A woman has divided TikTok after sharing a story about a recent business meeting gone wrong. Emily Joy Lemus (@emilyjoylemus), an actress, began by sharing how a screenwriter and author got in touch with her via Instagram for a business meeting. But there was one problem.
“In the past, this guy has responded to my Instagram story with, like, heart eyes and fire emojis and whatever,” she said. “So I was like, ‘I think he’s into me,’ but he prefaced it with like, ‘This is a business meeting and we’re talking about projects,’ and so, this was a business meeting.”
She said a woman directed her to the table where the man was sitting when she arrived at the restaurant. While things began well, the man started to cross the line, Lemus said. “It’s totally fine and normal, until, like, an hour into the conversation … maybe not even an hour, he starts being like, ‘So how’s your dating life?’ And I’m not interested in this guy at all. I’m like, ‘Oh, I’m really focused on my career right now. … And like, right after that, he’s like, … ‘I gotta go,’ and he starts standing up.”
Lemus said things then escalated when, as the man was leaving, the woman from earlier came to the table and said she was his girlfriend. Suspicious, she reportedly asked Lemus if she could see the Instagram messages between her boyfriend and the actress, to which Lemus obliged. Lemus said the girlfriend began screaming at some point during the conversation, and seeing the story responses from her boyfriend further upset the woman, whose screaming drew the attention of everyone in the restaurant.
@emilyjoylemus so yeah i don’t think i’ll be working with him #storytime ♬ original sound – Emily Joy Lemus
“I was like, ‘Stop. We’re done here,’” Lemus continued. “‘Like, you guys clearly need to work through something because why am I in the middle of your drama right now? This is not a date. Like, what’s going on?’ And so, finally, they agreed to leave, obviously. Like, she like storms off, and the entire restaurant again is looking at me.”
Some commenters were sympathetic about the encounter, with one saying, “I’m so sorry this happened to you, that’s bizarre [sic].” However, the vast majority were less forgiving. “All I’m hearing is the girlfriend had every right to be weirded out,” one viewer wrote. “You lost me at the ‘I think he’s into me’ then continued to meet,” another said, while a third posited, “the fact that you didn’t immediately side with the girlfriend is a red flag on your part.”
Lemus didn’t immediately respond to the Daily Dot’s request for comment via Instagram direct message.
While some found the situation “bizarre,” this is not the first time an awkward dinner story like this has been documented on social media. Back in November, a restaurant worker got more than she bargained for when she had to serve a man she had been seeing—and his wife. In a “storytime,” she recalled how she did everything she could to “make it as awkward as possible” for him, including complimenting the wife.
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