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Original poster

What is the stingiest thing you've ever done / seen someone do?

900 replies

Teadrinker11 · 12/01/2022 21:03

Yourself or someone else, what is the most stingy, mean, miserable thing is that you have ever done or seen someone else do?

OP posts:
BigYellowHat · 13/01/2022 08:07

DH, DS and I went out with a stingy friend to a burger bar that was about £8 a head as it was the early bird. Anyway, we were meeting stingy friend as he was in the city for work. We got up to pay and DH had put down our payment plus about a fiver for a tip, expecting stingy friend to do the same. As we looked back, we saw that he took the bowl with the money to the till, used the tip as partial payment for his meal and then heard him ask for the remainder (only) to be put on his card!!

The real kicker was he was getting the meal on his expenses from his employer!! So not only did he steal from us and make us look cheap to the restaurant for not leaving a tip, be basically stole from his employer. The guy is on a £50k plus a year salary too. We distanced ourselves after that.

TwoLeftSocksWithHoles · 13/01/2022 08:08

Well there's some great tips on here, however, don't try mine of using both sides of the toilet paper - it was not really very successful. Grin

Lovemusic33 · 13/01/2022 08:08

Take a small lunch box to a meal to take home leftovers, this wasn’t me but my dh’s (now ex dh’s) boss at a Christmas party/meal, he took leftovers from other people plates too….well he was paying for everyone’s meal? 😬

SpookyScarySkeletons · 13/01/2022 08:08

@KatherineJaneway

Why not make two cups of tea as unless you want very strong tea, a bag easy does two.

It doesn't.

Depends what teabags you are using. We have Ringtons breakfasts tea and it easily makes 2 strong cups out of one teabag.
TheOrigRights · 13/01/2022 08:15

@MinnieJackson

Saw someone snapping the ends of broccoli in the veg shop before weighing it. My Gran always used to tell me not to tie a knot in the plastic bag when you put it on the scales there because it weighs more Confused
If you're not going to eat the stems, then snapping them off seems reasonable, not stingy.
EveningOverRooftops · 13/01/2022 08:15

@reesewithoutaspoon

My nan was frugal, but she was born in 1918 and I think wartime had a lot to do with it. She saved all wrapping paper and ironed it flat to reuse, cut buttons and zips off every item of clothing that had worn out, clothes were cut up for rags or used to make patchwork items. basically she very rarely threw anything out and would find another way of using it. Old jumpers were unravelled and used to make hats/gloves/scarves. Old tights were stuffed with rags to make draught excluders. or the rags cut into strips to make rag rugs. She wasnt skint. I just think she got so used to having to make do and mend when she was younger that she just couldnt bear to see anything go to waste.
I still do things like this and we all need to be doing things like this!

Even if we cut up worn out clothes are remove all the good stuff and donate it to someone who can use it it’s really important we try.

I have a jar full of white school shirt buttons from properly stained and ruined school shirts. I’ll probably never use them but I plan to take the jar to the seamstress shop down the road. No doubt she will have more use for it than me!

MrsLargeEmbodied · 13/01/2022 08:24

a place i was temping at, making myself a cup of tea, a colleague came along and before i had even squeezed the tbag, removed it from my cup to use for herself Shock

ds toddler group had used teabags drying all around the kitchen, to reuse

Harrysutton · 13/01/2022 08:26

My FIL announced at the end of a meal. Ours was £30. It most definitely wasn’t (it was more) and then said to DH ‘you can buy us a drink on holiday to make up the difference). That would be the holiday we had paid for. Never again.

noodlezoodle · 13/01/2022 08:26

@KatherineJaneway

Why not make two cups of tea as unless you want very strong tea, a bag easy does two.

It doesn't.

Depends on the tea. If you have Yorkshire Tea, it definitely does.
Toocoldtocamp · 13/01/2022 08:27

Agree that we could all take a leaf out of the older war generations book... for the environment for starters.
I recently helped clear my Nans house out when she went into a home (she's just over 100). She'd kept and still used so many things from 50s, 60s and 70s. She'd not been well off but was comfortable in retirement and always well turned out. Well...dangerous electrics, out of date condiments and cake making ingredients (she still used them periodically). A soup maker that looked like it would fry you alive. Nothing was well washed up because i guess she wasn't able. We brought loads of things back home to use (and sadly had to bin a lot for safety) and my DC wouldn't as they said that the dishes looked dirty and unhygienic. They did. But then Granny is still alive with her questionable hygiene and attitudes (to food use by dates, and 70s electrical appliances, drying hands on dirty towels, no antibacterial in sight. Cleaning products with a 1/4 left and were old labels....)... but aged 100 so who is right?!

Riverlee · 13/01/2022 08:29

I was thinking about teabags in the middle of the night, when I couldn’t sleep. Teabags were never designed for one cup of tea, but for teapots. You’d put your teabag in the pot, and then would let it brew/mash/stew, and then would top it up with water for further cups of tea. Recycling at its best.

I was just trying to find out when the one-cup teabag was introduced. Tetleys introduced the round teabag in the 90s, so possibly then.

piney07 · 13/01/2022 08:34

We went on an expensive group holiday which had a cook, it was very much expected culturally to tip the cook. One of the wealthiest in the group who had spent the trip buying themselves clothing worth thousands of dollars refused to join in on the tipping which amounted to about $50 each for a week of cooking and service (it was already on the low end of an expected tip!), so we all had to cover their tip for them. I could never look at them the same after that.

PropertyFlipper · 13/01/2022 08:35

Years ago I was at the gym with a friend. We were in the changing rooms and she noticed a bra that was hanging on a hook, presumably left behind by someone. She had a quick look at the label, said 'oh great that's my size' and popped it into her bag.

We are no longer friends (unrelated to above!).

Andtheyalllookjustthesame · 13/01/2022 08:35

Years ago there was a young man who used to come out with us who would take his cigarette butts home with him to unpick and re-roll later, and would always take something with him from every pub eg. An ash tray, toilet roll, a pint glass, etc. He lived in a million pound odd house with his parents and wore designer clothes.

Toocoldtocamp · 13/01/2022 08:36

Every time i make multiple cups of tea and use multiple bags i feel like an anarchist and I left home 30 years ago.... My DM (see my OP) would have 'had my guts for garters' if i had done this at home growing up. She always makes a pot at my house (i only have the pot for posh leaf tea). Then she stews it and tops it up again. And microwaves it too. My DH said her tea is the worst tea he's ever had! Coffee is the cheap 'church' kind too. Like dust.
My dad loves a cuppa at ours. Poor bustard has had my DMs tea for over 50 years! (We only have Yorkshire tea for this reason).

greenteafiend · 13/01/2022 08:37

I have black tea, no sugar, and don't like very strong tea. I can get 3 cups of tea exactly as I like it from one tea bag.

This! If you don't like strong tea (and especially if you take it black), one teabag works for at least two cups of tea.

TightWadPilot · 13/01/2022 08:38

I am crew for an airline. Went on a week long layover to Barbados one Christmas. The pilot organised a boat trip and most of the cost per person was covered in each persons Christmas allowance. We each had £4 extra to pay. It only really transpired that he'd conned £2 extra out of everyone when someone actually did the maths/exchange rate calculations. He even conned an extra £2 out of my Husband (who I took with me as a guest) who'd paid full price for the trip too.

It was so embarrassing, he went bright red (we were all in the hotel reception on the day we were leaving) when it transpired. He had to use float the cabin manager carried to divi out everyone's £2.

TinyTear · 13/01/2022 08:38

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

languagelover96 · 13/01/2022 08:40

My mom used to collect those free magazines on planes. She claimed she would read them but I know that really she passed them to other relatives and family friends over the years.

UniformSchmooniform · 13/01/2022 08:42

Dunno if it's been mentioned before but those lockdown food bags for kids were the epitome of stinginess - packs of ham and pasta split into plastic bag portions and individual counted out cheese slices. I think they were meant to be 30 quids worth but looked like they had a value of about a fiver at best.

cobblers123 · 13/01/2022 08:43

This used to happen at work on several Christmas buffets held in the department.

We all brought something in, either bought or home cooked so we had a fair selection of stuff. The same person always bought a pack of supermarket mince pies that cost less than a pound but ate quite freely everything else that had been supplied by the rest of us.

Every year ...

FreshandLively · 13/01/2022 08:45

I dot see most of these things as stingy, but as sensibly avoiding waste, protecting the planet.

Every time you use something you don't need you do harm. Sometimes we decide the harm is worth it (going on holiday) but if you can use half the number of tea bags by making two cups or reduce the number of plastic shampoo bottles by making sure each one is properly empty why wouldn't you?

Whatshernamevirginiaplain · 13/01/2022 08:46

NC for this.
ExDP is comfortable and has no mortgage (mummy bought him a flat years ago)and he has a reasonably well paid job for doing not much all day. He is too mean to put a shower into his bathroom and goes to his DM's or his work/gym every morning before work rather than use his bath. Too stingy to put a shower in for his DD who is a teenager and when she visits him ,she too also has to go to granny's. Tightwad. He gives the basic CM that he can get away with and it hasn't changed since DD was small.

AngelinaFibres · 13/01/2022 08:46

@squashyhat

I guess this was a product of memories of wartime shortages but I remember when I was a child my Dad would stick the tiny sliver of old soap onto a new bar rather than throw it away. I now get really irritated with my DH for throwing away the dregs of a shampoo bottle rather than turn it upside down and squeezing it into the new one so Dad must have passed on his parsimonious habits Smile
My mum used to do the sliver of soap thing when we were children. We had Imperial leather . Everytime I smell it I am taken back to my childhood and my first night at teacher training college .
SedentaryCat · 13/01/2022 08:46

A close relative who lives less than 3 miles from the hospital and expects people to do a 30 mile round trip to take him there, rather than get a taxi. Said people have to drive past the hospital to collect him.

Routine appointments, no treatment required, it's just cheaper for him to pay for the parking and a cup of tea than for a taxi both ways...(he has stated this).

Same relative gave DH a Christmas present of some screwdrivers. Cheap things that came as a freebie when he ordered something else. Routinely gives cheap plastic/front of magazine things as presents to the DCs at Christmas/on birthdays.

Gave his daughter a box of wine for her birthday. One that was a year out of date.

There are many other things this person does and I could go on at length about how mean he is, but it'll take me all day.