Sara was fed up. The New York City social worker, who declined to give her last name, had had countless dates cancel on her at the last minute. So, when a man she met on an app recently pulled out of their date an hour beforehand, she agreed to reschedule with one caveat: He would Venmo her a $50 deposit.
“I’m just done with my time and energy being wasted,” Sara told The Post. “In almost every other scenario, when someone books a time of their day dedicated to you, they have a no-show policy or security deposit.”
The man agreed to the terms and sent her the money. They met up for a drink on a Monday night date in Hell’s Kitchen, and he was fully engaged the entire time, paying for their cocktails and offering to buy them food to share.
Sara’s female friends cheered her brazen move, while male friends told her it was “nuts.” Still, she has no regrets. “I think it makes sense,” she said of the arrangement.
Dating in the digital age can take a toll — both emotionally and financially — and some city women have had enough. They’re asking men to pay them back for their time and energy when they cancel, cheat or commit other indiscretions.
“For me it’s a way to just be like, ‘You’re a d-bag, here’s the monetary value of my time you wasted,'” Martha Duke, 38, told The Post.
Duke said she’s sent around six Venmo requests — ranging from $1,500 to $3,000, depending on their financial situation — over the years to different men she’s dated. She listed infidelity, secret marriages and hiding having multiple sexual partners from her as some of the reasons for the charges.
Putting a monetary value on caddish conduct helps men to better understand the error of their ways, Duke said, adding that she puts the phrase “the d-bag tax” in all her Venmo requests.
“[New York] is the narcissist capital,” Duke, who works as a personal assistant, said. “They’re not going to understand, ‘What you did really hurt my feelings,’ because they don’t grasp feelings; they grasp money.”
Duke says the Venmo requests have been cathartic and she’s submitted them to men who offended her in various ways. One man had promised to help her with rent but required a not-too-subtle reminder. Another abandoned her on a weekend getaway in Atlantic City because he expected “more of her.” A third dude ghosted her and resurfaced a month later married to another woman.
“[When I ran into him again years later] he’s like, ‘But my divorce finalizes tomorrow, want to hang out?'” she recalled in disbelief.
About half the time, the suitors have paid up. Duke has been surprised at the success of the requests, but hypothesized that men they would rather pay than deal with the emotional consequences.
“If you’re dealing with narcissists, you’re never gonna get closure,” she said. “But I can get the mental image of them receiving [my Venmo request].”
Hazel Everett, 34, agreed, saying she sent a Venmo request to a man she’d been seeing for several months after he stopped communicating with her and sent her another woman’s nude photos.
“I just went on Venmo and I requested $100, and for the highlight I wrote for ‘wasting my time,'” she said.
Although initially surprised at her request, her former partner paid the money, stating her reasoning behind the charge being the significant time and effort into their relationship, which was not reciprocated.
As for Sara, she never went on a second date with the man who paid the deposit. But no matter, she came out ahead.
“I never heard from him again,” she said, “so I just kept the money.”