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.

In the 80's my cousin who was five years older than me started randomly turning up at our house at meal times. My DM being the kind soul that she was, always offered him a meal of whatever we were having. His parents, my DF's brother and wife were always known to be notoriously stingy, despite my aunt having inherited two houses, and also running their own business. My DP's were just ordinairy working class, living in a humble mid terraced house.

After around a year I brazenly asked him if we could go to his house to play for a change. He begrudgingly agreed, and when my DS and I got there I asked for a drink and something to eat. My aunt banged a two glasses of ice cubes and a packet of Ritz biscuits down on the table, without so much of a glimmer of a smile. When I asked where the drink was my cousin took great delight in telling me that the ice cubes were the drink, and half the fun was watching them melt! I never asked to go to his house again.

When we were first married, as were a lot of our friends, none of us had much spare cash and get togethers tended to be cheap garlic sausage, french bread and coleslaw, none of us judged the others, it's what we could afford.

The coffee post reminds me of something we did 35 years ago.
My friend had no.money to spare, times were very hard, she had free milk, as had a small child.
Now the lady over the road would pop over and drink 4 or 5 cups of coffee, my friend only liked Nescafe it was her only treat, and instead lasting a month it was gone in a week.
Nice hints were dropped, about paying for a jar, but nope, you couldn't say no as it would have cause uproar about being a inhospitable, so I gave her a very big tin of the cheapest coffee I could find.

The Nescafe was hidden in the freezer, and my friend would make her nice coffee and let the coffee hog drink as much of the cheap stuff as she wished, we topped up the tin all the time, so it never ran out...

@SingingSands

That is actually really petty. I would go out of my way to ensure there was stuff in the bathroom and new toothbrushes they could have as sometimes people do forget to pack items. In fact I think i wold let them know in advance if they don't want to pack too much that there is plenty of stuff in the bathroom.

My mum is incredibly " careful" around money etc - she says it's as a result of experiencing rationing.
When we first started with her in her new house, over 4 hours away from us, I spent a few days before batch cooking for her so that she could have done home cooked meals after we'd left. ( she's elderly and was living off microwave meals).

I presented her with a cool bag full of meals to last several weeks...to which she grumbked, " Oh, now I'm going to have to switch the freezer on! "

I shouldn't have been surprised - when I gave birth to my first child, my mum deliberately didn't send flowers, "...because I knew you'd have some from other people. "

Before she had unlimited calls on her phone package, she would call me on my birthday but would say, " I can't be long, it's costing me! "

When she stayed with us, she'd bring a large bar of Dairy Milk, which she kept in her bag in her bedroom and ate in private.

When we stay with her, she only let's us fill the kettle half way and she turns the Wi-Fi off when she goes to bed.

She is very well off, needless to say.

The laptop story isn’t nearly as interesting and happened a good few years later. I probably reacted strongly but I’d had years of her taking the piss by this point. My ds would get upset when she visited. She’d try and guilt him into giving her his toys. He collected figures and she took a shine to one of them and asked ds if she could have it. He said no and she threw a strop claiming a ‘seven year old doesn’t need a collectors figure like that’.

Anyway, I’d seen her pull different tricks to avoid putting her hands in her pockets too many times and I didn’t want to be on the receiving end of it again.
Ex husband had bought himself a gaming laptop. It wasn’t cheap, I think it was just short of two grand but he’d saved for a while and had wanted one for ages. Turned out the novelty soon wore off and it was barely used. About six months after he’d bought it he decided he’d like to sell it. He told sil this and she immediately offered to buy it as her laptop had apparently been playing up. They agreed on £300 (I have no idea if this is fair or not, I confess I know next to nothing about laptops).

So she drives down to spend the day with us and pick up the laptop. All good, it starts getting late so I take the children up to bed and she leaves at some point while I’m upstairs. I go downstairs to find ex a bit quiet. Ask what’s wrong and while I was upstairs sil had decided she didn’t want to pay for the laptop there and then. She wanted to take it to her home a couple of hours away and test it out for a few days first and then if she likes it she’ll transfer the money. Yeah! Pull the other one!

She hadn’t long left so I phoned her and told her if she didn’t bring the laptop back immediately I’d be calling the police and reporting it stolen. She brought it back, furious. Shouted at me for calling her a thief, proceeded to block me on everything and after that we hardly spoke. Can’t say I missed her! Difficult woman would be putting it mildly!

When I was young we visited an aunt from my dads side.up north, she was notoriously tight. Especially with food. One day she made tea with leftover baby formula milk from the baby's bottle (my mum said she saw her from the living room window which was L shaped so kitchen was visible...

She sounds batshit
Good riddance
I feel bad for your ex husband, she was probably too manipulative for him to stand up to her

My brother, now in his 50s, still reminisces to this day about the time when he was about 10 or 11 and he and two other friends were invited to another kid’s house, and got served a Bachelor’s Cup-A-Soup each as a main evening meal.

Surely this is fine for a multi kid sleep over... ?

Erm, no. Of course it isn't

I was at a friend's all day wedding (1pm start) where there was no meal or anything until the evening buffet at 9pm. We were all starving.

🤣🤣🤣🤣

My cousin got married while I was planning my wedding and I noticed the waiters didn't give anything to the teetotlers to toast with at his reception. At our wedding I made sure there was sparkling grape juice on offer and surprisingly quite a few people chose that option.

@Bertielong3 that's even worse than the one I attended. I would do the same

Halloween Party BBQ - bring own food to cook, own drinks and own chairs if you plan on sitting. No scary costumes.
RSVP’d - NO!

Been there, done that, except there was food but it was really bad and basically inedible. We ran into quite a few of the wedding guests at the local McDonald's on the way home.

Kids 4th birthday party. No cake no song. Parents had no idea when party was over …

I've got a lovely lovely friend but her and her DH are unbelievably tight and it makes me so mad. I've hosted them so many times, making nice meals, spending time cooking. They bring just enough drink for themselves (4 cans for him, 2 for her) and have asked us round to theirs once in over 25 years of friendship.

If they do bring food it's the cheapest thing they can find. I've given up hosting them so now we don't see them.

Bless you (and SIL for letting you know). I think I'd have been so angry I might have stayed elsewhere for the night and let him get on with it. Actions have consequences. 🌹

If the couple were short on funds AND had let you know ahead of time (so you could agree to attend and pay, or not) I'd not have a problem with it. I went to a wedding like this years ago and there was a small financial contribution, which was pre-agreed ahead of time. It was a brilliant day/evening. 🌹

I have to admit to being a rampant undercaterer on the roastie front. I don't like potatoes, would only eat half a roastie if served them, so when I cook a roast for people I find it nearly impossible to work out how many to cook! So I either end up doing not enough (but there's always plenty of everything else, so nobody complains) or so many that I have to press them on people when they are going home (no point in me keeping them to eat as leftovers - I don't like them!).

At a friend’s house as a child - the parents were going out for dinner and left my friend money for us to get a takeaway. Friend pocketed the money and I went without. When the parents came back she listed off an elaborate order that I had apparently had! I was absolutely starving.

Re wine etiquette - if someone gives me a bottle as a gift I always ask if they would like some and if we should open it now, or we can have some wine that is already chilled. That way guests either say, no it’s a gift for you, or go ahead and crack it open! Works for me.

The wine thing is tricky isn’t it? I was always brought up that the host provides the food and drink (unless otherwise specified) and to take a bottle as a gift for the hosts. When we went for dinner at a friend’s I took them a bottle of the wine I knew they liked. They then asked if I wanted it opened to have a glass of it, I said “no, that’s for you to say thanks for having us”. I wasn’t offered another drink all evening.