I do not understand cheap people. For some reason, I've become more and more aware lately of people nickel and diming their way through life, and it's been blowing my mind. Some examples...

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I work at a restaurant as a bartender and waiter. A guy comes in and wants to get a chicken and spinach burrito. Okay. Each filling is 2 bucks on top of a base price of 6 for the burrito. He wants to know if he can get half and half fillings. I ask him if he means, like, one end of the burrito with chicken and the other with spinach. No, he explains. He means, can he get half the standard amounts of the fillings and only pay two bucks instead of four. No, I say. He winds up getting the spinach on the side, so, in his words, he doesn't get cheated on the amount of spinach he's getting.

WTF? It's two dollars, guy. A half gallon of gas. Was it worth debasing yourself for five minutes in order to get like four more ounces of spinach?

Other restaurant stuff--Chips and salsa at my restaurant are three dollars. It is a very regular occurrence that people will sit at a table and order chips and salsa, then quickly ask if they're complimentary. When they find out that they're not, these people look very disappointed, hem and haw for thirty seconds and then say, no, forget it. Again, Wtf?

Also, I do not understand the $.50 tip. As in, someone comes to the bar, orders a $3.50 beer and pays with a 5, gets back $1.50, and leaves the two quarters. It's not exactly that I feel entitled to the $1, although it is standard, but I can't fathom the mentality of someone who wouldn't just throw down the buck, if for no other reason than not wanting to look cheap and douchey.

So as not to turn this into yet another tipping thread, some non-restaurant stuff...

Fluff and fold. The laundromat I go to has a fluff and fold service where you give them your laundry and they wash, dry and fold it the same day. It costs about 20 bucks. If you do it yourself, you wind up paying at least 10-12 bucks and sitting in the nasty, hot, crowded laundromat for 3 or 4 hours. And yet the place is packed with people doing just that. In other words, if you do laundry yourself, you are essentially hiring yourself out as a housekeeper for about 2 dollars an hour. Is your time really worth that little to you? Wtf?

A while ago, a friend and I went on a trip to Vegas. When we were booking hotels, there was a special at the MGM which made it around $100 a night. Cheap friend was lobbying to stay at the Imperial Palace which was about $70. I asked him if saving $30 (we were sharing a room) over the course of two nights IN LAS VEGAS was worth staying in a roach infested dungeon. Apparently it was, and I covered the cost of staying at the MGM. Yes, I am baller.

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To summarize, it blows me away the corners people try to cut in their lives for no good reason. I know you wind up saving money in the long run, but what's your quality of life like? I guess they'll have the last laugh when they're retired and I'm 75 and a Wal-Mart greeter.

What cheap behavior have you seen that blows you away?

we're in a recession yo

A fifty cent tip on a $3.50 beer is a 14% tip.

And people who end up not ordering the chips and salsa don't really want chips and salsa. They'd just eat it if it was free and there, like peanuts or pretzels at a bar.

The spinach guy seems megacheap, though.

I was on a 1-month trip with some friends around Europe. All 18-19. We ended up choosing restaurants WAYY too often based on 1 EUR differences in the price of a .5L beer. I was never that pissed. The worst was when we were in Slovenia and my friends wanted to get the bottle of wine (at the grocery store) that was about 2 EUR cheaper on an average cost of 5 EUR. It's ****ing Europe. Wine is cheap. Might as well get some good one??? And then the next day one of them splurges on a Cuba worth $20 in a club, wtf.

Another thing that pissed me off is the concept of paying a round of beers. If you're paying a round (and trust me, I paid way more than any1 else), are you supposed to bitch that you don't get the exact same number back from others? WTF? Especially in cheap-ass countries like Czech Republic?

I agree on all counts except the .50 thing.
I can totally see how someone would just leave .50 for a 3.50 beer to some rando bartender, although I leave the dollar about 98% of the time.

I paid $7.25 and $7.75 for beers yesterday at Fenway. Am I cheap because I only left $1.50 on two beers that cost $14.50? I say no.

I hear ya though. The food service industry pretty much sucks across the board...

I am not going to make this a tipping debate, but $1 on any drink you order is totally standard--you don't figure % on drinks, although even if you did,
14% is still cheap.

And with the chips and salsa thing, to clarify, imagine a table with mom and dad and two hungry kids. They want chips and salsa, they're hungry and grouchy, but they won't pay 3 bucks for it. It's not that they don't want it, it's that it's free other places so they can't see coughing up $3, even though their kids are starving and whiny.

Sooo, business is down at your restaurant huh?

The guy probably didn't want any change so he just left the 50 cents and took the dollar, I do this all the time at places when they give me like 1.47 cents in change and I just put the 47c in the children donation box or wherever the money is going to now.

The mind of someone who tips 50 cents (devil's advocate):

If I tip $1.50 well that is way too much. If I tip 1 dollar, well then I have change which I hate carrying. Thus, I tip 50 cents.

Now, since you seem like a douche. If I knew you, I would tip you nothing. However, anyone else would just get a normal tip.

is tipping in bars for beers in the US standard?

I'm from the UK and there is NO WAY I'd tip in a bar/club whatever unless it was say £14.20 or something random. We pay say £2.50 for a bottle of Becks at a bar, wouldn't cross my mind to leave a tip. I've been a bartender before and people do leave tips but no way is it standard especially on a single beer.

I agree with this post on all three points.

i don't think he does. the .50 cent thing is the only debatable issue really. the burrito and laundry issues show the ******ed/annoying nature of a certain subset of people.

he could have made other douchey posts, but this one seems fine.

But in the US there’s some kind of special minimum wage for serving staff so they need tips or they starve. That arsehole from ready steady cook the little gnome like one wants the same thing here because he can’t stand having to pay his waiters £5.5 an hour and then see them get tips on top. Arseholes a millionaire already how many ivory back scratchers does he need?

No, $1.50 there is cool.

Arggh, didn't want this to be a stupid tipping thread. Look, just forget the .50/$1 on beers thing, okay? I don't really care either way, just making the larger point that trying to save money by not tipping whole dollar amounts, to me, is weird and cheap, when you're out at a restaurant and dropping at least 40-50 bucks.

And actually, business has been strangely good at my restaurant despite the recession.

oh whatever nvm. Tipping pisses me off, ever since I was in LV

+1

i'm sure you do some things that make even wealthier people cringe

This will never garner a lot of sympathy.

If I tip someone 14% and I hear they called me cheap, it's go time.

Lol, "even wealthier." Even wealthier than a bartender at a Mexican restaurant? Now that's wealthy! Are you talking about not taking a helicopter to work or something? I'm talking about the inexplicably cheap and self-defeating behavior of average middle-class people.

Get into fine dining.

This has already turned into a tipping thread.

It's all relative.

First of all, a couple of loads of laundry has never cost me $12. Even at $1.50/cycle (which is higher than average if I had to guess), 3 loads of laundry is $9, taking a maximum of 1.5 hours, not 4. Saving $10 per load of laundry (for a family this could be $40-50/mo) isn't insignificant for many people.

Regardless, to call this "cutting corners in life" or "self-defeating" behavior is stupid. They value their time and money differently than you. It shouldn't really be that mind blowing.

meh, i don't really get what's the constant hating on cheap people. if they wanna be cheap and penny pinch that's their choice.

the beer thing is perfectly fine esp since the tip amount is a result of convenience

i also agree with whoever said that the people who cancel their nacho orders didn't really want them to begin with.

the burrito guy seems pretty cheap but i mean $2 is 30% of the cost of the burrito seems like a lot extra for a topping

laundromat - meh good chance you save more than you indicate (though of course i would agree and always just drop my **** off) and even though there's an opportunity cost to sitting there not anyone can just work any hour they please. However, in all likelihood a lot of people just don't put a monetary value on their spare time.

hotel thing - meh, i mean it's pretty cheap and i don't know the differences between the two hotels. it's still money saved on something that really won't be a huge deal imo.

either way, in the end being cheap over little things really does add up to a decent amount of cash in the end. especially if you work some low paying job

and going along with what the poster above me said, saving $100/mo or something can be somewhat significant for a lot of people

Cheap to you is saving money to others. It's all relative to how you view/value money and we all know that poker players have wacked up money values.

T

None of these people would take a job that pays $2 an hour. But that's what they're doing at the laundromat. I probably make as much or less money than most of them but value my time enough not sit in a hot room with screaming kids for hours in order to save ten dollars. I mean, if they're going to the laundromat 5 times a month at two hours a pop, that's 10 hours. Working ten extra hours a month at your job should be worth a lot more than $50.

why would someone want spinach in a burrito

people being cheap doesn't necessarily bother me, but it blows my mind how inconsistent some are. the type of person that will refuse to eat somewhere that won't take their expired 50 cent coupon, but will rack up 1k in credit card debt that same month.