PHOENIX — One Ahwatukee man makes new friends every week after one day, he decided to post a lunch invite to his neighbors on Facebook.
Michael Glynn said he would go out on Fridays and eat alone thinking ''Well, this is ridiculous".
"Coming out of COVID I found myself, probably like lots of other people, just kind of forgot how to socialize and how to get out and talk to people and meet people," Glynn said.
Glynn said he wanted to change his situation and thought about posting a lunch invite to Philly's Sports Grill in a Facebook group called Ahwatukee 411.
"I put the post up to invite people to lunch about five weeks in a row and every time I got ready to send it, I chickened out," Glynn said. "I said, 'No' you know, because nobody likes to put themself out there and then get rejected."
However, Glynn eventually overcame hesitation and posted anyway.
Glynn said the lunch group started with four and now has more than two dozen people.
"I've learned that you know, there's lots of people out there who are no different than me that just kind of got out of the habit of socializing, and now they're, you know, happy to come out here and do this and talk," Glynn said.
Donna Jagielski is part of Ahwatukee 411 and said when she saw the post she knew she had to try it out.
"When I first saw it, the only thing that really occurred to me was, 'Wow, this is such a great idea. Why wasn't it thought of earlier?'," Jagielski said. "It really brings our community together, much more than just digitally online. I mean now we can actually connect faces to names."
Cheryl Graves said she saw the group growing through updates on Facebook and finally found time in her schedule to meet people in the group.
"This is just such a big little town and even though we have people all over the place, no one actually knows neighbors," Graves said. "Things have become so much worse with even working at home, and every meeting is on Zoom."
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