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.

Quiche can be served cold but I take your point.

MIL has , in 28 years of marriage, invited us over for dinner 5 times. We live in the same town. When you do go, there is no heating on( that’s for wimps) and she starts yawning shortly after dinner to give us a cue to leave.
However when she comes to us, she comes before the time we have invited her and it’s a massive effort to get her to leave hours later. We’ve tried all the tricks. It puts me off inviting her and she is the only thing DH and I ever row about.

A friend known for being very tight, invited herself and her new boyfriend to mine for dinner.

She very enthusiastically said she would do the puddings (great - she used to be a cook).

She turned up with a half used box of tiny Aldi puddings.

Lovely puddings (and I love Aldi!), but the sheer tightness of it was a real eye opener.

There’s a big difference between having to be very careful (I understand that) and being excruciatingly tight.

I'm always worried about looking stingy as a guest so probably go overboard.

We are out tomorrow at a friend's house for lunch. I've bought 2 bottles of wine (white and red) a bottle of prosecco, a bottle of soft drink for the Dcs, one of the large bunches of flowers from Waitrose (so uber spendy) and a large chocolate egg for each of the 4 children. DH doesn't drink so that more than covers anything I would drink but am feeling a bit anxious now! We rarely to never cook for our friends because our house is small and squished and i am embarrassed at how cluttered it is. My friend is lovely but she once wrinkled her nose and asked how we can cope with the size of it when she has come over.

Now I'm thinking it;s not enough and i am second guessing myself!!! She is always the most generous and lavish host, too.

@4yellowdaffodils

Gosh no don’t ever worry, that’s MORE than enough !!!

My paternal grandmother had me and my cousin from mum’s side (so not her grandchild) one afternoon when we were about 7. She put a frozen pizza in the oven for tea, had half for herself and cut the other half in two slices for us. Cousin and I are in our 40s and he still recalls it 😅

It was annoying. No guests ever said anything but it rankled. We had quite a DIY wedding and a few other friends popped in to help us with tidying up the next day so we gave them the bottles to say thank you and kept one for us to have at home.

so it worked out ok, but I’d rather have had the guests have more drink on the day and us have to buy some thank you gifts for the unexpected helpers!

If you relied on public transport in the last two places that I lived you'd either be confined to home after 18:30 or waiting until the next market day to go out! 😂 And neither place was out in the sticks!

Thanks... DH says I am way OTT about it but I am really conscious that we never host ourselves so try and compensate!

Thoroughly enjoying reading this. It's just so bizzare to me the way some people behave, I'm also from a culture where people over cater, always want to be pay etc.

namechange fail. Oh well.

I've probably outed myself now as my friend is on MN!

@Natty13

If you read the post it says they drove past the wine shop hence my comment

Because it’s not a big deal and life isn’t always that simple.

Actually, if you take a bottle to someone's house it is a gift for them. You shouldn't expect it to be served unless it is specifically discussed. "I'll bring champagne for the midnight toast," or "As you're cooking, I'll bring a couple of bottles to have with it."

PPs have said it was deleted - but have also filled in the details, so I'm sure you've got the gist by now 😂

I once went to a child's party with my child, they were v young so the parents stayed. The mum had got some wine for the adults, yay, which she served in those tiny plastic cups you get stacked next to water bottles in offices. Her husband arrived about 30 mims after me (it was an afternoon picnic) and he offered me another glass of wine, which I accepted. But then the mum came over and took it off me as I had already had mine

There's about 60 calories in one of those...

More than enough!

Your friend is not lovely, she's rude!

I thought this. @4yellowdaffodils, that’s more than enough. When we lived in a small unchildfriendly flat, we declined invitations from friends with a few kids and actually said it’s because we wouldn’t be able to return the favour. We’d suggest meeting them in a child friendly restaurant instead. If they insisted, we always got a big cake from a lovely local patisserie and nice wine which prob cost more than it cost to host us.

Not a stingy guest/host story, but I have the house to myself today so indulging in trash t.v. U.S. 'lifestyle ' shows.
The one I am watching at the moment is called 'So Freakin' Cheap'. I don't know if these people are for real or it's a massive piss take, but dear God some of these peoples level of stinginess is beyond belief.

They are not poor by any means, the men are all in good jobs as are some of the partners so it's not out of necessity.
One woman grooms her 3 dogs and cat and collects the fur to stuff the cushions on their sofas.The same woman goes and asks the neighbours for their half empty packets of pasta, which she then cooks up in a massive pot then strains it with a tennis racket.

In another family the guy was filmed frying eggs, then while the frying pan was still hot be actually ironed a pair of trousers! The wife looks at him like wtf? At a restaurant he paid for the meal with coins, a lot of coins and while he was counting them, he knocked some on the floor so he was scrabbling around with other customers laughing at him. The poor teenage daughter was mortified.

I am horribly enthralled.

You say their stinginess:

• makes you angry
• you feel disrespected
• You feel you are not worth the effort
• your discomfort doesn’t matter
• they don’t care about you

And yet you say ‘it’s not a big deal’

Sounds like you enjoy being a martyr.

A lot of these ‘reality shows’ are actually scripted

SIL drains the whole mid-priced bottle and then starts hunting for more. I offer her the cheap bottle but no she doesn't want that. Oh dear that's all we've got, what a shame, would you like squash?

How did she react OP? 🌹

Or perhaps they'd numbered the sheets, then re-rolled it?

Wow, that advice was terrible!

I always remember good wedding food and generous hosting (and when people have been stingy).

What I don't remember is what the flowers / dresses / decorations looked like, because ultimately they're all the same. The tiny details that people spend months planning boil down to a slightly different shade of pastel ribbons. All weddings look identical to the guests.

What matters is giving a good party. Ours was in a room above a pub and we spent the entire budget on a huge spread and an open bar.