The straw
Our gaming group had 9 members: Jonathan, myself, Laura, Ramón, Jennifer, Richard, Tony, John, and Tennis (it's an alias). Laura works most Saturdays and so her attendance is rare. Besides myself, Jennifer, Ramón, Tony, and John are also very regular in their attendance. Richard and Tennis have frequent but predictable schedule conflicts. Jonathan has been in the group longer than any of the rest of us, but his attendance has been kind of spotty for a long time. Worse, we've had trouble getting him to let us know whether he'd be coming or not, and even then, he'd cancelled on us at the last minute too often. We obviously weren't a priority to him anymore. Every week, we broadcast a request for each player to say by Thursday night whether he or she will attend on Saturday. This is to let the GM know how many and which characters will be "in play" on Saturday, and for the host to have an idea of how many soft drinks should be in the refrigerator. Jonathan did not reply this past week. It was the straw that broke the camel's back. He was notified that he was out of the group on Friday. He took it well. I think he suspected it was coming but didn't want to be the one to quit.