Saw my boss from the summer of 2002 at the bar tonight. Probably haven't seen him since then. Huge, huge Mets fan...he didn't even ask for the bartender to put on the Mets game when it started. I gave him a little shit, but they're really not even good enough for it to be fun anymore.

Bakestar wrote:I got stiffed on gifts by two wedding guests, including a guy who invited himself to the wedding (and brought his girlfriend), and a guy who lived on my couch for four months.

I got stiffed at my wedding by two couples (and one really cheap one)- all on my wife's side including her closest cousin. He just re-upped with the marines and is headed for Afghanistan but he had a few extra days to waste in NJ before he had to report to North Carolina I think so we let him crash here. Before he left he gave us a wedding card with a $100 gift card to Walmart inside. Yeah our wedding was almost 6 years ago. I went out a few days later and put it towards a new Xbox that had HDMI for my gameroom (which I'm now selling on ebay along with a few games so I can upgrade to the Elite for basically the same price).

One of her best friend's didn't give us a fucking card let alone a gift (for which she had promised to make up for but never even made an attempt). Her parents were invited as well and broke out a crisp $50 bill. So yeah $50 from 6 people- so we only lost $1000 on the deal (well $900 if you count the gift card 6 years later).

Before our wedding our parents sat us down and said we will either:

A) Throw a small reception for immediate family and friends- maybe 30 people tops and then give us the rest in cash for the wedding that my wife wanted.
B) Have the wedding but get no cash since it ended up being ~220 people @ ~$175/head, plus flowers, a dress, tuxes, limos, a vintage Rolls Royce, a photographer, and all of that other stupid BS.

I immediately said cash. She immediately said wedding. Her eyes welled up and I gave in despite the opportunity to be able to pay off all of our debt and put a decent size down on a house. I thought about it and concluded that the wedding is the woman's equivalent of her team winning the Super Bowl or World Series. They dream of that day since they are like 10. But guess what? I dreamed of playing DE for USC since I was 12, too. Sometimes you have to roll with the punches. You would think at some point you have to use some logic in the equation but I digress. I ended up spending 75% of the night doing blow in the bathroom with my scumbag friends. I don't even remember it really. I know I didn't eat anything.

Anyway if this opportunity ever presents itself to you... take the cash and do whatever it takes to convince her that's the smart move. We probably haven't even talked to 75% of the wedding guests more than 5 or 6 times since the wedding. Ridiculous.

And Phight On! knocks another one out of the park.

2 years ago I went to 5 weddings in 4 months. i was in 2 of them. another was about a 6 hour drive away. i dont think i got gifts for any of them. i was poor and would struggle to pay rent if i bought gifts. i still feel really guilty about it.

eah, so like it's carzy to know that people with similar heart conditions do crazy stuff. i really wish she didnt, how do i get her to stop ugh

I have no idea who gave us gifts at our wedding or what they gave us. I remember that my company at the time gave us a set of knives, the german kind with the long name that starts with W.

any time we go out for sushi i get historically hungry later in the night.

Don't fear the reaper

CalvinBall wrote:2 years ago I went to 5 weddings in 4 months. i was in 2 of them. another was about a 6 hour drive away. i dont think i got gifts for any of them. i was poor and would struggle to pay rent if i bought gifts. i still feel really guilty about it.

It's tough to really criticize you - rent's more important than gifts.

But class, let's use this as a learning opportunity. Woody, what are some of the steps Calvin could have taken while still making the same basic outlay of money?

UncleMilt, what can Calvin do to rectify the situation?

pay for a round of golf with the guys you stiffed. cigars, beer, all that jazz. this way, you all get to hang out, you get to do something nice for them, and the women don't get anything.

Calvin could have made them a craft. He could have taken a spare job to afford a gift. He could have sold plasma. He could have put an ad on Craigslist to "do things" for money

But frankly the real lesson here, and the one we all learned in the past year, is that Calvin should have borrowed money to pay for the gifts he couldn't afford. I would have suggested a cash advance on any major credit card. Leverage is the only way to get anywhere in life.

you give lame-ass $15 gifts to the wedding party. and you want a $90 place setting? kiss my fucking ass, i eat off paper plates every night.

So I had a customer order a large quantity of exercise tubes and he requested that the mill put identifying marks on the boxes to make it easy on his warehouse.

some examples-

XT- exercise tube
LS- Lateral stepper
R- Red
D- Dark Blue
C- Cuff
etc

We just received this shipment into our warehouse and we needed to re-sort the boxes and reship them to the customer.


Needless to say, after looking at the boxes Im amazed that cutoms allowed boxes marked, "XTC" and "LSD" into the country

CalvinBall wrote:2 years ago I went to 5 weddings in 4 months. i was in 2 of them. another was about a 6 hour drive away. i dont think i got gifts for any of them. i was poor and would struggle to pay rent if i bought gifts. i still feel really guilty about it.

Fuck that. If they're really your friends, they understood and didn't care.

Grotewold wrote:

CalvinBall wrote:2 years ago I went to 5 weddings in 4 months. i was in 2 of them. another was about a 6 hour drive away. i dont think i got gifts for any of them. i was poor and would struggle to pay rent if i bought gifts. i still feel really guilty about it.

$#@! that. If they're really your friends, they understood and didn't care.

I agree with Grotewald, in the case of real financial hardship. One of the guys who didn't bring a gift to my wedding was a compulsive video game player and bought pretty much everything he wanted PlayStation-wise, and lived in a kind of self-inflicted poverty as a result.

the weddings i was in i figured forking over a bunch of money for the bachelor parties was enough. for one of them we took the guy to boston for goodness sakes.

the one far away was in west/central virginia so i figured my presence there was gift enough especially it was on a sunday and the day right before i was at/in another wedding.

anyone have cheapskate friends going with the friday weddings?

Woody wrote:anyone have cheapskate friends going with the friday weddings?

If you have a Friday wedding you've officially waived any right to bitch about people who aren't able to attend.

I ran into that with a friend who had a Friday wedding, in Chicago, during my first week at my current job last year. I got a severe guilt trip.

Calvin, son, you're the one who said you felt guilty. Not me.

Second, what I would have liked to see, and Woodrow missed this, is that you should have communicated some of this to them. "Geez, I would love to be in your wedding, but my finances are a little tight". It gets you in the wedding but out of buying a present.

Third, you have a year to get a present, send them a vase from their registry 6 months later.