How do you handle a tight arse mate.

[El Presidente]

You may know the one

Beautiful bloke.  Heart of Gold.  Everyone who meets him loves him. Partners are the worse....they fawn.   

He can recite prose, knows his history backwards, hugely entertaining, a raconteur. 

Unfortunately he has one huge flaw that if you look hard enough you will see. 

It becomes apparent when there are get togethers and he is empty handed. When there are cigars being handed out he is a Cohiba and LE fiend. When he is handing out from his well stocked humidor ....it is Monte 4's all around. I love a great 4 as you well know....but that is not why he is handing them out. 

When at a long lunch he leaves early with the promise to fix you up. He always does...about 6 weeks later at which time he invariable tells you the lunch was overpriced as he hands out the moola with the enthusiasm and look as someone pulling out his own intestines. 

Yes, the mate is a tight arse and tolerance has reached the limit. 

How have you handled such situations in the past?

[JohnS]

This mate goes to get togethers empty-handed, as in, without cigars? That says it all, you'd think!

[Fuzz]

47 minutes ago, El Presidente said:

You may know the one

Beautiful bloke.  Heart of Gold.  Everyone who meets him loves him. Partners are the worse....they fawn.   

He can recite prose, knows his history backwards, hugely entertaining, a raconteur. 

Unfortunately he has one huge flaw that if you look hard enough you will see. 

It becomes apparent when there are get togethers and he is empty handed. When there are cigars being handed out he is a Cohiba and LE fiend. When he is handing out from his well stocked humidor ....it is Monte 4's all around. I love a great 4 as you well know....but that is not why he is handing them out. 

When at a long lunch he leaves early with the promise to fix you up. He always does...about 6 weeks later at which time he invariable tells you the lunch was overpriced as he hands out the moola with the enthusiasm and look as someone pulling out his own intestines. 

Yes, the mate is a tight arse and tolerance has reached the limit. 

How have you handled such situations in the past?

For a second I thought you were talking about me!

[Buck14]

This type of person is not really your friend. I can’t stand freeloaders. Wants the best from you and doesn’t reciprocate or pay his fair share. Time for a new friend.

[RDB]

The trouble is, it's always a deeply ingrained characteristic, and I've never known anyone like this to change significantly. Maybe a few degrees, but not much. Doesn't matter if you speak to them openly, cut back your own generosity, or love bomb them with even more open-handedness. In the end you have to broadly accept or move on. Two amelioration strategies are to be totally prescriptive: "please bring three of those nice Esplendidos you were showing me" and humour "cause we don't want your crappy cast-offs while you scoff our good stuff, ok?" 

I feel sorry for mean people. The world is just so much nicer if you act with generosity. Either it's reciprocated, which is great, or it's not, in which case you did the right thing anyway.  

[wineguy]

7 minutes ago, Buck14 said:

This type of person is not really your friend. I can’t stand freeloaders. Wants the best from you and doesn’t reciprocate or pay his fair share. Time for a new friend.

I have a friend who is very wealthy, think 9 figures, and he smokes $2 cigars and brings $8 bottles of wine and then happily smokes and drinks what others have brought.  I tried addressing in a light hearted way it didn't work so he has just been getting left off the guest lists by our group almost entirely now....

[multi-useless]

Sounds like someone who's more interested in the things in life, than the friendships and relationships...  his loss for not understanding what's important.

Not much you can do to make him understand, so might as well have some fun with it...  re-band a dog rocket every now and watch him choke down a $2 NC 

[torsion]

2 hours ago, El Presidente said:

You may know the one

Beautiful bloke.  Heart of Gold.  Everyone who meets him loves him. Partners are the worse....they fawn.   

He can recite prose, knows his history backwards, hugely entertaining, a raconteur. 

Unfortunately he has one huge flaw that if you look hard enough you will see. 

It becomes apparent when there are get togethers and he is empty handed. When there are cigars being handed out he is a Cohiba and LE fiend. When he is handing out from his well stocked humidor ....it is Monte 4's all around. I love a great 4 as you well know....but that is not why he is handing them out. 

When at a long lunch he leaves early with the promise to fix you up. He always does...about 6 weeks later at which time he invariable tells you the lunch was overpriced as he hands out the moola with the enthusiasm and look as someone pulling out his own intestines. 

Yes, the mate is a tight arse and tolerance has reached the limit. 

How have you handled such situations in the past?

My father has always taught me that when you may be generous it's best not to expect the reciprocal back to avoid disappointment.

For the most part I always try to have this mindset however there are always guys like this and after a while it wears thin - when it reaches the limit then they have less invites...

[BrightonCorgi]

Start making fun of him when it's time for his share.  He'll feel embarrassed some I would imagine.  Ask him in front of others why he does not give nearly as equally as he gets?  Hard questions like those are at least entertaining to see how they answer.  Perhaps an obvious non-invite to something could wake him up? 

[LGC]

People really don’t change... especially the older we get. With friends, there is never worry about getting the short end of the stick. I see drastically cheap treatment as disrespect... when they are knowingly scraping the barrel on their end. Such folks are dealt with such as prior girlfriends with not much to offer.

[ElJavi76]

I've been told... Bring some extras I'll buy something off of you. Show up and 4 guys have no cigars. Even the guy that brought his own says he hasn't kept his humidor in great shape. "They're a little dry". 

I end up down 4-6 cigars... Bill shows up and nobody even bothers to buy me an ice cube for my drink. 

My last experience with this crew... Cash and Carry. You want one? $15. You want two? $25. To me it's more principal than dollars. 

It's the old... I'd rather see you reach for your pocket even if you're bluffing. To you not even making an attempt and acting like I'm your personal cigar curator. To echo the sentiments of a few above... It's tough calling these folks true friends. Whether cigars or a bottle of wine or whatever... A real friend gives and shares whatever they have to share. Doesn't have to be equal to your offering. The problem comes when they won't even share what little they can.

Give with love. If the love doesn't come back... Lighten up your load. There are literally dozens of people waiting to have a new friend like you in their lives. Go find them!

[ritter6788]

It's even worse when it's a family member!

[99call]

Gladly I can spot these people very early, and it's simply unforgivable.

Regardless of what their personality has to offer, there is not making up for a lack of generosity, for that person is knowingly taking people for chumps. 

I didn't know this person, as he was a mate, of a group of mates. He went to university with them, and for 4yrs he used to turn up at the pub, then when asked if he wanted a pint, he'd say "sorry lads, i'm absolutely broke, I just dropped in to say hi" invariable everyone would say "don't worry mate, sit yourself down, will get you a pint in".  At the end of the 4yrs he turned up at the pub and sad "lads come and check this out" . 

He'd bought himself a second-hand BMW for about £5,000.  My mates stood there with their mouths open (non of them had cars, or even £100 in their bank accounts). They asked him "where on earth did you get this!!!!???" he said....................."I've been saving up!".          nobody ever spoke to him ever again.......utter scumbag. 

[ElJavi76]

20 minutes ago, ritter6788 said:

It's even worse when it's a family member!

They're the usual suspects brother. My bro had smoked many many Cuban cigars in his life. Paid for almost none of them. I think he bought a glass top box once. LOL it's easy to abuse the ones we "love".

[LGC]

Gladly I can spot these people very early, and it's simply unforgivable.
Regardless of what their personality has to offer, there is not making up for a lack of generosity, for that person is knowingly taking people for chumps. 
I didn't know this person, as he was a mate, of a group of mates. He went to university with them, and for 4yrs he used to turn up at the pub, then when asked if he wanted a pint, he'd say "sorry lads, i'm absolutely broke, I just dropped in to say hi" invariable everyone would say "don't worry mate, sit yourself down, will get you a pint in".  At the end of the 4yrs he turned up at the pub and sad "lads come and check this out" . 
He'd bought himself a second-hand BMW for about £5,000.  My mates stood there with their mouths open (non of them had cars, or even £100 in their bank accounts). They asked him "where on earth did you get this!!!!???" he said....................."I've been saving up!".          nobody ever spoke to him ever again.......utter scumbag. 

Reminds me of this one guy that never had cash when paying in groups. He would always collect everyone’s cash and collect the points on his card. I later found out he was constantly skimming and leaving smaller tips than we paid for.

[Stogiepuffer]

Reminds me of this one guy that never had cash when paying in groups. He would always collect everyone’s cash and collect the points on his card. I later found out he was constantly skimming and leaving smaller tips than we paid for.

Sounds like my brother-in-law. He would be the most demanding with servers then collect all cash and leave 5% or no tip. Another thing he would do is not order his own meal but then eat his wife and kids meals. He would quip 'they're not going to finish it anyway, so I'll eat it'.

Sent from my SM-G930V using Tapatalk

[joeypots]

I know a few. They are the same everywhere and in the end all money flows to them without any flowing out except under duress.  It's a miserable existence as far as I can tell. I had lunch years ago with three women from a community group. A cheap lunch. When the check came one particularly miserable companion divided up the check to the penny and made sure she didn't pay one cent more than she ordered. I'm talking about less than ten bucks each. And she isn't hurting for dough. I might have grabbed the check if she hadn't taken it and started to do the arithmetic to the penny.

[Hookmaker]

6 hours ago, Buck14 said:

This type of person is not really your friend. I can’t stand freeloaders. Wants the best from you and doesn’t reciprocate or pay his fair share. Time for a new friend.

Exactly - not your mate at all

[BeerPimp]

2 hours ago, Brandon said:

Reminds me of this one guy that never had cash when paying in groups. He would always collect everyone’s cash and collect the points on his card. I later found out he was constantly skimming and leaving smaller tips than we paid for.

I had a friend do this once.   He said he would put it on his card then as everyone handed him their cash which included a generous 20% tip he left a much smaller one.   That only happened once.   Now I just make sure to get a separate check.

[Ritch]

Best thing you can do is order grub and drinks with your mate present and come the end of the night thank him profusely for covering the bill and walk out. 

[VRATJV07]

As I have grown older I think I have just weeded these people out of my close social group.  

I have plenty of examples, but the point is I just don't hang out with or invite these people to events anymore.

[Lotusguy]

Cut him loose - nobody needs that kind of deadbeat/weight.

[BG1165]

I was always the generous one and never really gave it a second thought. As I became more frugal over the years, it resolved itself.

[Ritch]

3 minutes ago, BG1165 said:

I was always the generous one and never really gave it a second thought. As I became more frugal over the years, it resolved itself.

This. Just this.

Now I find myself staying at home on a night looking after the daughter and talking to odd people on the internet...

[TBird55]

It speaks volumes of a persons character, when they try and get over on anyone, much less a supposed friend.