So I’ve been a member of www.meetup.com for years now & I’ve been to a few (not a lot) of meetups on various different topics in various different cities – both business & social.
Panama didn’t have any meetups, so I just put myself on notice to be notified when a new meetup for Panama is created.
Well this week I was notified that this meetup was created – http://www.meetup.com/PTY-Friends-Panama
I was excited, especially because it was about food (I’m a foodie) LOL
So I join & right away there’s problems.
The organizer asked me some questions in an e-mail. They were standard when joining, but after I spent time answering them, I got no response back.
Then a few days later in their message discussion area I wrote saying I never received a response & I didn’t know what was going on. Part of the rush was they were having a meetup this Saturday (today) & I needed to decide if I was going or not. They were hiding the location which I found to be VERY suspicious as usually the location is mentioned right off the bat so one can decide if they want to go. I didn’t want to go to a restaurant I didn’t like, so I need to know this information & I questioned why this was being hidden.
Other problems I noticed were:
- The picture on their group was very strange. It was a terrible picture of an outline of several people in black. I don’t know how to describe it other than in those movies where you see outlines of images all standing around & there’s no facial features & they are black & all solid? That’s what it was.
- Then I kept trying to see the pic of the organizer which is ALWAYS in every group I belong to.This person didn’t upload a pic of themselves or if they did, it was such a poor picture, I couldn’t make it out at all. It was a thumbnail at best & I started to question why there were so many problems with these pictures. I’ve never seen such a thing before.
Also now that I think about it, the person who started this group hid their name. That is VERY suspicious to me. I’ve NEVER been in a meetup group where the organizer’s name is kept secret. In fact I’m thinking of notifying Meetup to see what their policy is on this.
- There appeared to be ONLY one person in the group. I thought this was because they were so new, but then I didn’t know if it was just because I couldn’t see the other members or what was going on.I’ve NEVER not been able to see other members. That’s important in deciding whether you want to go to a meetup in the first place.
I was willing to ignore the picture issues, but then when I posted the message, that was also not showing up, so I didn’t know if they were blocking my message or it was a Firefox issue or what was going on. All I know is that I contacted them twice & they ignored me twice. I have a problem with people who are passive aggressive & ignore me.
Then I received another notice in my inbox about the meetup & I thought it was for today’s meetup, but then I looked more closely & I had to “assume” it was for their next meetup in Costa del Este, Panama. I went onto the group & then saw that they had closed the first meetup (if there even was one) & they ONLY had one member who was going. I didn’t know if they were keeping the number of people to one or two (seemed strange) or people just weren’t signing up to go.
Every day I was wasting time trying to figure out what was going on.
Then I saw someone message them asking how to get there & I wrote back saying I wasn’t trusting this meetup group anymore because of all that happened with the pics, no responses from the organizer, etc.
The next thing I knew, they deleted me from the group. That’s NEVER happened to me before.
I wrote the organizer & said “wow, you sure act like a Panamanian.” What I mean by that is this… Panamanians are known for ignoring problems. A lot of them aren’t very smart & have no sense of logic & they act a lot like little children (not all of them). Ignoring a problem instead of trying to solve it is acting like a little child & this is what this UNKNOWN Panama Meetup organizer did. He decided NOT to communicate with me twice & without discussion or warning, just removed me from the group.
As we always say…
Drama in Panama.
Michelle