely planning to arrive.

This can be annoying for the host: it’s hard to plan an event without knowing how many people will show up!

Additionally, most people have at least one friend who is habitually late to any meetups (Fig. 1), which can be an aggravating experience.

Fig. 1: This person was going to meet a friend at a cafe at 11:45 AM. But it’s now half an hour later, and the friend has still not appeared!

Proposal:

This problem can be easily solved by adopting a system that is already in use by doctors and dentists: the refundable “no-show / late” fee. This is a very straightforward system: if a patient doesn’t show up within a “reasonable” amount of their scheduled time, they’re charged a late fee.

Adapting it to friend-related activities is simple: when a host invites people to a party (or other event), the invitees who confirm their attendance must also pay a (say) $100 refundable deposit to the host (Fig. 2). If they show up to the event within 29 minutes of the scheduled start time, they get their money back—otherwise, the host keeps it!

Fig. 2: The person who RSVP’d “yes” to the party (left) gives the host a deposit: in this case, the rarely-seen $99 bill.

Conclusion:

After this system is put in place, people will actually look forward to hanging out with friends who are unreliable and/or bad at scheduling (Fig. 3).

Fig. 3: The same situation as Figure 1, but this time, the punctually-arriving cafe guest is pleased that their friend didn’t arrive on time, since they just got $100 as a result! Jackpot!

PROS: Helps preserve friendships between punctual and non-punctual people!

CONS: Might incentivize financially-strapped party hosts to intentionally make it difficult to reach their party on time: such hosts might lay spike strips on the surrounding roads, fell trees to make walkways impassible, and release deadly snakes in the surrounding fields. This could have negative societal consequences.