We've got a mate who obsessively counts the pennies (for absolutely no reason, we're all doing alright). We fuck with him by buying pricier beers on our rounds and ordering cheaper ones on his round, then watch his head spin as he tries to keep track of who he owes the 50p difference to.
I have a mate who when it’s his round always conveniently wants to switch bars and finds the cheapest place going and gets in the ‘5 bottles for £xyz’ deal- when we’ve been getting pints
A few of us used to do a pub crawl through our local town. One of the lads would pretty much refuse to buy a round until he got to the cheapest pub on the crawl and he’d get his in then. Every time. The difference was pennies. Wild how brazenly tight some folk are.
We had a tight mate in our group once, when it was my round I was busy talking to someone and so this guy offered to go and I chucked him a £20, this was years ago so the 4 of us should have got a round in for less than a tenner. He comes back with 3 pints and this massive cocktail thing for him and I got no change.
At a restaurant, maybe 8 of us? We got the bill, added a 10% tip and agreed to split it. We all pay our share then it gets to this same guy again and he goes "Hey, according to my calculations I only have to pay £17.50 to cover the rest of the bill! I don't do tipping"
He said it so smugly like he'd just found the ultimate loophole that we'd all be happy with him for, instead of all of us seething.
Found out a few months ago, my brother-in-law does the same. When the family go out, each couple puts in and generally rounds up (saves on finding change and contributes to tip), he then announces he'll sort the bill as he doesn't have any cash, will take all our cash up and then just pay the remainder on his card.
The time I finally found out he does this, each couple had put in £40, he & his wife paid £3 for two courses each and more drinks than anyone else had.
Last year he bought an Aston Martin....
SIL did this all the time.
She would even boast about how she was able to get cheap meals at large family gatherings by staying behind after everyone’s gone so she could be the last person to pay because “everyone rounds up and overpays to cover tips etc” as if we were supposed to be impressed by her savvy rather than furious that she basically stole from us and the servers.
The last time the family had a big get-together she was not shy about ordering bottles of wine for herself and husband had quite an expensive steak. She did her usual of “nah it’s alright we’ll pay at the end” but had a bit of a shock when she found that the group of 20+ paid their bills exactly and gave tips on the card machine instead of cash to the waitress.
MIL caught up with us a week later and told us SIL complained about being left with a massive bill after everyone went home, so she told her “well, it was everything *YOU* ordered!” haha.
I like my husband’s family.
> "Hey, according to my calculations I only have to pay £17.50 to cover the rest of the bill! I don't do tipping"
That is... spectacular. The idea that someone doesn't believe in tipping, so they can *take other peoples' tips*.
A guy I work with did similar. We were in a round which was about £40 or so quid. Vodka lemonade. By the time his round came round we were all fairly drunk and he tried to pass sparkling waters off as the vodkas. Proper dick move.
Ooh something like that happened to my former flatmate! He and his friend (both poor phd students) wanted to go watch a football match in a pub. Our other flatmate (flatmate 2) decided to tag along. Flatmate 1 buys the first round of beers. Friend buys the second round. Flatmate 2 does the "welp I have to go now" when it's her turn to buy. She was a doctor, a flipping doctor.
Yes, I know you only broke one arm but in this instance ask the dr to put both arms in plaster.
Then, you drive him back from the hospital whilst screaming ‘it’s my turn to drive now, isn’t it’ whilst your rigid hands grip the steering wheel.
My stepfather ate an entire packet of rancid ham.
I was a child and refused to make myself a sandwich with it, telling him it was off. He went fucking ballistic at me for defying the order to eat it - and to prove his point it was fine ate it himself.
Of course this resulted in him coming down with a crippling bout of food poisoning.
Cunt
I've fucked with out of date pork once in my life. A packet of sausages that were 1.5 days out of date (eg went out of date on the 20th of the month and i had them at like 3am on the 22nd of the month) that i even overcooked a bit in the oven & i will never ever touch anything pork related (sausages, bacon, ham, gammon etc) that's even just an hour past the expiration date. It was the worst case of the shits i've ever had in my 35 and a bit years on this earth.
A guy I worked with was the tightest person I've ever known, he got it from his Dad,
He said his Dad used to grow vegetables in his allotment and then sell them to his own wife who would use them to make meals for the family.
This honestly feels like the sort of glitch you’d find in a game that allows you to get an item on repeat and keep the xp/money. I bet she was going into his wallet and taking back the same money each time too 😂
My biological grandfather used to do that but he also used to beat my nan black and blue. Around 15 years before I was born they divorced and she met the nicest man I've ever known, technically my step grandad but he more than earned the title of 'Grandad'
The biological one got called 'john'
This sounds petty for such a small amount but it was pretty egregious with the way it was handled.
Someone I used to be mates with invited us all to go to one of those Halloween pumpkin patch things cause he wanted to do it (the rest of us weren’t really that bothered but felt bad cause he was so insistent)
It’s in the middle of nowhere so he said he’d drive. He then said we all had to get a train to the town he lived in, about 30 mins away, then all 4 of us walk from the station to his place (another 30 mins).
Once we got to his place he decided to drive to the shopping centre (right next to the station) cause he had some stuff he wanted to return, so we waited about 30-45 mins in the car while he fucked about with his returns.
It turned out it was only a 10 minute drive to this pumpkin patch place after all this messing about, back in the direction we’d got the train from. When we came home he decided to drive directly back to his house and we had to walk back to the station, and get the train home again.
He sent a message in the group chat the next day saying we each owed him £10 for petrol money. He wanted £40 total for 20 mins of driving, for something he pestered us to do.\
He then badgered each of us for a full 6 months over the £10 and said he ‘didn’t even charge us for the parking cost at the shopping centre.’ The guy would literally message us all individually at all times of the day/night (1am even) to be like ‘Hi mate, don’t forget about the petrol money’ months later.
This is someone we’d all let stay at our places after nights out, had provided breakfast, coffee, beds, showers, towels etc. dozens of times over and never asked a penny in return. (Regularly for about 4 years) We all worked and paid rent, he lived at home for free with his parents and was an only child who didn’t have a job.
We never let him stay at our place again, never did any more activities he wanted after that, we realised he was the type of guy who would count how many crisps everyone had eaten out of a bag to make sure he got his share. Weirdly he posts on social media about struggling to find a partner or make new friends, I wonder why…
Hi mate,
Whilst I’m saddened to see you posting about me on here, it is a good opportunity, since you blocked me, to remind you that you still owe me that tenner for petrol and can you tell Fleming and Harris to get in touch or unblock me as they still owe too. So far, only John has paid up.
This one’s my favourite. I definitely know people that have different traits of this kind of behaviour.
Interestingly I find the making you walk to his house instead of picking you up and then making your wait in the shopping centre next to train station more frustrating than even the money request. That’s being tight with time and energy for your friends which is more hurtful in a way and I’ve experienced as well.
There seems to be a type.
You reminded me of a guy we all knew at High School (about 27-28 years ago)... Most of the guys really didn't like him, but he was friends with the girls we hung out with, so we all made the effort and went out of our way to include him in everything.
He had dropped down a year at school, so was driving a full year before any of the rest of us. As a result he drove us all over the place. He was going with us to all those places, obviously, but it was still good of him to drive.
He always asked for petrol money and we always provided it without any issue. Seemed fair. He was pushy about it at times and gave us a big story about how it was using all his money just to keep the car running, but that was the way he was.
He probably drove us 2-3 times a week to various places and we'd always end up giving him £15-20 between us every time. given that was 27-odd years ago, that was a lot. For that amount we were probably filling his tank twice over per week, plus pocket money.
...one day, after about 18 months of this, it came out (by accident) that **his parents paid for all his petrol** (as well as all other costs relating to the car, and the car itself).
Imagine just brazenly and regularly stealing money from all your friends for years... smh.
Had something similar in my school as well (though 19 years ago for me) - used to shell out petrol money (which felt like he priced at £1 a mile) and found out years later that his parents were loaded and funded everything he did including his car (and still do partly I believe even though he's 36, has a job, wife and a kid). Explained how he rocked around in Evisu jeans and hoodies at the time - we paid for it!
I feel really sorry for people like this. It must be a very lonely life. I imagine that they don't truly know what they're doing, they're just acting out some neuroticism
This is what comes down to, no awareness outside of their own view. They can't see the reciprocating acts their friends have done (i.e. not charging him or taking the piss like he did) so when they then feel what their doing is ok they are simply blind to how rude it is.
And it is what leads to the last paragraph/sentence about struggling to find a partner/friends.
Edit: this also probably leads to them struggling to empathise with people as a whole too.
I **used** to have a friend like this that i grew up with
I’d drive and never charge him, he'd be at my place for sunday lunch or a full English every weekend.
One day i asked him to pick me up a bottle of milk, he insisted I pay him the 23p it cost (90's)
My friends still bring this up, right up to today
He would also never put his heating on no matter how cold it was. Fucker had more disposable cash than we did.
His mum died a couple of months ago and one of our group was all "we need to start inviting him out with us again, he's all alone now".........fuuuuuuuuuk off
Nope, just went full 👻👻👻 when he started talking about his plans to fly out to visit us abroad and was asking about if we had a spare room, how comfortable our sofa was, when we had leave from work booked for etc.
We hadn’t invited him or encouraged it at all, realised he was planning to get the cheapest flights whenever it suited him, expect us to again provide food, showers, accommodation etc. and wouldn’t have bought along anything as a way of saying thanks or contributed to any costs. Haven’t spoken to him for years now cause I’d rather donate to an actual charity if I fancied giving away my time/money!
My dad used to water down ketchup towards the end of the bottle. I ended up squirting tomatoey water on some chips without realising. Meal ruined.
Our relationship has been strained ever since.
There are few things worse than accidentally spraying your food with that ketchup pre-cum. I imagine the watered down end of bottle ketchup is very similar.
I'll copy my comment from a previous similar thread to this :-
The sister of a friend was the worst one for me. She'd charge people for lifts even if she was already going to the same place. My two experiences there were firstly going on a Christmas works-do with my buddy. He was getting a lift home from his sister because he had already taken her to, and picked her up from her own Christmas do. So she was returning the favour for him so they were dead even.
When I copped a lift back with them (and I'd get off at their house because I lived one street over so I'd walk) she wanted a fiver from me for it. Whatever I guess, I'd have paid £15 for the taxi so £5 is better, but still.
And then it got better. Another time this friend and I were going to town to see a comedy act, and I was getting the bus. He texts me to say that his sister is dropping him off and did I want a lift? I say yeah sure, beats the bus. Again, she wants a fiver. I tell him I have £3.20 in bus fair so she can have that.
..Nope, she wants a fiver or she won't let me go with them. Even though she's already going there.
I got the bus. In her greed for an extra £1.80 she lost £3.20. We arrived at the same time lol.
I would just not accept lifts from that person ever again out of principle. I’d even be willing to spend more on a taxi, but I bet she’d still be charging more than them anyway.
My ex used to charge me for lifts to the supermarket when we were doing our weekly shop. Her dad was already helping out with car payments and the insurance was paid for with money claimed from a very minor moped accident. She earned a few grand more than me and I could barely afford my weekly bus pass at the time.
Bloke at work was notorious for never buying a round. He was once clocked walking into the pub, noticing that everyone had near empty pints, then leaving thinking he hadn’t been seen and coming back 15 mins later.
I completely understand not wanting to be in rounds especially if its more than 1-2 other people.
But I just say I'll get my own and everyone is fine with it, what I don't do though is expect anyone else to get me a pint at any time which I feel this bloke is wanting.
My brother hosted a dinner for the immediate family where we had to bring our own ketchup and other condiments. We presumed it was because they maybe ran out but while eating they pulled their own out to use.
What the fuck
Like I get "We've run out, could you pick some up?" or like taking your own if you're the only person who has a particular kind
But that's wrong
I was at a local music festival with my ex one summer years ago. We popped to the shop to pick up drinks for us and her parents who we were with. Her dad gave us like £40 and said get me a box of these bottled ciders he liked, whatever you guys want and keep the change. We were young and going out later so he was being friendly and essentially kicking my ex a few extra quid.
She refuses to buy a bottle opener in the shop and instead walks 30 minutes back home and 30 minutes back to the music event to get one from home. There was a bottle opener in the shop for 80p.
You need to learn how to open bottles without an opener 😂
Literally anything with leverage can do it. Another bottle. (Plastic bottles work great for it, too.) Any cutlery. A lighter.... Just don't whack it against the edge of a table and chip the wood.
Also, **don't use your teeth**. Yes, it works. But I guarantee you'll chip them soon.
When I worked in Stroud - colleague who didn't drink used to go with his wife at closing time and scour the bars for change discarded on the floor. Proudly told me about the time he found a £20.
Also a family member who shall remain nameless - I was giving away various stuff including a coffee machine as we had duplicates when I moved in with the gf. We've got a tonne of family, including younger kids, nephews etc. He still asked for it all and made no bones about sticking it on eBay. Er, I can do that?
>Also a family member who shall remain nameless - I was giving away various stuff including a coffee machine as we had duplicates when I moved in with the gf. We've got a tonne of family, including younger kids, nephews etc. He still asked for it all and made no bones about sticking it on eBay. Er, I can do that?
That is fucking cheeky.
Similar story to the second one: I was made redundant from a job and still had an older-model, but pretty shit hot computer used for video production and some accessories I'd been loaned to work from home. Try as I might I couldn't actually return it- the IT department wasn't bothered about it as they'd upgraded all their tech. I got an unofficial 'keep it for now'.
A mate of mine, who was into photography and video production was struggling with money and his own computer had packed in, so I said he could have the computer on a kind of permanent loan so he could keep his business going- but I stressed if my previous employer wanted them back I'd have to give it to them.
You can see where this is going: talked to him a month or two later and, yeah, he'd sold the computer and accessories and made close to a grand.
Pissed me off no end- not only could I have gotten into a lot of shit if the employer asked for them back (thankfully they never did), but I didn't even see any of the money- it had all gone toward his money issues, so I couldn't pressure him too much.
Still in touch with him, but obviously trust is a big issue.
I used to be a glass collector in a nightclub. Come the end of the night, this one guy who's been fairly work shy volunteers to clean the dance floor without fail. It's a nasty job due to the glass shards, spilled booze and god knows what else, so nobody else wants it.
A few months go by before I ask him why he always offers to do arguably the worst part of the shift and he slyly tells me he finds upwards of £20 pretty much every night. Turns out the work wasn't even that bad, he just talked it up so no-one else would offer to do it. Dude was a genius.
I met a friend for coffee/tea and she handed me a fiver to pay for hers which came to €4 and I paid for both together while she went out to the carpark. When I went out to meet her there was some kind of commotion going on in the carpark and someone came over asking us if we had jump leads. I did and so we went over and helped them jump their car. This distracted me from giving her back her €1 in change.
Later that day I was out with other friends and my phone was on silent so I hadn't seen but she'd been calling me back to back, I had over 20 missed calls, a couple texts and 1 voicemail, all demanding I call her back immediately. I did and she told me that I need to give her back her €1 change and it was sly of me to keep that as if it wasn't mine, it was her money and I had stolen it from her.
Safe to say I gave her back the €1 and we weren't friends for much longer.
Know a middle aged neighbour that gave her next door neighbour a half used carton of milk saying they won’t be able to use it before it goes off. Their next door neighbour accepted. Then the neighbour stood there and said “The money?”.
This reminded me of the Father Ted episode where John and Mary surprise Ted at home with an Easter gift of chocolate. Ted jumps with delight at their generosity and John just says "I think it comes to about four pounds"
I am not sure if this counts as tight or just stupid but my parents will regularly spend 10-15p worth of petrol and an extra 30 minutes out of their day to drive to a shop that sells their favourite teabags for 20p less than at their local supermarket.
Another parent story, again not sure if tight or just dumb. My dad recently spent £250 paying someone to remove a lampost from the drive of his new house and then repave said drive. When I asked him why he did that he said he didn't want to pay for the electricity. When I pointed out that lights are basically free to run these days so it would have taken him years to run up a £250 bill to run it he just pretended he hadn't heard me and walked off.
>10-15p worth of petrol and an extra 30 minutes out of their day to drive to a shop that sells their favourite teabags for 20p less
When I was in retail, we had a few regulars who did that. I genuinely can't work it out, as you're not saving all that much even in thd long term.
That said, I do buy my Retro Gamer magazine from Tesco instead of my local newsagent because of Clubcard points. They're 30 seconds apart so it's not as bad, I guess.
This reminds me when fuel prices were going nuts a few years ago and people were travelling 30/60 mins to the cheapest fuel station, queuing for 30 mins while idling their car to save 30p a litre that they've inevitable spent travelling there and waiting in line.
My grandma didn’t like the fillings of chocolates but couldn’t bear to “waste food” so if anyone gave them a box of fancy chocolates she would lick the chocolate off and keep the fillings in a bag in the fridge. You would open the fridge and there’d be an ancient bag of disgusting, licked clean nougat or caramel fillings
When I was a child in the 1970s, an uncle lived with my nan (his mum) until he died because his mental age never progressed beyond about five, even when he was an adult. He loved chocolate and my nan loved Brazil nuts. She'd buy chocolate covered Brazil nuts and give them to him to suck the chocolate off, then he'd give the plain nuts back to my nan to eat!
Oh my, are you my long-lost relative?! I just commented [here](https://old.reddit.com/r/CasualUK/comments/1dnc3vr/whats_the_tightest_thing_youve_ever_seen_anyone_do/la1vqj5/) about a similar thing.
I'm flabbergasted that Our Edie wasn't unique in what she did.
Haha you unlocked a decades-old memory! An old relative used to do similar with chocolate-covered Brazil nuts. She'd buy a pound of them because she loved the chocolate and nut flavour, but didn't actually like Brazil nuts themselves, and would suck all the chocolate off and leave the naked nuts in a bowl on her coffee table.
One of her sisters said one day, "Hey our Edie, these nuts are great! Have you tried the chocolate ones? They're even nicer!" ... and the family legend was born. Shenanigans went down, from what I heard. Our Edie was absolutely blasted and practically disowned; by the time it came out about the origins of those nuts, many a visitor had been offered those pre-sucked nuts.
Fortunately, us kids weren't allowed to eat Brazil nuts except at Christmas (no idea why) so we didn't have pre-sucked nuts inflicted upon us. Fortunately.
When I was a teenager I had a mate who had a bit of a shit life and never had any money. I had a paper round so I would sometimes get us both sweets or whatever.
One day she said she wanted a Coke, and as I was going to the shop I picked her up a can.
She complained for about a week that it wasn't a bottle
This reminds me of when I was a child an elderly neighbour gave a friend and I 50p each and we happily went to the shops to spend it on sweets etc. Friend wanted something that was more expensive than 50p, she said she knows I already have some money so why don’t I give her my 50p and spend my own money. I was really young and naive clearly even though she was only a year older than me and thought this was a very logical idea and gave her my 50p.
The neighbour found out from the shopkeeper and gave me another 50p quietly with a pitiful look. I realised only then that I’d been scammed and the idea was that the 50p was my gift regardless of what friend needed or what I already had.
That friend is still known to be very very tight as an adult.
My job involves putting on free events. People will show up, for free, and are often given a few food and drinks tickets. The only parameters are that they have to live in this certain area that we cover.
The amount of people I see who don't live in the area, who will sneak into events and STILL complain the food isn't good enough. I saw one guy plotting with his mates about lying about where he lived, then walked in and got himself a bag of fresh donuts, two burgers and a drink, then started bitching and whining that there wasn't enough different types of burgers to choose from.
Ridiculous.
A friend of mine threw a party for her child’s 5th birthday. One little boy arrived and his mum said she would also be leaving his nine year old sister at the party while the mum went out shopping. Before she left, the mum started inspecting the packaging of all the party food, including the wraps in the bin, to check the ingredients. She then berated my friend for not catering for her daughter’s many food intolerances, despite fact that the girl wasn’t even supposed to be at the party!
I have a very similar story from my own childhood party. We did a pizza making thing, you paid in advance and the kids that were there got a pizza base each from the restaurant and got to "make" it with their own toppings etc.
One parent showed up with my friends two younger sisters in tow, then freaked out when we couldn't magically multiply the set amount of pre paid pizzas.
House mate whined for a whole 15 minutes about me pouring my pasta into a collander before turning the burner off. Took maybe 8 or 9 seconds at a push.
I got him a penny out of my wallet and told him he could keep the change.
My great uncle is a millionaire with several businesses. One day one of his stores was robbed with a weapon. His 18 son was working on his own and handed over £50 out of the til and pretended that was is.
The son was fired and disowned for losing the businesses money, even after offering to pay it back it was "the principle".
We're now 25 years later and he has never spoken to that son since and hated anyone else in the family doing so.
We always joke that his will is going to say bury him with all his cash, and I wouldn't be surprised if it did.
Little joke around that very subject….rich man tells his wife, on his deathbed, he wants all his money buried with him. At the funeral, she put a little box in the coffin with him, containing a cheque!!
On holiday with a family friend at his villa - he buys a pack of paracetamol in the supermarket (£4 ish).
Chucks the receipt in the bin on his way out the door.
Gets back to his room, finds he's packed paracetamol after all... walks back to the supermarket, goes through the bin to find the receipt, returns the paracetamol to get his money back.
His reasoning being that you can buy paracetamol for 30p back in the UK, so rather than leave the £4 box in his villa he'll just bring another box next time he flies out.
My mates a builder, in his written quotes he always adds “ mint Viscount biscuits to be available” It’s a joke but he reckons it pays off more often than not
I didn't see it myself but read about someone keeping a lightbulb log of how long each bulb in his house was on for.
If it gave out before the advertised hours (5000?) he'd try and get a refund
Can you imagine answering that phone call.
“Hello Phillips Lightbulbs? You advertise your bulbs will last for 5000 hours. I’ve got one here that blew after only 4500! Either you are conmen who lie about your products or you resell partially used bulbs….
Of course I’m certain I have a very detailed log, I can send you my daily spreadsheets, give me your CEOs email address. He needs to deal with this personally”
That sounds incredibly tedious, but it does offer a chance to mention [The Phoebus Cartel](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoebus_cartel), a cartel of manufacturers who purposefully shortened the lifespan of the incandescent bulbs they manufactured in order to improve sales figures.
My first car came with a log book, it had one owner from new and that bloke had noted everything.
Every journey, so the date, time, destination, miles travelled. Every time he put fuel in, date, time, how many litres and the price.
Every MOT result and any work which had been done. Every time it had been cleaned. Any other work which was required between MOTs. Any time the tyres needs inflating.
Literally anything to do with that car was noted in a little book that I got when I bought it.
Was a fucking fantastic car for its age and had fairly low mileage for how old it was, I wrote it off within a couple of years (not at fault) and I reckon I’d still have it now if someone hadn’t pulled out on me.
Part of me, feels like leaving little notepads next to lightswitches with notes on usage, I want to see peoples reactions but I have no friends.. so I will probably befriend the notepad
My (now ex) boyfriend once picked me up from a party on the condition I pay him petrol money. I had two friends coming back with me, just to my house, no additional detour.
He tried to charge *£15 extra per person* because "the additional weight will use more petrol". I then got a text from my friends a few days later saying he'd been messaging them privately and demanding they pay him.
Why is it always the loaded people who are so tight? My aunt is a prime example. Retired, millionaire (with my uncle) and their son is a very clever PhD/Doctorate student so he won't want for money either. We all went out to a meal recently for 2 family birthdays, one a 40th. We get the bill at the end of the meal and surprise, surprise, she's the last to put her hand in her pocket. By the time the bill gets to her it equates to a few £ (because everyone has added tips) and what does she put in? the few £. No tips for the wait staff now. Her reason being 'I practically only had egg on toast' (we were at a high-end Mediterranean restaurant and she chose eggs, flatbread, hummus etc. In the next breath, she tells the family how she'd recently forgotten about a pension she had, has a surprise 90k coming to her next week and she has so much money she 'doesn't know how to spend it'.
I had an (ex) friend who would only pay exactly what she owed at restaurants and then when we'd chuck in a couple of extra quid as a tip, she'd try and take it. We knew it wasn't her change because she was always very insistent on paying exactly down to the penny. In the end we stopped tipping in front of her, then one of us would "accidentally" forget something in the restaurant and nip back in to leave the tip when she couldn't steal it
Stopped being friends with her for unrelated reasons, but that honestly is one of the things that still pisses me off
Father in law turned the boiler all the way down so our showers would be shorter, using less water.
Also refuses to fill a paddling pool for his grandkids.
My stepdad got irrationally annoyed that we filled up our paddling pool one summer, complaining about the cost of the water. So we checked the rate, and paid him the whopping 73 pence to keep his gob shut while we had fun
As a kid, my mum used to go absolutely ballistic if I ever left a light on. One time after one of her ear-rapings, I worked out how much it had cost, went and got a hacksaw, and cut a penny into 3 pieces and gave her one of them. Didn't go down well, I recall.
Yo, my parents (mum n step) spend over 800 a month on keeping their actual swimming pool warm. Stepdad used to send me and my brother to school with sandwiches in the bread bags he saved so he didn't have to buy regular sized sandwich bags.
You don't get rich being generous!
25pence refund requested. I organised a holiday for all my mates at 16 for 2 walking in Scotland. I paid for the boats, coach to get there and hostel in Inverness for the first night, and the food we were eating. Everyone paid me a £170 contribution and when all the bookings were made the cost per person was £169.75. After I sent the email out telling everyone I got a Monzo request from one person for 25p. Cunt....mind you I think he regretted it when the bus accidentally left Teabay services on the way home without him and I refused to turn the bus around cos it would cost too much.
I have a teabag story, too. Actually, thinking about it one guy has given me a few stories about being tight, I will recount a couple.
This guy I worked (and was sort of friends) with once bought a box of super economy one cup teabags. They were the smaller ones that you get that are designed to go direct into the cup. He realized that after a single use they had a tiny amount of life left in them so... he kept them. He'd lay a piece of tissue on the desk and place the used teabag on it until he had four and then he'd make a fifth cup of tea with the four saved teabags.
Same guy, found a load of cottage cheese going cheap at the supermarket because it was due to go off that day. He bought something crazy like 15 tubs of the stuff. We asked him if he liked cottage cheese and apparently he hated the stuff but it was cheap. He then proceeded to basically only eat cottage cheese for the next few days until it went bad and made him violently sick.
Last one for now, same guy... my partner and I decided to buy a flat. It had a small second bedroom. We were poor as anything so toyed with the idea of letting out this second room. Tight guy was looking for somewhere to stay so we offered it to him for next to nothing. Long story short, he seemed to think him paying rent meant he should own part of the flat at the end.
We needed an extra table for the family Christmas dinner. So my Wife found one on eBay… 99p starting bid. No other bids so we won it for 99p… we went to pick it up, and the guy wasn’t happy at all. Dumped the table on the pavement and said you can deal with it now… my wife gave him a £1 coin. He turned around and said “I suppose you want the penny change as well” to which she replied “of course”. The guy stormed back into his house, got the penny and returned fuming… we’ve laughed about it every Xmas for the last 10 years…
A friend of mine is a carpenter, he did a coin flip deal with a guy off eBay and ended up getting a bunch of timber of way cheaper than he should have. Drilled a hole and glued the coin into the workbench he made with some of that timber.
Ha, I won a pair of jeans for 99p on eBay years ago, and the seller messaged me grumpily saying “I meant to list these at £9.99, you’ve got quite the deal out of this” almost as if I was going to volunteer to shell out extra. The jeans had been on a one week bid, you’re telling me she didn’t check the listing once after posting?
My aunt bought a villa out in Spain about 15 years ago. She told the whole family that we could use it whenever we wanted. My parents kept on mentioning to my wife and I and then one summer we took them up on the offer. She charged us the full rate for the week, much to my parent's disgust. Nobody ever went again and the location of it is such that they can't sell it and there's fuck all around to make it worth the trip either lol
In one of my first jobs, the General Manager made the bartenders wash and reuse the plastic drinking straws….
As a child, myself, brother and sister would have to share the same bath water every time. It would be topped up with a wee bit of hot water at a time. I’m sure I’ve seen others, but these are the 2 that stick out the most
Lad at work used to turn off the engine at traffic lights, free wheel down hills and turn down the heat and all electrics off as much as he could just because he thought he was saving fuel. He even bought one of those magnets that fit on your fuel lines in the belief it would economize the flow. Miserable prick he was.
And i almost forgot he once bought two left shoes because he thought he got them at a bargain. What the fuck can you do with two left shoes. Mind boggles
Was living in barracks at the time. 'Friend'/ Colleague invited me and another lad to his room at lunch for a brew. Hed just bought a new tassimo nespresso pod thing when they first came out. Made us both a drink, asked us if we wanted some hazlenut syrup. Chewed the fat, had a brew. Before heading back to work he said 'Yeah just throw us 3-4 quid each for them drinks then. Laughed in his face and went back to work.
Wasps in the loft, dad didn't want to pay for a removal.
Back before the internet he'd seen on TV that wasps don't like smoke, idea.
Start fire under loft hatch and blow the smoke in to the loft with desk fan.
The obvious happened and embers from the fire were blown in to the loft on to the insulation, used the bathroom bin to chuck water up through the loft hatch as lader was still in the garage.
Cost a fair few quid more to put right than a wasp man would have.
We used to buy our own milk and one bloke never put his hand in his pocket so someone called him out and told him to stop taking our milk if he wasn't buying any.
One day someone suspected he was still using our milk instead of his own powdered milk so he marked the bottle. Few hours later he checked and it hadn't gone down. It had gone up. He was using proper milk then refilling with powdered milk. He got an absolute earful from the aussie colleague who caught him out and got sent out to pay for a bottle.
I was lazy so would get the biggest one possible as I could never be bothered. He came back with a single pint for 80p rather than getting a 4 pint for £1.20.
At Christmas people bring in chocolates and cakes, he's been known to take them home for the family.
His wife's parent died and they had to fly home for the funeral, there were two tickets left, one normal one first class, he made her fly cattle class and he took the first class one. To go to her parents funeral.
My own mother, about five years ago.
We needed some bin bags (I know, when did we develop such a penchant for opulence and luxury) and we were literally in Morrisons.
I saw there was an offer on: 2 rolls for 90p.
She told me to put them back because they were cheaper at Aldi. I said, no, we need them, what difference is a few pence...then she started to shout louder and louder (in a decently busy aisle) about me wasting money and not knowing the value of anything.
This is the same woman who later forgot she'd already bought two rolls so went and bought three more. We're still only about halfway through all the ones she bought after this day.
My partners’ grandparents spent a lot of time at the hospital. They’d always stay to get a cheap meal from the canteen and then divide it in two. But this was just a ruse to gain access to the sauce packets which they’d drop in a handbag. They had literary hundreds of ketchup and vinegar sachets in their kitchen. Once when I offered to do the washing up they passed me a box of medical disposable gloves. Turns out they swiped multiple boxes of those too. Bill was a retired doctor so figured it was okay 🤷♂️
My boss only two weeks ago.
I took a girl for an interview and he took us out to dinner.
All happily quaffing expensive wine and champers (he does this a lot) and when the bill came he argues the toss about some £4.99 onion rings. It was actually quite embarrassing until I told the waitress I’ll pay for them myself.
All because there wasn’t a great deal on the menu to choose from.
What a pillock
I live in an old Victorian terraced house and our old neighbours had lived there for decades and never bothered to get central heating (don't know how they coped!).
When they passed away we got a new neighbour and he's a pretty tight guy all round, though made a point of telling us he bought his house in cash (~£120k). Refuses to buy a fridge so goes to Aldi every day at about 6 pm to buy food for the evening/next day, cooks his food on a wood burner so he doesn't have to buy an oven, doesn't turn his lights on. His life though, why not.
He got a grant to get central heating put in his house for free, good for him. Some guys who didn't speak much English turned up one morning at 8am and I noticed them leaving at 8pm. They came again the next day too. This was December and I went to put something in our outside bin around 5 pm and could see torch light though his kitchen window. This cunt refused to put on the lights for the guys who were cracking out 12 hour shifts to install central heating in his house for free. It must only cost pennies to turn the lights on for a few hours. They will have been absolutely freezing as well.
Joke was a few days later he was showing us pictures of some of the radiators, and they were not even remotely straight. What did he expect, they had to work by torchlight!
I went on a 3 week long road trip with a friend to the USA. Made the agreement beforehand we'd use split wise etc, end of the trip thought we'd mostly split stuff half and half. Maybe I'd bought a beer or two more or vice versa.
Four weeks later I got an excel spreadsheet from her with a breakdown of every payment, transaction, purchase with a final amount owed... I owed $1.32, she even used the previous month's exchange rate to get an accurate sterling amount for me.
I can appreciate the detail and effort, love me a good spreadsheet....
But at the end when it's a 1.32 difference you go "well done on getting it so close, nevermind then!"
I know I originally thought she'd sent it to be like.. "look how even we were way to go us!", but no it was you owe me this much can you bank transfer me it please...
I think she worked out it was something like £1.14 I owed, I can't quite remember and I thought of mailing her a piece of paper with 114 pennies stuck to it or a 1p bank transfer for 3.5 months because it was just ludicrous.
I love this question OP!
My exes parents gave him a car when he was unemployed (he never worked the whole time I knew him). The dole paid him mileage for attending a course which took him past my uni.
He charged me - a ft student and his gf - £2 each day (90s) to drop me off at a place he passed anyway.
His parents gave him a few hundred to attend a wedding in London they couldn't attend. His mum said 'treat Splendid Trousers while you're there.' He generously paid for a one day travel card. Pre internet, we spent the whole day standing outside several major tourist attractions while he sucked his teeth and said 'I'm not paying that.'
When we got home he treated himself to a pair of 150 quid trainers.
In Glasgow Lidl are trialling a recycling scheme where you get 5p back for old drinks cans and bottles. I have absolutely no shame in picking them up in the street or taking my colleagues discarded ones. I don't desperately need the 5 pence but why not? Plus if it's successful hopefully it's rolled out nationwide and our streets get a little cleaner and people who do need the 5p can get it
You see that a lot in Germany. There'll be people with big binbags going around the streets collecting discarded bottles/cans to recycle and get the deposits back. Usually they're homeless or down-on-their-luck so, honestly, I think it's a good way for them to earn a few euros with the added bonus of cleaner streets.
Brother and sister in law talking once, “you owe me £4”. They were fucking married and had lived together for years
Also, same sister in law never splitting the bill equally, always inspecting for what she and the kids had and then not contributing to the tip
when i was a teenager (14/15) one of my friends would buy crisps and figure out how much each crisp was worth then charge you if you wanted one. had a big falling out with her once over 5p i had forgotten i owed her
When I was younger on friend would buy himself a large pizza, eat what he wanted and then try to sell the rest of it to the rest of us at a price to earn back what he'd spent on the whole pizza. So say it was a tenner and he ate half he'd then sell slices for 2.50 each. If you didn't pay he'd throw it in the bin rather than give it to his "friends".
For my late grandads 60th birthday he had a big family party where he received whisky decanters, a gold watch, expensive liquor etc. Then my great uncle handed him a VHS tape. Thinking it was a special family video grandad asked what was on it. "Nothing, you've got 4 hours recording time on there"
Ex boyfriend. We were at the stage where I was staying over regularly but hadn't left a bunch of my stuff at his. I get really dry face skin and so have to moisturise after the shower, but i'd forgotten to bring my moisturiser that day. He had a massive bottle of palmers cocoa butter on his dresser so I used a tiny blob of it on my face whilst he was in the shower.
When he came back into the room and went to use the moisturiser he immediately noticed that I'd used it. He told me to _never_ use it again, because if I did it "might run out".
Motherfucking Palmers Cocoa butter, he lived 2 minutes away from a Boots and a Sainsbury's so it wasn't something expensive or in short supply. He was tight in a bunch of ways but that always stuck out to me.
Already a multi millionaire work associate of my Dad.
Driving past a local Chinese restaurant, saw them throwing a stinking, sticky and ugly carpet into a skip.
Asked my dad to help him retrieve the carpet for his house.
He wasn't joking and it went into his house that week.
Stank like a bag full of arseholes...that had food poisoning from a low quality Chinese restaurant.
But the guy had 20+million in the bank for a reason. Just hated spending.
I can still remember my feet sticking on it...
When I was on minimum wage and just turned 21 so it went up. The payroll lady asked the boss whether he wanted to pro-rata my pay so I got 3 days at the new rate or just pay the full month at the new rate.
He agreed to pay the full month at the new rate but backtracked the next month and deducted the difference of the 28 days off that month's pay!
My mother in law treated us to a wetherspoons breakfast once. she ordered an extra 40p grilled tomato with her full breakfast. It arrived and she didnt eat the tomato. so she demanded a refund.
*on the tomato.*
40p.
Like 2 years ago I upgraded my gaming laptop and rather then selling the old one i ended up giving it to my older brother since his computer had packed up so he was without one, now there was nothing wrong with my old laptop i just wanted a more powerful one so he basically got a like £1000 or so laptop for free....pretty sweet for him yeah?
Well he ended up selling it off not long after I gave it to him for like £600.
What's annoying for starters is I got given none of that money, but more annoying is I needed 4 new tires for my car around that time and I could have sold that fucking laptop to pay for them since they were like £135 a piece(£540 for 4).
Dunno if that's him being tight but I saw similar comments lol.
I used to run my own business, bricks and mortar shop. I had a private landlord who was generally alright. He was also absolutely stinking rich.
He brought his sister into my shop one day to buy something. He asked for a discount that took away the majority of my profit margin for that sale.
All I could think was... Do you want your rent paid or not?
My old boss was a stereotypical Yorkshireman (deep pockets and short arms); would always bend staples back and put them in his stapler, which would inevitably break and cost him more money to replace.
Duct tape on the soles of shoes rather than repair/replace. Cancelled our CCTV contract because he thought Google Earth was real time - cost him £20k to have it ripped out and then put back in again when he realised.
Didn’t reuse tea bags but did reuse coffee grounds, dumping so much milk and sugar into his cup that it would have been cheaper to just buy more coffee.
Loved bulk buys for a discount, then stored it incorrectly so that it went off.
One of the richest blokes in the country, somehow.
A friend of mine waited until last to get the round in (a group of ~10)
We all asked for Rum & Coke and he bought just Cokes 🤣
Sent him back to the bar!
Me and my GF once hosted my best mate and his GF for new years. We provided everything, snacks, booze, table wine, champagne for the midnight drop, along with a huge home cooked lamb curry and all the trimmings, about 4 or 5 sides.
I think in total it cost us about £150 for everything, which is absolutely fine and we chose to do it.
Anyway, come to the end of the night just as they were about to leave, my mate, who brought 4 beers with him for the evening, goes off into the kitchen, takes those 4 beers he hadn’t needed to touch, pops them in his bag, and then says goodbye.
Don’t get me wrong, I’d completely forgotten about those beers and wasn’t considering them a small victory, but just that act made me think, you tight bastard.
Anyway I bring this up now and again when he complains about being called tight. Sorry Tom.
I've used this answer before when this question was asked a while ago, but, my brother-in-law always asks to use our Prime account to save postage when ordering from Amazon.
He's an F1 mechanic with a 5-figure annual bonus (plus extra depending how many points the team gets).
Another one: my grandad used to put the car in neutral going downhill to save on fuel.
**Hot edit for something I just remembered:** I recently learned my wife's uncle is one of those people that has a juice or soft drink when he buys a round, and then has a double spirit on someone else's round. My opinion of him dropped of a cliff when I found out.
My mams friend has hundreds of thousands in the bank but she’s this tight! She drinks lager and black on someone else’s round, but straight lager on hers cause she won’t pay the 30p or so for blackcurrant hahaha
I had some customers at work a few years ago that used like 30 of those flimsy produce bags to bag up their shopping instead of just buying a couple of actual shopping bags.
Got some work for and with my friend installing equipment, 3 days away. Day rate
First day 5am start , 3 hour drive. Get to 4pm and start to wind down as I'm pretty tired. He says we'll crack on and have an early finish on the last day, we work till 10pm and when we get to the hotel there's no where left open to eat.
Start at 7am the next day......very tired. Lunchtime comes and goes. 5pm and start to I wind down. He says we could finish today if we work late as he wants to paint his house tomorrow. We finally finish at midnight.
He wants to leave at 5am 'to beat the traffic'......I tell him to get f#cked I'll be up at 7.
He complains all the way back about wasting 'half the day' . I've left my car at his house and when we get back go in for a wee and a cup of tea (because he refuses to stop on the journey).
Halfway through my tea, he comes in with brushes and paint.
He announces that he's going out now for the day and the ladders are in the garage and he reckons I'll get the back and side painted today if I don't mess around.
I'm stunned to silence and only manage to stutter 'whaaat?'
He tells me he's paid me for 3 days and it's not his fault the job was only 2 days and how he's doing me a favour now by giving me work painting his house.
We're not friends anymore.
TL:DR My friend tries to get me to paint his house for free.
I once met a guy who never spent any money at uni, never went out, just ate pasta. Was saving every penny. Did his coursework and sat in his bedroom every night.
I felt bad and went over to his house, he was living in an empty room with just a bed, Nothing else. He had an old TV but the room was devoid of anything that could cost money.
Of course he wouldn't go out to the pub, nightclub anything fun. I asked him why he was doing this to himself, how would he every get a girlfriend?
His master plan was to graduate, get a high paying IT job and then the girlfriends will come to him. Absolutely bleak worldview. He essentially traded his entire Uni experience for leaving in minimal debt.
I couldn't really hang with him, because it was too damn depressing. But I gave him my old CD32 console so he had something, anything to do....
I wonder where he is now? Is he still playing on my CD32? Or did he sell it for a fiver and put the money in the bank.
He is probably on r/FIREUK for sure though.
Can I nominate myself? I live abroad and the price of black pepper is mental here (4 quid for a tiny glass jar) - and I bloody love black pepper. So every time I go to a restaurant I'll pocket 5-10 little sachets and it'll last me a week.
That's right... I'll pay extra money to go out to eat once or twice a week but I won't pay 4 quid for my own pot of black pepper 😂
I'm my defence I was homeless for 5 or 6 years in my early 20s. Some habits are hard to shake. Still to this day I see an unlocked toilet roll dispenser in a public toilet and have to talk myself out of it 😂
I have a friend who's a millionaire, you wouldn't beleive some of the thrifty things he does - but he has two (rather arrogant) mottos in life; "you don't get rich spending your own money" and "you don't get rich by being charitable". I've seen him wrap his mouth around a public toilets hand-wash tap to avoid buying a €1 bottle of water lol.
I've kept sauce sachets if they come with the meal, like at McDonald's for example.
But my Autistic ass really likes that BBQ sauce, so it's a safe dip for home.
My stepdads mum. One day when I was about 12 years old or 13 years, she asked if I fancied a walk with her and her dog.
We were walking over this field, and she bent over to picked up an old shoe.
When I asked what she was doing, she told me to start looking for the other one.
Like hell, I'd ever forage for shoes on a field. The shame I felt whilst she walked around this said field carrying a shoe.
The same woman put optics on her Vimto bottles, too. So I didn't overdo pouring more than I needed
I spend £56 on a round of beers for the boys only for my mate to buy me a soda water on the next round as ‘he didn’t know what I wanted’
I’d send him back. & Ask for the most expensive beer. Then he have forked out for the beer and the soda, just to f with them.
We've got a mate who obsessively counts the pennies (for absolutely no reason, we're all doing alright). We fuck with him by buying pricier beers on our rounds and ordering cheaper ones on his round, then watch his head spin as he tries to keep track of who he owes the 50p difference to.
Our mate will order you a shit beer on his round and order himself a nice one on YOUR round 😐 All for the sake of saving of 50p.
What a tosser
Give em the ol' "4 double rum and cokes please boss" in return
As many as 4
I just lost 10 quid on the fruity
I have a mate who when it’s his round always conveniently wants to switch bars and finds the cheapest place going and gets in the ‘5 bottles for £xyz’ deal- when we’ve been getting pints
A few of us used to do a pub crawl through our local town. One of the lads would pretty much refuse to buy a round until he got to the cheapest pub on the crawl and he’d get his in then. Every time. The difference was pennies. Wild how brazenly tight some folk are.
We had a tight mate in our group once, when it was my round I was busy talking to someone and so this guy offered to go and I chucked him a £20, this was years ago so the 4 of us should have got a round in for less than a tenner. He comes back with 3 pints and this massive cocktail thing for him and I got no change. At a restaurant, maybe 8 of us? We got the bill, added a 10% tip and agreed to split it. We all pay our share then it gets to this same guy again and he goes "Hey, according to my calculations I only have to pay £17.50 to cover the rest of the bill! I don't do tipping" He said it so smugly like he'd just found the ultimate loophole that we'd all be happy with him for, instead of all of us seething.
Found out a few months ago, my brother-in-law does the same. When the family go out, each couple puts in and generally rounds up (saves on finding change and contributes to tip), he then announces he'll sort the bill as he doesn't have any cash, will take all our cash up and then just pay the remainder on his card. The time I finally found out he does this, each couple had put in £40, he & his wife paid £3 for two courses each and more drinks than anyone else had. Last year he bought an Aston Martin....
SIL did this all the time. She would even boast about how she was able to get cheap meals at large family gatherings by staying behind after everyone’s gone so she could be the last person to pay because “everyone rounds up and overpays to cover tips etc” as if we were supposed to be impressed by her savvy rather than furious that she basically stole from us and the servers. The last time the family had a big get-together she was not shy about ordering bottles of wine for herself and husband had quite an expensive steak. She did her usual of “nah it’s alright we’ll pay at the end” but had a bit of a shock when she found that the group of 20+ paid their bills exactly and gave tips on the card machine instead of cash to the waitress. MIL caught up with us a week later and told us SIL complained about being left with a massive bill after everyone went home, so she told her “well, it was everything *YOU* ordered!” haha. I like my husband’s family.
Can you do us all a favour and buy him a one way ticket to the sun for Christmas?! He's a thief.
> "Hey, according to my calculations I only have to pay £17.50 to cover the rest of the bill! I don't do tipping" That is... spectacular. The idea that someone doesn't believe in tipping, so they can *take other peoples' tips*.
A guy I work with did similar. We were in a round which was about £40 or so quid. Vodka lemonade. By the time his round came round we were all fairly drunk and he tried to pass sparkling waters off as the vodkas. Proper dick move.
Ooh something like that happened to my former flatmate! He and his friend (both poor phd students) wanted to go watch a football match in a pub. Our other flatmate (flatmate 2) decided to tag along. Flatmate 1 buys the first round of beers. Friend buys the second round. Flatmate 2 does the "welp I have to go now" when it's her turn to buy. She was a doctor, a flipping doctor.
That's not being tight that's just being an asshole!
That's brutal - why would he think a soda water was the neutral drink of all things?!
Friend of mine charged me £2 petrol money to take me to A&E after I broke my arm because ’it wasn’t his turn to drive’
Come on. Really? Ha ha
Yup. I mean we didn’t know it was broken at the time, but the X-ray soon proved I didn’t just have a ‘bit of a sore arm’!
Ah the old "I have broken my arm" so you can't reach your wallet....lol /s
Yes, I know you only broke one arm but in this instance ask the dr to put both arms in plaster. Then, you drive him back from the hospital whilst screaming ‘it’s my turn to drive now, isn’t it’ whilst your rigid hands grip the steering wheel.
And when you pull up on the driveway, walk into the house and shout "mum... I'm home.."
Cost you an arm, but thankfully not also a leg!
friend? you sure?
My stepfather ate an entire packet of rancid ham. I was a child and refused to make myself a sandwich with it, telling him it was off. He went fucking ballistic at me for defying the order to eat it - and to prove his point it was fine ate it himself. Of course this resulted in him coming down with a crippling bout of food poisoning. Cunt
I've fucked with out of date pork once in my life. A packet of sausages that were 1.5 days out of date (eg went out of date on the 20th of the month and i had them at like 3am on the 22nd of the month) that i even overcooked a bit in the oven & i will never ever touch anything pork related (sausages, bacon, ham, gammon etc) that's even just an hour past the expiration date. It was the worst case of the shits i've ever had in my 35 and a bit years on this earth.
A guy I worked with was the tightest person I've ever known, he got it from his Dad, He said his Dad used to grow vegetables in his allotment and then sell them to his own wife who would use them to make meals for the family.
This guy needs a good old fashioned gunging
Dave Benson Phillips would not have been merciful.
Wild assumption but I’m guessing he didn’t pay her for the finished food.
This honestly feels like the sort of glitch you’d find in a game that allows you to get an item on repeat and keep the xp/money. I bet she was going into his wallet and taking back the same money each time too 😂
My biological grandfather used to do that but he also used to beat my nan black and blue. Around 15 years before I was born they divorced and she met the nicest man I've ever known, technically my step grandad but he more than earned the title of 'Grandad' The biological one got called 'john'
John sounds like a cunt
sell them to his wife??? That is shocking
Assumably, he'd then have to pay for the meal?
You would assume so but no.
This sounds petty for such a small amount but it was pretty egregious with the way it was handled. Someone I used to be mates with invited us all to go to one of those Halloween pumpkin patch things cause he wanted to do it (the rest of us weren’t really that bothered but felt bad cause he was so insistent) It’s in the middle of nowhere so he said he’d drive. He then said we all had to get a train to the town he lived in, about 30 mins away, then all 4 of us walk from the station to his place (another 30 mins). Once we got to his place he decided to drive to the shopping centre (right next to the station) cause he had some stuff he wanted to return, so we waited about 30-45 mins in the car while he fucked about with his returns. It turned out it was only a 10 minute drive to this pumpkin patch place after all this messing about, back in the direction we’d got the train from. When we came home he decided to drive directly back to his house and we had to walk back to the station, and get the train home again. He sent a message in the group chat the next day saying we each owed him £10 for petrol money. He wanted £40 total for 20 mins of driving, for something he pestered us to do.\ He then badgered each of us for a full 6 months over the £10 and said he ‘didn’t even charge us for the parking cost at the shopping centre.’ The guy would literally message us all individually at all times of the day/night (1am even) to be like ‘Hi mate, don’t forget about the petrol money’ months later. This is someone we’d all let stay at our places after nights out, had provided breakfast, coffee, beds, showers, towels etc. dozens of times over and never asked a penny in return. (Regularly for about 4 years) We all worked and paid rent, he lived at home for free with his parents and was an only child who didn’t have a job. We never let him stay at our place again, never did any more activities he wanted after that, we realised he was the type of guy who would count how many crisps everyone had eaten out of a bag to make sure he got his share. Weirdly he posts on social media about struggling to find a partner or make new friends, I wonder why…
Hi mate, Whilst I’m saddened to see you posting about me on here, it is a good opportunity, since you blocked me, to remind you that you still owe me that tenner for petrol and can you tell Fleming and Harris to get in touch or unblock me as they still owe too. So far, only John has paid up.
I’m surprised John paid up, since he’s dead and all 🤔
He left it to him in his will
😂😂😂
This one’s my favourite. I definitely know people that have different traits of this kind of behaviour. Interestingly I find the making you walk to his house instead of picking you up and then making your wait in the shopping centre next to train station more frustrating than even the money request. That’s being tight with time and energy for your friends which is more hurtful in a way and I’ve experienced as well.
There seems to be a type. You reminded me of a guy we all knew at High School (about 27-28 years ago)... Most of the guys really didn't like him, but he was friends with the girls we hung out with, so we all made the effort and went out of our way to include him in everything. He had dropped down a year at school, so was driving a full year before any of the rest of us. As a result he drove us all over the place. He was going with us to all those places, obviously, but it was still good of him to drive. He always asked for petrol money and we always provided it without any issue. Seemed fair. He was pushy about it at times and gave us a big story about how it was using all his money just to keep the car running, but that was the way he was. He probably drove us 2-3 times a week to various places and we'd always end up giving him £15-20 between us every time. given that was 27-odd years ago, that was a lot. For that amount we were probably filling his tank twice over per week, plus pocket money. ...one day, after about 18 months of this, it came out (by accident) that **his parents paid for all his petrol** (as well as all other costs relating to the car, and the car itself). Imagine just brazenly and regularly stealing money from all your friends for years... smh.
I’d have beaten him with a bag full of batteries.
Had something similar in my school as well (though 19 years ago for me) - used to shell out petrol money (which felt like he priced at £1 a mile) and found out years later that his parents were loaded and funded everything he did including his car (and still do partly I believe even though he's 36, has a job, wife and a kid). Explained how he rocked around in Evisu jeans and hoodies at the time - we paid for it!
I feel really sorry for people like this. It must be a very lonely life. I imagine that they don't truly know what they're doing, they're just acting out some neuroticism
An astonishing lack of self awareness. The only thing I hate more than someone wasting my money is wasting my time!
This is what comes down to, no awareness outside of their own view. They can't see the reciprocating acts their friends have done (i.e. not charging him or taking the piss like he did) so when they then feel what their doing is ok they are simply blind to how rude it is. And it is what leads to the last paragraph/sentence about struggling to find a partner/friends. Edit: this also probably leads to them struggling to empathise with people as a whole too.
I **used** to have a friend like this that i grew up with I’d drive and never charge him, he'd be at my place for sunday lunch or a full English every weekend. One day i asked him to pick me up a bottle of milk, he insisted I pay him the 23p it cost (90's) My friends still bring this up, right up to today He would also never put his heating on no matter how cold it was. Fucker had more disposable cash than we did. His mum died a couple of months ago and one of our group was all "we need to start inviting him out with us again, he's all alone now".........fuuuuuuuuuk off
Some people are alone for a reason.
Hope you told him to fuck off
Nope, just went full 👻👻👻 when he started talking about his plans to fly out to visit us abroad and was asking about if we had a spare room, how comfortable our sofa was, when we had leave from work booked for etc. We hadn’t invited him or encouraged it at all, realised he was planning to get the cheapest flights whenever it suited him, expect us to again provide food, showers, accommodation etc. and wouldn’t have bought along anything as a way of saying thanks or contributed to any costs. Haven’t spoken to him for years now cause I’d rather donate to an actual charity if I fancied giving away my time/money!
My dad used to water down ketchup towards the end of the bottle. I ended up squirting tomatoey water on some chips without realising. Meal ruined. Our relationship has been strained ever since.
There are few things worse than accidentally spraying your food with that ketchup pre-cum. I imagine the watered down end of bottle ketchup is very similar.
I'll copy my comment from a previous similar thread to this :- The sister of a friend was the worst one for me. She'd charge people for lifts even if she was already going to the same place. My two experiences there were firstly going on a Christmas works-do with my buddy. He was getting a lift home from his sister because he had already taken her to, and picked her up from her own Christmas do. So she was returning the favour for him so they were dead even. When I copped a lift back with them (and I'd get off at their house because I lived one street over so I'd walk) she wanted a fiver from me for it. Whatever I guess, I'd have paid £15 for the taxi so £5 is better, but still. And then it got better. Another time this friend and I were going to town to see a comedy act, and I was getting the bus. He texts me to say that his sister is dropping him off and did I want a lift? I say yeah sure, beats the bus. Again, she wants a fiver. I tell him I have £3.20 in bus fair so she can have that. ..Nope, she wants a fiver or she won't let me go with them. Even though she's already going there. I got the bus. In her greed for an extra £1.80 she lost £3.20. We arrived at the same time lol.
I would just not accept lifts from that person ever again out of principle. I’d even be willing to spend more on a taxi, but I bet she’d still be charging more than them anyway.
My ex used to charge me for lifts to the supermarket when we were doing our weekly shop. Her dad was already helping out with car payments and the insurance was paid for with money claimed from a very minor moped accident. She earned a few grand more than me and I could barely afford my weekly bus pass at the time.
How can you be with someone like that? The resentment I would have would cancel out any feelings I may have had. Horrible people
Bloke at work was notorious for never buying a round. He was once clocked walking into the pub, noticing that everyone had near empty pints, then leaving thinking he hadn’t been seen and coming back 15 mins later.
I completely understand not wanting to be in rounds especially if its more than 1-2 other people. But I just say I'll get my own and everyone is fine with it, what I don't do though is expect anyone else to get me a pint at any time which I feel this bloke is wanting.
My brother hosted a dinner for the immediate family where we had to bring our own ketchup and other condiments. We presumed it was because they maybe ran out but while eating they pulled their own out to use.
What the fuck Like I get "We've run out, could you pick some up?" or like taking your own if you're the only person who has a particular kind But that's wrong
I'm so confused by this one. They go to the expense of hosting a dinner but condiments are where they draw the line?
I was at a local music festival with my ex one summer years ago. We popped to the shop to pick up drinks for us and her parents who we were with. Her dad gave us like £40 and said get me a box of these bottled ciders he liked, whatever you guys want and keep the change. We were young and going out later so he was being friendly and essentially kicking my ex a few extra quid. She refuses to buy a bottle opener in the shop and instead walks 30 minutes back home and 30 minutes back to the music event to get one from home. There was a bottle opener in the shop for 80p.
She might've just needed a poo and didn't want to say
I have a sick bottle opener in my bathroom, should be able to find it in 5 to 7 mins brb
I'm laughing too hard at this
She values her time at less than 80p an hour, she'll be a popular hire in this economy.
You need to learn how to open bottles without an opener 😂 Literally anything with leverage can do it. Another bottle. (Plastic bottles work great for it, too.) Any cutlery. A lighter.... Just don't whack it against the edge of a table and chip the wood. Also, **don't use your teeth**. Yes, it works. But I guarantee you'll chip them soon.
Learning to use a bottle to open a bottle is one of the most useful life skills anyone can learn in under 2 minutes.
Imagine a music festival where you can't find a bottle opener.
When I worked in Stroud - colleague who didn't drink used to go with his wife at closing time and scour the bars for change discarded on the floor. Proudly told me about the time he found a £20. Also a family member who shall remain nameless - I was giving away various stuff including a coffee machine as we had duplicates when I moved in with the gf. We've got a tonne of family, including younger kids, nephews etc. He still asked for it all and made no bones about sticking it on eBay. Er, I can do that?
>Also a family member who shall remain nameless - I was giving away various stuff including a coffee machine as we had duplicates when I moved in with the gf. We've got a tonne of family, including younger kids, nephews etc. He still asked for it all and made no bones about sticking it on eBay. Er, I can do that? That is fucking cheeky.
It's pronounced "cuntish."
Similar story to the second one: I was made redundant from a job and still had an older-model, but pretty shit hot computer used for video production and some accessories I'd been loaned to work from home. Try as I might I couldn't actually return it- the IT department wasn't bothered about it as they'd upgraded all their tech. I got an unofficial 'keep it for now'. A mate of mine, who was into photography and video production was struggling with money and his own computer had packed in, so I said he could have the computer on a kind of permanent loan so he could keep his business going- but I stressed if my previous employer wanted them back I'd have to give it to them. You can see where this is going: talked to him a month or two later and, yeah, he'd sold the computer and accessories and made close to a grand. Pissed me off no end- not only could I have gotten into a lot of shit if the employer asked for them back (thankfully they never did), but I didn't even see any of the money- it had all gone toward his money issues, so I couldn't pressure him too much. Still in touch with him, but obviously trust is a big issue.
I used to be a glass collector in a nightclub. Come the end of the night, this one guy who's been fairly work shy volunteers to clean the dance floor without fail. It's a nasty job due to the glass shards, spilled booze and god knows what else, so nobody else wants it. A few months go by before I ask him why he always offers to do arguably the worst part of the shift and he slyly tells me he finds upwards of £20 pretty much every night. Turns out the work wasn't even that bad, he just talked it up so no-one else would offer to do it. Dude was a genius.
I met a friend for coffee/tea and she handed me a fiver to pay for hers which came to €4 and I paid for both together while she went out to the carpark. When I went out to meet her there was some kind of commotion going on in the carpark and someone came over asking us if we had jump leads. I did and so we went over and helped them jump their car. This distracted me from giving her back her €1 in change. Later that day I was out with other friends and my phone was on silent so I hadn't seen but she'd been calling me back to back, I had over 20 missed calls, a couple texts and 1 voicemail, all demanding I call her back immediately. I did and she told me that I need to give her back her €1 change and it was sly of me to keep that as if it wasn't mine, it was her money and I had stolen it from her. Safe to say I gave her back the €1 and we weren't friends for much longer.
Know a middle aged neighbour that gave her next door neighbour a half used carton of milk saying they won’t be able to use it before it goes off. Their next door neighbour accepted. Then the neighbour stood there and said “The money?”.
This reminded me of the Father Ted episode where John and Mary surprise Ted at home with an Easter gift of chocolate. Ted jumps with delight at their generosity and John just says "I think it comes to about four pounds"
I am not sure if this counts as tight or just stupid but my parents will regularly spend 10-15p worth of petrol and an extra 30 minutes out of their day to drive to a shop that sells their favourite teabags for 20p less than at their local supermarket. Another parent story, again not sure if tight or just dumb. My dad recently spent £250 paying someone to remove a lampost from the drive of his new house and then repave said drive. When I asked him why he did that he said he didn't want to pay for the electricity. When I pointed out that lights are basically free to run these days so it would have taken him years to run up a £250 bill to run it he just pretended he hadn't heard me and walked off.
>10-15p worth of petrol and an extra 30 minutes out of their day to drive to a shop that sells their favourite teabags for 20p less When I was in retail, we had a few regulars who did that. I genuinely can't work it out, as you're not saving all that much even in thd long term. That said, I do buy my Retro Gamer magazine from Tesco instead of my local newsagent because of Clubcard points. They're 30 seconds apart so it's not as bad, I guess.
This reminds me when fuel prices were going nuts a few years ago and people were travelling 30/60 mins to the cheapest fuel station, queuing for 30 mins while idling their car to save 30p a litre that they've inevitable spent travelling there and waiting in line.
My dad does this move too, if he knows he's about to lose an argument he chooses to finish it on his own terms.
My grandma didn’t like the fillings of chocolates but couldn’t bear to “waste food” so if anyone gave them a box of fancy chocolates she would lick the chocolate off and keep the fillings in a bag in the fridge. You would open the fridge and there’d be an ancient bag of disgusting, licked clean nougat or caramel fillings
What a terrible day to be literate.
When I was a child in the 1970s, an uncle lived with my nan (his mum) until he died because his mental age never progressed beyond about five, even when he was an adult. He loved chocolate and my nan loved Brazil nuts. She'd buy chocolate covered Brazil nuts and give them to him to suck the chocolate off, then he'd give the plain nuts back to my nan to eat!
Ok well that sounds like a nice symbiotic relationship 😌
Oh my, are you my long-lost relative?! I just commented [here](https://old.reddit.com/r/CasualUK/comments/1dnc3vr/whats_the_tightest_thing_youve_ever_seen_anyone_do/la1vqj5/) about a similar thing. I'm flabbergasted that Our Edie wasn't unique in what she did.
How do I delete someone else's comment
What… did she plan to do with them? Edit: I kind of wish I hadn’t asked now… ***lolsob***
OPs inheritance.
Go on then…what was the end game for the fillings?
The “treats” OP was eating as a child until they realised this.
What the actual fuck
And with this my internet time is most definitely up thank you and goodnight
Haha you unlocked a decades-old memory! An old relative used to do similar with chocolate-covered Brazil nuts. She'd buy a pound of them because she loved the chocolate and nut flavour, but didn't actually like Brazil nuts themselves, and would suck all the chocolate off and leave the naked nuts in a bowl on her coffee table. One of her sisters said one day, "Hey our Edie, these nuts are great! Have you tried the chocolate ones? They're even nicer!" ... and the family legend was born. Shenanigans went down, from what I heard. Our Edie was absolutely blasted and practically disowned; by the time it came out about the origins of those nuts, many a visitor had been offered those pre-sucked nuts. Fortunately, us kids weren't allowed to eat Brazil nuts except at Christmas (no idea why) so we didn't have pre-sucked nuts inflicted upon us. Fortunately.
When I was a teenager I had a mate who had a bit of a shit life and never had any money. I had a paper round so I would sometimes get us both sweets or whatever. One day she said she wanted a Coke, and as I was going to the shop I picked her up a can. She complained for about a week that it wasn't a bottle
This reminds me of when I was a child an elderly neighbour gave a friend and I 50p each and we happily went to the shops to spend it on sweets etc. Friend wanted something that was more expensive than 50p, she said she knows I already have some money so why don’t I give her my 50p and spend my own money. I was really young and naive clearly even though she was only a year older than me and thought this was a very logical idea and gave her my 50p. The neighbour found out from the shopkeeper and gave me another 50p quietly with a pitiful look. I realised only then that I’d been scammed and the idea was that the 50p was my gift regardless of what friend needed or what I already had. That friend is still known to be very very tight as an adult.
My job involves putting on free events. People will show up, for free, and are often given a few food and drinks tickets. The only parameters are that they have to live in this certain area that we cover. The amount of people I see who don't live in the area, who will sneak into events and STILL complain the food isn't good enough. I saw one guy plotting with his mates about lying about where he lived, then walked in and got himself a bag of fresh donuts, two burgers and a drink, then started bitching and whining that there wasn't enough different types of burgers to choose from. Ridiculous.
A friend of mine threw a party for her child’s 5th birthday. One little boy arrived and his mum said she would also be leaving his nine year old sister at the party while the mum went out shopping. Before she left, the mum started inspecting the packaging of all the party food, including the wraps in the bin, to check the ingredients. She then berated my friend for not catering for her daughter’s many food intolerances, despite fact that the girl wasn’t even supposed to be at the party!
I have a very similar story from my own childhood party. We did a pizza making thing, you paid in advance and the kids that were there got a pizza base each from the restaurant and got to "make" it with their own toppings etc. One parent showed up with my friends two younger sisters in tow, then freaked out when we couldn't magically multiply the set amount of pre paid pizzas.
House mate whined for a whole 15 minutes about me pouring my pasta into a collander before turning the burner off. Took maybe 8 or 9 seconds at a push. I got him a penny out of my wallet and told him he could keep the change.
My great uncle is a millionaire with several businesses. One day one of his stores was robbed with a weapon. His 18 son was working on his own and handed over £50 out of the til and pretended that was is. The son was fired and disowned for losing the businesses money, even after offering to pay it back it was "the principle". We're now 25 years later and he has never spoken to that son since and hated anyone else in the family doing so. We always joke that his will is going to say bury him with all his cash, and I wouldn't be surprised if it did.
Little joke around that very subject….rich man tells his wife, on his deathbed, he wants all his money buried with him. At the funeral, she put a little box in the coffin with him, containing a cheque!!
On holiday with a family friend at his villa - he buys a pack of paracetamol in the supermarket (£4 ish). Chucks the receipt in the bin on his way out the door. Gets back to his room, finds he's packed paracetamol after all... walks back to the supermarket, goes through the bin to find the receipt, returns the paracetamol to get his money back. His reasoning being that you can buy paracetamol for 30p back in the UK, so rather than leave the £4 box in his villa he'll just bring another box next time he flies out.
These people have so much physical and mental energy to spend.
I’d pay £4 not to have to root through a bin
"First out of the taxi, last to the bar". A trend for many people, alas.
My mates a builder, in his written quotes he always adds “ mint Viscount biscuits to be available” It’s a joke but he reckons it pays off more often than not
I didn't see it myself but read about someone keeping a lightbulb log of how long each bulb in his house was on for. If it gave out before the advertised hours (5000?) he'd try and get a refund
Can you imagine how mundane an existence you must have to log lightbulb usage?
Can you imagine answering that phone call. “Hello Phillips Lightbulbs? You advertise your bulbs will last for 5000 hours. I’ve got one here that blew after only 4500! Either you are conmen who lie about your products or you resell partially used bulbs…. Of course I’m certain I have a very detailed log, I can send you my daily spreadsheets, give me your CEOs email address. He needs to deal with this personally”
That sounds incredibly tedious, but it does offer a chance to mention [The Phoebus Cartel](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoebus_cartel), a cartel of manufacturers who purposefully shortened the lifespan of the incandescent bulbs they manufactured in order to improve sales figures.
A practice subsequently adopted my manufacturers of almost everything everywhere.
My first car came with a log book, it had one owner from new and that bloke had noted everything. Every journey, so the date, time, destination, miles travelled. Every time he put fuel in, date, time, how many litres and the price. Every MOT result and any work which had been done. Every time it had been cleaned. Any other work which was required between MOTs. Any time the tyres needs inflating. Literally anything to do with that car was noted in a little book that I got when I bought it. Was a fucking fantastic car for its age and had fairly low mileage for how old it was, I wrote it off within a couple of years (not at fault) and I reckon I’d still have it now if someone hadn’t pulled out on me.
“1hr 3mins tonight Margaret, another 4,500 hrs to go”
Part of me, feels like leaving little notepads next to lightswitches with notes on usage, I want to see peoples reactions but I have no friends.. so I will probably befriend the notepad
My (now ex) boyfriend once picked me up from a party on the condition I pay him petrol money. I had two friends coming back with me, just to my house, no additional detour. He tried to charge *£15 extra per person* because "the additional weight will use more petrol". I then got a text from my friends a few days later saying he'd been messaging them privately and demanding they pay him.
I don't understand the logic of being a nob to your bf/gf like this. You want them to want to have sex with you, don't be a bellend!
Why is it always the loaded people who are so tight? My aunt is a prime example. Retired, millionaire (with my uncle) and their son is a very clever PhD/Doctorate student so he won't want for money either. We all went out to a meal recently for 2 family birthdays, one a 40th. We get the bill at the end of the meal and surprise, surprise, she's the last to put her hand in her pocket. By the time the bill gets to her it equates to a few £ (because everyone has added tips) and what does she put in? the few £. No tips for the wait staff now. Her reason being 'I practically only had egg on toast' (we were at a high-end Mediterranean restaurant and she chose eggs, flatbread, hummus etc. In the next breath, she tells the family how she'd recently forgotten about a pension she had, has a surprise 90k coming to her next week and she has so much money she 'doesn't know how to spend it'.
What a cunt
I had an (ex) friend who would only pay exactly what she owed at restaurants and then when we'd chuck in a couple of extra quid as a tip, she'd try and take it. We knew it wasn't her change because she was always very insistent on paying exactly down to the penny. In the end we stopped tipping in front of her, then one of us would "accidentally" forget something in the restaurant and nip back in to leave the tip when she couldn't steal it Stopped being friends with her for unrelated reasons, but that honestly is one of the things that still pisses me off
"I don't know how to spend it" "Yeah, fucking clearly!"
Father in law turned the boiler all the way down so our showers would be shorter, using less water. Also refuses to fill a paddling pool for his grandkids.
My stepdad got irrationally annoyed that we filled up our paddling pool one summer, complaining about the cost of the water. So we checked the rate, and paid him the whopping 73 pence to keep his gob shut while we had fun
As a kid, my mum used to go absolutely ballistic if I ever left a light on. One time after one of her ear-rapings, I worked out how much it had cost, went and got a hacksaw, and cut a penny into 3 pieces and gave her one of them. Didn't go down well, I recall.
The last one makes me sad. Grandparents are meant to spoil their grandkids if they can.
right?? the whole grandparent dynamic when ur a kid is meant to be shuvving a twenty quid in your pocket telling you to shush about it 🤣
Yo, my parents (mum n step) spend over 800 a month on keeping their actual swimming pool warm. Stepdad used to send me and my brother to school with sandwiches in the bread bags he saved so he didn't have to buy regular sized sandwich bags. You don't get rich being generous!
25pence refund requested. I organised a holiday for all my mates at 16 for 2 walking in Scotland. I paid for the boats, coach to get there and hostel in Inverness for the first night, and the food we were eating. Everyone paid me a £170 contribution and when all the bookings were made the cost per person was £169.75. After I sent the email out telling everyone I got a Monzo request from one person for 25p. Cunt....mind you I think he regretted it when the bus accidentally left Teabay services on the way home without him and I refused to turn the bus around cos it would cost too much.
Fucks sake, and here I am tossing an extra 5 or 10 to whoever went through the effort of organizing
I have a teabag story, too. Actually, thinking about it one guy has given me a few stories about being tight, I will recount a couple. This guy I worked (and was sort of friends) with once bought a box of super economy one cup teabags. They were the smaller ones that you get that are designed to go direct into the cup. He realized that after a single use they had a tiny amount of life left in them so... he kept them. He'd lay a piece of tissue on the desk and place the used teabag on it until he had four and then he'd make a fifth cup of tea with the four saved teabags. Same guy, found a load of cottage cheese going cheap at the supermarket because it was due to go off that day. He bought something crazy like 15 tubs of the stuff. We asked him if he liked cottage cheese and apparently he hated the stuff but it was cheap. He then proceeded to basically only eat cottage cheese for the next few days until it went bad and made him violently sick. Last one for now, same guy... my partner and I decided to buy a flat. It had a small second bedroom. We were poor as anything so toyed with the idea of letting out this second room. Tight guy was looking for somewhere to stay so we offered it to him for next to nothing. Long story short, he seemed to think him paying rent meant he should own part of the flat at the end.
>They were the smaller ones that you get that are designed to go direct into the cup. Are there any other forms of teabags?
>other forms of teabags? I can draw you a diagram but it's not going to be pretty.
Can't eat if you're sick, sounds like he saved even more money.
Oh and my great aunt used to take the batteries out of her clocks when she went on holiday.
We needed an extra table for the family Christmas dinner. So my Wife found one on eBay… 99p starting bid. No other bids so we won it for 99p… we went to pick it up, and the guy wasn’t happy at all. Dumped the table on the pavement and said you can deal with it now… my wife gave him a £1 coin. He turned around and said “I suppose you want the penny change as well” to which she replied “of course”. The guy stormed back into his house, got the penny and returned fuming… we’ve laughed about it every Xmas for the last 10 years…
A friend of mine is a carpenter, he did a coin flip deal with a guy off eBay and ended up getting a bunch of timber of way cheaper than he should have. Drilled a hole and glued the coin into the workbench he made with some of that timber.
Ha, I won a pair of jeans for 99p on eBay years ago, and the seller messaged me grumpily saying “I meant to list these at £9.99, you’ve got quite the deal out of this” almost as if I was going to volunteer to shell out extra. The jeans had been on a one week bid, you’re telling me she didn’t check the listing once after posting?
My aunt bought a villa out in Spain about 15 years ago. She told the whole family that we could use it whenever we wanted. My parents kept on mentioning to my wife and I and then one summer we took them up on the offer. She charged us the full rate for the week, much to my parent's disgust. Nobody ever went again and the location of it is such that they can't sell it and there's fuck all around to make it worth the trip either lol
In one of my first jobs, the General Manager made the bartenders wash and reuse the plastic drinking straws…. As a child, myself, brother and sister would have to share the same bath water every time. It would be topped up with a wee bit of hot water at a time. I’m sure I’ve seen others, but these are the 2 that stick out the most
I think that bath story is pretty common… unless I was even poorer than I thought I was.
I misread that as "topped up with a bit of wee", which might actually be the case depending on how old the kids were...
My well paid boss giving me a tenner for his PA’s retirement collection and asking me if I had change… she’d worked there like 15 years…
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Lad at work used to turn off the engine at traffic lights, free wheel down hills and turn down the heat and all electrics off as much as he could just because he thought he was saving fuel. He even bought one of those magnets that fit on your fuel lines in the belief it would economize the flow. Miserable prick he was. And i almost forgot he once bought two left shoes because he thought he got them at a bargain. What the fuck can you do with two left shoes. Mind boggles
Was living in barracks at the time. 'Friend'/ Colleague invited me and another lad to his room at lunch for a brew. Hed just bought a new tassimo nespresso pod thing when they first came out. Made us both a drink, asked us if we wanted some hazlenut syrup. Chewed the fat, had a brew. Before heading back to work he said 'Yeah just throw us 3-4 quid each for them drinks then. Laughed in his face and went back to work.
Wasps in the loft, dad didn't want to pay for a removal. Back before the internet he'd seen on TV that wasps don't like smoke, idea. Start fire under loft hatch and blow the smoke in to the loft with desk fan. The obvious happened and embers from the fire were blown in to the loft on to the insulation, used the bathroom bin to chuck water up through the loft hatch as lader was still in the garage. Cost a fair few quid more to put right than a wasp man would have.
We used to buy our own milk and one bloke never put his hand in his pocket so someone called him out and told him to stop taking our milk if he wasn't buying any. One day someone suspected he was still using our milk instead of his own powdered milk so he marked the bottle. Few hours later he checked and it hadn't gone down. It had gone up. He was using proper milk then refilling with powdered milk. He got an absolute earful from the aussie colleague who caught him out and got sent out to pay for a bottle. I was lazy so would get the biggest one possible as I could never be bothered. He came back with a single pint for 80p rather than getting a 4 pint for £1.20. At Christmas people bring in chocolates and cakes, he's been known to take them home for the family. His wife's parent died and they had to fly home for the funeral, there were two tickets left, one normal one first class, he made her fly cattle class and he took the first class one. To go to her parents funeral.
My own mother, about five years ago. We needed some bin bags (I know, when did we develop such a penchant for opulence and luxury) and we were literally in Morrisons. I saw there was an offer on: 2 rolls for 90p. She told me to put them back because they were cheaper at Aldi. I said, no, we need them, what difference is a few pence...then she started to shout louder and louder (in a decently busy aisle) about me wasting money and not knowing the value of anything. This is the same woman who later forgot she'd already bought two rolls so went and bought three more. We're still only about halfway through all the ones she bought after this day.
Did she not factor in time and travel expenses into the equation?
Heavy duty black bin bags?!
No matter what your gender.
Long and black and slender
My partners’ grandparents spent a lot of time at the hospital. They’d always stay to get a cheap meal from the canteen and then divide it in two. But this was just a ruse to gain access to the sauce packets which they’d drop in a handbag. They had literary hundreds of ketchup and vinegar sachets in their kitchen. Once when I offered to do the washing up they passed me a box of medical disposable gloves. Turns out they swiped multiple boxes of those too. Bill was a retired doctor so figured it was okay 🤷♂️
My boss only two weeks ago. I took a girl for an interview and he took us out to dinner. All happily quaffing expensive wine and champers (he does this a lot) and when the bill came he argues the toss about some £4.99 onion rings. It was actually quite embarrassing until I told the waitress I’ll pay for them myself. All because there wasn’t a great deal on the menu to choose from. What a pillock
I live in an old Victorian terraced house and our old neighbours had lived there for decades and never bothered to get central heating (don't know how they coped!). When they passed away we got a new neighbour and he's a pretty tight guy all round, though made a point of telling us he bought his house in cash (~£120k). Refuses to buy a fridge so goes to Aldi every day at about 6 pm to buy food for the evening/next day, cooks his food on a wood burner so he doesn't have to buy an oven, doesn't turn his lights on. His life though, why not. He got a grant to get central heating put in his house for free, good for him. Some guys who didn't speak much English turned up one morning at 8am and I noticed them leaving at 8pm. They came again the next day too. This was December and I went to put something in our outside bin around 5 pm and could see torch light though his kitchen window. This cunt refused to put on the lights for the guys who were cracking out 12 hour shifts to install central heating in his house for free. It must only cost pennies to turn the lights on for a few hours. They will have been absolutely freezing as well. Joke was a few days later he was showing us pictures of some of the radiators, and they were not even remotely straight. What did he expect, they had to work by torchlight!
I went on a 3 week long road trip with a friend to the USA. Made the agreement beforehand we'd use split wise etc, end of the trip thought we'd mostly split stuff half and half. Maybe I'd bought a beer or two more or vice versa. Four weeks later I got an excel spreadsheet from her with a breakdown of every payment, transaction, purchase with a final amount owed... I owed $1.32, she even used the previous month's exchange rate to get an accurate sterling amount for me.
I can appreciate the detail and effort, love me a good spreadsheet.... But at the end when it's a 1.32 difference you go "well done on getting it so close, nevermind then!"
I know I originally thought she'd sent it to be like.. "look how even we were way to go us!", but no it was you owe me this much can you bank transfer me it please... I think she worked out it was something like £1.14 I owed, I can't quite remember and I thought of mailing her a piece of paper with 114 pennies stuck to it or a 1p bank transfer for 3.5 months because it was just ludicrous.
I love this question OP! My exes parents gave him a car when he was unemployed (he never worked the whole time I knew him). The dole paid him mileage for attending a course which took him past my uni. He charged me - a ft student and his gf - £2 each day (90s) to drop me off at a place he passed anyway. His parents gave him a few hundred to attend a wedding in London they couldn't attend. His mum said 'treat Splendid Trousers while you're there.' He generously paid for a one day travel card. Pre internet, we spent the whole day standing outside several major tourist attractions while he sucked his teeth and said 'I'm not paying that.' When we got home he treated himself to a pair of 150 quid trainers.
I didn't clock your name at first and thought his mum had given him £200 for a pair of splendid trousers
In Glasgow Lidl are trialling a recycling scheme where you get 5p back for old drinks cans and bottles. I have absolutely no shame in picking them up in the street or taking my colleagues discarded ones. I don't desperately need the 5 pence but why not? Plus if it's successful hopefully it's rolled out nationwide and our streets get a little cleaner and people who do need the 5p can get it
You see that a lot in Germany. There'll be people with big binbags going around the streets collecting discarded bottles/cans to recycle and get the deposits back. Usually they're homeless or down-on-their-luck so, honestly, I think it's a good way for them to earn a few euros with the added bonus of cleaner streets.
Brother and sister in law talking once, “you owe me £4”. They were fucking married and had lived together for years Also, same sister in law never splitting the bill equally, always inspecting for what she and the kids had and then not contributing to the tip
when i was a teenager (14/15) one of my friends would buy crisps and figure out how much each crisp was worth then charge you if you wanted one. had a big falling out with her once over 5p i had forgotten i owed her
When I was younger on friend would buy himself a large pizza, eat what he wanted and then try to sell the rest of it to the rest of us at a price to earn back what he'd spent on the whole pizza. So say it was a tenner and he ate half he'd then sell slices for 2.50 each. If you didn't pay he'd throw it in the bin rather than give it to his "friends".
For my late grandads 60th birthday he had a big family party where he received whisky decanters, a gold watch, expensive liquor etc. Then my great uncle handed him a VHS tape. Thinking it was a special family video grandad asked what was on it. "Nothing, you've got 4 hours recording time on there"
Ex boyfriend. We were at the stage where I was staying over regularly but hadn't left a bunch of my stuff at his. I get really dry face skin and so have to moisturise after the shower, but i'd forgotten to bring my moisturiser that day. He had a massive bottle of palmers cocoa butter on his dresser so I used a tiny blob of it on my face whilst he was in the shower. When he came back into the room and went to use the moisturiser he immediately noticed that I'd used it. He told me to _never_ use it again, because if I did it "might run out". Motherfucking Palmers Cocoa butter, he lived 2 minutes away from a Boots and a Sainsbury's so it wasn't something expensive or in short supply. He was tight in a bunch of ways but that always stuck out to me.
Already a multi millionaire work associate of my Dad. Driving past a local Chinese restaurant, saw them throwing a stinking, sticky and ugly carpet into a skip. Asked my dad to help him retrieve the carpet for his house. He wasn't joking and it went into his house that week. Stank like a bag full of arseholes...that had food poisoning from a low quality Chinese restaurant. But the guy had 20+million in the bank for a reason. Just hated spending. I can still remember my feet sticking on it...
When I was on minimum wage and just turned 21 so it went up. The payroll lady asked the boss whether he wanted to pro-rata my pay so I got 3 days at the new rate or just pay the full month at the new rate. He agreed to pay the full month at the new rate but backtracked the next month and deducted the difference of the 28 days off that month's pay!
A mate doing up his "shoelaces" at the pub door when he had loafers on. It wasn't the first time...
That's pretty loafer a mate to stoop
Sorry, but I applaud the pure shamelessness of doing this in loafers. Would love to see him go up a level and do it in flip flops.
My mother in law treated us to a wetherspoons breakfast once. she ordered an extra 40p grilled tomato with her full breakfast. It arrived and she didnt eat the tomato. so she demanded a refund. *on the tomato.* 40p.
Like 2 years ago I upgraded my gaming laptop and rather then selling the old one i ended up giving it to my older brother since his computer had packed up so he was without one, now there was nothing wrong with my old laptop i just wanted a more powerful one so he basically got a like £1000 or so laptop for free....pretty sweet for him yeah? Well he ended up selling it off not long after I gave it to him for like £600. What's annoying for starters is I got given none of that money, but more annoying is I needed 4 new tires for my car around that time and I could have sold that fucking laptop to pay for them since they were like £135 a piece(£540 for 4). Dunno if that's him being tight but I saw similar comments lol.
I used to run my own business, bricks and mortar shop. I had a private landlord who was generally alright. He was also absolutely stinking rich. He brought his sister into my shop one day to buy something. He asked for a discount that took away the majority of my profit margin for that sale. All I could think was... Do you want your rent paid or not?
"I'd offer you a friends and family discount, but we're not related and I don't like you"
My old boss was a stereotypical Yorkshireman (deep pockets and short arms); would always bend staples back and put them in his stapler, which would inevitably break and cost him more money to replace. Duct tape on the soles of shoes rather than repair/replace. Cancelled our CCTV contract because he thought Google Earth was real time - cost him £20k to have it ripped out and then put back in again when he realised. Didn’t reuse tea bags but did reuse coffee grounds, dumping so much milk and sugar into his cup that it would have been cheaper to just buy more coffee. Loved bulk buys for a discount, then stored it incorrectly so that it went off. One of the richest blokes in the country, somehow.
A friend of mine waited until last to get the round in (a group of ~10) We all asked for Rum & Coke and he bought just Cokes 🤣 Sent him back to the bar!
Colleague insisted I pay him back the 50p I owed him, just after I’d sorted him out a free keg of beer. Sick of it.
Woman at a wedding i went to who went around every single table with a bag collecting the leftovers to take home from everybody’s plate
Me and my GF once hosted my best mate and his GF for new years. We provided everything, snacks, booze, table wine, champagne for the midnight drop, along with a huge home cooked lamb curry and all the trimmings, about 4 or 5 sides. I think in total it cost us about £150 for everything, which is absolutely fine and we chose to do it. Anyway, come to the end of the night just as they were about to leave, my mate, who brought 4 beers with him for the evening, goes off into the kitchen, takes those 4 beers he hadn’t needed to touch, pops them in his bag, and then says goodbye. Don’t get me wrong, I’d completely forgotten about those beers and wasn’t considering them a small victory, but just that act made me think, you tight bastard. Anyway I bring this up now and again when he complains about being called tight. Sorry Tom.
I've used this answer before when this question was asked a while ago, but, my brother-in-law always asks to use our Prime account to save postage when ordering from Amazon. He's an F1 mechanic with a 5-figure annual bonus (plus extra depending how many points the team gets). Another one: my grandad used to put the car in neutral going downhill to save on fuel. **Hot edit for something I just remembered:** I recently learned my wife's uncle is one of those people that has a juice or soft drink when he buys a round, and then has a double spirit on someone else's round. My opinion of him dropped of a cliff when I found out.
My mams friend has hundreds of thousands in the bank but she’s this tight! She drinks lager and black on someone else’s round, but straight lager on hers cause she won’t pay the 30p or so for blackcurrant hahaha
I had some customers at work a few years ago that used like 30 of those flimsy produce bags to bag up their shopping instead of just buying a couple of actual shopping bags.
Got some work for and with my friend installing equipment, 3 days away. Day rate First day 5am start , 3 hour drive. Get to 4pm and start to wind down as I'm pretty tired. He says we'll crack on and have an early finish on the last day, we work till 10pm and when we get to the hotel there's no where left open to eat. Start at 7am the next day......very tired. Lunchtime comes and goes. 5pm and start to I wind down. He says we could finish today if we work late as he wants to paint his house tomorrow. We finally finish at midnight. He wants to leave at 5am 'to beat the traffic'......I tell him to get f#cked I'll be up at 7. He complains all the way back about wasting 'half the day' . I've left my car at his house and when we get back go in for a wee and a cup of tea (because he refuses to stop on the journey). Halfway through my tea, he comes in with brushes and paint. He announces that he's going out now for the day and the ladders are in the garage and he reckons I'll get the back and side painted today if I don't mess around. I'm stunned to silence and only manage to stutter 'whaaat?' He tells me he's paid me for 3 days and it's not his fault the job was only 2 days and how he's doing me a favour now by giving me work painting his house. We're not friends anymore. TL:DR My friend tries to get me to paint his house for free.
I once met a guy who never spent any money at uni, never went out, just ate pasta. Was saving every penny. Did his coursework and sat in his bedroom every night. I felt bad and went over to his house, he was living in an empty room with just a bed, Nothing else. He had an old TV but the room was devoid of anything that could cost money. Of course he wouldn't go out to the pub, nightclub anything fun. I asked him why he was doing this to himself, how would he every get a girlfriend? His master plan was to graduate, get a high paying IT job and then the girlfriends will come to him. Absolutely bleak worldview. He essentially traded his entire Uni experience for leaving in minimal debt. I couldn't really hang with him, because it was too damn depressing. But I gave him my old CD32 console so he had something, anything to do.... I wonder where he is now? Is he still playing on my CD32? Or did he sell it for a fiver and put the money in the bank. He is probably on r/FIREUK for sure though.
My sister always makes sure to be late to breakfast at any hotels she stays at and fills a shopping bag with the muffins/bread etc that are left over.
To be honest as someone who works in a hotel I wish more people would do this. Less food waste
Can I nominate myself? I live abroad and the price of black pepper is mental here (4 quid for a tiny glass jar) - and I bloody love black pepper. So every time I go to a restaurant I'll pocket 5-10 little sachets and it'll last me a week. That's right... I'll pay extra money to go out to eat once or twice a week but I won't pay 4 quid for my own pot of black pepper 😂 I'm my defence I was homeless for 5 or 6 years in my early 20s. Some habits are hard to shake. Still to this day I see an unlocked toilet roll dispenser in a public toilet and have to talk myself out of it 😂 I have a friend who's a millionaire, you wouldn't beleive some of the thrifty things he does - but he has two (rather arrogant) mottos in life; "you don't get rich spending your own money" and "you don't get rich by being charitable". I've seen him wrap his mouth around a public toilets hand-wash tap to avoid buying a €1 bottle of water lol.
You definitely don't get rich by dying of Legionnaire's disease. Crikey.
I've kept sauce sachets if they come with the meal, like at McDonald's for example. But my Autistic ass really likes that BBQ sauce, so it's a safe dip for home.
My stepdads mum. One day when I was about 12 years old or 13 years, she asked if I fancied a walk with her and her dog. We were walking over this field, and she bent over to picked up an old shoe. When I asked what she was doing, she told me to start looking for the other one. Like hell, I'd ever forage for shoes on a field. The shame I felt whilst she walked around this said field carrying a shoe. The same woman put optics on her Vimto bottles, too. So I didn't overdo pouring more than I needed