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.

@BreadInCaptivity

Thank goodness you and your husband thought and acted the same. What an awful way your "hosts" treated you. 🌹

Did you point out how much money you saved him with your generosity?! Good grief!

I’ve loved reading all of these and glad it’s not just me that’s encountered stinginess.

My best friend in my teens used to regularly come and stay over on a weekend, my parents would pay for a takeaway and we had a cooked breakfast.
When I stayed at her house her mother had put locks on the fridge and cupboards and left out a few slices of bread, 2 tins of beans, some margarine, a small supermarket pizza and a bottle of supermarket orange squash she’d already filled with water and diluted.
Her mum went to bed at 8pm and we had to make no noise, my friend used to panic if I used the toilet and hinted I wee in the garden.
The sad thing is we are still friends and she now has the same attitude when her kids friends are staying. I saw some supermarket pizzas and beans on the worktop with I last visited and jokingly said “it’s like when I stayed at your house when I was 15!”. She nodded and said “yeah the kids have friends staying, so maybe it’s hereditary?

My sister always said how skint she was so I regularly took her out for nice meals, spent a fortune on her and her kids at Christmas because I had no kids and lent her money she “forgot” to pay back constantly.
One year instead of our parents hosting she decided she’d host Christmas Day, I offered to help but she completely refused.
Me and DP turned up with bags of gifts and 6 bottles of champagne and a cheeseboard. She whisked the champagne away and got out 2 bottles of cava and for 8 people and we had a single slice of turkey, one roast potato, one stuffing ball and a mini Yorkshire pudding.
She insisted as she’d cooked that me and my mum wash up then brought out an Asda smart price tiny Christmas pudding that was lukewarm for 8 of us… we never saw the champagne or cheeseboard again.
At 6.30pm she said she was exhausted from the effort of cooking (most of the food was aunt Bessie’s) and heavily hinted she was tired and we should leave, we’d all cancelled evening plans but left feeling awkward. As we were leaving she said she’d spent a fortune on Christmas and wanted £20 from me, DP and EACH of my parents.
I got a £10 book voucher, my parents got nothing and DP got a chocolate orange. My parents had bought all her kids gifts totalling £500 and given her and BIL £200.
I later found out she bought her best friend and her kids gifts worth £150 and spent £50 just on Christmas tree baubles so family were just not important enough. She got a box of Thorntons chocolates back from her best friend and £10 each for her two kids.
We did go back to my parents house though and have a lovely buffet and lots of drinks so it wasn’t a total washout, me and DP didn’t pay £20 each but sadly my mum and dad did.

My best friend is very very well off, I have always struggled for money. We generally go 50/50 if we eat out or do anything. Once we went shopping together and I was 10p short at the checkout, she offered it grudgingly.
About a week later we went for a drink and both bought our own, she then said “don’t forget you owe me 10p” I thought she was joking and laughed but then she said “count the pennies and they make pounds”
We are still best friends but that’s just the way she is, she lives as though she’s on the poverty line and expects nothing back from anyone so I just accept her stinginess.

For anyone doubting these stories I’m just amazed they haven’t experienced it, there are a lot of tight people!

DP is from a culture where you feed everyone and guests are treated like royalty and everyone in the vicinity gets fed. I did have to stop him offering up our food and takeaways to the neighbours though! After a buffet he’d bring any leftover food home and knock on doors giving out vol au vents, sandwiches and portions of pasta and rice salad. When anyone is popping round even for a few minutes he lays out a huge spread. I’d rather that then him be tight though.

My dbil, dh’s db and his dw serve nice meals, plenty of food.
However they will not give so much as a biscuit in between.
Once we took dn on holiday with us and dbil fetched us from the airport.
It was 2pm when we got to theirs and dinner was at 6. Obviously we had missed a meal whilst travelling and assumed we’d be offered a sandwich at dbil’s.
No. Just a cup of tea. We were so hungry.
Fortunately dn got herself a chocolate wafer and I asked her to bring me one, then waited 4 hours for dinner!

On another occasion we travelled for 2 hours to a lunch they insisted on giving for in-laws anniversary. We arrived at 11.30 and dh went to make us a tea, he was told that we’d missed the cup of tea and was given 2 glasses of water.

I was tight when we first got married, we were young and broke. I look back and cringe. However I’m now the opposite and always make far too much food and will send my dh to the bar to buy drinks all night.
I try not to judge others who are tight with paying as I don’t know their true circumstances. Although I had a friend who would allow her young dc to order whatever they wanted and it would often be untouched and thrown away, I would split the bill with gritted teeth.

I can't believe they expected you to bring your own dinner after you cooked for them. At least they offered to share, but still, that's not how you treat guests. It's common courtesy to provide a meal when you invite someone over for dinner, right? It's like they completely missed the memo on hospitality.

We had a friend of a friend of OH's round for dinner with his gf and he then invited us for lunch on his very very nice yacht. We had a very small plate of salad leaves with pieces of duck (I was quite bemused as a vegetarian to be given the salad plain). We both assumed that was the starter, but then coffee was served, so no the diddy plate was the main course and there was nothing else. It was about enough to feed a toddler if you could get a toddler to eat a plate of lettuce. We said our goodbyes and drove straight to a local teashop for sandwiches - we were starving.

He was a very wealthy man so we were surprised at the frugality of it. Both our lunches would have cost less than the wine we brought.

When I was a little girl (many years ago!!!!) there was an elderly lady who lived in the next road to my family home. She always looked so poor, her hair was long and straggly and she wore a mans gaberdine raincoat which had seen better days

She would stand in the doorway of the local shops, looking wistfully at the food, until a staff member would enquire if she was OK. She would then say "your cakes/fruit/sausages look so lovely - it must be wonderful to be able to afford something like that." The staff would inevitably find something for her and she would express her gratitude for the wonderful treat. This went on week after week for years

There was a large plot of allotments nearby and she would hang around the gates, admiring everyone's crops and would often be given some fruit and vegetables

She would also turn up at any church (R.C., C of E, Baptist, Methodist etc) that had a meeting followed by food and would linger around the kitchen afterwards, wondering aloud where all the leftovers would end up. She would then be offered a food parcel. She always attended funerals and often managed to be an uninvited guest at weddings too!

The local schools always gave her a generous hamper at Harvest Festival

Everyone in the area knew her, she was lovely to talk to and I suspect that many people "helped her out" with gifts of food

When she died, with no will written, her estate was more than half a million (this was in the 1960's in a working class area of small terraced houses). Her house was hoarded, mainly with newspapers.

Sorry, I know this doesn't fit the 'stingy guest' topic but so many of these posts seem to be about well off people being incredibly stingy regarding food so I thought I would share the story . . . .

@DelilaDelilahJane
Wow! So you took around desserts and because she 'was stuffed' (wanted them all by herself) she declares she won't be serving them?? 😧
The worst for me on this thread so far is the horrible husband moaning about the teabags. I wouldn't ever have graced his door to babysit his children again 🤬

Well off PIL providing dessert, turned up to Xmas lunch at ours with two £1 cheesecakes from Morrisons for six adults and four teenage boys.

This has left me stressed about how I've handled wine in the past, but it's a useful education.

I didn't know these rules about how you do wine in people's houses socially, and I don't know much about wine at all. When I'm hosting, I go to LIDL and look at the ones with high ratings and find one that says it goes with the type of food I'm making.

I didn't know I was meant to serve the one my guests bring too. I wouldn't recognise an expensive wine if I was handed a bottle of it. I'm sure I've inadvertently kept expensive wine and served cheaper wine, because I've understood the wine given to me to be a gift, and I've assumed it's my responsibility to provide wine as the host!

How do people learn this stuff if you don't grow up in a household where it's modelled?

Whenever my brother and his partner visits us, I go all out with the meal making lots of stuff that they like and giving them the leftovers. They never bring flowers or even wine. When we go there I take the meal with us. He serves it up in the kitchen, giving himself a large portion and us tiny ones as he’s saving some for later.
After years of doing this I decided that I didn’t really care whether I saw him or not so now only talk on the phone.

Why would you take a meal round and sit there with hardly any food while he saves it for later?

Yes, you’re right @skoobydoo no obligation to serve guest wine. But it was very weird for the host to keep a bottle under the table for himself 😂

I found it really weird when I moved here and hosted a group of women: they each brought their own wine and drank that, and this seems to be the expectation here.

Sorry, OP, you sound like a really stingy host. When you knew he was popping round, why didn't you have any nice snacks in - that's basic hospitality.

And when he stayed on, why didn't one of you just pop out to the local shop for some lunch bits? Really strange and rigid behaviour on your part.

Another one. Years ago my sister a very wealthy doctor invited us to pop in and have bit to eat and a break at her house 😂I arrived with two children on a hot summers day. She gave us a glass of water each. She said there with a cup of iced tea and it was bizarre.

Isn’t that a Peter Cooke joke?

Why didn’t you just say, sorry but we’ve got to go shopping now? lovely to see you…

FGS I hope she’s not your best friend anymore

We had a very similar experience at my father-in-law’s girlfriend’s house. it was us, and my FIL’s family from up North.

The Northern relatives are incredible hospitable and generous, and include a couple of strapping men, with matching appetites. The girlfriend had visited them a few times at this point.

She had made a big deal about doing a barbecue. They had bought some of those long sausages…but had catered for half a sausage each. There was nothing served with it - no bun, no salad.

My daughter was 2 at the time. She had not been included in the numbers because the girlfriend didn’t think she would need to eat food. We had taken her out for lunch a few times by then, and she had witnessed my daughter eating. No food could be spared for her - not a piece of toast, not an apple from the fruit bowl. In the end my daughter had both her parents’ lunch (as a 2 year old can manage an entire sausage).

It was mortifying. My FIL was apparently fully on board with the catering. We couldn’t believe he thought it was OK to serve this to his siblings who had travelled a long way to see him, and paid for hotel rooms.

After this lunch, we suggested that everyone go for a nice walk, and we had fish and chips on the seafront.

Just before last Christmas I received an emailed invitation to a party, open house from 2pm until late. Pictures of food and drink on the invite so all looked very festive and pleasant. I arrived at 3.30pm as didn’t want to be first there/too eager. There were about 10 people there when I got there holding empty wine glasses so when offered a drink I asked for a glass of wine. Half an hour later I was handed a mug of very weak tea. The food, one mince pie on a plate in the middle of a large table and a few crisps in a dish. A box of chocolates was opened by a fellow guest who was prompted by his wife to offer them round to other people. I left once I had drunk my tea and went home for a strong G&T.

A work related one. A team meeting was called by our head of department, three line whip so I had to attend. We were told we would be going to the nearby very posh hotel for afternoon tea after the meeting. There were ten of us. The HoD ordered two teas for us all to share between us. Think one tiny finger sandwich or a tiny cake each. I didn’t expect a full scale blow out but it felt very tight.

My cousin asked me to house sit for a week, looking after her dogs and cats. I was a student at the time, I was happy to help, and I wasn't expecting any payment. However, the fridge and cupboards were empty. No milk, teabags, cereal - just the odd tin of tomatoes and some crackers. I wasn't expecting the ingredients for a banquet, but they could have at least provided the staples.

I'm Arab, this thread is blowing my mind.

I read something once that explained why desert cultures have a tradition of basically forcing (an abundance of) food/drink on guests. Its ultimately enlightened self interest. In historical times, if you were travelling, your survival would depend on food and hydration whenever you found a settlement or caravan before you headed out into the open desert again for potentially a long time. It was sort of an implicit agreement that feuds and disagreements would be put aside in that situation, because next time you might be the traveller. So there's a tradition that the guest is always honored, fed, watered, sheltered, even if you don't actually like them.

These people must be MN stalwarts 😂