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.

Another one just thought of:

A friend moved house with her DH - they are well off and had very good jobs. She invited many friends ( local and a few of us were travelling far to see them ). It took me and my DH 4 hours to get there the night before leaving straight after work on a Friday we got there about 8:30pm . Knowing we’d driven non stop straight from work she didn’t offer us a drink or any food. In the end I asked if I could have something ( we were going out drinking) and she made me a piece of toast.
Next day was party day - my DH and I were asked to help out setting up ( no prob) and friend was telling me that she had spent a good while thinking if the cheapest way to feed everyone at the party. She didn’t prep any food or seem to have anything in and gave us 1/4 pizza for lunch. I wax thinking maybe she’d got caterers in. Party night came about 60 people in garden so I thought it must be a bbq - then at about 7 ish someone arrives with a box from the local chippy - with 50 portions of chips. That was it.

My friend doesn't put the food on the dinner table. She fills our plates with portions and then brings them to the table. If you want more she will take your plate and do the same thing. So you naturally don't ask for more :) once I saw her slice up croissants into 4 or so small slices so they look more. 2 Sliced croissants were shared amongst about 6 people.

I’d love to know what goes on in the
minds of people to make them think this is an ok way to behave!

if they’d ’hosted’ first, you’d think maybe that’s just how they do things and would expect to chip in when you hosted. But to go for a lovely meal at yours and then expect you to pay £100 to a takeaway??!!

Do they think you are much better off than them?

all the posters who end their stories with "and they are quite well off" .....well now you know how they stay well off!!!

OP, the dishes in your first post look really lovely. Thanks for the recipe of the chicken cari, I googled that and as PP said, it defaulted to curry.

Sorry to hijack. I don't have any good stories of stinginess but I agree with all, it's a very unattractive quality.

Maybe this is where taking of photos of food for Instagram came from. I wonder what those giving a lettuce leaf and a cherry tomato would think if you took a photo and said you were going to post it online.

"What a lovely meal! Let me take a photo to show all my friends."

Genuine question - when the stories are something like the MIL who put out a single plate of 4 roast potatoes, does nobody question why? I’d be concerned their is some sort of dementia setting in.

Are you Mauritian op? Those sound like Mauritian dishes.

It’s shocking reading some of these!

I went to a family reunion of about 15 and it was a long journey with changes and on public transport which I'm really unused to and paranoid of. It was miles away in the middle of nowhere.
Got there, and realised there was not even a crisp, a nut? It was about 6pm. I was offered a small glass of squash!?
Luckily I had bought a bottle of wine. Unfortunately it transpired I had to share it with 7 people. The hosts had provided bottled beer, but it seemed it was only offered to the men? They then looked shocked when a case of 10 beers was finished. It was one beer each...
3 hours later, dinner was served. Again no drinks. Dry meat with no gravy or sauce, aunt bessie roasties and frozen peas/sweetcorn. There was only enough for a tiny bit of each.
Finally got home at midnight bloody starving and parched!

Travelled from Newcastle to Newmarket to dh's cousin's wedding. Cost us fuel and a hotel. All the none dc people tabled together.. Just the evening part.. No food. None. Nothing. Just hours of speeches. And a few songs via speaker no dj. I was pregnant and nearly fainting.. Not even any crisps left at the bar..
Never attend anything now. Too depressing...

I must admit reading some of these make me feel sad and embarrassed for when we just had no spare money, I really hope our friends weren’t judging us

Love this!😂

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

I agree. There are far too many passive posters on here.

It is easy to challenge someone without being confrontational.

In the case of the one mince pie poster, if I had known the host was stingy I would bring extra mince pies, not give them to the host but offer them around.

.

Invited to a friend's for supper, she reminded me that she is a vegan.
Meal was a can of chickpeas, poured out cold and still in their gloopy liquid, between three of us.
My face must've showed my feelings because she added a little dribble of olive oil on top and got out a white sliced loaf, in the plastic bag.

One my first night at uni one of my new flatmates offered to cook dinner for the four of us in our flat. He happily shared the bottles of wine the rest of us had contributed to thank him for cooking (pasta with tomato sauce comprised entirely of Tesco value ingredients), before announcing that would be £1.50 each "as we are students now".

This is the same bloke who would charge 10p for a dollop of his ketchup and would ask for the difference in the price of a round on a pub crawl.

But not all events are like that!

Some of these honestly! Whatever are these people like? Why have someone over at all!

At a wedding of a colleague I was served a starter of cucumber flavour ice, the main was a slice of overcooked cauliflower, zero seasoning, nothing with it. The meat eaters dish was equally poor, on very very thin slice of gammon each, half a roast potato and a single tree of broccoli. There was also one bottle of wine per table, there were 12 people on each table.

I love cooking, so we host people quite a lot, I always plan to make food for the number of people plus two, that way there is enough for larger appetites etc. We were in the summer invited to a guests for dinner, we didn’t know them, but they has been a guests plus one and we have similar interests. I offered to bring a plate of something I had made that she enjoyed, we also took some wine. The starter was the plate I had made split between six adults, thankfully as I make generous portions it was an okay size for a starter. She didn’t mention I had made it, but fair enough. The main was a chilli concarne, we all had a portion of rice about the size of one of those gu glass pots, the chilli concarne was then one table spoon on top of the rice, no sour cream, guac etc. Pudding was on small scoop of ice cream on a biscuit, I’m dairy free so mine was just a biscuit. The wine had also apparently vanished into thin air. We had to leave early as I’m a type one diabetic and had to eat more.

I was a bridesmaid once and before we were getting ready the family turned off the water - noone could wash their hands or flush the toilet. We also weren't offered anything to drink.

My brothers wedding
They wanted a massive doo,but didn't see why they should pay for it
The one bit where they put their short hands in their long pockets,was the food
30,dried out and burnt baked potatoes (no toppings,not even butter) between 150 people
Then they whinged because people where leaving to go to the sainsburys over the road for sandwiches

Made sure they where well fed though

I travelled a long way with small children in tow to a bbq. Told to come for lunch. Arrived at lunchtime. Food wasn’t served until hours later and then it was a single burger. No salad, no crisps, no sides, nothing to go in the bun, no dessert. They’ve been to bbqs at mine before and I do tons of food.

Really? No kettle etc in the rooms? I once stayed in a B&B in a remote corner of Scotland, old rickety furniture (think '40-'50s chintz), one bathroom down the hall (IE not ensuite) and even that, in the '90s had tea making facilities in the room

At brother in laws wedding. Husband on top table , I was sat at table of eight. Waitress poured a drop of wine into guest's glass.
He tasted it and said 'yes that's lovely'.
She replied 'no Sir, that's it' .
They had purchased 10 bottles of wine for a wedding of 92 people.