To expect to share alcohol?

[Riversideandrelax]

We went on an adult only trip to to celebrate a big birthday of a friend. It was a large group and we were divided into different holiday homes. We were sharing with one couple who are mutual friends of ours and one couple who we'd met a few times before but are not friends of ours.

Before we went this couple suggested we all put a bit of money in and they'd get some basic ingredients for breakfast/snacks for the holiday home. We agreed as did the friends of ours.

When we arrived they showed us what they'd bought. It was lots of 'basics' type things like cheap white bread, biscuits, crisps, squash, margarine, baked beans, instant coffee, sugary cereal, lots of sausages and bacon (I'm vegetarian.) This is not the type of food I normally eat but after a moment just thought I obviously had different expectations but as nothing was specified I'll have to put it down to experience. So we didn't say anything negative about the food - just got on with it.

We'd all brought some alcohol with us. Myself and the friends of ours said to everybody else 'please help yourself.' We'd brought a bottle of champagne, some wine and beers. Our friends had bought similar. The other couple bought a bottle of spirits. I realise now they'd not suggested that it was to be shared. I'd also brought some nice nibbles to share - crisps, olives, bread sticks.

On the first proper night (had arrived late on the first day) we were all sat in the lounge having some drinks and the nibbles I'd brought. I'd opened one of our bottles of wine and myself and the 2 other women were drinking that. The men all had some of the spirit. Anyway the evening went on and the men were a bit drunk. The man who brought the bottle of spirits started a physical fight with my DP because he'd helped himself to the spirit. It all came out. About how they'd offered us a cup of tea but we'd not reciprocated - we didn't ever have a tea as we don't like the cheap tea bags. We should have made them breakfast to thank them for getting the shopping.

I realised the whole thing about us paying for this shopping was essentially because they couldn't bare to share anything.

My DP didn't retaliate but left the holiday home to go for a walk to let things calm down. When he got back we packed our things and left.

I think the moral is not to go on holiday with people you don't know well. We are the type of people that share everything. They'd been counting every time my partner had some of their alcohol. They also eat very differently to us, which is fine, I'd just not realised. But perhaps they should have checked as they wanted to do it this way.

People asked me whether I bought cheap wine so I was just answering that.

And my suggestion of what I'd like for breakfast wasn't overly fancy, I didn't think.

But yes, we should have picked up on that.

Thank you

I can’t get over the guy being so chintzy that he’d actually physically attack somebody for having a sip or two out of his bottle of precious alcohol. What was in it? Mars vapour? Raindrops from Jupiter? Crushed rainbows from Venus?
Sheezus.
He needs to go Miss Manner’s School of Anger Management & Wallet Extraction.
And I’m only half-joking.
It’s like a lousy sitcom gone bad, and I’m very sorry you - and especially your husband - had such a difficult and shocking experience.
It should never have been a lesson in the first place.

I don’t think @Riversideandrelax is coming off as the snobby person here, all due respect.

And no, he wasn't remorseful. Thought he was completely in the right. I think his wife was quite embarrassed, though.

Completely in the right to hit someone??? They sound awful @Riversideandrelax -a bit trailer trash as well as cheap and mean. Maybe they’re not used to socialising much.

And expecting you to make them breakfast and cups of tea, simply because they’d gone to Lidl (or Poundland?) for cheap food ??? - for which you’d paid your fair share. Vulgar chancers.

The OP is not in the least snobbish. She just wanted good quality food while on a weekend away.

And frankly, the acquaintances sound quite low rent. It’s not snobbish to describe honestly what they thought was food to share as cheap and not very good quality if it was cheap and not good quality.

Thank you.

The guy attacked your partner! Why are you so fixated on the ‘cheap’ food they bought? Why is your thread title about sharing alcohol rather than the attack?

Because I don't need to ask if AIBU about the attack. I already know the answer to that

But what if everyone said no, no one ever shares alcohol, and you should have accepted the offer of a cup of tea with their nasty cheap teabags — would that legitimise the attack?

As a fellow autistic person, I think I understand why you asked the question in the way you did. You know that the attack was absolutely wrong, so you don’t need anyone else’s opinion. But you’re not sure about the dynamics of the drink and food situation, and you want outside opinions so that you can learn from what happened. Is that right?

Here’s my take:

I do not think it was unreasonable to assume that all the alcohol was fair game, since everyone apparently was helping themselves to all the other drinks. If everything else is being treated as a free for all, it’s down to the owner of the vodka to find some way to clarify that they are not offering it on the same terms - maybe by putting the top back on and keeping the bottle tucked down by their own chair, rather than leaving it out with all the communal drinks. But it would be rather bad to do so, unless there was something special about the vodka, or unless the owner wasn’t partaking of any of the other drinks and wanted to make sure they had enough for themselves.

I also think their choice of foods and snacks was weird and inappropriate. If two other couples have chipped in a decent amount for a weekend’s breakfasts and snacks for a group of adults, buying the cheapest possible supermarket basics is a bit insulting. From what you say, it sounds like there was enough money there to have bought decent-quality bread, beans, bacon, veggie sausages, free-range eggs, and that you’d have found that quite acceptable (even if not what you’d have chosen for yourself)? The problem is that they bought a lot of really poor-quality food even though you gave enough money for significantly better-quality options. I’d be confused and really annoyed by that. Anyone who thinks this is snobbish has an odd idea of snobbery - these foods are not bog-standard-quality; they’re very cheap, bulked out with cheap ingredients, generally low in nutrition and don’t taste great.

So, they offered to do the food shopping, and did an obviously bad and inconsiderate job of it. You wouldn’t have owed them a tea and breakfast service even if they’d made better food choices, especially since they volunteered and you’d have happily done it yourself otherwise. It’s not a major task and certainly not one that entitles them to demand that you and your friends become their private caterers for the weekend!

The husband, in particular, sounds like an abusive bully. No rational, decent adult behaves that way. I don’t think you or your DP did anything obviously wrong.

But some people choose quantity over quality. Some people like white sliced bread, cereal, baked beans, squash, sausages etc. and snack on biscuits and crisps. Some people literally can’t taste the difference. My father’s approach to food is that it should be ‘nice and hot and plenty of it’. He’d prefer to big plate of cheap food to something he ‘had to appreciate’.

To them it wasn’t a ‘bad and inconsiderate job’ of breakfast shopping — they presumably bought the kind of thing they eat themselves. The OP even acknowledges this — that it was a matter of mismatched expectations. If they don’t eat like that themselves, they can have had no idea the OP wanted freshly-squeezed orange juice, wholemeal bread, freerange eggs, yoghurt, fruit and pastries. They presumably thought that a vegetarian could eat beans if she wanted more than toast and cereal.

Obviously the hitting someone who drank their vodka thing is territorial and quite mad (I seem to remember people hiding their own bottles at student parties when we were all skint), but I’m not sure I necessarily think they consciously skimped on breakfast food to spend the OP’s money on booze.

If the couple who brought the vodka didn’t want other members of the group to help themselves to their vodka then they should not have helped themselves to the alcohol that other members of the group had brought with them.

By helping themselves to others alcohol they are entering a social contract to share theirs.

As for the cheap, low quality food. Why would anyone be offended that others might not want to eat it, and prefer a much nicer breakfast alternative?

UWNBU, the violent, angry man was. I hope his girlfriend sees sense and LTB.

This is getting the strangest replies I’ve ever seen on mumsnet.

OP you are not an alcoholic or unreasonable not to want to eat crap food. I don’t eat crap food ever. I certainly wouldn’t do it on holiday! I love nice wine too! It doesn’t make me an alcoholic. It makes me an adult who has good taste in things.

Leave the rest of these daft bastards replying to you with nonsense to their smart price beans. Fuck em! YANBU.

YANBU & the other couple sound awful.

You're not BU OP.
You didn't like the breakfast offerings and it wasn't a huge choice as your are veggie anyway (and you'd told them). Yes I can see how they'd maybe thought everyone would cook them a massive fry up but then again the other couple didn't either?
But you slipped out and bought your own and said nothing. That was not offensive.
You didn't make tea but you didn't have any. So also not offensive. Did the other couple make tea?
You openly shared your wine and nibbles and your DP had a glass of vodka without being asked. And got that reaction.
Honestly these people sound batshit !

Well his wife was drinking OPs wine. Thats a very clear sign its free for all. You dont bring a bottle of spirits to a party and drink it alone. Even if you specify ‘this is my alcohol, not to share’ people would think youre insane.

But they weren't only feeding themselves,they should have thought about the other couples.
They paid the same amount,so if couple A likes that stuff,fair enough.
But they could have included stuff the other 2 couples liked.

But the OP says they didn’t say. She says in her first post that while it isn’t the kind of food she eats, nothing had been specified about what kind of breakfast food was to be purchased with the kitty, and it was a case of ‘mismatched expectations’.

I mean, obviously this couple behaved badly later on, but it’s perfectly possible they just bought the kind of food they eat themselves.

They sound bloody awful and unhinged! Sorry your holiday was ruined

This has nothing to do with "communication" and everything to do with going on holiday with a violent thug.

You have done nothing wrong.

Not what you would expect to eat, no. They must be happy to eat it though as it’s what they chose to spend the money on, unless you think that they kept back some of the money you sent? If you were all eating breakfast in your separate lodges then maybe they didn’t consider that to be part of the celebration and were happy with the basics?

I do get it- I don’t eat meat (or any eggs from shops, let alone caged ones) so I wouldn’t have eaten most of it either. My point was that I think you just have to accept that your wires got a bit crossed on that one. If you trust other people to do your shopping then you kind of have to accept that they will get what they want/think is suitable unless you ask them for something specific.

It’s disappointing, but not worth crying over!

No, obviously the OP did nothing wrong. She and her boyfriend just happened to go away for a weekend with someone who thinks hitting peoole is an acceptable thing to do.

I just think the breakfast food subplot is a total red herring. There seems to be no evidence whatsoever the other couple deliberately bought cheap breakfast food in order to use the rest of the money for the bottle of spirits that started the fight.

The other thing that strikes me is that the weekend sounds a bit joyless. I would have expected one of the houses to be designated a communal gathering spot if the weekend was to celebrate someone’s birthday, but the OP describes drinking alone in her house on the first proper night of the trip, with only the two other couples staying there (neither of whom are the birthday person), during which all the men get drunk on spirits, and then the spirit-buying couple kick off and the man attacks the OP’s boyfriend.

I would be absolutely gutted to find cheap meat especially as I really enjoy a nice breakfast when I am away, I don't think you sound snobby at all

You seem to have taken this very personally. Why ?