Stories where YOU came off as bad/stingy?

I was out with a few guys and we're at a restaurant and I guess I'm spacing out or in the mens room or flirting with the waitress or something when the other guys all decide to get some appetizers together. I had no idea.

So the check comes and they tell me what my share is and it's way more than my burger and drink or whatever. I didn't eat any of the appetizers because I didn't know they were a community thing. They chowed down and it looked good and I kind of thought, "man, I should have tried one of those appetizers."

But I don't think I should pay $35 when I didn't have any of that stuff and what I had was maybe $15 or something. One guy is all, "c'mooon....we all agreed at the start we were in on these apps together" and I honestly had never heard that and thus didn't eat any of it. Not sure how they didn't notice that I wasn't eating any of the apps.

I came off as a super-nit/stingemeister over it. Was about to just pay anyway just to shut up one of the guys but then he one-upped me and whined, "oookkkkayy...I guess I need $5 from each of you guys then." Crap. Now I look ******ed. And no amount of "seriously, I thought you guys just ordered those individually" would have gotten me out of it.

I went camping with my freshman year girlfriend and her family. We ate our food with plastic cutlery, obv. I threw my spoon away. Well they saved theirs to wash and re-use, and I got busted when they COUNTED the remaining ones and noticed one was missing, and they were quite disappointed that I had been so wasteful. The patriarch of this family is a chemical engineer that works for Dow.

Also I used to work for an answering/paging company that handled a lot of medical offices. Well, one office called because the doctor's pager wasn't working, so I told them to mail it in and we'd send a new one. "But what about the postage?" "It's like two bucks." "We shouldn't have to pay that."

Yeah. This is especially true for me when someone who has less money than me buys something for me. Occasionally I'll like refuse to let them pay and later realize that I basically insulted them.

Jesus.. getting your panties in a bunch about how someone organizes their wedding is so ridiculous. Maybe they don't like your wife. Maybe they thought she would be awkward there because she doesn't know everybody. Maybe the sister who was paying was being really annoying about the whole thing and your friend had no control over it. Maybe your friend, his wife, and their families collectively made a slightly bad decision about how they chose to handle one night of their lives. Why should you care?

My dad's sister didn't invite him (or any other family on her side) to her wedding because her wife (yes.. lesbians) is kinda weird and clearly feels uncomfortable around us. Nobody in my family is pissed about this because we're not 12-year-old girls.

Micro,

To answer ur first question more directly, I don't think she would have been bothered if I went. Again, the isssue is, is it OK to invite one spouse to dinner and make a 'rule or decision' to explicitly not invite the other half in order to save a few dollars on a wedding where they spent thousands?

You might be right when you say I should have gone but I didn't create this drama. He did when he decided to not include her

Yes. They can invite whoever the hell they want to an event that they're holding and paying for.

fyp

I feel the urge to hit somebody.

I saw a guy go in to a restaurant and take a tea bags out of someones dirty used cup.

Uh, men don't get to make decisions like that in weddings and you're still missing the point that you're acting like a 12 y/o girl.

This used to happen to me all the time :/

And I have the rite to decline that invitation for whatever reason I feel is important.

And if I shouldn't be annoyed that she was excluded (in order to save some money) then why should he be bothered that I decided not to go? I just saved him a few bucks more.

Meh... start a new thread about it. If you put a poll in the OP that asks if you're acting like a 12-year-old girl, I'll bet up to 5k that > 50% of OOT thinks so.

Hehe. U might be rite. But believe it or not, the opinions of OOT aren't always rite!

They definitely have that right. It might not be entirely OK but if they said they just wanted the regular wedding party there then that's what they did. But you have no idea (I assume) if it was a financial issue, do you? It could have just been an issue of them wanting SPECIFICALLY the wedding party together at this dinner with no outsiders or something like that.

Regardless, this is NOT really the issue. The issue is how you reacted to it. The issue is whether it's acceptable to decline the invitation based on them not wanting to include your spouse. And I think the answer to that in this situation is no.

king - In other completely unrelated news: It kind of tilts me that you keep spelling it "rite." This isn't a "rite of passage" nor is it a "Rite-Aid" pharmacy. You are referring to "rights" as in "the right to remain silent" and stuff like that.

Plus, if they let him bring his wife, what would the rest of the bridal party think when they saw her there?

Sorry about the rite thing Micro. Just trying to save a key stroke.

Theres a guy i work with who will wait at the computer when clocking out until it reaches the start of the next minute. Says it makes him an extra buck every other week.

And this is where we disagree.

And not that I imagine anyone cares, but Emily Post- the etiquette source- says it was wrong for spouses not to be included for whatever the reason.

I had a bunch of friends come up for a Cubs game and let them stay at my place the previous night and they were all going to the game the following day. I couldn't go cause of work commitments but I met up with them at a bar in Wrigleyville after the game. They all said they have been buying rounds and I should get the next. I have no problems with this and cover the next round. After that, not even one of them ordered a round for everyone and just covered their own beer. I was absolutely livid at the end of the night. Didn't end up speaking with any of them till summer break was over and saw them in classes again. Never really hung out with any of them after that. It just seems downright shady to ask me to buy a round and out of the 5 of em, none of them bought me a drink and they all stayed at my place.

you could save tons of keystrokes by not posting any more about this stupid bull****

hrmmm... $15 an hour?

Hate to pile on KingofNYC, but everyone else is rite.

Now, of course you have every right to decline the invitation if you want to; people have the right to do a lot of stuff as long as it's not illegal or whatever. It's the next part, where you don't believe/acknowledge that it's an incredibly douchey thing to do and that you deserve to be chastised for it, where it breaks down.

This is the response I was going to type. If they are saving money by not having her come, then they are saving even more money now. Hoorah. Obviously if they had said it was because of the money you could have just offered to pay for you and your wife. (but naturally they don't!)

I've heard of people picking up cigarette butts, unrolling the remaining tobacco from them into a jar and re-rolling them into new cigarettes. Maybe they were just poor, though.
How stingy.
I'd like to think the groom is more affected by the absence of his childhood friend than his childhood friend's wife (who isn't a member of the wedding party).