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.

Many years ago, myself and DH were good friends with another couple. They'd been to our house a few times for meals and drinks several times- home made curry, or chilli, fajitas and nachos,that kind of thing. They never bought much in the way of drink etc but it never bothered us because they were good friends- the female was my bestie at school so I'd known her a long,long time.
So, we get invited to theirs for a meal. Took plenty of drinks etc and a dessert.
Dinner turned out to be a Tesco Value pizza which he GRILLED! He refused to put the oven on just for a pizza, so he grilled it. The base wasn't even warm. One pizza, between 4 adults. No sides, salad, fries....nothing. It was grim! They ploughed through the dessert and alcohol that we took.
The ironic thing was that he was a chef....
Bought chips on the way home....

I think you are all way too polite! These fuckers get away with it because nobody questions them.

Is anyone on here going to admit to being tight? I'd love to know your thought processes.

I just find posts like this very hard to believe.

Surely when she put a plate with 4 roast potatoes on it on the table everyone looked at her incredulously and said “where’s the rest”?

I would think my mil had lost her mind if she did this - why would you all just sit there like idiots?

I suspect there’s a lot of exaggeration on threads like these to make a funny story.

Once we stayed at the ILs and they offered bacon butties for breakfast. We accepted enthusiastically and were disappointed to get an open sandwich consisting of one slice of toast with one and a half slices of bacon each.

I don’t think it was stinginess in this case as my ILs are very generous, I think they just have weird ideas about portion size.

My friend told me once she'd gone to adult son , DIL and 2 children for Xmas

The DIL gave her potatoes to peel and counted them so that everyone could have 2 each , then counted the Yorkie pudds for 1.5 each

They were wealthy private school teachers , one a Head

@Marssuri sadly no I couldn't salvage anything. To be honest as they had their knives and forks into it I didn't feel it was hygienic to try! When I say generous portions I had literally done 38 Yorkshire puddings and three trays of roast potatoes so that I could portion and freeze portions for DF - so you can see there was more than enough for 4 adults plus DF. I shall change the MN usual CF for GF ..... greedy f**kers! Sorry the outrage is still strong 😂😂.

DH cousin and his wife invited us to their new home. Two hour drive away. We brought a housewarming gift. No offer of tea, coffee, water on arrival. The wife asked could I bring her to Lidl to get some lunch stuff. Filled her trolley and at the checkout said, we can just pay half each because its for lunch. I said I had no money on me. We got back to her house, shopping was put away and she never made us anything. We left soon after. She wanted me to pay half of her weekly shop and when I didn't she wouldn't even make us a sandwich.

Same couple went to their room on the day of their wedding to count their money that was gifted to them..

How do you cut a Yorkshire pudding in half with a straight face??

Again though - I don’t understand this.
Wouldn’t you just say “stick the kettle on, there’s a love”? Or at least ask for a glass of water.

Or perhaps some of these friends/family members are trying to tell some of the people on here something?

This makes me think of my SIL! She will invite people round for a meal or bbq and put on a decent spread. However she will constantly be eyeing up how much food people serve themselves and whip it all off the table as soon as she possibly can and put all away in the fridge saying how they will be having the leftovers for supper! She literally watches how much everyone eats like a hawk! She also has been known to give her dc lunch or ice cream's while my dc are round visiting and not offer anything to my dc!!! My dc really dislike her!

we was invited for dinner at my dad and his partners house !
Because we know how stingy and slow it took her faffing with the food and having 2 hungry teenagers we came up with this idea 💡
we will pop into the local chippy and bring dinner so we can all eat and enjoy so no one has to cook !
Anyways we handed over all the chips and sausages fish ect ! Dad’s partner dishes them up and we had teeny tiny portions she had rewrapped the chips and put them in the oven !! Like wtaf we paid and bought it with us cheeky cow !!
so for revenge I had a birthday cake made for her bday and normally I’d let her take home any that was left but no I thought u can have a teeny slice and u not taking it I put it away 😂😂😂😂 petty but felt so bloody good !!!

We went to a bring-a-dish wedding last year. I was a bit 🤔 about this, but went with it anyway. The wedding was several hundred miles away, so we travelled the day before and joined the wedding party for a pub meal the previous evening, which guests were paying for. Hell, we even chipped in for the bride and groom's meals. All very nice. The pub was doing deal that you got a free bottle of wine with every 2 main courses ordered, and was happy to provide this as a takeout. We were looking forward to having it in the hotel when we got back (we'd had to drive to the pub, it was beautifully in the middle of nowhere). As we were leaving, the bride wrenched the free wine out of my hands and said "that's for the wedding tomorrow".

If the happy couple had paid for the meal, or their wedding breakfast; if they'd suggested that donating the wine might have been a nice gesture, if I hadn't driven 300 miles to be there, if they were actually skint (they're really not), if they didn't spend the next next day droning on about Christian values of love and generosity, if she'd asked me nicely if she could have my wine.... maybe I wouldn't have minded, but actually taking my wine out of my hands struck me as being very tight indeed. And relying on "free" wine for your wedding reception.

Another one - my uni boyfriend. We went on holiday together for the first time and he had a little notebook in which he recorded everything he’d spent that day, including adding up what we’d spent on each other - so say he bought us both a drink and I bought us both an ice cream, he’d work out how much I ‘owed’ him or vice versa. He didn’t actually want me to pay him the difference, he just wanted it recorded. Couldn’t be having with that long term.

Went to to a BBQ once hosted by health freak 'friends' of mine. We all got a couple of chipolata sausages and some salad leaves each. I was so pissed off, especially after driving 45 miles into London for it on a lovely summer's day.

We are generous as a family. If you’re in our house, you can have whatever we have.

we had friends visit us each year at the same time and it became more and more obvious that they would drink many bottles of red wine, eat lots of lovely meals DH cooked and I would do lots of activities for the children.

One time we were going to the farmers market next to our house and our daughter was overtired so I took her back. The guests came back with treats for themselves and their children and nothing for us or our daughter. Our daughter had to sit there and look longingly at the doughnut.

i just froze them out after that and declined any other kind offers to visit us.

I knew a teacher who would bring beer to a party and take it when she left.

I'm the ‘one mince pie’ poster above, sadly no exaggeration.

Why did we sit there?..

• Not to embarrass my parents infront of other guests
• It was Christmas and despite the food (or lack of) we were having a nice chat
• My DM would have gone on the attack and made the day awful, likely turning this somehow into being my fault.

I try and model, when they come to me, I provide loads of food, hoping they will see how to be generous. They are just not.

My mum and dad many years ago were in holiday with another couple and called into a cafe for tea and cake. Lady comes over with large teapot for four of them. After a few minutes my dad starts to pour and it’s just pale and watery . Looks inside teapot - they had given 1 teabag for 4 people! ( and it wasn’t a mistake-when they asked for more they were told that’s plenty!)

Oh ALL the typos 😆

It's a guesthouse, not your friends' house. Some of them have tea and coffee making facilities, some don't. It's not a hotel. The landlady was just warning you that there weren't tea-making facilities in your rooms. Or are you suggesting tat if you arrived mid-afternoon in a Birmingham BnB, you would be greeted with a full afternoon tea?

This isn't a guest one really but, at the hospital I used to work at, we sometimes had buffet lunches for special occasions with all the staff bringing one item to share.

There was one staff member who always 'forgot' that we were having a buffet lunch so didn't contribute anything but she would come & eat with us anyway and afterwards would take any leftovers home in a large plastic box as "I can't abide food going to waste". She was one of the more highly paid members of staff . . .

Was invited to a friends for dinner and drinks. Brought some wine and chocs.
Host offers some vodka and coke, I accept, she insists that I have another, and another and it's ok because she has plenty and she doesn't really drink it.

I asked what kind of vodka it was, as it tasted odd.

She said it was the dregs from all the vodka bottles from parties past, and she collected them all in one big bottle.

I stopped drinking immediately. Never been back 🤣

Not the host in this case but a guest.

A friend had a few folk around for her birthday. She provided some wine to be shared and for herself but told us all it was BYOB. One guest showed up with a bottle of wine, drank almost all of my friend's wine (at least two bottles by herself) while other people had their own then went utterly batshit when friend had to open the guest's bottle because there was none left to share. She grabbed her bottle and stormed out the house moaning that friend was stealing from her.

My MIL can be stingy but is also just the worst host. She invites you round but is hostile and ungenerous- often have to ask for a cup of tea or offer to make one for everyone as she won’t. She invited us round for DHs birthday for breakfast (we offered to host but she wanted us to go to hers) and had got a pack of mini pastries. She didn’t warm them, put them on a plate, lay a table etc she just left them in another room and told people they could get them whenever. You just feel like an imposition constantly even when she invites you.

I was 8 months pregnant, invited to ex PILs for 'luncheon'🤣 Turned up mid morning, all seemed ok (although of course I was never good enough for exDH). Lunchtime came - salad - one lettuce leaf, one cherry tomato, half a slice of ham. No dessert!
We helped wash up, and went into the garden with them.......time passed and it was tea time - 'you'll have to go now, we can't feed you twice in one day' and that was it!