Theres a lot to unpack here, but really OP made a mistake by asking to go hiking. Thats a terrible first date idea and also isnt inherently date-y. Likely he was just missreading her kindness as flirting, but if he had asked her to dinner or coffee brunch it would've made his intentions more clear to her.
Not that it really matters because its fake and gay anyways.
Well, I read like a hundred times that going for a coffee is an incredibly boring date idea and doing some activity you both actually enjoy is much better.
For what it's worth, I hate the idea of a coffee / dinner date. Seems incredibly forced and like some kind of an interview. Though, I'm not dating and not interested in doing it, so I might be completely out of touch.
Coffee is a great first date if you met on a dating app. It's a public location where you can both meet in person for the first time and chat but neither of you is forced to stay if things aren't shaping up how you expected.
But if you already know each other then yeah, coffee isn't much of a date.
Even if you want to do something more interesting than coffee, find something better than "let's go together to a remote area where no one will hear you scream or find your body" or even just "you'll be stuck the whole afternoon with no way out if it turns out you don't like me."
If you want to do something like that, I would recommend a climbing gym or something like that instead. It's public and it's easy to leave, two things you should make sure to include in a first date.
In my opinion dating is basically an interview. Though for a first date i would choose some light activity so if conversation doesn't naturally come it wouldn't be awkward.
since we have only one part of this supposedly real situation:
4channers always loose and this one did as well, how dare this woman wanting an actual friend
and of course this weirdo assumes it was totally flirting
Some people just come across as flirty. It usually isn't deliberate and if you mistakenly interpret it as flirting that's fine. Just don't get all butthurt about it when it turns out they weren't flirting with you like OP and then it's no harm no foul.
Maybe she quit because his reaction to her having a boyfriend creeped her out. She didn’t want to be around someone who misinterpreted what were merely friendly gestures.
Comments here are ignoring we only have this guys extremely biased view of this situation and are saying "leading him on" was cruel again big assumption.
I don't get why anon believes he is being used. It was a miscommunication, sure. Did he spend money on her before this? Using him as a ride to go on a hike? Hikes being extremely cheap and only needing to pay parking, usually.
It depends. Generally speaking they're free. I was told by a ranger at the Great Smokey Mountains National Park that they don't enforce (or at least specifically weren't that day) parking passes and only give people courtesy notices to pay for parking. They were only ticketing people parking in places that weren't actual parking spots or blocking areas.
Generally speaking I think you can expect to pay about $5 on average, some places maybe more (like if it's a trail in a city, then parking is usually more costly). But in tons of places it's just totally free.
My point is that anon thinking he was being used was hilarious because it's extraordinarily cheap.
I don't necessarily agree she was leading him on. It was a miscommunication. It's an extremely common story if men misinterpreting women's behavior as pursuit when it is often just friendly. Even then, platonic flirting is a thing. If anon really intended for this to be a date, why did he at no point ask if she was single? We can sit here all day and debate whether the girl's "flirting" was appropriate or not and whether she should've said she had a boyfriend, but it goes both ways. What we do know is that, to anon, this was a date and that anon never asked if she was single at any point in the two weeks.
I'll never understand how difficult people make things by not being forthright and making things awkward:
"Is it okay if I bring my boyfriend?"
"...I think there's been a misunderstanding. I had asked you on a hike as a fun first date, I didn't realize you had a boyfriend. I'm going to bow out of this, but I can give you the hike info if you want to take him." And then you laugh about the misunderstanding the next work day, and keep things at work from then on. No reason for it to get bad. Flirting is still fun! Just leave it at that without expecting anything more.
The post ends with "so did I win?" Which is EXTREMELY similar to asking people if you're the asshole. Why do you find it surprising people are treating this like an r/aita post?
Welcome Anon to the confusing gameshow of "Is she flirting or is that just how she is with friends!" /s
I kinda want to know what Anon and his "female coworkers" thinks counts as flirting.
Simply being nice to someone and having fun talking to them isn't flirting, as much as some guys might like to think it is.
Now if she was a more touchy person, I can see how that'd be mistaken, as being touchy is also a common way of flirting.
Though find it odd that she waited until the very last minute to ask if her boyfriend could come.
And also, guessing "I'm no longer interested" is paraphrased, cause nobody on 4Chan is mature enough to not make things incredibly uncomfortable at work after this.
In what world do you think someone is a creep and then you agree on going on a hike of all things with them, an activity that is basically guaranteed to have you alone with them at some point?
Yeah, it could upset plans such as tickets, amounts of food brought along, seat reservations at restaurants,... so it is a bit rude to keep that to the last minute.
Hike sound like 1st date PC to anyone? I mean, it depends on the definition of hike but someone I barely know dragging me to an isolated place in the woods somewhere sounds like a legit way to end up being drug through the woods with a much higher probability than the typical coffee shop date.
Also, who doesn't have work-mances without deeper meaning? I always have beer after work bros and lunch/break dates with my coworkers but that has no meaning beyond. In fact, I've always had a strict rule of never shit in my own back yard. If I was so inclined as to date someone from work, I would not do so until after finding a new job.
Arguably, they know each other from work, so it's not like the guy could just bury her somewhere remote and act like nothing happened. If she tells other people about the date, police will surely come and ask him.
Sounds normal to me, but I think you're right that it depends on what they mean by "hike." Around here, a casual trail walk in an area that's likely to have other people around would not be beyond the pale... But like a back country slog where you park on the shoulder of a secondary highway 45 minutes out of town would.
Definitely sending mixed signals not mentioning her boyfriend and saying she has to do things alone, but not sure how that qualifies as "using". Hiking isn't really something people "use" others for, it's not like he would have been carring her the whole time. If she was getting him to do her job when he was talking to her then yeah, but this doesn't mention anything like that. She could very well have just wanted a friend to talk to at work and didn't know how to bring it up after a while...
If I had the time and patience, I’d offer a rebuttal green text as this one skips quite a bit of salient information. Feels over-edited. Wonder what anon did to her to make her instantly run away.
The most generous but still realistic interpretation I can come up with is that the girl is attractive, nice, and a little flirty with people. (I don't see anything wrong with platonic flirting.) Because of these three things, she has a known history of guys, perhaps in particular more desperate guys, thinking she is interested. Her and her boyfriend talk and the boyfriend points out that this may have happened again. So she tells anon about her boyfriend. Anon gets angry. She gets upset because she feels like she is incapable of making friendships with guys without them falling for her and because it's a pattern she leaves the job out of embarrassment.
That's being very generous and not believing anon is stretching the truth at all.