We added a 5th player, whom we all (our group) know, to our every other Sunday game. I let the DM know my concerns when he told us about adding the 5th. Because of his work schedule, the 5th player only gets 2 Sundays a month off. It has been a few months with #5 now and the issues are starting to appear already. We have had to skip games because he gets into a situation with the character/party and then we wrap up that day, only to have him miss the next game, or "forget" that we had a game (which happens to coincide with sportsball season starting).
The crappy thing, really, is that we need 4 of 5 people to play now, instead of 3 out of 4. So we have played only 3 games in three months when we normally would have played 6. This sucks in my opinion. I may be selfish, but with a family, I have to plan out this shit way in advance and this guy is really grinding on my attitude. If it wasn't such a kick-ass game with a phenomenal DM, I would have found something else long ago.
So, I know this is not isolated to me. How have you dealt with it. Was there ever a way you came up with a solution to this in the past? The asshole part of me really wants to push to bounce this guy, but he is a friend and I want to instead take everyone to coffee and have adult conversation about it. The DM and I both have wife/2 kids each so we know how important time is, the other dudes are all 30 somethings and single.