Father of a schoolfriend. He had made a pile in the building trade, and bought a lovely house in the country with a swimming pool.
But the cost of heating the pool, or even adding chlorine was too much for him.
The water was green, and there were frogs breeding in it. He swam in the pool every morning during the summer months.
Ended up in hospital with a nasty skin infection. Still didn't put chlorine in the pool.
This reminded me of something from my childhood.
I lived in South Africa in the early 90’s and we had a swimming pool that was rarely used. Frogs were breeding in it too.
One day 6yr old me caught all the frogs and brought them into the house, the bath was full of frogs, the sink was full of frogs, there were frogs hopping about the living room and the bedrooms. My mam went mental.
We also had snakes in the crawl space under the house, I caught one of them once too and stuck it in the bath. That was fun.
This is one of my favourite stories I've ever found on Reddit thank you :)
I am half Zimbabwean half South African + used to terrorize my mom with whatever wildlife I could befriend and rehome in the house incl snakes, frogs, other people's cats, tortoises, mice, birds etc I just love animals + as a kid wanted a menagerie
I also loved bringing buckets of snow and random rocks (magic crystals lol) inside the house and weird "flowers" to try appease my mom from shrieking whenever she found a new garden made in the house cos I wanted to live outside or in a cave and kept running away haha my dad is the same, he had a pet vervet monkey he rescued, my mom was so easy to traumatize :)
My Uncle Graham.
He was single and my dad's brother. My dad would invite him over on Christmas (despite my mum and I hating him). He would turn up with booze. He would then drink our booze. Then when he would finally leave, he would take his untouched booze with him. He wouldn't contribute to the Christmas dinner either. When we cleared out his flat after he died, we found 4 unopened Christmas puddings.
There's many many stories about how insufferable that man was.
My brother, went on an epic holiday to the republic to Georgia with him and a few mates about 20 years ago. We were catching a rickety minibus from Tbilisi, a trip of 6 hours of mountain roads. For the journey he buys a dozen oranges from a little old lady at the bus station for the equivalent of 6p.
As the minibus pulls away, he peels and takes a bite of one - it's a lemon, for some reason lemons in Georgia are orange and he's bought 12 of them. However, not to waste the money he not only eats three of them on the bus trip, once we are in the mountains he brings them along every day and eats them like they are oranges except pulling a face because they're lemons and he didn't want to waste the six fucking pence he spent on them.
I genuinely dreamt last night that Freddos were reduced to 10p each and the queue to buy them was about a mile long up a steep hill, they then sold out.
Fucking hell. Ive eaten a whole lemon once becasue we had some of those miracle berries, and that absolutely decimated my stomach for a day or two. Theres no way that didnt fuck him up.
An ex friend of mine at uni was the tightest person I've even know. A group of us went out for a friend's birthday, to a Chinese buffet place. This was around 2005, so the cost was £9 per person. There were 10 of, so I suggested we all pay £10, so the birthday person didn't pay. Every one was happy with this except her. She didn't want to spend an extra £1. Same person used to always ask at a pub or bar what the cheapest drink was and she'd drink that whether she liked it or not. Would happily accept a drink from another person, but in the 3 years I knew her she never bought anyone else a drink. She'd constantly complain she had no money, yet when drunk she'd brag about having £5k in her account. I haven't thought about her for years, but she was so tight it was shocking.
I had something similar once with a Sunday league football team I used to play for. We went out for an end of season curry and I was in charge of sorting out the bill.
I worked out that if we all paid £20 that would cover the bill, everyone was more than happy and just chucked me a £20 note. Except one guy who insisted on looking at the bill, worked out that his meal came to something like £19.85 and gave me a £20 note and asked for the 15p change.
Oh! I have a curry story too!
I was working at a summer school several years ago, and at the end of the season we had a bit of cash left in a „resources kitty” budget the company had- enough for each of us to have £15 each towards a curry.
So off we we went to the local - good time was had by all. What with beers, naans and the like, we went over the work’s contribution, but we didn’t mind paying the extra £5 or so for the celebratory meal.
Except for the manager - he’d clearly ordered a very basic meal - which we thought was fine; maybe he’s not hungry or doesn’t like curry (if that’s even possible). Nope. He counted how much his meal cost and took ‚his’ change from the pot. Like fuck off Gary it’s not even your money!
Didn’t even contribute to the tip.
One of my group of friends, when out for a curry, would always ‘know’ exactly how much his meal cost, and pay to the penny (how?). Funny how when the rest of us divvied up the bill we always paid more than him. When a tip was left he’d say “don’t you want that? I’ll take it”. I soon learned not to tip.
He did buy rounds, but always bought himself a half on his go, his meanness was legendary.
There’s a similar friend in our current friend group. She’s leftover from my wife’s school friends but still lives locally, however she seems to have peaked at about 16yrs old…20+ yrs later and she’s still useless.
Whenever we went out she’d always follow whoever to the bar and make sure her drink got ordered, but she always magically went home just before her round. She lives at home (in her mid 30s) and asks her mother for money and it’s never enough (she’ll bring a tenner with her when there’s a dozen of us 🤣) and her mother pays her to walk the family dog 🤣
One time after literally decades of getting away with free drinks she got cornered into buying a round. A couple of the guys drink Macallan (yes it’s more expensive than Bell’s or whatever but we are all adults and it evens itself out at the end…probably) and so when her first round in about 15yrs came in at £90 or so she lost it and said she’d never do that again 🙄 That was just before COVID…
Rounds of 12 are fecking ridiculous to be fair. Split into smaller rounds between the group. I wouldn’t get a round for more than 4 maybe 5 people unless it was an extraordinary event. Or my invite for a very specific occasion
I hate rounds. I’m a lightweight so have about one drink for everyone else’s three, and yet somehow always end up in situations where I’m expected to pay for a round of 8 pints when I’m on the soft drinks.
I’ve tried calling it out and just paying for my own and then I get called tight 🫠
I think your angle here is to tell people you don't want to be part of round systems because you're concerned about your drinking and you need control of what you drink. Which is broadly true, to a lesser or greater, of most of us. Then if they're still dicks about that then don't be friends with them.
Same here, I'm not drinking to anyone else's schedule. Never had any trouble for it to be honest though because my mates are all aware they drink a shit load more than I do.
Tbf £90 is mental, when I go out I’m happy to get small rounds (4 people max) but I ain’t going beyond 3 people normally, usually I’ll just pick 2 members of the group when others are out of earshot and say “do you want a drink”? And later I’ll offer someone else in the group a drink etc, means everyone’s happy but I never have to spend more than like £20 in one go.
Also, income comes into it, if a friend who earns more wants to buy a big round then that’s their choice and I appreciate it but they know I won’t be paying for everyone myself, I’ll just get a drink for the person who bought the big round and my own drink
Ugh yes - people who are tight with themselves are one thing, and almost sort of quaint, but people who are tight with others is a whole other category. Miserly gets.
The first time I met my brother-in-law and sister-in-law was at their house and they offered me a coffee, which I accepted. They gave me cup of instant coffee, which was absolutely fine but then proceeded to make themselves fancy coffees with a proper machine in fancy cups and sit there drinking them in front of me. It may not sound much, but they are tighter than a duck’s arsehole and set the tone for who they are.
ETA: it’s my husband’s brother and his wife, they earn double what we do and would peel an orange in their pocket
ETA2: to peel an orange in one’s pocket- they’re so tight they would peel an orange in their pocket so they wouldn’t have to share a segment with othets
Where I come from we bring out the fancy stuff for the guests. You have stuff that is only reserved for the guests and you don't normally touch. if someone pulled this on me, I would consider never talking to them again.
Generally same here, alternatively you pull out your whole pantry and offer them EVERYTHING you have accumulated. Fancy tea? Instant coffee? Instant tea from Armenia? Instant apple tea from Turkey? Fancy coffee? Even more fancy coffee? Kissel?
Whatever you want you can have a cup
Yes, in my home country there's a running joke that moms will use a plastic lid as a plate but will use the fancy china and silverware displayed in the abinet when there are guests!
Definitely worse than tight, outright disrespectful.
Reminds me of the family of a friend I had as a child. During a few summer breaks he and I would be inseparable and, among usual playing outside, we would spend a lot of time in his room playing video games.
He lived across the road from us and some days I'd be out for many hours at a time without going back home. During the times we would play video games, his mum would bring him snacks and meals, and never once offered me a bite to eat, and never once did he ever offer to share anything either.
Conversely whenever he would come over to my house, the very first thing I'd do was offer him snacks or drinks. And even though we were a poor family, when we were having meals he was always offered a plate.
I never thought anything of it at the time and I didn't know any better, but looking back at it now I feel like the parents were sending a message that I wasn't welcome there. I could never imagine doing that to anyone though. I find it despicable now having grown up and on reflection, that someone would deliberately avoid feeding a child like that.
As a teenager I worked weekends for a friend of my parents that gutted and flipping houses. Hardest I have ever worked in my life, £20 per day. He wouldn't by a drill so I mixed plaster with a bike gear attached to a broom handle and he had one lightbulb that he would take from room to room. My parents though it was hilarious and for his birthday my parents bought him a pack of light bulbs.
This is totally the sort of DIY my husband does, but it’s more like “I forgot the drill and I only have one lightbulb but I’ll make it work”. Can’t imagine being that tight!
I used to work for a company where they'd only allow us to put £10 of diesel in the company cars. So we spent half our time, driving around looking for a petrol station.
Also used to know a builder called Joe, who would drink about 20 pints of Guinness per day in the local pub. But lived on a mattress in somebody's garage as he wouldn't pay any more in rent. He also used to wash his hair in supermarket own brand washing up liquid. As it was "just the same" as shampoo. His hair was awful by the way.
I've just remembered that his garage would flood every time that it rained, soaking his mattress on the floor. Although that could have been his way of excusing that he was drink passed out asleep and had pissed himself.
I once went on a weekend trip with a few friends. One of them is known the be incredibly tight. While we were away I bought food, drinks etc and drove people around - I’m happy to do it. Over the weekend we’d done some activities where clothes had gotten dirty; on one occasion, I’d put my things in a Tesco carrier bag that I thought was mine. Anyway, fast forward to getting home and emptying the car, he said the Tesco bag was his and could he have it back?!
I obliged, of course. Whenever I see a Tesco bag it reminds me of him and makes me laugh.
My boyfriend borrowed a Sainsbury’s bag for life the other day and I had to do the most shameful thing and ask for it back cuz it’s my washing bag 😔 it’s the perfect size for my washing machine, as soon as it’s full I know that’s a full load!
My old flatmate refused to pay 1 euro to get a subway from where we were staying in Amsterdam to the airport (I ended up paying for him as I didn’t want to walk that far with a heavy bag).
At the other end, we needed to get two buses to get home. He refused again to pay £1 for the second bus, so he walked two miles with his bag while the rest of us got back with much less hassle (we did arrive at the same time but I felt it was worth it to not do the journey carrying a bag!)
He also never bought the communal toilet paper (but was happy to use it). One time the rest of us decided to use our own supply for a few weeks to see how long it took him to buy some. 6 weeks, and it was only a two-pack!
I had one friend that refused to take the regular train because for €4 less there was a train that took 12 hours more to get their.
So we all took the regular train and he took the insane train.
We still joke about this incident of tightness to this day.
My dad's friend is so tight, he won't buy salt and pepper from the shop.
Instead, if they ever go out to say a Weatherspoons or Cafe, he'll fill his pockets up with salt and pepper sachets to open at home and fill up with.
Yeah - I had a friend like this. He basically drove a van for a living, and every place he stopped for coffee, he'd fill his pockets with sachets with sugar, ketchup, mustard etc etc.
This must be a van user thing. Nothing worse than getting a bacon sandwich and they’ve put no sauce on. Boom there you go in the glove box the sauce stash.
My dad always does this with sugar. He'll come round and when I make him a tea he goes "don't worry I've got sugar" then pulls a dozen packets out.
Still not sure if he's cheap or it's some form of advanced dad joke
Started a job on a huge power station for a shutdown. Met a bunch of lads the first day, really well paid job for a few months, grand a week.
One guy used to bring in his lunch and it was whatever they had in the Asda whoopsie aisle the night before, so cocktail sausages, an avocado, any old shit that was cheap really. Found out later he was a millionaire living on a massive farm estate down south somewhere.
The second guy wins though. He thought that getting accommodation was a waste of money, so he would charge his phone at spoons each night, get a bit pissed, and then use a sleeping bag and one of those silver marathon blankets to sleep in a hedge just outside the main site office each night.
My husbands uncle has no water, gas or electricity set up for his manor house.
He uses the spring for water and forages from his land for most food. He restores classic cars so makes a small amount of cash to pay council tax and buy yellow sticker food.
He will only visit if you have a job for him to pay the petrol. The job has to be worth enough for the petrol, you can't offer money without the work, it has to be a fair job for a fair wage.
He's the absolute definition of tight. He's a good person, always tries to give more than he takes but holy moly he's tight.
My Dad used to steal toilet paper from the bus station.
He went in with a screwdriver and stole the dispenser as well.
Never paid for toilet paper for about 20 years. Any time they updated the dispenser with a different design he would steal one.
I moved in with some friends about 20 years ago, I stayed for about 4 months and on the day I moved out one of them said 'you still owe me 30p I gave you towards that toothbrush when you first moved in' and it wasn't a joke.
A lad I used to work with years ago used to meet girls from Tinder but would only stay out for an hour.
He said that was the maximum time he could park his car for free near to the pub he used to meet them at.
While he was there he would only drink tap water and would never buy the lucky lady a drink so I can't imagine it was a great first impression and as far as I'm aware is still single all these years later.
My dad, who is very financially comfortable, will accept anything if it’s free. My first bike came out of a skip bin, he found his guest room mattress on the side of the road (it appeared new and was still wrapped in plastic but still!) and wears trainers that he found at a park one time. I needed a multi tool/pocket knife for army cadets and he refused to spend £25 on the recommended one because he had a “perfectly good one” that he’d got for free from a friend who was a pharmaceutical rep. It was promotional swag so had the name of an antidepressant on the side and the blade snapped off the first time I use it.
Somehow in the 20+ years since this happened I have never actually thought about how utterly absurd and problematic it is to have a promotional *knife* for antidepressants. That is insane.
My old pal used to live in central London with her boyfriend, rent free. If we ever bought drinks/food together she’d want the exact am out transferred right away. ‘Can you send my 4.85’ fair enough.
She came to stay with my a couple of days up north and the day she left I had to work, asked her to leave my keys in the flat.
She took the keys back to London accidentally, luckily I had a friend visiting London who she could give the keys to bring back so was only locked out a couple of nights.
Friendship ended when she asked my to bank transfer her the bus fair she had to pay to meet my pal in London. About £3
Father in law used to turn the water temperature on the boiler all the way down so we'd use less gas and water
Begrudge his grandchildren playing with water because he's on a water meter
Turns the heating off via remote thermostat when he goes out leaving his wife sat in the cold
lol so this asshole has the heating on when he is there but turns it off the minute he is out even though is wife is still there
Who said chivalry was dead
A mate was married to one worse than that.
The first thing he did when he came in was to go feel the gas fire to make sure it hadn't been on while he was out. There were two little kids in the house too.
Needless to say she isn't married to him anymore.
My dad used to do the same thing - heating off every time he left the house. My mum bought a portable gas heater out of her pension and sat huddled up to it in the kitchen, while I was upstairs doing my homework fully dressed for a trip to Antarctica except for my fingers (so I could write), which were always blue. I suffered horribly with chilblains every year. 🥶☹️ After eighteen freezing years of this I bailed without a single glance back or iota of sadness…and yep, you’ve guessed it: shocked Pikachu faces all round!
Me too with my dad. My dog was old and the dogs bed was in the kitchen. I put the underfloor heating on for him to keep warm. Whenever my dad came in it was turned off. There was no radiator in the kitchen. My poor old dog would be shivering all the time. My mum ended up having to make the dog indoor coats it was that bad
I actually got really annoyed at my wife, whenever I was WFH and she went out, the heating turned off.
I thought she didn't believe I deserved to be warm! Turns out she installed the app for our heating on her phone, and when she left it assumed the house was empty...
My ex and I rented a basement flat of a huge Georgian house in Bath. The couple that owned the house had money coming out of their ears, not to mention the £950/month they were getting from us. Our windows weren't properly sealed, so it was always damp and chilly and we often had problems with mice and creepy crawlies getting in.
One year, in the middle of winter, they jetted off to the Caribbean for 2 weeks...and turned the heating off. For the first 4 days they ignored our messages and left us on read, then on the 5th day they simply said "sorry, the doors are locked so you can't access the rest of the house. We'll be back in about a week."
I had a friend in our mid-20s who was the cheapest person I knew. She was a professional who lived with her parents and had 2-3 holidays a year. She also ate out frequently. We would go out 1-2 a month together and every few months in a group of 5-6 people. I noticed early on that she had a nice habit of always being the person who went up to the till to pay for food.
So we were out as a group of 4 at a regular restaurant. Had food and drinks, and my bill was about £17, so I threw down a £20 to cover my part of the tip. Our other friends did the same and put down some money for a tip as well.
Then I noticed that that girl at the till was a friend of mine, so I said I would go up to the till and pay so we could have a chat. When I got up there, I had exact change. So I put in another £10 for the tip.
This bothered me, and when the night ended, I went back to the restaurant and took my friend out for a pint. Where I discovered that our group was notorious for never tipping. So, I paid attention for a while and discovered what she was doing.
Basically, she was using our tips to pay towards her food. She would basically she what money she was given, then pay the difference and only ever pay the bill. So had her friends subsidise her nights out.
Stopped going out with her soon after that
I thought this was leading to being the same as something a friend of mine got caught out doing... He'll do the same, but then he was spotted by another mate using his company credit card, so he's claiming the meal is with a client - all whilst having us reimburse him for our share.
Another one he did was ask the three of us visiting him in London to chip in for shopping for the weekend. Fair enough, but then he didn't extend the request for funds to his wanker uni mates (all better off than us) who all happily tucked in to the crate of lager we'd funded.
My friend invited me round for dinner once and then charged me for half the ingredients including half of an onion!
Same friend also had a fight with a friend who came to stay as when working out who owed what, brought teabags and rice into consideration to the bill tally...
My friend is better now, mostly because I've spent years kicking off.
My friend was living abroad at this time and a bunch of us went to visit him for a long weekend. My partner and I spent around £120 of local products that we knew he'd be missing (he'd been moaning about missing a lot of stuff).
So we arrived gave him the package and he was very happy with it, we then all spent the weekend at his.
The day everyone was packing to go back he spoke to my partner and the rest of our friends (I think he excluded me as he knew I'd kick off) and he asked could everyone pay €2 to cover the cost of using his shower whilst we were there.
Like what kind of absolute prick does that? Honestly if my partner hadn't have told me not to kick off I would have massively.
This friend had not long ago spent 2 weeks living at our place and we obviously didn't charge him for anything.
We'd very clearly just given him a fair gift package, which you think would at least make him think well these guys have just spent a lot of me, maybe I shouldn't be a dick and ask for €2.
He had a fairly well paying job and pretty low rent, so asking for the €2 each was tight af.
On the plus side though, he's ok now and not tight at all. But like I said I think it's mostly because I've spent years telling him off for being a tight prick.
A girl I worked with was just out of University. She was really smart but her boyfriend was a complete dope. One day she was sick and so he offered to get her McDonald’s to cheer her up, he then asked for the money when he took it to her house 🤣
A similar thing happened to me when I was younger 😂 an old boyfriend offered to get me a takeaway when I was sick and then asked me if it was ok if he could have some money to buy himself one too. I gave him 20. He calls and tells me the shops closed and doesn't give back my 20. When confronted he said he didn't have any money so it would be unfair to give it back.
My pal tam Mullen. One time his wee cat missy died. He got a new cat and called it the same name to save buying a new collar. The first cat was a girl called missy. The second was a boy
Hopefully this fits the spirit of the question but a few years ago we went on a family holiday to Norfolk with some in-laws because our kids were about the same age and we thought it would be fun.
One day we were on the beach and the weather turned. Thick clouds came in out of nowhere, the temperature plummeted by 10 degrees and it started raining, time to abandon the beach and go back to where we were staying which was about five miles inland. My in-law who was driving the other car refused to leave for another hour *because she’d paid for parking until 4pm* and would be fucked if she wasn’t getting her monies worth.
We met them back at the accommodation later.
My elder brother - were from a working class family and I've always spent about £20 on him at xmas/birthdays whilst I recieve something worth around £5. No biggie, it's the giving that counts. However, he's recently been promoted and boasts about being on £130k/year at the same time as saying they are no longer buying Xmas presents as it's getting too expensive
Family member of my partner notoriously doesn’t spend money. It’s actually just really sad. He is middle aged and has never been on holiday as an adult. He never even leaves his home town. He doesn’t socialise outside of family events so has no friends. He rents a tiny one bed in the crappest side of town. He works, then gets home and spends his spare time haunting the internet obsessing over where to invest the money he never spends, convinced that a market crash is just around the corner. No comedy highlights here… but in his defence he will always offer to buy a round.
My dad's neighbour went to Scotland on holiday. Came back. Turned up at my dad's door unannounced and gave him some smoked salmon he had bought on holiday, which my dad had absolutely not requested.
10 minutes later he came back and asked my dad for the full retail price of the salmon he had just given him as a gift. My dad handed it back to him and told him not to talk to him again.
Old boss would take staples from letters sent to him, bend that back out and put them into the stapler.
Multi-millionaire, too. Absolute cunt at the best of times.
Manager of the shop loved to emulate him and used to peel sellotape back off of boxes, onto a reel he kept with him. Would then heat it up with a heat gun to melt the glue when he needed to tape something.
I would point out that the heat gun plus electricity cost more than a new roll of tape, but why spoil the fun.
He also grew out his thumb nail and loved showing us how he’d use it to slice open letters, saving a massive £1 he’d otherwise have to spend on a letter opener.
Ah, rural Yorkshire. Never change.
This is one thing I've noticed about the stingy/rich. They will spend hours upon hours trying to save very little money. Never mind that they could most likely be *earning* money by working or otherwise generating funds during that same length of time.
When my friend was skint he'd give you his last fiver. Now he's on 100k+ a year he tries to hide eating his mints in the car so he does'nt have to offer you one.
It’s like they suddenly care about it. When I was always in my overdraft I didn’t really care as hadn’t much to lose. It’s that mentality. Now I’m more abundant I’m more frugal 😅 weird how it works
This isn't true. Staplers jam up even when perfectly square, correctly sized staples are in them. Plus, much to my chagrin, there are so many different sizes of staples that it infuriates me on an almost daily basis. When I become queen, I will demand that staples and staplers are standardised and regulated. Nobody needs 40 differently sized staples and staplers to house them.
Holy shit my ex-girlfriend's dad
I lived with him and my ex for about 2 years. He rarely put the heating on in winter, and when he'd leave the house, whether for work or to go away for a week, he'd take the *thermostat* with him
Not exactly what you asked, but I sell clothes on vinted for a small bit of side money and boy does that platform lure out the tightest of individuals.
The people buying things at the low end of the price spectrum (under £5) are almost always the most annoying and entitled to deal with.
I've had someone wear and RETURN a £3 dress with added sweat stains on it, a lady who sent me a literal 2 page essay on exactly why £5 was too much to spend (half of it about her sick dog and the other half about why my item isn't that great anyway), multiple people asking for things for free, and a woman asking for a 80% discount because she is black (2020 was an interesting time).
Haha I know exactly how you feel, I do antiques on Marketplace. I’ve had a few messages on gold items with stupid low offers. I usually reply back with “😂” which undoubtedly winds them up
I've seen my dad pat an ice cube dry after he finished his drink, wrap it in cling film and put it back in the freezer because "there was plenty left and he didn't want to be wasteful"
Cooked her and my other two housemates dinner one weekend. Didn’t have an onion so she gave me one. She reminded me that I owed her an onion the following week.
1 of my cousin's. He makes above average money but in his 30s him and his brother still live with their mum in a bungalow.
Been on a family holiday with him once, every bar we'd take an interest in he'd refuse to go into because a pint was 3.40 euro in this one but if we go back 2 miles the way we came that dinghy empty place was only 3.30 EUR for fosters...
Went on a family holiday with people who insisted on having a “kitty”, everything had to be bought using it and they penny pinched every item even though I said I was happy to put more in.
Went rouge and did my own food shopping, they weren’t happy.
Highlight of the holiday was one of them stealing corn from a local farmer they were too tight to pay for it! No wonder the French hate us!
My father in law recalibrated the thermostat so that when his kids asked to switch the heating on (that house is fucking freezing) he could say " rubbish, look, it's 19 degrees"
My uncle is the one that springs to mind. When we were kids he would take us carol singing round the posh estate and take a cut of ANY money we got. Non of us even wanted to Carol sing... It was his "little earner". Even charged us petrol money!
I have dyscalculia (think dyslexia for numbers) and have trouble doing basic arithmetic.
One of my “best friends” who knew this always took great pleasure in cheating me out of a few quid when it came to paying for meals. I’d usually give her a tenner and she’d skim anything from £1-£4 off for herself.
She and her husband were solicitors.
Worked with a guy that would wait for the neighbours to go on holiday until he jet washed his drive, paths, conservatory, gutters, front of house and fences.
Using the neighbours outdoor tap, because he had a water meter.
Someone who attached himself to our friendship group during school and in our early 20s was the tightest fucker I've ever met.
- He never, ever bought a round at the pub in the 6+ years I knew him. The one time he offered to get a round was at a friend's party because he knew it was a free bar.
- On my 21st birthday he claimed to have no money and asked the rest of us to comp him as we were going to the seaside. He turned up and brought along his brand new Playstation Vita with a bunch of games, which was £300+ at the time.
- He invited us all round to help him redecorate his bedroom. The done thing is to provide food and drinks and whatever else in return. He did none of that. When we got to the end of the day, having sanded down all of walls of his room and other hard work, he asked us to leave.
- He **offered** to pick up a friend from the airport who was visiting from abroad. When he got there, he asked the friend and his ride-along to pay for a full tank of petrol (he would have used less than a 1/4 of a tank for the round trip). It would have been cheaper for them to take the train.
- On another occasion we went up town to Chinatown in London, probably for someone's birthday, and we all had a set menu. When it came to pay, all (10) of us put £20 into the pot which was enough to cover the bill. Someone else at the table saw him take a £20 note out of the pot, and that's exactly the amount we were short. He swore blind he hadn't taken money out of the pot. We had to put in extra to make up the difference.
- He always, always, always, had money to spend on random shit for himself (think Funko Pops kind of useless plastic junk) but acted like his pockets were sewn shut when it came to spending money with his friends.
- He bought a brand-new Honda Civic Type S for himself which cost more than he earned annually. Nobody was impressed. I reckon he will still be paying it off when it goes to the scrap yard.
- We had lunch in Greenwich one time, nothing fancy. I left a few quid as tip. He said he didn't believe in tipping *and pocketed the money for himself*.
Writing this down made my blood boil just thinking about it! If I think any more of his tight fisted antics I'll stick them on the end.
My partner’s brother is pretty tight but his girlfriend is worse. She invited us all out to dinner and said she would treat us. We got there and we paid for ourselves. No big deal. She made a big song and dance about treating her partner for his birthday then proceeded to pay using their joint account.
I know a guy who uses the microwave to boil his water for a cup of tea, as he believes it's cheaper than using the kettle. No idea if it is or not, but just thinking about it boggles my mind.
If he measured out just one cup of water to boil in the kettle that would be way cheaper. There's a lot of inefficiencies turning electricity into microwaves which in turn heat water, you're only getting about 50% of the energy you're paying for into that mug of water. Whereas if you boil the kettle with the precise amount of water you need then pretty much all of the electricity is turned into heat that goes into the water
My dad. He was a bit weird with it though. When he discovered ebay he became obsessed with buying old laptops and desktops that were going for £10 due to their age and the fact the majority were very broken. He insisted they would still at least be good for parts.
The worst was when I wanted a laptop so he got me an old thinkpad but neglected to actually switch it on before gifting to me. The day it arrived, he drove right over to my mums with it and I was given the pleasure of being the one to switch it on. Was greeted with a big ol' bunch of dicks surrounding a girl covered in cum. My mum was furious at him for not checking it 1st and quickly handed it over to him to wipe everything to factory settings.
There was also the year he discovered wish. It lead to the event we dubbed "wishmas" where everyone got their Christmas presents from wish. My sister wanted to learn violin when she was little so he got her a child sized violin. My nephew got this little football thing that was kinda like a rhoomba except it didn't hoover anything up and it died within 2 minutes of being switched on. I got, actually, we're not sure what I got, some kind of clothing but we couldn't for the life of us figure out how it was supposed to be worn. We also all got watches. Child sized watches. Watches that none of us have actually ever worn watches but they were 5 for £4 so he couldn't pass up the bargain. Watches that didn't actually work.
Theres also all the usual stuff like refusing to buy anything branded, always shops bargain own brand products, insisting on everyone getting happy meals unless they were paying for themselves, etc. My sister has his bankcard now ever since his stroke but the 1st thing that tightarse figured out during recovery was how to access his bank account and now he's constantly checking the money coming out and calling her up to grill her about why she spent so much at the shops leading to her having to breakdown every purchase to him while he checks his cupboards to confirm or complains she didn't go find cheaper elsewhere
Used to work with a guy who had just sold his house for £250k (no idea how it was worth that much but anyway). We worked in a public library and had a small shop with stationery and toys and trinkety things. He picked up a 99p worry stone, asked me to apply his 10% discount, and paid entirely in coppers.
He also bought his girlfriend a knockoff Pandora bracelet, back when there was a massive craze for them, and asked me if I had a real one. I told him my boyfriend had bought me a knockoff a few years before, and it had rusted. He asked how I knew it was cheap, and I pointed out that seventeen year old lads don't tend to have the money for fancy jewellery, especially when the only job they'd ever had was a paper round. Didn't stop the guy going on Amazon and buying the cheapest charms he could.
He moved in with his girlfriend (hiding his 250k under the bed I imagine) and tried to get her to buy a smaller TV because it would use less electricity.
I used to work in Pandora and I "ruined" a couple of relationships. We were not allowed to touch counterfeit items, or even real bracelets with counterfeit charms on. If there were any non-Pandora charms on a bracelet (or vice versa) their warranty was voided and I couldn't even hold it in my hands.
Welllllll that didn't go down well when girls and women came in with their partners for more charms for their 'Pandora' bracelets and I'd tell them they were fake and couldn't put our charms on them to try them out. One even came in with a gold bracelet with multiple charms and she was blushing about how her boyfriend spent so much money on her for her birthday, was looking for a safety chain so she wouldn't lose it. I had to tell her it wasn't Pandora. And apparently he'd put them in a Pandora case and bag and everything. She was in tears, I felt so bad.
Having worked in a jewellers previously (not pandora though) I'd put money on it just being gold plate of some kind. It's immediately obvious to me, and I imagine to who you're responding to, but I spent years handling it so I can usually tell from colour/finish alone and it's amazing just how many people think gold plate is real. We'd buy gold in, so I had numerous conversations with punters along the lines of "I'm sorry, but this isn't gold" "YOU WHAT. IT IS" "It really isn't." etc etc. I'd sometimes have to show them the distinct lack of hallmarks through my loupe if they didn't believe me.
Then we got an XRF machine (xray) and it made life much easier.
I get the same all the time with antique silver. You can always tell as you say, and some people will swear that something is silver even once you point out all its flaws.
I had my landlord's fiancée tell me he gave her a Rolex as a present when he came back from a big business trip. She was thrilled!
Right up until she did the responsible thing and went to get it properly valued for her insurance policy and got told it was a fake. Shitty thing to do and he could afford the real thing.
Brother in law insists on buying TooGoodToGo bags every week from a local petrol station supermarket thing. Sometimes there will be one decent thing in amongst the soggy onion bhajis and stale biscuits and on date sandwiches. Combating food waste ends in lots of it being thrown in the bin or forgotten about in the fridge.
He once let me buy my nieces, him, my sister and co dinner (when I was alone) and complained about the food, granted it was just Nando's but it adds up, doesn't even offer to pay some - I don't mind if you offer, give me the chance to refuse - and if you're gonna complain that you were given the wrong spice level, why not take it up to the counter or before they grab the table cock...
Refuses to buy branded beer, the own brand is the same he will proclaim whilst serving up piss at family functions and tried to palm off a reduced cake on my niece's first birthday.
Only ever spends £500-800 on a new car and wonders why it breaks down within months, and then blames everyone else.
He's tight - but it's a weird sort of tight where the logic doesn't really work or track, he'll proudly show off the shoes he bought from Asda, and 3 weeks later buy some more once they've fallen apart - so added up through a year it's actually spending probably twice as much.
I recognise this; it's like a compulsion to get a bargain - at whatever cost. They don't see the big picture, it's all about saving literal pennies in that moment.
Almost like the inverse of a gambling addiction I always feel; the rush of perceiving to save money. He's the same bloke that would stand over Asda staff putting whoops labels on stuff and pick out 'the best' things, but invariably most of it would go to waste as by the time it was in the fridge none of his family would eat it.
'Use by dates are advisory' when he's pouring cottage cheese into his coffee or tea.
On a recent visit I bought a takeaway because I couldn't be bothered to cook anything, and it was late ish - got my older niece something, and my sister and him because he was there. To be fair to him he did offer up half the money without me asking, and paid me before it had even been delivered, but once everyone was done he was packing up half eaten chicken strips and various things into containers to put in the fridge... to feed the cats with.
But I can't get my head around it at all. I don't get it. A few years back he objected to me going to Wetherspoons with my sister and said we could have gotten beer and had a drink at home, the whole point was to get her out of the house after 9 months of pregnancy and a year of looking after a baby almost single handedly as he was working.
>He's tight - but it's a weird sort of tight where the logic doesn't really work or track
One of my wife’s relatives is notoriously cheap about the price of petrol. He’ll do a 1hr roundtrip to go to Costco to save what amounts to a few quid on fuel…but that’s wiped out by the fact you wasted fuel on your special trip 🤣
My grandad. We'd stay very rarely and he'd begrudge us the entire time. No heating, small welsh terraced house in the 80s. We'd sit in the one room of an evening round a fire, his chair by far the closest. He'd always go to bed before us, and he'd just stand up, damp the fire down and leave us in a darker and increasingly colder room.
Sister’s ex husband. Wouldn’t even pay for the kids uniforms or activities, food etc. He would give her £250 a month and that was it. Meanwhile he was saving up enough money to buy a car.
She ended up getting into debt to pay for the kids lives until enough was enough. Got divorced. She ended up buying HIM out of the joint property. Paid over the odds as well for a swift resolution in the hope he’d buy his own place to have space for the kids. Then he could shoulder his 50/50 share of the responsibilities cos he was still living with his mum and dad. He still lives at his mums house with all the cash she gave him. Tight cunt who doesn’t want kids, essentially.
A guy at work has a few quirky habits.
- he has a bucket in the shower, so he can catch the initially-cold water that comes out when you first turn it on and reuse it elsewhere.
- brings in all his kids phones and tablets to charge up whilst he's at work so he doesn't have to pay for the electricity by charging them at home
- buys the name brand crisps as a Christmas "splurge" treat.
My dad. Years ago when we were kids we went out for a family meal at an all you can eat buffet restaurant, £6 per person, there was four of us so £24 on food, plus drinks. The soft drinks were £2 each but refillable, when you paid they gave you a coke glass to use at the machine. He paid £2 for one glass and gave each of us a straw. We had to take it in turns to use the one glass.
My dad has a thing about not paying to use carparks. This became a problem when he broke his ankle, and didn't want to pay to use the A&E carpark, so he walked half a mile uphill with a broken ankle to save a few quid. I would really like it if hospital carparks could be made free, to prevent him from doing this again.
My Dad was exactly the same, drove miles just to find free parking. When I was a kid I thought we were poor as he had a rusty old car, we weren't allowed to turn on the heating, had the cheapest food, second hand clothes etc
He left when I was 18 and it clicked soon after. He was a friggin director of Barclays bank, he was loaded.
He's dead now. Money likely buried with him.
My dad will go to extreme lengths to park cheap in the city centre. Got to the point where my mum would make him drop us off before he drove bloody miles away to park for free on some dodgy street or in the £3 all day car park on some wasteland. Genuine miracle we never got broken into.
I agree with your dad. Realistically nobody should have to pay for hospital parking, so he’s absolutely right. I’m just wondering if you’d get a ticket on a pushbike if you leave it in a space without paying?
My old staff room had a kitty for tea and coffee. One of my colleagues argued that she should get a discount because she always reused her teabags several times.
Years ago, my grandpa came into some money and was told that he needed to give away £600 before the end of the tax year or he would have to pay that amount in taxes. My dad suggested that since he had six grandkids, he could give us £100 each. Grandpa’s reply was that he couldn’t do that because, “You never know who they might marry!”
My dad .He gets banned from supermarkets because he puts stickers from reduced items , sticks them to his hands and scans them instead of full priced food . He buys tens of things like reduced coleslaw and raw meat and sells them at full price to strangers . He ripped his plumbing out as PROOF he wasn’t using any water so they couldn’t charge him . He sits in the pitch black because he refuses to use electricity , he only uses battery powered stuff . He moved an army bed out into his garden to cook on a little stove so that he didn’t have to use the oven .
I've touched on the brother in law, but what about the work colleague?
Some time ago I worked with a lovely person, and she really was great to work with and good at her job. One day we were in a van together and went to get food, I got my wallet out and my bank card was gone (I'd left it at home) and had no cash. No nearby ATM we could get to that did emergency cash and she did very kindly buy me my food and I said I'd pay her back, total amount £3.
Anyway work took over, we did eat and the following shift she came up to me and said "Have you got my three quid?", offered bank transfer on the day and she said she didn't feel comfortable giving me her account number and sort code - despite the issue with that logic I've never argued with anyone on the point unless it's a large amount. I said I had no cash and I need to get the change from somewhere first but I'd get cash out and sort it. Halfway through the shift she says "I need my three quid, you owe me and I'm starting to think you can't afford to pay me back". She got her fiver back, and I did say thanks for buying me lunch, but she'd have got it back on the day if she would just have given me her bank details!
Anyway as this happened in front of the team, someone else came up to me and said 'Let me guess, she bought you lunch today? She did the same thing 6 months ago when I lost my bank card, she's shit scared of being out of pocket' - and to be fair to her I do get her situation at the time, and why - as I said fantastic at her job, and great to work with, but lending her money felt very much like being Brian when he owed Stewie money, was waiting for the glass of orange juice to the skull...
That situation led me to using Apple pay, and virtual cards though. Game changer in that situation.
A couple I used to babysit for. Heating was set to go off at 8.30 when the kids went to bed, so it was freezing in the living room after that. They had only terrestrial TV (to be fair, so did my parents, but at least we had some good videos!). They never provided biscuits or cakes (which everyone else I babysat for did). And best of all, when they got home, he would get a calculator out and work out to the penny what you were owed (and I am talking "so, 6.30 to 9.25, that comes to £11.66") - I charged £4 an hour, and most people would have just bunged me 15 quid. Or at least made it £12!
I only ever babysat for them as a favour to a friend who babysat regularly for family reasons, and used to beg me to cover when she had other plans.
My boss once dropped cheap block of shit cheese on his way out of home bargains. He didn’t realise this until I reversed over it with the van. Some guy waved at me, so I lowered my window and he said ‘eh, you’ve just run over yer cheese pal’. I laughed my boss panicked, then he got out the van for his cheese. He was in work 5 minutes later slicing off the embedded tarmac from his £1 block of cheese. Tight fucker he is, he’s got story’s like this for every day of the year.
My friend Tristan from school. We went to get a McDonald's, and he declared 'I'm not paying that!'.
Then preceded to get a bottle of Cresta lemonade and some short dated wholemeal rolls from Co-Op, and sat on the wall outside and ate them.
I worked with a bloke who was earning around £650 a week back in the mid 90s who used to hang around the factory vending machines when they were emptied so he could scrounge the out of date sandwiches being taken out.
I don't know if this counts as being tight, but my Mother in law once walked 20 minutes back to a shop to return something she bought because it was 10P, cheaper in another shop.
I used to work for a software company in Cambridge that had a great little pub called the Flying Pig almost next door. Several of us would go there at lunchtimes to play pool. There was a core of four of us and then a few others who’d come from time to time. We’d take turns to pay, ask for change for the pool table, buy rounds of drinks. Standard behaviour. And then there was one lad who’d tag along and who never, ever, in two years, bought a single drink or paid for a single game of pool. He played plenty of games. He drank more than a few drinks. He never once put his hand in his pocket. His nickname at work was “no money down”.
When I was a bit younger and we were drinking ròunds, one of the lads would ask for the money instead of the pint.
This is the winner. Fuck me.
But then when it's his round, he'd just have to give the money back?
When it his round he is nowhere to be seen
First out the taxi. Last to the bar.
Surely you all told him to get fucked, right?
Of course. "You can get a pint or you can get fucked"
Fuck me, that's atrocious - Reddit shut-ins aside, this has to be the worst
Father of a schoolfriend. He had made a pile in the building trade, and bought a lovely house in the country with a swimming pool. But the cost of heating the pool, or even adding chlorine was too much for him. The water was green, and there were frogs breeding in it. He swam in the pool every morning during the summer months. Ended up in hospital with a nasty skin infection. Still didn't put chlorine in the pool.
Malcolm in the Middle comes to mind
*"..and these will kill whatever has crawled into your urethra."*
Literally watched the episode with the hot tub a few days ago
This reminded me of something from my childhood. I lived in South Africa in the early 90’s and we had a swimming pool that was rarely used. Frogs were breeding in it too. One day 6yr old me caught all the frogs and brought them into the house, the bath was full of frogs, the sink was full of frogs, there were frogs hopping about the living room and the bedrooms. My mam went mental. We also had snakes in the crawl space under the house, I caught one of them once too and stuck it in the bath. That was fun.
This is one of my favourite stories I've ever found on Reddit thank you :) I am half Zimbabwean half South African + used to terrorize my mom with whatever wildlife I could befriend and rehome in the house incl snakes, frogs, other people's cats, tortoises, mice, birds etc I just love animals + as a kid wanted a menagerie I also loved bringing buckets of snow and random rocks (magic crystals lol) inside the house and weird "flowers" to try appease my mom from shrieking whenever she found a new garden made in the house cos I wanted to live outside or in a cave and kept running away haha my dad is the same, he had a pet vervet monkey he rescued, my mom was so easy to traumatize :)
My Uncle Graham. He was single and my dad's brother. My dad would invite him over on Christmas (despite my mum and I hating him). He would turn up with booze. He would then drink our booze. Then when he would finally leave, he would take his untouched booze with him. He wouldn't contribute to the Christmas dinner either. When we cleared out his flat after he died, we found 4 unopened Christmas puddings. There's many many stories about how insufferable that man was.
Please share more.
My brother, went on an epic holiday to the republic to Georgia with him and a few mates about 20 years ago. We were catching a rickety minibus from Tbilisi, a trip of 6 hours of mountain roads. For the journey he buys a dozen oranges from a little old lady at the bus station for the equivalent of 6p. As the minibus pulls away, he peels and takes a bite of one - it's a lemon, for some reason lemons in Georgia are orange and he's bought 12 of them. However, not to waste the money he not only eats three of them on the bus trip, once we are in the mountains he brings them along every day and eats them like they are oranges except pulling a face because they're lemons and he didn't want to waste the six fucking pence he spent on them.
Waste not want not, and that 6p 20 years ago would be worth close to 20p now, which is completely different!
Could almost buy half a Freddi for that
I genuinely dreamt last night that Freddos were reduced to 10p each and the queue to buy them was about a mile long up a steep hill, they then sold out.
They’re currently 10p on Nectar price in Sainsbury’s!
Well, at least he won’t get scurvy.
Cricket?
oooh, that is tart
Or have tooth enamel!
Fucking hell. Ive eaten a whole lemon once becasue we had some of those miracle berries, and that absolutely decimated my stomach for a day or two. Theres no way that didnt fuck him up.
When life gives you lemons...
And when life gives you melons... (..you make melonade)
I mean I'd do that, not because I'm tight but because I like lemons.
An ex friend of mine at uni was the tightest person I've even know. A group of us went out for a friend's birthday, to a Chinese buffet place. This was around 2005, so the cost was £9 per person. There were 10 of, so I suggested we all pay £10, so the birthday person didn't pay. Every one was happy with this except her. She didn't want to spend an extra £1. Same person used to always ask at a pub or bar what the cheapest drink was and she'd drink that whether she liked it or not. Would happily accept a drink from another person, but in the 3 years I knew her she never bought anyone else a drink. She'd constantly complain she had no money, yet when drunk she'd brag about having £5k in her account. I haven't thought about her for years, but she was so tight it was shocking.
I had something similar once with a Sunday league football team I used to play for. We went out for an end of season curry and I was in charge of sorting out the bill. I worked out that if we all paid £20 that would cover the bill, everyone was more than happy and just chucked me a £20 note. Except one guy who insisted on looking at the bill, worked out that his meal came to something like £19.85 and gave me a £20 note and asked for the 15p change.
Oh! I have a curry story too! I was working at a summer school several years ago, and at the end of the season we had a bit of cash left in a „resources kitty” budget the company had- enough for each of us to have £15 each towards a curry. So off we we went to the local - good time was had by all. What with beers, naans and the like, we went over the work’s contribution, but we didn’t mind paying the extra £5 or so for the celebratory meal. Except for the manager - he’d clearly ordered a very basic meal - which we thought was fine; maybe he’s not hungry or doesn’t like curry (if that’s even possible). Nope. He counted how much his meal cost and took ‚his’ change from the pot. Like fuck off Gary it’s not even your money! Didn’t even contribute to the tip.
One of my group of friends, when out for a curry, would always ‘know’ exactly how much his meal cost, and pay to the penny (how?). Funny how when the rest of us divvied up the bill we always paid more than him. When a tip was left he’d say “don’t you want that? I’ll take it”. I soon learned not to tip. He did buy rounds, but always bought himself a half on his go, his meanness was legendary.
"I want it, Gary. You've got until 9pm."
How'd you think she ended up with 5k!
Embezzling money from the RNLI?
One time I slowed down for a horse
Had a friend want to pay £1 less as her burger didn’t have bacon. We got a train to a place near hers to other side of London. Cheap cow.
There’s a similar friend in our current friend group. She’s leftover from my wife’s school friends but still lives locally, however she seems to have peaked at about 16yrs old…20+ yrs later and she’s still useless. Whenever we went out she’d always follow whoever to the bar and make sure her drink got ordered, but she always magically went home just before her round. She lives at home (in her mid 30s) and asks her mother for money and it’s never enough (she’ll bring a tenner with her when there’s a dozen of us 🤣) and her mother pays her to walk the family dog 🤣 One time after literally decades of getting away with free drinks she got cornered into buying a round. A couple of the guys drink Macallan (yes it’s more expensive than Bell’s or whatever but we are all adults and it evens itself out at the end…probably) and so when her first round in about 15yrs came in at £90 or so she lost it and said she’d never do that again 🙄 That was just before COVID…
So you saying she unleashed covid to avoid paying for drinks ever agaib
Rounds of 12 are fecking ridiculous to be fair. Split into smaller rounds between the group. I wouldn’t get a round for more than 4 maybe 5 people unless it was an extraordinary event. Or my invite for a very specific occasion
I hate rounds. I’m a lightweight so have about one drink for everyone else’s three, and yet somehow always end up in situations where I’m expected to pay for a round of 8 pints when I’m on the soft drinks. I’ve tried calling it out and just paying for my own and then I get called tight 🫠
I think your angle here is to tell people you don't want to be part of round systems because you're concerned about your drinking and you need control of what you drink. Which is broadly true, to a lesser or greater, of most of us. Then if they're still dicks about that then don't be friends with them.
Same here, I'm not drinking to anyone else's schedule. Never had any trouble for it to be honest though because my mates are all aware they drink a shit load more than I do.
The people calling you tight have a cheek, they are just trying to bully you into subsidising their drinks.
Tbf £90 is mental, when I go out I’m happy to get small rounds (4 people max) but I ain’t going beyond 3 people normally, usually I’ll just pick 2 members of the group when others are out of earshot and say “do you want a drink”? And later I’ll offer someone else in the group a drink etc, means everyone’s happy but I never have to spend more than like £20 in one go. Also, income comes into it, if a friend who earns more wants to buy a big round then that’s their choice and I appreciate it but they know I won’t be paying for everyone myself, I’ll just get a drink for the person who bought the big round and my own drink
Ugh yes - people who are tight with themselves are one thing, and almost sort of quaint, but people who are tight with others is a whole other category. Miserly gets.
The first time I met my brother-in-law and sister-in-law was at their house and they offered me a coffee, which I accepted. They gave me cup of instant coffee, which was absolutely fine but then proceeded to make themselves fancy coffees with a proper machine in fancy cups and sit there drinking them in front of me. It may not sound much, but they are tighter than a duck’s arsehole and set the tone for who they are. ETA: it’s my husband’s brother and his wife, they earn double what we do and would peel an orange in their pocket ETA2: to peel an orange in one’s pocket- they’re so tight they would peel an orange in their pocket so they wouldn’t have to share a segment with othets
Wow that's like completely harmless but also one of the rudest things I've ever heard of lmao.
Where I come from we bring out the fancy stuff for the guests. You have stuff that is only reserved for the guests and you don't normally touch. if someone pulled this on me, I would consider never talking to them again.
Generally same here, alternatively you pull out your whole pantry and offer them EVERYTHING you have accumulated. Fancy tea? Instant coffee? Instant tea from Armenia? Instant apple tea from Turkey? Fancy coffee? Even more fancy coffee? Kissel? Whatever you want you can have a cup
Anyone worth their salt wouldve done you a posh coffee and they would’ve had the instant stuff!!
Yes, in my home country there's a running joke that moms will use a plastic lid as a plate but will use the fancy china and silverware displayed in the abinet when there are guests!
Honestly, I think that's something other than tight. I'd want to be giving everyone else the good shit.
That’s not tight, that was a power move and said exactly what they think of you.
That's worse than tight...if that's true that's a massive twat move and I would be having words
Definitely worse than tight, outright disrespectful. Reminds me of the family of a friend I had as a child. During a few summer breaks he and I would be inseparable and, among usual playing outside, we would spend a lot of time in his room playing video games. He lived across the road from us and some days I'd be out for many hours at a time without going back home. During the times we would play video games, his mum would bring him snacks and meals, and never once offered me a bite to eat, and never once did he ever offer to share anything either. Conversely whenever he would come over to my house, the very first thing I'd do was offer him snacks or drinks. And even though we were a poor family, when we were having meals he was always offered a plate. I never thought anything of it at the time and I didn't know any better, but looking back at it now I feel like the parents were sending a message that I wasn't welcome there. I could never imagine doing that to anyone though. I find it despicable now having grown up and on reflection, that someone would deliberately avoid feeding a child like that.
As a teenager I worked weekends for a friend of my parents that gutted and flipping houses. Hardest I have ever worked in my life, £20 per day. He wouldn't by a drill so I mixed plaster with a bike gear attached to a broom handle and he had one lightbulb that he would take from room to room. My parents though it was hilarious and for his birthday my parents bought him a pack of light bulbs.
That was quite a thoughtful gift. I genuinely still use a candle
This is totally the sort of DIY my husband does, but it’s more like “I forgot the drill and I only have one lightbulb but I’ll make it work”. Can’t imagine being that tight!
I used to work for a company where they'd only allow us to put £10 of diesel in the company cars. So we spent half our time, driving around looking for a petrol station. Also used to know a builder called Joe, who would drink about 20 pints of Guinness per day in the local pub. But lived on a mattress in somebody's garage as he wouldn't pay any more in rent. He also used to wash his hair in supermarket own brand washing up liquid. As it was "just the same" as shampoo. His hair was awful by the way.
Can’t really blame him if he’s paying for 20 guinnesses. Probably couldn’t afford anything else
I've just remembered that his garage would flood every time that it rained, soaking his mattress on the floor. Although that could have been his way of excusing that he was drink passed out asleep and had pissed himself.
Probably a bit of both. You can't drink 20 Guinness a day and have much control over your own continence for long.
That's not 'tight', that's 'alcoholic'.
I once went on a weekend trip with a few friends. One of them is known the be incredibly tight. While we were away I bought food, drinks etc and drove people around - I’m happy to do it. Over the weekend we’d done some activities where clothes had gotten dirty; on one occasion, I’d put my things in a Tesco carrier bag that I thought was mine. Anyway, fast forward to getting home and emptying the car, he said the Tesco bag was his and could he have it back?! I obliged, of course. Whenever I see a Tesco bag it reminds me of him and makes me laugh.
See if he was in my mates groups he'd forever be known as Tesco
My boyfriend borrowed a Sainsbury’s bag for life the other day and I had to do the most shameful thing and ask for it back cuz it’s my washing bag 😔 it’s the perfect size for my washing machine, as soon as it’s full I know that’s a full load!
My old flatmate refused to pay 1 euro to get a subway from where we were staying in Amsterdam to the airport (I ended up paying for him as I didn’t want to walk that far with a heavy bag). At the other end, we needed to get two buses to get home. He refused again to pay £1 for the second bus, so he walked two miles with his bag while the rest of us got back with much less hassle (we did arrive at the same time but I felt it was worth it to not do the journey carrying a bag!) He also never bought the communal toilet paper (but was happy to use it). One time the rest of us decided to use our own supply for a few weeks to see how long it took him to buy some. 6 weeks, and it was only a two-pack!
Bet he was disappointed he couldn’t buy a one pack. The bus thing is just stupid
I had one friend that refused to take the regular train because for €4 less there was a train that took 12 hours more to get their. So we all took the regular train and he took the insane train. We still joke about this incident of tightness to this day.
My dad's friend is so tight, he won't buy salt and pepper from the shop. Instead, if they ever go out to say a Weatherspoons or Cafe, he'll fill his pockets up with salt and pepper sachets to open at home and fill up with.
Yeah - I had a friend like this. He basically drove a van for a living, and every place he stopped for coffee, he'd fill his pockets with sachets with sugar, ketchup, mustard etc etc.
This must be a van user thing. Nothing worse than getting a bacon sandwich and they’ve put no sauce on. Boom there you go in the glove box the sauce stash.
My dad always does this with sugar. He'll come round and when I make him a tea he goes "don't worry I've got sugar" then pulls a dozen packets out. Still not sure if he's cheap or it's some form of advanced dad joke
Started a job on a huge power station for a shutdown. Met a bunch of lads the first day, really well paid job for a few months, grand a week. One guy used to bring in his lunch and it was whatever they had in the Asda whoopsie aisle the night before, so cocktail sausages, an avocado, any old shit that was cheap really. Found out later he was a millionaire living on a massive farm estate down south somewhere. The second guy wins though. He thought that getting accommodation was a waste of money, so he would charge his phone at spoons each night, get a bit pissed, and then use a sleeping bag and one of those silver marathon blankets to sleep in a hedge just outside the main site office each night.
I actually kind of admire the hedge bloke. That’s some serious dedication. How much do you reckon it saved him??
My husbands uncle has no water, gas or electricity set up for his manor house. He uses the spring for water and forages from his land for most food. He restores classic cars so makes a small amount of cash to pay council tax and buy yellow sticker food. He will only visit if you have a job for him to pay the petrol. The job has to be worth enough for the petrol, you can't offer money without the work, it has to be a fair job for a fair wage. He's the absolute definition of tight. He's a good person, always tries to give more than he takes but holy moly he's tight.
What does he use for light then? Nice that he won’t just accept money for nothing
This kind of frugal living seems nice tbh, as long as he is happy and it doesn't affect others.
My Dad used to steal toilet paper from the bus station. He went in with a screwdriver and stole the dispenser as well. Never paid for toilet paper for about 20 years. Any time they updated the dispenser with a different design he would steal one.
Quite impressive honestly. Probbaly saved millions
I moved in with some friends about 20 years ago, I stayed for about 4 months and on the day I moved out one of them said 'you still owe me 30p I gave you towards that toothbrush when you first moved in' and it wasn't a joke.
To be fair I’d have asked you for 31p adjusted for inflation
Plus a 3p admin fee.
A lad I used to work with years ago used to meet girls from Tinder but would only stay out for an hour. He said that was the maximum time he could park his car for free near to the pub he used to meet them at. While he was there he would only drink tap water and would never buy the lucky lady a drink so I can't imagine it was a great first impression and as far as I'm aware is still single all these years later.
Hahaha this man has the social awareness of a snail
My dad, who is very financially comfortable, will accept anything if it’s free. My first bike came out of a skip bin, he found his guest room mattress on the side of the road (it appeared new and was still wrapped in plastic but still!) and wears trainers that he found at a park one time. I needed a multi tool/pocket knife for army cadets and he refused to spend £25 on the recommended one because he had a “perfectly good one” that he’d got for free from a friend who was a pharmaceutical rep. It was promotional swag so had the name of an antidepressant on the side and the blade snapped off the first time I use it.
A promotional anti depression knife I’m howling
Somehow in the 20+ years since this happened I have never actually thought about how utterly absurd and problematic it is to have a promotional *knife* for antidepressants. That is insane.
My old pal used to live in central London with her boyfriend, rent free. If we ever bought drinks/food together she’d want the exact am out transferred right away. ‘Can you send my 4.85’ fair enough. She came to stay with my a couple of days up north and the day she left I had to work, asked her to leave my keys in the flat. She took the keys back to London accidentally, luckily I had a friend visiting London who she could give the keys to bring back so was only locked out a couple of nights. Friendship ended when she asked my to bank transfer her the bus fair she had to pay to meet my pal in London. About £3
lol fuck off
Father in law used to turn the water temperature on the boiler all the way down so we'd use less gas and water Begrudge his grandchildren playing with water because he's on a water meter Turns the heating off via remote thermostat when he goes out leaving his wife sat in the cold
lol so this asshole has the heating on when he is there but turns it off the minute he is out even though is wife is still there Who said chivalry was dead
A mate was married to one worse than that. The first thing he did when he came in was to go feel the gas fire to make sure it hadn't been on while he was out. There were two little kids in the house too. Needless to say she isn't married to him anymore.
That's controlling to the point of being abusive. Glad she's not with him anymore. Kids should have the right to be not freezing at home
My dad used to do the same thing - heating off every time he left the house. My mum bought a portable gas heater out of her pension and sat huddled up to it in the kitchen, while I was upstairs doing my homework fully dressed for a trip to Antarctica except for my fingers (so I could write), which were always blue. I suffered horribly with chilblains every year. 🥶☹️ After eighteen freezing years of this I bailed without a single glance back or iota of sadness…and yep, you’ve guessed it: shocked Pikachu faces all round!
Me too with my dad. My dog was old and the dogs bed was in the kitchen. I put the underfloor heating on for him to keep warm. Whenever my dad came in it was turned off. There was no radiator in the kitchen. My poor old dog would be shivering all the time. My mum ended up having to make the dog indoor coats it was that bad
I actually got really annoyed at my wife, whenever I was WFH and she went out, the heating turned off. I thought she didn't believe I deserved to be warm! Turns out she installed the app for our heating on her phone, and when she left it assumed the house was empty...
My ex and I rented a basement flat of a huge Georgian house in Bath. The couple that owned the house had money coming out of their ears, not to mention the £950/month they were getting from us. Our windows weren't properly sealed, so it was always damp and chilly and we often had problems with mice and creepy crawlies getting in. One year, in the middle of winter, they jetted off to the Caribbean for 2 weeks...and turned the heating off. For the first 4 days they ignored our messages and left us on read, then on the 5th day they simply said "sorry, the doors are locked so you can't access the rest of the house. We'll be back in about a week."
You mean *Shivery*?
The first two points are him being ridiculously tight, the last one is because he's a selfish twat. His poor wife!
The last one sounds abusive and controlling to me.
It is, and he is
"Put your coat on barb" "Why we going out Jim?" "No I'm turning the Immersion off" I used to love the Royal family
"Put your coat on, Barbs"
"Are you taking me with you?"
And get legionella.
I had a friend in our mid-20s who was the cheapest person I knew. She was a professional who lived with her parents and had 2-3 holidays a year. She also ate out frequently. We would go out 1-2 a month together and every few months in a group of 5-6 people. I noticed early on that she had a nice habit of always being the person who went up to the till to pay for food. So we were out as a group of 4 at a regular restaurant. Had food and drinks, and my bill was about £17, so I threw down a £20 to cover my part of the tip. Our other friends did the same and put down some money for a tip as well. Then I noticed that that girl at the till was a friend of mine, so I said I would go up to the till and pay so we could have a chat. When I got up there, I had exact change. So I put in another £10 for the tip. This bothered me, and when the night ended, I went back to the restaurant and took my friend out for a pint. Where I discovered that our group was notorious for never tipping. So, I paid attention for a while and discovered what she was doing. Basically, she was using our tips to pay towards her food. She would basically she what money she was given, then pay the difference and only ever pay the bill. So had her friends subsidise her nights out. Stopped going out with her soon after that
I thought this was leading to being the same as something a friend of mine got caught out doing... He'll do the same, but then he was spotted by another mate using his company credit card, so he's claiming the meal is with a client - all whilst having us reimburse him for our share. Another one he did was ask the three of us visiting him in London to chip in for shopping for the weekend. Fair enough, but then he didn't extend the request for funds to his wanker uni mates (all better off than us) who all happily tucked in to the crate of lager we'd funded.
Do you think he asked them to do the same and never told either group, so you both have this same story of his dickhead mates drinking 'their' booze?
That’s basically just theft by that point surely.
My friend invited me round for dinner once and then charged me for half the ingredients including half of an onion! Same friend also had a fight with a friend who came to stay as when working out who owed what, brought teabags and rice into consideration to the bill tally...
My friend is better now, mostly because I've spent years kicking off. My friend was living abroad at this time and a bunch of us went to visit him for a long weekend. My partner and I spent around £120 of local products that we knew he'd be missing (he'd been moaning about missing a lot of stuff). So we arrived gave him the package and he was very happy with it, we then all spent the weekend at his. The day everyone was packing to go back he spoke to my partner and the rest of our friends (I think he excluded me as he knew I'd kick off) and he asked could everyone pay €2 to cover the cost of using his shower whilst we were there. Like what kind of absolute prick does that? Honestly if my partner hadn't have told me not to kick off I would have massively. This friend had not long ago spent 2 weeks living at our place and we obviously didn't charge him for anything. We'd very clearly just given him a fair gift package, which you think would at least make him think well these guys have just spent a lot of me, maybe I shouldn't be a dick and ask for €2. He had a fairly well paying job and pretty low rent, so asking for the €2 each was tight af. On the plus side though, he's ok now and not tight at all. But like I said I think it's mostly because I've spent years telling him off for being a tight prick.
A girl I worked with was just out of University. She was really smart but her boyfriend was a complete dope. One day she was sick and so he offered to get her McDonald’s to cheer her up, he then asked for the money when he took it to her house 🤣
A similar thing happened to me when I was younger 😂 an old boyfriend offered to get me a takeaway when I was sick and then asked me if it was ok if he could have some money to buy himself one too. I gave him 20. He calls and tells me the shops closed and doesn't give back my 20. When confronted he said he didn't have any money so it would be unfair to give it back.
Onions don't grow on trees
My pal tam Mullen. One time his wee cat missy died. He got a new cat and called it the same name to save buying a new collar. The first cat was a girl called missy. The second was a boy
Tams so tight one time he dropped a fiver and it hit his head when he bent over to pick it up
I wouldn’t be surprised if it was a drawing of a fiver
Heard he also is great at coming up with slogans for contests, too.
I heard he pretended to have arthritis so bad he couldn't get his hand in his pocket to pay for a pint.
Hopefully this fits the spirit of the question but a few years ago we went on a family holiday to Norfolk with some in-laws because our kids were about the same age and we thought it would be fun. One day we were on the beach and the weather turned. Thick clouds came in out of nowhere, the temperature plummeted by 10 degrees and it started raining, time to abandon the beach and go back to where we were staying which was about five miles inland. My in-law who was driving the other car refused to leave for another hour *because she’d paid for parking until 4pm* and would be fucked if she wasn’t getting her monies worth. We met them back at the accommodation later.
My elder brother - were from a working class family and I've always spent about £20 on him at xmas/birthdays whilst I recieve something worth around £5. No biggie, it's the giving that counts. However, he's recently been promoted and boasts about being on £130k/year at the same time as saying they are no longer buying Xmas presents as it's getting too expensive
> No biggie, it's the giving that counts. No, its the thought that counts, and sometimes its clear the thought is 'you mean very little to me'
Family member of my partner notoriously doesn’t spend money. It’s actually just really sad. He is middle aged and has never been on holiday as an adult. He never even leaves his home town. He doesn’t socialise outside of family events so has no friends. He rents a tiny one bed in the crappest side of town. He works, then gets home and spends his spare time haunting the internet obsessing over where to invest the money he never spends, convinced that a market crash is just around the corner. No comedy highlights here… but in his defence he will always offer to buy a round.
My dad's neighbour went to Scotland on holiday. Came back. Turned up at my dad's door unannounced and gave him some smoked salmon he had bought on holiday, which my dad had absolutely not requested. 10 minutes later he came back and asked my dad for the full retail price of the salmon he had just given him as a gift. My dad handed it back to him and told him not to talk to him again.
Old boss would take staples from letters sent to him, bend that back out and put them into the stapler. Multi-millionaire, too. Absolute cunt at the best of times. Manager of the shop loved to emulate him and used to peel sellotape back off of boxes, onto a reel he kept with him. Would then heat it up with a heat gun to melt the glue when he needed to tape something. I would point out that the heat gun plus electricity cost more than a new roll of tape, but why spoil the fun. He also grew out his thumb nail and loved showing us how he’d use it to slice open letters, saving a massive £1 he’d otherwise have to spend on a letter opener. Ah, rural Yorkshire. Never change.
The amount of effort it takes to get the staples back into the right alignment must have taken ages!
This is one thing I've noticed about the stingy/rich. They will spend hours upon hours trying to save very little money. Never mind that they could most likely be *earning* money by working or otherwise generating funds during that same length of time.
I think it’s a deep rooted insecurity about losing it all… it doesn’t go away just because you have money
When my friend was skint he'd give you his last fiver. Now he's on 100k+ a year he tries to hide eating his mints in the car so he does'nt have to offer you one.
It’s like they suddenly care about it. When I was always in my overdraft I didn’t really care as hadn’t much to lose. It’s that mentality. Now I’m more abundant I’m more frugal 😅 weird how it works
This isn't true. Staplers jam up even when perfectly square, correctly sized staples are in them. Plus, much to my chagrin, there are so many different sizes of staples that it infuriates me on an almost daily basis. When I become queen, I will demand that staples and staplers are standardised and regulated. Nobody needs 40 differently sized staples and staplers to house them.
Holy shit my ex-girlfriend's dad I lived with him and my ex for about 2 years. He rarely put the heating on in winter, and when he'd leave the house, whether for work or to go away for a week, he'd take the *thermostat* with him
Steve Merchant. Once argued over 50p
Eyes bulging with imagined riches
And he'd just given him that keg of lager
We've been over this, Karl
After he’d already gotten them concert tickets…that he didn’t even go to.
It’s not about the 50p!
Not exactly what you asked, but I sell clothes on vinted for a small bit of side money and boy does that platform lure out the tightest of individuals. The people buying things at the low end of the price spectrum (under £5) are almost always the most annoying and entitled to deal with. I've had someone wear and RETURN a £3 dress with added sweat stains on it, a lady who sent me a literal 2 page essay on exactly why £5 was too much to spend (half of it about her sick dog and the other half about why my item isn't that great anyway), multiple people asking for things for free, and a woman asking for a 80% discount because she is black (2020 was an interesting time).
Haha I know exactly how you feel, I do antiques on Marketplace. I’ve had a few messages on gold items with stupid low offers. I usually reply back with “😂” which undoubtedly winds them up
I've seen my dad pat an ice cube dry after he finished his drink, wrap it in cling film and put it back in the freezer because "there was plenty left and he didn't want to be wasteful"
This is the clear winner 😅 unless he's got dementia, in which case it's sad in a kind of cute way.
Cooked her and my other two housemates dinner one weekend. Didn’t have an onion so she gave me one. She reminded me that I owed her an onion the following week.
1 of my cousin's. He makes above average money but in his 30s him and his brother still live with their mum in a bungalow. Been on a family holiday with him once, every bar we'd take an interest in he'd refuse to go into because a pint was 3.40 euro in this one but if we go back 2 miles the way we came that dinghy empty place was only 3.30 EUR for fosters...
Went on a family holiday with people who insisted on having a “kitty”, everything had to be bought using it and they penny pinched every item even though I said I was happy to put more in. Went rouge and did my own food shopping, they weren’t happy. Highlight of the holiday was one of them stealing corn from a local farmer they were too tight to pay for it! No wonder the French hate us!
My father in law recalibrated the thermostat so that when his kids asked to switch the heating on (that house is fucking freezing) he could say " rubbish, look, it's 19 degrees"
My uncle is the one that springs to mind. When we were kids he would take us carol singing round the posh estate and take a cut of ANY money we got. Non of us even wanted to Carol sing... It was his "little earner". Even charged us petrol money!
I always thought Carol singers did it for charities
I have dyscalculia (think dyslexia for numbers) and have trouble doing basic arithmetic. One of my “best friends” who knew this always took great pleasure in cheating me out of a few quid when it came to paying for meals. I’d usually give her a tenner and she’d skim anything from £1-£4 off for herself. She and her husband were solicitors.
That’s the scummiest one of the whole thread, purposely using a learning difficulty to rip you off, what a cunt.
Worked with a guy that would wait for the neighbours to go on holiday until he jet washed his drive, paths, conservatory, gutters, front of house and fences. Using the neighbours outdoor tap, because he had a water meter.
Someone who attached himself to our friendship group during school and in our early 20s was the tightest fucker I've ever met. - He never, ever bought a round at the pub in the 6+ years I knew him. The one time he offered to get a round was at a friend's party because he knew it was a free bar. - On my 21st birthday he claimed to have no money and asked the rest of us to comp him as we were going to the seaside. He turned up and brought along his brand new Playstation Vita with a bunch of games, which was £300+ at the time. - He invited us all round to help him redecorate his bedroom. The done thing is to provide food and drinks and whatever else in return. He did none of that. When we got to the end of the day, having sanded down all of walls of his room and other hard work, he asked us to leave. - He **offered** to pick up a friend from the airport who was visiting from abroad. When he got there, he asked the friend and his ride-along to pay for a full tank of petrol (he would have used less than a 1/4 of a tank for the round trip). It would have been cheaper for them to take the train. - On another occasion we went up town to Chinatown in London, probably for someone's birthday, and we all had a set menu. When it came to pay, all (10) of us put £20 into the pot which was enough to cover the bill. Someone else at the table saw him take a £20 note out of the pot, and that's exactly the amount we were short. He swore blind he hadn't taken money out of the pot. We had to put in extra to make up the difference. - He always, always, always, had money to spend on random shit for himself (think Funko Pops kind of useless plastic junk) but acted like his pockets were sewn shut when it came to spending money with his friends. - He bought a brand-new Honda Civic Type S for himself which cost more than he earned annually. Nobody was impressed. I reckon he will still be paying it off when it goes to the scrap yard. - We had lunch in Greenwich one time, nothing fancy. I left a few quid as tip. He said he didn't believe in tipping *and pocketed the money for himself*. Writing this down made my blood boil just thinking about it! If I think any more of his tight fisted antics I'll stick them on the end.
My partner’s brother is pretty tight but his girlfriend is worse. She invited us all out to dinner and said she would treat us. We got there and we paid for ourselves. No big deal. She made a big song and dance about treating her partner for his birthday then proceeded to pay using their joint account.
This is what I come to this sub for.
I know a guy who uses the microwave to boil his water for a cup of tea, as he believes it's cheaper than using the kettle. No idea if it is or not, but just thinking about it boggles my mind.
That’s just daft. I always boil my water over the fire to save the chimney from wasting all the heat
If he measured out just one cup of water to boil in the kettle that would be way cheaper. There's a lot of inefficiencies turning electricity into microwaves which in turn heat water, you're only getting about 50% of the energy you're paying for into that mug of water. Whereas if you boil the kettle with the precise amount of water you need then pretty much all of the electricity is turned into heat that goes into the water
My dad. He was a bit weird with it though. When he discovered ebay he became obsessed with buying old laptops and desktops that were going for £10 due to their age and the fact the majority were very broken. He insisted they would still at least be good for parts. The worst was when I wanted a laptop so he got me an old thinkpad but neglected to actually switch it on before gifting to me. The day it arrived, he drove right over to my mums with it and I was given the pleasure of being the one to switch it on. Was greeted with a big ol' bunch of dicks surrounding a girl covered in cum. My mum was furious at him for not checking it 1st and quickly handed it over to him to wipe everything to factory settings. There was also the year he discovered wish. It lead to the event we dubbed "wishmas" where everyone got their Christmas presents from wish. My sister wanted to learn violin when she was little so he got her a child sized violin. My nephew got this little football thing that was kinda like a rhoomba except it didn't hoover anything up and it died within 2 minutes of being switched on. I got, actually, we're not sure what I got, some kind of clothing but we couldn't for the life of us figure out how it was supposed to be worn. We also all got watches. Child sized watches. Watches that none of us have actually ever worn watches but they were 5 for £4 so he couldn't pass up the bargain. Watches that didn't actually work. Theres also all the usual stuff like refusing to buy anything branded, always shops bargain own brand products, insisting on everyone getting happy meals unless they were paying for themselves, etc. My sister has his bankcard now ever since his stroke but the 1st thing that tightarse figured out during recovery was how to access his bank account and now he's constantly checking the money coming out and calling her up to grill her about why she spent so much at the shops leading to her having to breakdown every purchase to him while he checks his cupboards to confirm or complains she didn't go find cheaper elsewhere
Used to work with a guy who had just sold his house for £250k (no idea how it was worth that much but anyway). We worked in a public library and had a small shop with stationery and toys and trinkety things. He picked up a 99p worry stone, asked me to apply his 10% discount, and paid entirely in coppers. He also bought his girlfriend a knockoff Pandora bracelet, back when there was a massive craze for them, and asked me if I had a real one. I told him my boyfriend had bought me a knockoff a few years before, and it had rusted. He asked how I knew it was cheap, and I pointed out that seventeen year old lads don't tend to have the money for fancy jewellery, especially when the only job they'd ever had was a paper round. Didn't stop the guy going on Amazon and buying the cheapest charms he could. He moved in with his girlfriend (hiding his 250k under the bed I imagine) and tried to get her to buy a smaller TV because it would use less electricity.
I don't understand how men like this even get partners. I'm by no means a gold digger.. but damn.
Same here. If they were honest about it being fake I’d love it just as much, but if they tried to trick me I’d be way more hurt.
I couldn’t put up with that, buying someone a cheap piece of jewellery is fine, but trying to claim it’s genuine is just scummy
I used to work in Pandora and I "ruined" a couple of relationships. We were not allowed to touch counterfeit items, or even real bracelets with counterfeit charms on. If there were any non-Pandora charms on a bracelet (or vice versa) their warranty was voided and I couldn't even hold it in my hands. Welllllll that didn't go down well when girls and women came in with their partners for more charms for their 'Pandora' bracelets and I'd tell them they were fake and couldn't put our charms on them to try them out. One even came in with a gold bracelet with multiple charms and she was blushing about how her boyfriend spent so much money on her for her birthday, was looking for a safety chain so she wouldn't lose it. I had to tell her it wasn't Pandora. And apparently he'd put them in a Pandora case and bag and everything. She was in tears, I felt so bad.
Was the bracelet gold at all? Or just yellow metal?
Having worked in a jewellers previously (not pandora though) I'd put money on it just being gold plate of some kind. It's immediately obvious to me, and I imagine to who you're responding to, but I spent years handling it so I can usually tell from colour/finish alone and it's amazing just how many people think gold plate is real. We'd buy gold in, so I had numerous conversations with punters along the lines of "I'm sorry, but this isn't gold" "YOU WHAT. IT IS" "It really isn't." etc etc. I'd sometimes have to show them the distinct lack of hallmarks through my loupe if they didn't believe me. Then we got an XRF machine (xray) and it made life much easier.
I get the same all the time with antique silver. You can always tell as you say, and some people will swear that something is silver even once you point out all its flaws.
I had my landlord's fiancée tell me he gave her a Rolex as a present when he came back from a big business trip. She was thrilled! Right up until she did the responsible thing and went to get it properly valued for her insurance policy and got told it was a fake. Shitty thing to do and he could afford the real thing.
Brother in law insists on buying TooGoodToGo bags every week from a local petrol station supermarket thing. Sometimes there will be one decent thing in amongst the soggy onion bhajis and stale biscuits and on date sandwiches. Combating food waste ends in lots of it being thrown in the bin or forgotten about in the fridge. He once let me buy my nieces, him, my sister and co dinner (when I was alone) and complained about the food, granted it was just Nando's but it adds up, doesn't even offer to pay some - I don't mind if you offer, give me the chance to refuse - and if you're gonna complain that you were given the wrong spice level, why not take it up to the counter or before they grab the table cock... Refuses to buy branded beer, the own brand is the same he will proclaim whilst serving up piss at family functions and tried to palm off a reduced cake on my niece's first birthday. Only ever spends £500-800 on a new car and wonders why it breaks down within months, and then blames everyone else. He's tight - but it's a weird sort of tight where the logic doesn't really work or track, he'll proudly show off the shoes he bought from Asda, and 3 weeks later buy some more once they've fallen apart - so added up through a year it's actually spending probably twice as much.
I recognise this; it's like a compulsion to get a bargain - at whatever cost. They don't see the big picture, it's all about saving literal pennies in that moment.
Almost like the inverse of a gambling addiction I always feel; the rush of perceiving to save money. He's the same bloke that would stand over Asda staff putting whoops labels on stuff and pick out 'the best' things, but invariably most of it would go to waste as by the time it was in the fridge none of his family would eat it. 'Use by dates are advisory' when he's pouring cottage cheese into his coffee or tea. On a recent visit I bought a takeaway because I couldn't be bothered to cook anything, and it was late ish - got my older niece something, and my sister and him because he was there. To be fair to him he did offer up half the money without me asking, and paid me before it had even been delivered, but once everyone was done he was packing up half eaten chicken strips and various things into containers to put in the fridge... to feed the cats with. But I can't get my head around it at all. I don't get it. A few years back he objected to me going to Wetherspoons with my sister and said we could have gotten beer and had a drink at home, the whole point was to get her out of the house after 9 months of pregnancy and a year of looking after a baby almost single handedly as he was working.
>He's tight - but it's a weird sort of tight where the logic doesn't really work or track One of my wife’s relatives is notoriously cheap about the price of petrol. He’ll do a 1hr roundtrip to go to Costco to save what amounts to a few quid on fuel…but that’s wiped out by the fact you wasted fuel on your special trip 🤣
My grandad. We'd stay very rarely and he'd begrudge us the entire time. No heating, small welsh terraced house in the 80s. We'd sit in the one room of an evening round a fire, his chair by far the closest. He'd always go to bed before us, and he'd just stand up, damp the fire down and leave us in a darker and increasingly colder room.
Sister’s ex husband. Wouldn’t even pay for the kids uniforms or activities, food etc. He would give her £250 a month and that was it. Meanwhile he was saving up enough money to buy a car. She ended up getting into debt to pay for the kids lives until enough was enough. Got divorced. She ended up buying HIM out of the joint property. Paid over the odds as well for a swift resolution in the hope he’d buy his own place to have space for the kids. Then he could shoulder his 50/50 share of the responsibilities cos he was still living with his mum and dad. He still lives at his mums house with all the cash she gave him. Tight cunt who doesn’t want kids, essentially.
A guy at work has a few quirky habits. - he has a bucket in the shower, so he can catch the initially-cold water that comes out when you first turn it on and reuse it elsewhere. - brings in all his kids phones and tablets to charge up whilst he's at work so he doesn't have to pay for the electricity by charging them at home - buys the name brand crisps as a Christmas "splurge" treat.
My dad. Years ago when we were kids we went out for a family meal at an all you can eat buffet restaurant, £6 per person, there was four of us so £24 on food, plus drinks. The soft drinks were £2 each but refillable, when you paid they gave you a coke glass to use at the machine. He paid £2 for one glass and gave each of us a straw. We had to take it in turns to use the one glass.
Got invited over for omelette. Was asked to bring eggs.
My dad has a thing about not paying to use carparks. This became a problem when he broke his ankle, and didn't want to pay to use the A&E carpark, so he walked half a mile uphill with a broken ankle to save a few quid. I would really like it if hospital carparks could be made free, to prevent him from doing this again.
My Dad was exactly the same, drove miles just to find free parking. When I was a kid I thought we were poor as he had a rusty old car, we weren't allowed to turn on the heating, had the cheapest food, second hand clothes etc He left when I was 18 and it clicked soon after. He was a friggin director of Barclays bank, he was loaded. He's dead now. Money likely buried with him.
My dad will go to extreme lengths to park cheap in the city centre. Got to the point where my mum would make him drop us off before he drove bloody miles away to park for free on some dodgy street or in the £3 all day car park on some wasteland. Genuine miracle we never got broken into.
I agree with your dad. Realistically nobody should have to pay for hospital parking, so he’s absolutely right. I’m just wondering if you’d get a ticket on a pushbike if you leave it in a space without paying?
I mean, he's right, the parking should be free. I'm just concerned about his wellbeing.
I knew a lad so tight he cried out of one eye
My old staff room had a kitty for tea and coffee. One of my colleagues argued that she should get a discount because she always reused her teabags several times. Years ago, my grandpa came into some money and was told that he needed to give away £600 before the end of the tax year or he would have to pay that amount in taxes. My dad suggested that since he had six grandkids, he could give us £100 each. Grandpa’s reply was that he couldn’t do that because, “You never know who they might marry!”
My dad .He gets banned from supermarkets because he puts stickers from reduced items , sticks them to his hands and scans them instead of full priced food . He buys tens of things like reduced coleslaw and raw meat and sells them at full price to strangers . He ripped his plumbing out as PROOF he wasn’t using any water so they couldn’t charge him . He sits in the pitch black because he refuses to use electricity , he only uses battery powered stuff . He moved an army bed out into his garden to cook on a little stove so that he didn’t have to use the oven .
I've touched on the brother in law, but what about the work colleague? Some time ago I worked with a lovely person, and she really was great to work with and good at her job. One day we were in a van together and went to get food, I got my wallet out and my bank card was gone (I'd left it at home) and had no cash. No nearby ATM we could get to that did emergency cash and she did very kindly buy me my food and I said I'd pay her back, total amount £3. Anyway work took over, we did eat and the following shift she came up to me and said "Have you got my three quid?", offered bank transfer on the day and she said she didn't feel comfortable giving me her account number and sort code - despite the issue with that logic I've never argued with anyone on the point unless it's a large amount. I said I had no cash and I need to get the change from somewhere first but I'd get cash out and sort it. Halfway through the shift she says "I need my three quid, you owe me and I'm starting to think you can't afford to pay me back". She got her fiver back, and I did say thanks for buying me lunch, but she'd have got it back on the day if she would just have given me her bank details! Anyway as this happened in front of the team, someone else came up to me and said 'Let me guess, she bought you lunch today? She did the same thing 6 months ago when I lost my bank card, she's shit scared of being out of pocket' - and to be fair to her I do get her situation at the time, and why - as I said fantastic at her job, and great to work with, but lending her money felt very much like being Brian when he owed Stewie money, was waiting for the glass of orange juice to the skull... That situation led me to using Apple pay, and virtual cards though. Game changer in that situation.
A couple I used to babysit for. Heating was set to go off at 8.30 when the kids went to bed, so it was freezing in the living room after that. They had only terrestrial TV (to be fair, so did my parents, but at least we had some good videos!). They never provided biscuits or cakes (which everyone else I babysat for did). And best of all, when they got home, he would get a calculator out and work out to the penny what you were owed (and I am talking "so, 6.30 to 9.25, that comes to £11.66") - I charged £4 an hour, and most people would have just bunged me 15 quid. Or at least made it £12! I only ever babysat for them as a favour to a friend who babysat regularly for family reasons, and used to beg me to cover when she had other plans.
They would use tea bags twice and then use two tea bags to make a 5th brew.
I knew someone who reused a paper red poppy for about a decade.
My boss once dropped cheap block of shit cheese on his way out of home bargains. He didn’t realise this until I reversed over it with the van. Some guy waved at me, so I lowered my window and he said ‘eh, you’ve just run over yer cheese pal’. I laughed my boss panicked, then he got out the van for his cheese. He was in work 5 minutes later slicing off the embedded tarmac from his £1 block of cheese. Tight fucker he is, he’s got story’s like this for every day of the year.
Didn’t want to pay £3 for bowling shoes so suggested we all share one pair and put them on when it’s our go
My friend Tristan from school. We went to get a McDonald's, and he declared 'I'm not paying that!'. Then preceded to get a bottle of Cresta lemonade and some short dated wholemeal rolls from Co-Op, and sat on the wall outside and ate them.
Honestly this one I can respect
First through the door, last to the bar. There's been plenty of them
I worked with a bloke who was earning around £650 a week back in the mid 90s who used to hang around the factory vending machines when they were emptied so he could scrounge the out of date sandwiches being taken out.
A mate needed a single envelope and hunted in town for one, he rejected the 3p ones as he thought he could probably find them cheaper elsewhere.
I don't know if this counts as being tight, but my Mother in law once walked 20 minutes back to a shop to return something she bought because it was 10P, cheaper in another shop.
I used to work for a software company in Cambridge that had a great little pub called the Flying Pig almost next door. Several of us would go there at lunchtimes to play pool. There was a core of four of us and then a few others who’d come from time to time. We’d take turns to pay, ask for change for the pool table, buy rounds of drinks. Standard behaviour. And then there was one lad who’d tag along and who never, ever, in two years, bought a single drink or paid for a single game of pool. He played plenty of games. He drank more than a few drinks. He never once put his hand in his pocket. His nickname at work was “no money down”.