to boycott bloody boring buy something parties

[shggg245]

Deep breath - body shop x 3, scented candles, temple spa, boden, pampered chef, Jamie Oliver - blimey it's all too dull.

Got another invite and said sorry I'm not attending. 1. Very dull. 2. Can't get pissed. 3. Fed up of getting told off by some wanky demonstrator for not paying attention to life changing products.

Aibu to think it's just a way of guilt tripping friends onto buying stuff? Surely it's better to not bother if you've no intention of buying anything. My friend thinks I'm being rude and should show my face.

It's totally rife in my village. Brown sauce lucky you 're escaping this - but be vigilant it'll happen.

Witch - that is outrageous, she clearly has no shame.

YANBU. Hospitality is giving your friends a nice evening, food and wine with no obligations, not expecting them to give you their money.

Scarlett -
no don't do it. However, if you're already signed up do not ever, ever recommend shimmery body butter.

Ever.

No, I have turned down invitations to betterware, pampered chef, virgin vie, usborne books and something else which escapes me parties over the last few years or so. I simply don't want to buy things that I don't need, and I know I will feel under pressure to do so once I am sitting as a guest in someone else's home, eating their twiglets and drinking their plonk. I am known as someone who likes to buy bits and bobs, and I think thats why I get invited ie they are guaranteed that I will spend there. But I like to buy bits and bobs that I like or need, and there is nothing I like or need at ghastly prices at these parties.

I didn't realise that there were boden parties, but I only ever buy at boden when there is a sale or 20%off, so there would have to be a better discount than that.

Can we make an exception for Tupperware please?

I was coerced into attending a few of these sixteen or so years ago, and their stuff really does last, apart from the most perfect batter jug ever designed. I melted a hole in its bottom and rendered it useless, and have never found a decent replacement. How I wish Tupperware would return to these shores.

The rest though can take a running jump, I just go and get happily drunk and refuse to buy the hideously over-priced tat.

I have been invited to dozens of these things. Have declined every single invitation.

I get invited, and always say 'no thank you, I'm frugaling, but I hope it goes well for you.'
My friends have learned over time that it just isn't my thing.

I never accept. It never occurred to me that it was rude to decline.

I know someone who does aloe gel as well. God, she's boring about it. It's a shame the NHS has not got onto this wonder drug, isn't it?

Stella & Dot should be an exception.....a party at my friends house
was how I first heard about them & now have a few lovely bits of jewellery (eBay ever since!) :)

Not rude imo. Host said 'just come - you don't have to buy anything..'. Trouble is I'm too soft not to out of some weird misguided obligation.

I now have a need vs want rule re every purchase. I'm still 2 grand ovet drawn though!

I'd turn down any. Politely of course.

YADNBU. I too have a personal policy not to attend. I like shopping, but on my own and in my own time. I like socialising with friends. I do not like combining the two. The overall feeling is that I have been invited to someone's home, not because they enjoy my company, but because they want to make a bit of money out of me.

If you do find yourself at a Pampered Chef party, they do do a very good bottle opener that sticks to the fridge and that is excellent for breaking the air lock on jars so you can easily open the lid. You have to seek it out in the catalogue and it's only about a fiver. I hoovered up a lot of food and drink whilst buying one of these at a series of parties and giving them as Christmas presents.

Once when i was a very naive mid-teen- about 16 I think, i went to one of these parties run by one of my mum's friends. It was for really nice, 'pure' cosmetics, and one of the products was a face mask made with mint and crushed almonds. The demonstrator said that the product was so pure that once when she had her ILs arrive unexpectedly she spread it on crackers as she had nothing else in. Like i said- i was a naive kid, so i stuck my finger in the sample pot and was about to lick it when she practically lept, spiderman like across the room screaming 'DON'T EAT IT!!!!!!!'.

True story.

Have taken every claim made by any makeup company with a pinch of slat since then.

I meant 'salt' of course. Slat I can sell you at a 'hostess discount'.

Hate them with a passion. If you dont want to work so you can be home in the day, find another way to do that without fleecing your friends to pay for that decision.

I don't get why people have to do this? Why not just invite friends around for a few drinks?

ps I got trapped at one of a v nice colleague who was just a colleague - we had been working together for a few weeks so she invited me - all her friends would be going and it was to be a hoot - didn't fancy it and was skint but thought would show face and go on to meet my own friends afterwards - but when I got there all her real friends had cancelled - she then roped her ndn in who had to get her mum to watch the dc so she could be dragged round last minute so we could be the sole focus of the virgin vie woman - and I am veggie and most of the nibbles were meaty - never again!

I once went to an excruciatingly embarrassing one of these. I had initially declined the invitation, due to not having childcare (ie due to not wanting to pay a babysitter so I could go to someone's house and spend money) but the hostess convinced me that I could take my son with me and he could spend the time upstairs with her kids watching a video.

So along I went, and there's no bugger else there apart from the other people who were also selling stuff. I mean, no-one at all, not a single person. In the end I wandered around pretending to look really carefully at everything and then bought a couple of hideously overpriced hand-crafted cards before collecting my son from upstairs and legging it down the road. And the cards weren't even that nice.

x-post with maddening - sounds like a very similar experience to mine.

Thirty five years ago my sister was a Tupperwear agent. At one party a woman bought a set of ice lolly moulds.

A week later she brought them back as they didn't work.

Customer..." I filled them with orange juice and left them on the sideboard for three days and they DON'T WORK"

Sister..."You are supposed to put them in the freezer"

Customer..."But I haven't got a freezer".

Temple spa is utter overpriced shite that managed to bring me and several friends out in a rash.
I hate buy me junk parties too.

My earliest memory of such parties is going to a tupperware party with my mum and nagging her into buying those ice lolly moulds. We did use them in the freezer though so they did work I do remember my mum moaning about how expensive they were for ages though!

I just decline these invites due to no childcare/difficult bedtimes these days. Worst recent example was when I met a girl who had given up teaching to be a SAHM and then become a frighteningly over zealous pampered chef rep who roamed the local baby groups trying to invite people and then getting increasingly hysterical when no one was interested. Poor lady..

My only involvement with one of these was back in primary school days. A new-to-the-school mum decided to hold a Chocoholics party as a PTA fundraiser. I genuinely couldn't go, but I did lend her the PTA wine glass collection.

Nearly a dozen got smashed, the evening raised over £200, and we did it again the next year.

But it WAS and - total MN joy!

The second year didn't raise nearly as much money from Chocoholics. However, by then we'd got the general idea, so the year after we just had a mahoosive party and chucked money at the PTA at the end.