So your Internet date looks 20 years older and 40 pounds heavier than the online profile advertised — we’ve all been there. Oh, and his personality is that of a very boring and mean wet blanket. In order to avoid dragging out another unbearable evening with Mr. So-Wrong-It’s-Disgusting, try and employ any of the follow techniques:

1. Phone Call Emergency

This classic get-out-of-jail-free move involves having your friend call your cellphone at a strategic point during your blind date. If the date is going well, you decline to answer your phone. If it’s a disaster, you inform your date that your friend is going into early labor and gracefully excuse yourself from a terrible meal.

2. Fake An Unexpected Food Allergy

All of a sudden, strawberries make you unable to breath! Tell your date that you will be fine but need to rush home for your EpiPen.

3. Start Disclosing Uncomfortably Personal Info

Divulging every big life moment and how you felt about it, from the time your first pet (frog) died to your last breakup, will most likely make your date split for the street.

4. Act Beyond Vulgar

Maybe you don’t have to go quite as far as dislodging then consuming the contents of your nostrils, but thinking along those lines should get your date to leave you instead of the other way around.

5. Find Something Intolerable About the Restaurant

Spit out your first forkful with the utmost disgust and announce that you have never dined someplace with such low culinary standards. Then storm off. Your date won’t even feel like you’re such a loss with that behavior.

6. Feign Getting Spotted Undercover

Mention that your current job involves you being undercover and the people you’re investigating entered the bar you’re in just now! You have to leave or else you’ll blow your cover and leave your whole unit vulnerable to mass mafia retaliation!!

7. Use Your Fictional Kids

Or real kids, if you have ‘em. If they’re made up expressly for the purpose of “picking them up from the play date you forgot about,” this will not only get you out of the lame date, it will also surprise the guy who thought he was getting into something less serious.

8. Pretend You’re An On-Call Doctor…

… and the 80-year-old diabetic you’ve been monitoring just sunk into critical condition. You’ll have to go immediately and text your date later to reschedule.

9. Cry

There’s nothing like a good, long, spontaneous cry to get a new acquaintance out of your hair. If you provide zero explanation, this could further work in your favor.

10. Have Your Friends Crash “By Accident”

Let them arrive in a whirlwind of cheek kisses and “OMG! I can’t believe you’re here!” Then have them drag you off to another spot you just have to check out… oh, and your date can come, too, but it’s kind of just a girl thing…

11. Get Drunk

Though this may not mean a literal end to your date, it can at least transport you to an enjoyable plane outside of your intolerable dinner companion. Avoid getting wasted so as to prevent your date from taking advantage of you.

12. There’s An App For It!

The Bad Date Rescue App allows you to schedule your fake “must leave now” call on your iPhone. You don’t even need to have friends to escape a lame date in the modern world!

13. Climb Out The Bathroom Window

Say you need to go to the bathroom…and never return. Warning: This is an incredibly mean thing to do to someone.

14. Use Your Doorman As An Accomplice

If you are lucky enough to have a doorman and your blind date is coming to pick you up, let them screen for you. If your date sticks his hands down his pants or has the face of lopsided bulldog, have your doorman communicate that you’re not feeling well.

15. Be Honest

Arguably the best way to get out of a lame evening is to just tell your date you’re not feeling it. They’ll understand… maybe.