As a guest, what's the stingiest thing you've ever experienced?

[Marssuri]

Just that!
I'll start

I invited friends for dinner at mine. I made traditional dishes from where I'm from, sausage rougail, chicken cari and dessert.

A few days later they text me telling me to come to theirs for some food at dinner time.

I show up and bring a small jar of chilli peppers. One of the people who invited me goes "is that all you're going to eat?". I was confused and asked what they meant. They replied "It's everyone brings their own food."
I told them I thought they had invited me for dinner and they go "yes, we invited you to come to the house for dinner!".
They saw my face and said "don't worry, we can share some food with you!" before cutting a couple of raw carrots, aubergines, cherry tomatoes with some white sauce and putting them in the middle of the table.
They then served each other the meal they had made for themselves and digged in.

Note from MNHQ - we've had lots of nominations for this thread to be moved over to Mumsnet Classics and, as we're very generous hosts, we've done exactly this.

Oh wow. Flame me all you want but I have to admit my teeth find themselves cringing if I read an invitation that asks for cash. Just being honest! ducks for cover

To be fair, if I invited someone for dinner and they showed up with a 'small jar of chili peppers', I'd think them very odd and stingy. Surely everyone knows to bring wine/chocolates/cake/flowers? But as the hosts in the OP's story were weirdos themselves, they can hardly complain.

Now my contribution. Not hosting, but fits. Went to a pub: ex and me, friend and her boyfriend and some couple they knew from uni. Ordered multiple beers, a large platter of snacks/tapas (not UK, so foodstuffs slightly different), etc. Sharing things. We're all big/equal drinkers and we all ate pretty similar-ish amount by the looks of it. No one ordered lobsters&champagne why others had salad&water is what I mean.

The bill came. BF and me and our friends just thought to split it 3 ways (3 couples). Then the guy from the third couple whipped out his phone and proceeded to add up the things him and his girlfriend ate EXACTLY. I mean, to the point of 'Anna had six onion rings, four and a third of beers, this and this tapas, etc.' - like that. And arrived to an exact amount to the pennies. So instead of paying, say, 40, he arrived at something like 36.28 and paid that exactly. I've never seen anything like it.

Needless to say, none of us went out with them again.

We were invited for a play date by a school mum. The children were playing and the mum and I were chatting. My DD came in and asked if she was allowed to use the loo. School mum says yes but you have to provide your own tissue. I laughed thinking it was a joke, but in all honesty she did not allow guests to use her tissue. Her reason was.. germs? She’d hidden it on top of her wardrobe before we arrived. Luckily I had some pocket tissues in my handbag. Thought it was so odd, I’ve laughed about it ever since.

Forgot to ask: did they at least say in lieu of a gift or something to that effect?

Very, very similar. Invited to dinner. No mistake about that.

Cautiously enquired about food after a couple of hours and was told if I was hungry I could order a pizza.

Middle class, good jobs. Clearly no plans to eat that evening. I’ve no idea.

@WittiestUsernameEver The purpose of his visit wasn’t to see us. And he had already been out the night before with my DH so they’d had a good old catch up. He told my DH as their night was ending he’d ‘pop’ round and drop off a present for me.

He came over on a Sunday morning and we hadn’t been shopping. I wasn’t expecting to see him at all during his staying - only my DH (on their night out). So we thought a cup of tea and a quick chat would suffice and he’d go.

Quite. I cannot stand penny pinching to such an extreme when they really don’t have to. I have a very, very well paid colleague who always ransacks the yellow sticker stuff and proudly takes far more than her fair share. We are responsible with saving but also live life too. Food is such a huge part of life’s joys for both me and my husband.

Nope! And to top it off, we did give a monetary gift and card as well (obviously made sure we drank a lot to get our money's worth for the booze we paid for 😂) and never got a thank you card or anything afterwards.
That really did wind me up for a while afterwards.

Bless you! I am so sorry your rage is raging! Its ok honestly DH was so mortified it was me who wanted to take charge. I left them to the fish n chis went out and found a coffee shop and had a lovely lunch! When I went back it was nearly time for home! They lost all ways round.we have a lovely family now and they know not one of us.

We usually didn't spend Christmas with my in laws because they celebrated on Christmas Eve and hosted elderly frail relatives, and we had small children who wanted to do presents on Christmas Day etc. But the year my mother died and we had a 4 month old new baby, the in-laws kindly invited us just for Christmas Day with a warning that they had their Christmas meal the night before and so it would be just cold food. I was so grateful and so we drove the 2 hours with excited 4 year old and young baby, looking forward to spending time with family and what I imagined would be a Boxing Day style meal such as sandwiches leftovers cheese crackers Christmas cake etc. What they actually served was one plate of cheese sandwiches between six adults and a four year old. I was exclusively breastfeeding the baby and ravenous but the fridge was basically empty and there was nothing to offer us. We ended up leaving earlier than planned and went to a motorway service station to stock up on food. It was weird because they are usually very generous hosts but they kept saying they had eaten a massive meal the day before and had smoked salmon for breakfast so were not hungry!

I genuinely cannot fathom stinginess!
I love to host and always make far far too much, and have too much drink. My worst fear is that anyone would ever leave my house hungry!
We had "friends" that would occasionally pop over for drinks. Except they would never bring any drinks, but proceed to drink our house dry! Eventually I got fed up with this, the wife wasn't too bad, but the husband really greedy. I started serving him "speciality" drinks (you know, that bottle you brought back from Greece/ Amsterdam/ Spain about 7 years ago?). He was so greedy he just kept drinking! He was apparently v. v. ill afterwards- oh dear! Never came again, and i got rid of all those dusty old bottles. Win win!

You’re mad to have given cash as a gift too 😂 - unless they asked for that too…

I don’t like not receiving a thank you for a wedding gift either…. Really rude. The couples in question were given £100 and £250 too, not to mention the costs of going to a wedding on top of that.

Our hosts boiled a tin of french beans. That was all they gave us.

I wonder if we were at the same Bbq😂

We were invited to a wedding reception. The invitation was for after the actual wedding service which was held in a small venue and was just for close family.

The invitation said to arrive at the hotel where they were holding the reception anytime from 4pm and food would be provided. I can't remember the exact wording, but it definitely said arrive from 4pm and there would be food.

We went along with a card and a gift. It took us a while to get there, to a lovely hotel in the middle of nowhere (about 20 miles from the nearest chippy unfortunately😂)

We'd incorrectly assumed that due to the timing and wording of the invitaton, there would be either a wedding breakfast, or if not that, then a buffet or something similar during the evening.

At 10.30pm a platter of bacon sandwiches was brought out. One half sandwich each.

Such a joyous occasion.

I did check the invitation afterwards, to see if there was any way at all it should have been obvious, but no. My god we were hungry that evening because we hadn't eaten since lunchtime.

We hadn't thought to ask what exactly we were being invited to, because it just seemed obvious at the time!

I’m feeling so sorry for the people worrying that they’ve been seen as stingy when they’re skint (have been on benefits myself) but surely it’s obviously completely different? As in you would never be in the situation where you’d invited 20 people round, told them not to bring anything, and given them half a piece of ham and a slice of tomato? I must admit I am lucky and have not been in this situation as a guest, when we were young and skint we would make great bowls full of things like bean salad and couscous etc, and friends would reciprocate with eg spaghetti. It all makes me wonder what the people who are hosting are doing it for

That's disgusting. You should be ashamed of making someone ill.

Well done for actually doing that

I didn't MAKE him drink it!!! It was all we had left, and it was offered!

These are hilarious!!
Me & my dh got married many moons ago. One of his friends he invited to the wedding is known for been a tight-ass, even though he is loaded. He came with his girlfriend at the time, no gift. Which really didn't bother us & we actually laughed about it together as we were not surprised.
Every time I seen him since, he brought it up ("oh I must organise your wedding gift"), this went on years.
Anyhow, about 7 years after our wedding, he got married & invited us. He met my husband a week before the wedding, saying how worried he was how much the wedding would cost & that he didn't think many guests would give them a present (to pay him back for lack of present). He said he would be so embarrassed when his new wife seen all the guests not giving presents. He said to dh "I sincerely hope you won't attend our wedding without a gift, and show me up in front of my new wife like that". DH slagged him off & joked about "what goes around comes around etc".
The night before his wedding (7 years after ours), he calls to our house with a wedding card & money gift 😂😂.
People can be so strange!

All these stories reminds me of this American mother. Baking cookies on the car windscreen is extreme and I'm not sure how hygienic it is.

I genuinely do wonder.

Went to stay with my brother and his wife for the weekend for the first time. Straight from work, off the train at 7pm, picked up by him from the station, at their house by 7.10pm. He asked what I’d like to eat. I said ‘oh, whatever you’re having, I’ll eat anything.’ He said ‘we’ve had our tea as always have it at five thirty when we get in from work. Do you want a ham sandwich?’

Heaven forbid that they should wait 90 minutes and eat with me or even offer me something hot.

Reading these is making me feel better about every embarrassing experience I've ever had in my life!

I stayed with a friend once (she was living far north at the time) - due to location and not having a car at the time I was pretty much confined to her flat whilst she went to work etc over the couple of days I was there, was a long train trip up and I hadn't had a chance to do any shopping (assumed we'd go together) - she tells me that there's a special box of fancy granola/yog she's got for me - I help myself whilst I am confined to the flat. Next day or so she comments "Oh - where did all that go?" - and the tone was sort of dismissive, as if it had all been eaten uninvited (there was loads left) - cringes me out disproportionally to this day and makes me strangely nervous to stay with her as host!

We are good friends and are usually generous with each other and don't keep track of spent (usually it's I'll get it this time, you can get it the next) - she must have been having a bad morning or something!

I have to say OP, one chicken weighing between 1kg and 1.5kg (bones included) between EIGHT TO TEN people sounds pretty stingy to me!!