The 'Tremendous' Tales of Tightfistedness Thread

[Mark Connolly]

On 24/08/2023 at 16:38, Derry Alli said:

One of my mates is like this. Borrows £20 or whatever then when tables have turned got a three day lead up to pay day asking g if I'll have that money, 6am payday text can I transfer it.

 

[Busta Nut]

22 hours ago, Bert Raccoon said:

You find that sometimes with people who have money. In my previous role with the bank you'd have old dears with £200k plus sitting in savings who'd call to complain they believed their interest payment was 6p short 

Aye, worked the same job as Bert at one point and it was always all the rich cúnts who were the tightest.

22 hours ago, Cosmic Joe said:

I knew a guy who invited his golfing* pals back to his house for refreshments, then charged them for his wife making sandwiches. 

 

*Golfers are, in my experience, ones for the watching

 

My mate won a watch in some raffle, some top of the range golfers watch. He then sold it to his maw who gave it to his da for christmas.


 

Edited August 25, 2023 by Busta Nut

[Hedgecutter]

My other half has a new colleague who has recently moved into a house across the road from the office on the edge of Kingswells (a relatively affluent area of Aberdeen).  One of the company perks is a free lunch in their canteen.

This one guy has gone there for lunch every day last week. Normally there wouldn't be anything odd about this behaviour, except he's been on leave for the Easter Holidays all week.  This current status is best evidenced by him wandering in wearing his lanyard and jammies at 11am (canteen opening time) this past Friday.  Top marks for brazenness.

Edited April 7 by Hedgecutter

[Melanius Mullarkey]

My old boss used to claim for newspapers. I saw one for 45p.

Probably on about £75k at the time (late 90s).

[A Diamond For Me]

This has been a braw read, some top-notch stinginess.  I don't really have anything to add except to agree that it's the richest folk who are generally the stingiest (something my brother found when he worked going door to door for various charties after he left school).  I had a part time job in an antique lighting shop when I was at school and then as a uni student, work I enjoyed and was often quite interesting.  We'd often go to install light fittings at houses, or remove fittings when folk were flitting and so on.  Now, given the nature of the shop all of the customers were pretty well off - I mean, they were all buying or already owned art nouveau chandaliers and things, after all.  But there was certainly an inverse relationship between how much they were spending/how fancy their hoose was and how likely they were to offer you a cup of tea.

To be fair, some folk could be quite generous.  One lady had a son who was involved in Innes & Gunn and gave us some six-packs of beer bottles she had around.  I don't drink, so I gave mine to the girl back at the shop who hadn't come with us that day.  Another was a couple that were flitting, and when we got chatting and I said I was going to uni so study Gaelic the husband - a Gaelic speaker from Skye - was delighted and went around his bookshelves picking out Gaelic dictionaries, grammar books, novels and so an and gave me a big box of them to take with me. 

For some historical stinginess, there was a ninth-cenury king of Norway with the quite precise nickname of Hálfdan hinn mildi ok hinn matarilli - Hálfdan the generous [with money] but stingy with food.  Every day is a school day.

[Hedgecutter]

16 hours ago, A Diamond For Me said:

it's the richest folk who are generally the stingiest (something my brother found when he worked going door to door for various charties after he left school)

The richest aren't necessarily those who earn the most, but very often those who build up a decent amount over the years because of their frugality.  On the flip side, those who live in the biggest house with the flashiest car don't necessarily have the biggest disposable income.  The latter are the perennial misery guts who are constantly under stress to keep up with the Jones'.  The under-the-radar ones who don't give a f*** about driving a Skoda rather than a Jaguar even though they can afford one, far less so.

As a gross generalisation, the wealthier in society generally appreciate how 'wealth builds wealth' more than the not-so-wealthy who are more likely to piss it away on overinflated consumerist garbage.

Not that I'm saying that everyone will do this, as there will always be greedy bas*ards in the world, but many will have their own charities and opt to give money to them in the future after giving today's money time to grow.  Why give £X now when you can give £X+Y later sort of thing.  

 

Quote

... you're loaded, and things are different from there.

Edited April 8 by Hedgecutter

[Derry Alli]

11 hours ago, Melanius Mullarkey said:

My old boss used to claim for newspapers. I saw one for 45p.

Probably on about £75k at the time (late 90s).

I used to work with a boy who worked all the Saturday OT and would ask boys if they wanted him to pick up coffees or that on his way in. He used to go into McDonalds at Monifieth and nab the papers then charge the boys in work full price for them.

[19QOS19]

5 hours ago, Hedgecutter said:

On the flip side, those who live in the biggest house with the flashiest car don't necessarily have the biggest disposable income.  The latter are the perennial misery guts who are constantly under stress to keep up with the Jones'.  

Work with a guy exactly like this. He doesn't have a massive house but he has a massive mortgage. I'm not sure what else he has on the go but for someone who's P60 will almost certainly be comfortably over 40K I can't get my head around how he can be counting down the days to payday each month. He was off sick the other week and was rushing back as he had been given an overtime shift. It's no surprise that he appears to be stressed out his tits on a daily basis. 

Have people always lived out with their means like they do these days or is it another social media thing where folk have to show off the shite they have, even if they can't afford it? 

[KingRocketman II]

On a work course and we were each given a £30 voucher to use in the adjacent restaurant to cover dinner. I wasn't too keen on the food and only ordered some sides and a drink. A colleague at our round table (though not sat within direct talking distance), was clearly seeking maximum return on his voucher. We went up to pay/hand in our voucher at the till at the end and he had slightly miscalculated and his came to £30.72. After clarifying some final individual costs with the woman on the till, he turned to me behind him and (oddly) aware of what I had ordered, asked if I could extend some of my remaining voucher balance towards his additional costs ie 72p. I laughed and said why don't you just pay the pound and he said "it hopefully will not have to come to that" - suggesting that he had a few more options to apply if I refused or the woman said that what he was proposing was not possible. 

[SH Panda]

2 hours ago, 19QOS19 said:

Work with a guy exactly like this. He doesn't have a massive house but he has a massive mortgage. I'm not sure what else he has on the go but for someone who's P60 will almost certainly be comfortably over 40K I can't get my head around how he can be counting down the days to payday each month. He was off sick the other week and was rushing back as he had been given an overtime shift. It's no surprise that he appears to be stressed out his tits on a daily basis. 

Have people always lived out with their means like they do these days or is it another social media thing where folk have to show off the shite they have, even if they can't afford it? 

It kind of has, a significant cause of the 2007 crash was people signing up for mortgages they couldn't afford, and this was mostly pre social media.

As is the concept of 'keeping up with the Jones'.

Basically a lot of people who look rich, aren't, and if you know someone who probably is paid well but has a more modest lifestyle that's someone who probably manages their money.

I still remember my then boss telling me she had bought her husband some sort of large automatic watch winder.

So, not only does the guy have a fancy mechanical watch that needs frequent movement (technologically these have all been surpassed) he actually has quite a few of them, doesn't wear them, but still wants them to be able to tell the time correctly.

The answer is just - why? And she complained her husband was cheap! They also went to Vegas frequently, they both earned a lot but I have no idea what their finances would be like.

It's a bit of a psychological thing, you could alleviate (but not fix it) with more detailed financial education in school.

But the economy relies on most people spending everything they make, so we should be applauding these people mostly.

Edit: I also want to know who in Kingswells is givng out free lunches, that's almost unheard of in O&G in the last decade. At this point, being charged to park your car in the company car park seems more likely.

Edited April 8 by SH Panda

[houston_bud]

Many years ago when I was a student we were all tight b*****ds who'd try to a save a quid here and there for a bottle of frosty jacks.

The boys I lived with, and I, used to take turns of nicking bog roll from the uni library. Walk in with an emptyish bag, and take the big industrial, sandpaper like stuff from the dispenser and put it in our bag.

One of the lads was a bit sheepish but we eventually convinced him it was his turn. Unbeknown to him, another of his mates had lifted a book off the shelf and stuck it in the front part of his bag so it would set the alarm off as he walked out.

To be fair to the woman, she put the toilet roll back in his bag after she found the book.

[A Diamond For Me]

4 hours ago, houston_bud said:

Many years ago when I was a student we were all tight b*****ds who'd try to a save a quid here and there for a bottle of frosty jacks.

The boys I lived with, and I, used to take turns of nicking bog roll from the uni library. Walk in with an emptyish bag, and take the big industrial, sandpaper like stuff from the dispenser and put it in our bag.

One of the lads was a bit sheepish but we eventually convinced him it was his turn. Unbeknown to him, another of his mates had lifted a book off the shelf and stuck it in the front part of his bag so it would set the alarm off as he walked out.

To be fair to the woman, she put the toilet roll back in his bag after she found the book.

A simple but amusing prank.

[Venti]

Alliteration in the title is pleasing.

[Derry Alli]

Plenty of the Oil & Gas places give out free lunches. Only Baker and Schlumberger who I do work for have stopped it. 

[BFTD]

9 hours ago, 19QOS19 said:

Work with a guy exactly like this. He doesn't have a massive house but he has a massive mortgage. I'm not sure what else he has on the go but for someone who's P60 will almost certainly be comfortably over 40K I can't get my head around how he can be counting down the days to payday each month. He was off sick the other week and was rushing back as he had been given an overtime shift. It's no surprise that he appears to be stressed out his tits on a daily basis. 

Have people always lived out with their means like they do these days or is it another social media thing where folk have to show off the shite they have, even if they can't afford it? 

The Eighties was all about wallopers buying loads of flash shite to demonstrate how much better they were than their neighbours, and the phrase "keeping up with the Joneses" is over a hundred years old.

Safe to say that Ugg was draping sabre-toothed tiger pelts on the outside of his cave and parading his trophy wife/slave around to show off her particularly bony forehead. We're a peculiarly unpleasant species, considering that we seem to do this shit now because we enjoy it, rather than from any biological imperative.

[Florentine_Pogen]

43 minutes ago, BFTD said:

Safe to say that Ugg was draping sabre-toothed tiger pelts on the outside of his cave and parading his trophy wife/slave around to show off her particularly bony forehead. We're a peculiarly unpleasant species, considering that we seem to do this shit now because we enjoy it, rather than from any biological imperative.

[Newbornbairn]

My wife had a colleague at work in Falkirk who was tight as f**k. In his 40s, twice divorced and using every dating agency he could find to try and get another woman. This was unlikely as he was a stingy, unpleasant short-arse who very rarely got a second date. Anyway, Morrisons had recently opened in the town and we had tried shopping there, stopping to eat in the cafe. When she described it at work the next day, she mentioned that the cafe was incredibly cheap.

 

Guess where the stingy twat took his next "date"?

 

I'm not kidding - a romantic meal in Morrison's cafe 

[carpetmonster]

7 minutes ago, Newbornbairn said:

My wife had a colleague at work in Falkirk who was tight as f**k. In his 40s, twice divorced and using every dating agency he could find to try and get another woman. This was unlikely as he was a stingy, unpleasant short-arse who very rarely got a second date. Anyway, Morrisons had recently opened in the town and we had tried shopping there, stopping to eat in the cafe. When she described it at work the next day, she mentioned that the cafe was incredibly cheap.

 

Guess where the stingy twat took his next "date"?

 

I'm not kidding - a romantic meal in Morrison's cafe 

I take it he didn’t splurge the extra thirty bob to really set up the ambience?

 

[Molotov]

3 hours ago, Derry Alli said:

Plenty of the Oil & Gas places give out free lunches. Only Baker and Schlumberger who I do work for have stopped it. 

Perhaps that’s just when you turn up?  

[SH Panda]

4 hours ago, Derry Alli said:

Plenty of the Oil & Gas places give out free lunches. Only Baker and Schlumberger who I do work for have stopped it. 

For office workers? There's a whole world out there I didn't even know.

Even the free fruit and bi weekly bacon rolls stopped about 7 years ago.

Service companies look to be where it's at.