How mean can you get?

that takes some beating !

Stinginess is one thing and I find your employer very stingy on the scale of meanies but my story is rather shocking. My mum was widowed and stuck in looking after us kids night after night. One day she was invited to a dance in the village hall. She really wanted to go but couldn't find a babysitter. A neighbour who was also invited, knocked on our door. She asked if, as mum couldn't go to the dance, could she look after her kids as well!!

I'm not sure that 5/- per hour was stingy.
That's equivalent to 200 shillings for a full-time, 40 hour week.
200 shillings = £10.
£10 a week was good pay in the 60's.
I got £3 a week working full time in Boots in the school holidays in 1967.

You have a point Jane. My pay in 1963 was 15 shillings for a 4 hour Saturday job.
I thought it was riches as I could spend it on myself apart from bus fares.

When I was between "proper" jobs, not that long ago, one boss used to switch the fridge off each night!

So of course, one morning the milk was off. I volunteered to go to get some, but was told "we're not supposed to leave the office unless we're on our break"

This man also had staff working in a building that had only been signed off as a storage unit, with the only facility for washing up being the hand basin in the toilet, which incidentally opened straight into the "office" area!

My FIL gave my OH a shirt that we had gifted to him 15 years previously! He never did like spending money!

It isn't the wages I was commenting on, but the Christmas present.

Someone I know had relatives visiting from South Africa. She invited them to tea. She gave them each two cream crackers with a small piece of cheese on them. That was it.

Not a case of meanness, more behind the times.
A sweet elderly lady was admitted on my ward from a care home, she had no visitors so l would sit and chat with her during my break times.
After her discharge I popped in to see if she had all her stuff packed up.
'You have been so kind to me' she said. 'Pass me my handbag because I want you to go and treat yourself to something really special'.
And wth that she pressed 20p into my hand.
Bless!

S

One Christmas, an employer of mine gave me a mug that had been given to her by a rep. It had the name of the company he was selling for, printed right across it. She even wrapped it up in festive paper! It didn't make it back to my house.

Giving people raspberries is not mean. How do you know she wasn't going to share what she had among more people?

Also, why would you expect a Christmas present from your employer?

On his 2nd birthday, DS was in hospital following a big operation. My inlaws, his paternal GPs, turned up without a present. They were not poor.

I think a lot of employers buy some staff presents, especially secretaries etc. I worked for a large government organisation. Everyone's salary was known to every one else (pay scales easily accessible to all). One of the secretaries I worked with did all sorts of jobs for her four bosses including going out in her lunch hour to do their shopping, buy presents for their wives etc. These men were on about £80,000 a year. They were SO generous at Christmas to their PAs. The four of them put together and bought her a £10 Marks & Spencer voucher.

DH and I have what is described as a micro company and I have always given my employees a Christmas present ( usually money or a voucher paid for by me and DH ) I have never in over 20 years had so much as a Christmas card in return .

Didn’t expect one son I have never been disappointed.

I used to work for a rather eccentric consultant. One Christmas he turned up with presents for his two PAs (I was one of them) They were small unwashed margarine tubs with 5 chocolate truffles, hand rolled by his young daughters, in each tub.

The following year it was a single polyanthus each from the local supermarket.

Honestly I can’t see why anybody is harking back to the days when they earned 5/- an hour. That puts it in 1970 or earlier?
Does that really still rankle?
So many things have happened to all of us in the last 49 years - why let this bother you now?

SiL had insisted that each Christmas we send the same card to each other and so it went, back and forth. When she died she certainly hadn't been short.

In the 80s working in a private hospital .... a now-dead flamboyant and well known captain of industry and his girlfriend had enjoyed their whole roast chicken that they'd ordered from outside.

The girlfriend presented me with the carcass wrapped in foil - I swear it was denuded of any flesh - and told me to help myself!

I handed it back and said, no thanks!

I had a holiday job on Ventnor pier when I was 16. I was supposed to be on the candy floss machine but it gave me conjunctivitis so I was lumbered with clearing tables in the café.

A man walked by and threw a half eaten apple on the ground. I went to throw it in the bin but the manager snatched it out of my hand and said, 'There's plenty on there to make some apple sauce for the pork chops.'

Merlot wins, hands down!

When my Dad was 5 years old he went to get his Christmas stocking to see what Santa had left him.

It was a stocking full of coal.

His Dad thought it was funny. From what I understand he laughed and laughed and my Dad cried and cried.

Not that he ever was a Dad to me but that's how the story goes.

My father was once very angry with me for giving my pet mice a dried butter bean!
When we had central heating installed he wouldn’t allow windows to be opened because that was wasting the heat.
When I was about 13 and still wearing NHS wire framed glasses my mother backed me wanting grown up ones but my father would not pay for them.