People Describe The Worst Cheapskate Behavior They’ve Ever Witnessed

Some people are just a little too frugal when it comes to saving vs. spending...

People Really Take Advantage Of Discounts

1) “I had a grown man ask me for a serviceman discount because he was an ‘officer,’ His proof was a little plastic sheriff badge you get with children toy kits. I just stared at it, stared at him. Gave him his 10% discount on a $4 item. I did not want to argue with someone who would actually be willing to try this.”–

2) “When I worked at Petsmart, we would regularly have older ladies that would come in when Friskies went on sale for 25 cents a can. I was the inventory manager at the time and dreaded those sales because we could never keep up with demand. I remember this one older lady very clearly though. I ONLY ever saw her come in during those sales. She would buy (no exaggeration) 100 cases of cans and take them home in multiple trips in her old tan Volvo. It was during one of these trips that I got saddled with helping her with the carry out to load her beast of burden. In the middle of stacking, she said: ‘The babies and I are going to eat well for a while!’ I stopped mid-stack, turned to her, and said, ‘Excuse me?’ because I thought there was no way I could have heard that right. But nope. She proceeded to explain how she got very little money from her pension, so she made things stretch because of Friskies. ‘It is totally edible! And very yummy!’ I had one of my stockers do the rest of her trips. I wasn’t sure which disturbed me more: The fact that she ENJOYED the food or the fact that in her older years she’d been reduced to eating cat food to survive.”–

3) “I work in a coffee shop at a bookstore and we have this really condescending regular that we all hate. Anyway, one night (very close to closing time) he walked up to the counter and ordered a brownie. He used his membership to the store and got 10% off his brownie, which was around 23¢. About 5 minutes later, he came back and ordered another brownie, but he forgot to use the discount. He then continued to make a huge fuss about 23¢, all right before the store was closing. I ended up giving him some of my tips to shut him up, and he took it and walked out the door smiling. He is now deemed my #1 least favorite customer. I cringe every time he walks in the store.”–

4) “I work customer service at a well-known clothing and housewares retailer here in the US. We issue a lot of coupons to loyal customers, which are valid for anything in the store excluding our charity items. There is one rack of charity items in the entire gigantic store, and there is a sign that clearly states that we can’t take discounts for these items because the proceeds go to charity. Flashback a few months ago, an angry customer was at my counter and she was mad that her 15% off coupon didn’t apply to a charity item she’d purchased the week before. She got extremely irritated when I said I couldn’t give her back the $0.75 and started off about how she had driven 2 hours to come back to the store, specifically to resolve this issue. She started screaming for the manager, who apologized and told her the same thing. After much arguing, the woman burst into tears, told the manager to fire me, and finally returned everything she’d bought (about $150 worth of merchandise), swearing that she’d never come back. This was over $0.75, which she was trying to take back from underprivileged children, and she probably wasted at least 5 bucks in gas just to get to the store.”–

5) “We used to have this guy in our group that would do whatever was possible to get out of paying for dinners and outings that were split amount the group. He would leave halfway, or fake a phone call and leave right when we split the bill, or conveniently leave his wallet at home when we’d remind him not to, etc. One night we were all going out for dinner at a place he suggested. This time he stayed till the end which was kind of odd. The rest of the group were pretty easy when it came to paying. If someone got something for $25 they would put in $30. Anyway, this scumbag says he will pay at the register, so he takes the money and goes to pay. Fast forward a week or so, we find out he had 40% off at that specific restaurant. He used the coupon to get a massive discount on our meals and pocketed the rest.”–

6) “An older lady comes into the Harris Teeter grocery store I work at. The problem is that she will find something wrong with a product before bringing it to us and asking us to discount it for her. I work in the fresh foods department, so a single cookie crumb out of line? Discount. Chicken out of the oven 10 minutes ago? Discount. Pie crust not the right color? Discount. She walks around the produce and fresh foods area for hours every night searching for deals, it’s really kind of crazy.”–

7) “Being a bagger for a local grocery store in New England, I constantly see obnoxious people getting outraged about a couple of cents when using a ton of coupons. The worst was when a lady had enough to make the bill negative, but apparently, it wasn’t enough. The store owed her seven freakin’ dollars.”–

8) “I once saw a guy try to argue that his Coke coupon should work for Pepsi. It was the cashier, paid to be there no matter what, and this guy who had to weigh saving a buck against spending ten minutes arguing with a cashier when he was absolutely wrong. Guess what he picked? ‘Ah, you see sir that’s for Coke, not Pepsi. Sir… sir no. No sir, you can’t use them on a different brand. You can use them on other CocaCola products, like Diet Coke or Fanta…’ Long pause for complaining and whining. ‘Sir, I’m sorry but I can’t just let you use it on Pepsi. It’s a different brand. No sir, it doesn’t work like that.’ Long pause for complaining and whining. ‘Sir, it says ‘CocaCola products only’ right on the coupon.’ You get the idea. The cashier was very polite the entire time while this dude complained. In the end, he just left about 6 cases of Pepsi sitting there for her to clean up.”–

9) “Was in the grocery store, just a couple cans (well 20 small ones) of food for the cat, two gallons of milk, half gallon of Blue Bell ice cream and a loaf of bread. Not much, had decided to use the hand basket. Had to stand behind some woman who had a War and Peace sized book of coupons while she went through each and every page looking for a coupon for each and every item she had. She had filled the cart to the point of overflowing, and was arguing with just about every single coupon. Most were expired but the store generally overlooks it, unless the coupon is a year and a half old like hers were. I have never seriously contemplated murder before, seriously, I had it all planned out. I’d beat her over the head with her book of coupons, steal the cart, and run for the border and wait for the heat to die down. By the time she was finished turning $500 dollars worth of groceries down to, I think $200, which was admittedly impressive, except for it taking an hour, my ice cream was almost a liquid. Thankfully the clerk let me run back and get a new one while someone else handled the soup.”

Being The Cheap One In Relationships

10) “Back in college my buddy had a girlfriend that lived about 15 minutes out of town. Every time they hung out and he was the one driving, he would charge her for the gas used. I kid you not. They always went dutch on dates. They lasted about 1.5 years. I knew he loved his current wife when he bought her a meal. I knew then that he was in love.”–

11) “I have a friend I love dearly, but she’s such a pain in the butt. She once lived with my ex-boyfriend (before my ex-boyfriend and I started dating). Come winter, my friend wanted to turn the heat completely off when they left for the day. My ex-boyfriend argued that they should just turn the thermostat down, ‘cos it took less energy to keep the apartment moderately heated throughout the day than to crank it full blast when they got home. My friend said it was stupid, and said she was only going to pay 1/3 of the heating bill. My ex-boyfriend called the power company and got them to send some pamphlets that said it was better to turn the thermostat down, not off when leaving for the day. My friend’s response: ‘Of course they’ll say that, they’re the power company!’Then the ex-boyfriend called the local extension service, who also sent pamphlets saying the same thing. My friend still refused to believe it. I forget how the whole thing ended, but it was just insane in that the argument went on EVERY SINGLE DAY for, like, 8 weeks. They’d even get into arguments at bars about it: Ex-boyfriend would poll our friends, who always unanimously voted ‘Turn it down, not off,’ which would tick off my friend, who would stomp off outside to smoke even though you could still smoke inside back then.”–

12) “I have a friend that is ridiculously cheap. My roommates and his roommates used to have dinner at one another’s houses every week. Whenever we had it at his house, he would total up what he spent on groceries and make us each pay our equal share. When dinner was at our house, it was free. I always thought, ‘It’ll even out if we make a dinner, then you make a dinner,’ but apparently, that’s crazy talk. So, at one of these dinners, he and my roommate start dating. At the same time, we all join an intramural team together. For their first date, he takes her on the bus, even though he has a car, to a free tea factory so he doesn’t have to pay anything but they can still taste teas. Apparently, she was not impressed and broke it off. Because it got awkward, we ended the weekly dinners. A few days later, I get hounded with texts from this guy to get the intramural money that he was owed from the girl that broke up with him (it was $5). After a few more days, he shows up at my house demanding the money from her, which was incredibly awkward for everyone, especially since she had quit the team. She didn’t have the money on her, so he came back every day until she did. He was an aerospace engineer that bragged about saving 30k in college, but he couldn’t let $5 go or pay for a few dinners? He ate the absolute cheapest food, never bought anything new, and made people feel awkward being so anal about money.”–

13) “On my parents’ first date, my father crashed the car, breaking my mother’s foot and her mandolin. He then proceeded to pick the pennies out of the dash cup holders while they waited for a tow truck. Somehow, I exist.”–

14) “My boyfriend is quite frugal and has never been a big fan of my spending. One day we were at the grocery store and I decided to treat myself and I bought a box of grape tomatoes. When we got home, I realized I had forgotten something and went to the corner store. Upon my return, I walk in and catch him red-handed counting my tomatoes. After a slightly awkward ‘should we pretend this never happened moment’ we laughed it off. Grape tomatoes are now referred to as 10¢ tomatoes.”–

15) “My mate broke up with his girlfriend the day before Valentines Day then got back with her the day after so that he wouldn’t have to buy her anything or take her out anywhere.”

Reusing Products In Innovative Ways

16) “My ex-girlfriend’s parents used to take all of the salad dressing from their plates. After they were finished eating, they would pour it back in the bottle so they could use it again.”–

17) “My grandpa has: Stolen the neighbor’s newspaper at 4 am, after having fully read it, folded it back together and placed it back on the neighbor’s stoop before 6 am, for years. He claimed to have regularly used just one square of toilet paper at times in the army. He cut up gallon milk cartons into very small pieces and then kept them in another gallon carton to see how many he could fit, all with the aim of saving trash bags. He didn’t toss those either and would wash them out and reuse them over and over. He would move from house to house, of each of his three children, during much of their adult lives to avoid paying rent.”–

18) “My best friend grew up with the sort of parents that salvaged everything. There are many stories, all of them rather sad (being hot or cold, getting food poisoning from expired food, etc) but yelling at a small child on Christmas day for accidentally tearing the wrapping paper has to take the cake. The wrapping paper had to be saved and reused to save money. They own four houses.”–

19) “I knew someone who once went to buy shampoo at a Walmart and didn’t like that the bottle wasn’t filled to the very top (don’t try explaining to her that bottles need room to expand during transport). So she unscrewed another bottle and poured it into the bottle she wanted to buy to top it off. Well, security cameras saw her doing this and she was busted by the security officers. She got argumentative and combative and ended up being arrested, all for half an ounce of shampoo. Then she got kicked out of medical school for stealing scrubs to wear because she was too cheap to buy real clothes.”–

20) “My grandmother would never throw away a dryer sheet. It got to the point that you’d have to sort 50 dryer sheets from the laundry before you could put away your clean clothes. She also reused every ziplock bag container. All the cereal bowls were old margarine tubs.”

Paying For What You Use Versus What You Get

21) “My parents split everything. My mom has her shampoo, my dad has his. Their own food, drinks, etc. Fast forward to when my dad was sick and needed some Pepto Bismol. He didn’t have any, my mom measured out 15 ml, then divided that by the cost and my dad paid her 23 cents or whatever it was.”

22) “I lived with a roommate and we had a dinner party. He cooked a pie using my ingredients and vegetables. I also bought the drinks as he was a student at the time and had zero cash. At the end of the dinner, he demanded £5 from each guest. When I called him out he admitted he had not contributed anything to the party but his time was worth the money. After some stunned silence when people realized he was being serious we all told him to go screw himself and left for the pub. He wasn’t invited and went into a huff for two weeks until he moved in with his girlfriend to save money on rent. The guy was as tight as 2 coats of paint. Haven’t spoken to him since.”–

23) “When I first moved out of home (around 15 years ago), I lived in a 2-bedroom townhouse with 4 girls. Each of us took a bill (cable, gas, electricity & water) in our name. My roommate called Sarah (cause that is her name) came up to me one day, late at night when I was engaged in studying/MSN chat on the computer in my room. Sarah: ‘The gas bill is here. It’s $2.00.’ Me: ‘Ok, so I owe you 50 cents. I don’t have any cash on me.’ Sarah: ‘You actually owe me 58 cents. I split the cost of the stamp to mail in the payment between the 4 of us. I can take a check if you have one.’ I was confused… She also shared a bedroom with our other roommate and they insisted on getting bunk beds. Sarah got the bunk bed from IKEA and assembled a few days before they both moved into the room. The bed was, say, $100 (including tax). Sarah told roommate that she owed her $65. The roommate said, ‘Why the extra $15?’ Sarah said because she drove from her parent’s house to assemble the bed and she split the cost of gas for her driving.”–

24) “Couple of neighbors I hung out with regularly invited me out to have some pizza and drinks at a place they found near our house. We end up having a few pitchers and a few pizzas – they were medium sized pizzas. The bill came and one of the guys looks over the bill, and instead of splitting it evenly across for everyone, he tells us, ‘I only drank about half a pitcher and only had half a pizza.’ That’s all he paid for. It wasn’t even enough to cover the tip. We all graduated from college and we all had steady jobs. That was my wake up call to not hang out with this guy again, and if I did, make sure to get a separate check.”

Money Saving Craziness Around The Holidays

25) “My mom insists on saving the freaking tissue paper we use for gifts every Christmas. She also refuses to throw away any expired medicine. Oh, you have a headache? Here, have some 13-year-old Great Value ibuprofen!”–

26) “I was a cashier at Walmart for a year, so I got my fill of retail. It was the week before Thanksgiving and the lines were really long, as we expected. Going through customer after customer, crying on the inside when I get the old ladies with checks. Then this lady comes up with her overflowing cart full of stuff, I’m going through it like its any other transaction trying to make some small talk, then we get to the end with all her coupons, most of them are alright and we get through it. Come to the promotional coupon we had going (spend $100, get a free turkey) and crap hits the fan. The way we were trained, and the best to my knowledge of the system, we marked down the turkey to one-cent and then take that one cent off of some other item, hence, free. Nope, this woman was having none of it, ‘This turkey should be free! Make it FREE!’ Followed by a beautiful statement, ‘This is my 3rd turkey this week and everyone else made it free.’ Why are you buying 3 turkeys at different times? So I’m standing there trying to talk this customer down and explain and she yells she wants to see a manager right now! So I push our call button and wait for my manager, 10 minutes later Manager A shows up: ‘Whats the problem?’ Lady: ‘This turkey should be free and he’s not giving it to me for free!’ Me: ‘I was making it one cent and taking it off (item).’ Manager A: ‘So whats the problem?’ Lady: ‘Well one cent isn’t free! I’m calling (Boss-Manager).’ She proceeds to take out a flip-phone, speed dials the Boss-Manager. So we wait another 10 minutes (I have people stuck in line because there are so many people behind them). Finally, Boss-Manager shows up and asks: ‘Whats the problem?’ Lady: ‘They aren’t giving me this turkey for free!’ Boss-Manager: ‘I don’t care what you have to do, make this free.’ Walks away. So after trying to explain it one more time to this lady, I end up just doing it my way and she throws a hissy fit but walks away saying she’s gonna tell Boss-Manager about this! Next person in line comes up and says: ‘Just breathe.’ Me: ‘You want your one cent, too?’ Screw retail.”–

27) “My dad, who is not poor at all, went to a Christmas lunch for homeless people. He did this so he didn’t have to pay for lunch while visiting Victoria, BC. He did this ‘unintentionally’ thinking the restaurant was serving the public.”–

28) “I was volunteering at a Christmas charity dinner and at the end Santa came in and sat down to hand out gifts to the many less fortunate children there, a woman, with two children, sent them both through three times until Santa caught on and they were kicked out, mother and children. I was so angry that greedy woman was trying to ruin it for all the other children and their parents. I get you’re less fortunate, but so is everybody else there.”–

29) “I had a great-grandmother who was notoriously stingy. My mother used to say she was the only woman in the world who did know what ‘real shopping’ was. She’d shopped every day of her life but hardly bought a thing. If you’ve ever seen that Meryl Streep biopic of Thatcher, there’s a scene in it where she recites the prices of milk. That was my Great-Grandmother. Even at the age of 70, she knew exactly how much to pay for every item in her household, who sold it cheaper, etc. However, even though she was an incredibly frugal woman, she also was completely out of touch with reality and had no qualms about being unapologetically cheap. My favorite example of this is when she sent our family (of 5) a Christmas card one year and the card itself was from her 50th anniversary, but she’d blocked out the message inside the card with a black marker and written a lovely message in this tiny corner of the card. On the front, she crossed out ‘Happy 50th!’ and wrote, in pen, ‘Season’s Greetings’. Inside the card was taped two loonies and a toonie (for non-Canadians, that’s two $1 coins and one $2 coin) for a total of $4. Who the heck sends someone a card with $4 in it? My mom chortled and told me to go rent a movie with it. The sickest part of the whole thing was that my great-grandmother had been hoarding her money for years. She was a lifelong housewife, and I have no idea what her husband did but they were very middle-class people, but it was speculated by most people she must have had millions in the bank, simply from 50 years of savings and she died and left it all to the church.”–

30) “My Grandfather shops at 8 different super markets plus gets the deals at all the Walgreens, CVS & Rite Aid’s. He’ll sometimes just get the best deals from each place. He always gets his limits, then uses all the coupons possible then goes back for a rain check. He uses his and my Grandma’s customer cards to get more coupons. I forget what pharmacy but one of them offers a deal for every prescription you transfer to their pharmacy you get a $25 store gift card. So every other month he transfers it and takes turns with his name, my Grandma’s name and my Uncle’s name who lives with them (mentally handicapped). He dates everything so he uses the oldest first, and his basement is filled with backups of everything. He has made friends at every supermarket and place he shops at and knows all the cashiers and customer service people by name. Around the holidays he’ll buy candy on sale and go around gifting them. He’s 80 and does the grocery shopping for the elderly on his block (lives in South Philadelphia). He takes so much pride in his savings, and always tries to pass it along to other people. Shopping is his social life, my Grandmom likes staying in and watching the news, and my Uncle isn’t good at conversation.”