I have never in my life experienced someone in a restaurant refusing to pay their fair share

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it was so embarrassing ended up with me and Friend B paying over the odds to make up for it

Chinese so all sharing all dishes, china tea, prawn crackers etc

Family A - Mum (not eating but drinks tea), Dad (only ordered soup, but gorged on everything else on table)and 18 year old

Family B - 2 adults

and US - 2 adults, 2 kids (one a 6 year old who barely eats)

Family A mum said he only ordered soup so we're only paying for one adult

divided by 8 (there were 9 of us but she didn't eat) bill was just under £20 each

she said we only pay for what we ordered
she repeated it despite minor protestations that he'd eaten everything - her 18 year old was mortified

I ended up paying £80, Family B paid £50 and Family A £20

am still aghast

would you do it? would you say anything after the fact? am so tempted to email and say wtf were you thinking you fucking freak (she a relative not a friend)

I don't pay too much attention to dates,Morloth,but I draw the line at eating food which has sat out for hours,exposed to insects, and in the heat of the sun

I hate mean, thoughtless people!!!

Nah develops the flavour.

Food never gets wasted here DH will eat anything.

I don't understand that better off people should pick up the slack of those with less money. If I couldn't afford a meal, I wouldn't go. I certainly wouldn't turn up expecting someone else to pay for me. I have some self respect.

What about people who turn up at weddings with no present or card, I know someone.........

When I was young, and very very broke, my Dad turned up and gave me a cheque for £250.

The first thing I wanted to do was take my two mates out to lunch, as they had been so great to me lately.

But they ordered the cheapest things on the menu, wouldn't drink, wanted to pay the bill themselves at the end, etc. And they knew I was flush- I'd told them about the gift from Dad.

Didn't know whether to hug em or bash em!

What about my SIL who made a big deal over handing a birthday card to my DS2 on his 3rd Birthday with nowt in it?

kitty you have lovely friends!

So true, Lying.

'Exactly so, ZipZap... it seems to be 'intentional' in so many cases and that's really unfair.'

I've said it time and again: it is intentional. People like this deliberately take advantage of others' politeness/sense of embarrassment and the chaos of time to pay up in order to basically thieve a free/reduced cost meal.

LeQueen, I would not be able to have such people in my life.

Because they're people who steal from their friends.

I wouldn't dream of treating a friend like that.

If I had family members like that, I would severely restrict the time I spent with them.

BIL has a friend like this. He's cheap beyond belief.

I never let him get away with that around us.

We're smashed as it is, we can't afford to subsidise him.

And no, he's anything but poor - he's only in his mid-30s, owns a massive flat outright, has no debts, great job.

Too cheap to pay for broadband/net access (he goes to his nana's), a landline or contract mobile, bus pass, fill up the tank in his own car (only buys £10/time), etc.

what about them melika?

I'm rather glad that not everyone who came to our wedding brought a gift and/or card......

My sis won't even call people when it's important because she doesn't want to use the credit on her phone. What the hell is it for then????

Oh, I remembered another one about Cheap Bret, the well-off, 40-year-old bachelor (no kids), petroleum engineer who always tried to get out of paying tax and tip (except he never got away with it because climbers are ballsy and would demand it from him).

There was once a group climbing trip arranged for a destination about 100 miles away from where we were all living.

He offered me and my friend Suzi, both of us working for temp agencies as secretaries on about the equivalent of about £6/hour, a lift.

We knew we'd have to pay him petrol, fair enough.

But it was 40 degrees and he didn't put the A/C on!

Suzi asked if we could have some A/C.

He held out his palm and said, 'Sure, for $10 each.'

He did the same to a mate who is an actuary in winter time. Except with HEAT!

We begged rides off other people on the way home! :o

Baroque maybe you didn't need anything when you got married, but I did! We had very little and paid for wedding ourselves, people coming all day had the audacity to turn up empty handed. This is extremely rude in my eyes.

Over New Year, we'd all go ice climbing and backcountry skiing in a place in Colorado called Ouray, down south about an hour from Telluride.

We'd all stay in this motel (not expensive) as it was fun to all hang out in each other's room and get stoned in the evenings, large around with everyone else in the huge hot tub, etc.

Not Cheap Bret.

It was 'too expensive'.

He'd stay in this unheated hostel.

No one ever offered to share a room with him because one year this guy did and Cheap Bret tried to get out of a paying tax.

What a way to live! No wonder he never had a girlfriend.

expat -reading about the car, it sounds like Cheap Bret would do well working for the likes of EasyJet and Ryan Air

That's why he is a sad and lonely man.

meilka - oh trust me we needed a lot.

But we had (estimated) 400-500 people "passing through" our wedding (wasn't in the UK - different way of doing things before you ask)........that would have been a LOT of gifts and cards

Personally I didn't invite people to my wedding to get a gift or card from them - I invited them because I wanted them to come and celebrate with us.

Of course the gifts we did get were gratefully received - but it was their presence on our "special day" ( - arffff - I'm in the process of divorce at the moment) I wanted.

melikalikimaka / Baroque

I just don't get why MN are so anti wedding presents.

I just would not dream of accepting anyones hospitality be it a dinner in their house or a wedding reception and not give a gift of some sort. It is just plain rude.

Everyone I know in RL feels the same ... why on MN is there always this anti-present chorus whenever wedding presents are mentioned?

[sorry to derail the thread]

Norbert, if EasyJet offered the availability to stand up in the cargo hold for reduced price, Cheap Bret would chose that option.

I want more Cheap Bret stories.

baroque I see what you mean, but at least they could have slipped a twenty pound note to cover the meal!!!

I hate Cheap Bret and if I ever see him I'm gonna give him a swift kick up the arse.

Oh, meli, that's why BIL's mate is eternally single, too.

He's also got the EQ of a 12-year-old.

When I told him DH was getting a vasectomy because I can't use any hormonal contraception and we both don't agree with how copper coil works (and we had one condom failure baby) he said, 'What about abortion? Why don't you just use those?'

Then he said, 'I'd like a child, but only a girl.'

Um, okay.

So in addition to being cheap, you're a weirdo.

I realised that things had Gone Too Far when I started hiding the bananas behind the stereo because I was so intensely annoyed that a friend of dp's who I couldn't stand anyway, would pop round everyday and feel a bit peckish and help himself to a banana. Never a cheap old apple, always a banana.

I'm not "anti presents" - we had some lovely (and extremely useful) ones. But, like with birthday parties, I don't get the you "have" to take a card of present.

I want the person to be there to celebrate with me/my child - not so they give me a nice gift. If they give me a nice card and gift - that's an added bonus. But I just can't get worked up about people that I've invited to celebrate a special event with me not bringing something.

A gift/card is no substitute for the company/presence of a person that you want to be there.