AIBU to ask what cheeky things you've seen people to do in order to not have to pay

[IronFists234]

First off, this is supposed to be a cheeky fucker thread. This is not a thread laughing at people making attempts to cut back to save money. Just want to make that clear!

This thread is inspired by my friend I went swimming with yesterday. Our local pool does wrist bands that indicate what time you entered, so yellow for 2-4, blue for 4-6, etc...

My friend was very adamant we HAD to go swimming at the 4-6 slot. I didn't question it but found her insistence odd.

It turns out she had blue bands from her last swimming session! She had just kept them and not handed them in

When we entered the pool she shouted "oh don't worry I already have the bands" to the pool employees. So not an outright lie but they assumed she paid!

It's a busy pool as well, so I doubt they notice she hasn't paid

I asked her why she did it and she said she'd paid once and if she could get in for free by keeping the bands, why pay?

any other stories like this?

My father also once said he went to a barbecue where the owner requested everyone bring a 'portion of coal' but I still think that was a joke (or hope)

I’ve had ‘donyou know who I am?’ Cheekiness tried on me twice in different jobs.
First: GP surgery. Patient phoned for an appointment with the nurse. Routine, nothing urgent but I had nothing on the day she requested so offered her different times. I got back ‘my name is X, do you know who I am? I’m a close personal friend of Dr Y and if you don’t give me that date I’ll complain to your manager!’ So I went to find Dr Y and asked him... he only vaguely knew her in passing and was quite pissed at having his name dragged into it. He took over the call and pleasantly booked her into a time already offered by me .
Second: restaurant I managed. A ‘close Personal friend’ of the manager demanded a refund on a finished meal because it wasn’t to their taste and was cold apparently. They also demanded a free drink as compensation. I took great pleasure telling them that I was the manager and I’d never seen them before. They paid slowly and reluctantly in as much change as they could find. I almost admired their front to be honest!

My MIL is so odd with money, I can't bend my head around it. She's got a large amount of money in her savings account (I help her with paperwork so I;ve seen bank statements etc), yet is so changeable about what she will spend it on. She invited herself came with myseld and DS to see a stage performance of Room on the Broom, bringing one of DS's cousins along too. At the interval, I was buying DS an activity book from the merch stall; she asked how much the story books were (£6.99, same as Waterstones/WH Smiths etc), she complained loudly at the cost, and said she'd rather buy 'them light up things' and asked why they didn't have any because it's a theatre performance, not a sodding panto/concert!! Apparently plastic tat that will be forgotten about by the end of the day is a better spend that a story book!!

Anyway, onto skinflit/CF/CT/TB story. We went to visit one day, and she proudly told be she'd picked up 3 packs of the soap powder I use for £10 (usually £9 each). I was briiefly stupidlyexcited, adn asked here where from, thinking I could go and buy a stockpile if I could find more. She'd bought them at the door from the loac shoplifter!! I was horrified (I obviously didn't acceppt them), but I've since found out she does this all of the time! She's also told me she got some Next babygros for one of her other grandkids, which now has me wondering where the hell all of the Next stuff DS wass given when he was born from her and the neighbours came from! I dug it all out and gaveit to the charity shop, and I'm pretty well convinced it's all stolen. I was mortified!

MANY typos in that. Angry rant typing, sorry!

Bloody hell Pea Receiving stolen goods? You personally could be had up for that if the police decided to make an example of you . Does your OH realise his mother is putting his family in this position? I would refuse anything from your MIL just incase they were stolen goods.

But how does anyone know anything we have is are not stolen goods? If something is a gift you don't know where it came from, that's not your fault and it's not like you stole it

Maisy I don’t think so. Bizzare that teachers supervising event would have to pay.

I once watched a grown man in his 50’s/60’s disgustingly eating a peach as he walked around Tesco then dump the stone on a shelf!

In Tesco again I watched a different man eating pistachios as he shopped dropping the shells everywhere.

People are disgusting!

I once had a friend who had a housewarming bbq. She said bring your own meat and booze, so basically just provided rolls. It was a bit CF but the funniest bit was that she didn’t have a BBQ so some of the guests (a couple) bought one for her and then assembled it. Me and my husband met through her and we still laugh about it now.

I cringed when I went to a theme park with a friend and her family, which included her sister who had a pass for their child with disabilities. She kept bleating on about getting ahead in the queue and I could join them (we travelled together but split when we got there as our kids liked different things, but a couple of times when I was queueing she was pulling me out of the queue to get me to go with sister and the "magic pass"). I can now see why Disney only lets the actual person pls one carer if absolutely needed into the restricted areas - went to Orlando and SIL spent an hour by herself (in wheelchair but didn't need a carer) waiting for the parade in the cordoned off area whilst the rest of us were queuing opposite. They weren't even happy about any of us popping over to chat from the other side of the barrier in case we tried to sneak in :(

All the 'potluck bandit' stories made me remember that we had a couple of employees who would always rush to the sign up sheet and put their names down for 'paper plates' or 'soda', leaving the rest of us to furnish the more expensive cooked items whilst they brought one pack of plates or one liter of soda.

We solved it by putting all the items & quantities on slips of paper and everyone drawing from a hat. You know, 'main for 12', dessert for 6', 'paper goods for 15'. You could 'swap' if you wanted to. One of my coworkers made a special cake we all loved and didn't mind swapping to bring it. The look on the faces of the cheapskates was priceless when they realize their days of paper goods or soda were over.

Restaurants really do turn some people into utter arses, I’m sure it’s because they have staff waiting on them. It gives a certain type of person some kind of God complex!

@cheekyfuckersareentertaining she sounds absolutely awful. How do you manage to be near her? Dragging her kids into it as well 😡

I once baught a new pair of hair straighteners for a holiday, they broke 3 weeks after purchase and I didn’t have the receipt. So I purchased a new pair and then took the old pair back with the new pairs receipt and said they didn’t work. They accepted it :) it’s aboit as cheeky as I’ve got lol

Yes, I'm surprised there are any restaurants left in business after reading about all these people who are constantly moaning about their meals to get them for free.

We used to live near a couple who had cheating and lying down to a fine art; their house was in a fantastic state; they we always having work done. When they had new windows installed, they kicked up such a fuss about workmanship that the company gave them a huge discount, they reduced decorators to nervous wrecks, and when she had a baby they got virtually everything including a very expensive pram for next to nothing as they moaned and complained relentlessly. Their daughter stole some items from a local shop and when the shop owner kindly rang them instead of calling the police they said it was his fault for having a display. I sometimes wonder if she has grown up as lying and grasping as her parents - they caused a lot of local businesses a deal of grief; I wonder if they thought it was worth it?

Scaredycat2000 I know, hence getting anything we received from that lot out of the house as soon as I realised it could have come from shoplifters. Thanks for seeing my perspective Squirrel I know where his Christmas gift came from, as she showed to to me in a catalogue before buying after last year when she bought a gift that I thought was dangerous and I refused to let him have it. She ordered it there and then so we're safe on that front.

We were offered a nearly new Smartrike that belonged to the granddaughter of one of her friends, but had been kep at her grandparent's house, so barely used. I declined saying I didn't think we'd use it and didn't have space to keep it (I couldn't guarantee where it had come from before they had it so I wasn't interested). OH is sat there saying 'but you said the other dday that you wanted one for him'. I almost killed him! It wasn't until we came away and I could speak freely that Icould admit why I didn't want it. It's normal and acceppted where they live. Luckily we're in a completely different town so don't see them that often, and we alternate visits, so he's surrounded by that lot even less. I dread DS being older and the amount of damage limitation I'm going to have to do in order to make sure he doesn't grow up thinking the way they behave is either normal or acceptable.

I hadn't met any of OH's family until I was already pregnant. I genuinely wonder if we would have a realtionship if I knew what they were like before things got so serious between us.

People who take food from the breakfast buffet so they don't have to buy lunch

I've seen people at a breakfast buffet literally load their bags with boxes of cereal, bars, fruit, cakes - whatever they can get their hands on. And then sit down and have a full breakfast. After which they go for 'seconds' just to cram more stuff into their bags. All in full view of other guests and with no shame whatsoever.

In Morrison’s this week a man just picked up a bottle of vodka and walked out. Despite someone telling staff no one did anything and he went on his way.

I'm not CF enough - DD got some Top Trump cards in a lucky dip recently, brand new and sealed but she already had them so I gave them to the charity shop. Only later wondered if I could have taken them to the supermarket and exchanged for a different set. Immoral but how wrong would it be as no one would have lost out financially, all sets are the same price (it was a current set not a donkeys years old unfashionable one)? (Other than the charity shop not getting a pack to sell)

@WhyamIBoredathome

Perfectly reasonable. When I used to go out with friends if you were the driver you would get your drinks bought for you by the rest of the group as it was cheaper then a cab

I suppose I did a CF thing once, but it wasn't intentional. Ex and I were in Budapest, and needed to take a tram to the other side of town. We didn't know how the system worked, and honestly couldn't figure out how to pay for our trip. There were no ticket machines that we could see, and nobody on the tram seemed to speak English so we could ask. So we had a free ride. But we didn't know what else to do!

My mum used to pick up nappies in a shop and tie a bag around the handles that indicated she’d bought it from another shop. This was back around 1990. She insists that it was ok because she couldn’t afford it otherwise. When I found out I was horrified. It is thieving. She still justifies it because she had no other option (how about stopping smoking eh )

I gad an ex like that. We went to a harvester once and he just had the salad bar (about 6 bowls full) and tap water and was shocked when they charged him turns out the salad is only free if you buy something! He was always finding a was too be a cheapskate. I hate it.