Woman's ultimate revenge on 'cheap' date

Judy had a "really lovely" first date with Steve but when he made her pay for dinner not once, but twice, she took her own brutal revenge. Photo / 123RF

Judy was looking forward to her date with Steve, a handsome businessman she'd met on Tinder. They'd chatted for a while, realised they had a lot in common and made plans to meet for dinner.

"It was a really lovely dinner and I offered to pay, just to be nice, as I had a good time," Judy told news.com.au. "So, Steve said, 'Next time dinner is on me.' We organised another dinner a few days later. He ordered almost everything on the menu and all this wine and he'd said he'd be paying.

"It was like a feast, it lasted several hours. The talk was quite repetitive, the things he said on the second date were the same things he said on our first date, talking about his work and his family. He mostly spoke about himself. But it was okay, it was quite interesting."

However, when it came time to pay, Steve told Judy he'd left his wallet at home and she'd need to pay for dinner.

Once again, Steve told Judy, "The next dinner will be on me".

While Judy wasn't thrilled to be left with the bill, she realised she had no choice by to pay for their dinner again.

"He just walked off and I thought, 'Okay, I've got to pay'. I was annoyed as I'd travelled for 90 minutes to see him and dinner came to over $200. When I got home I called a friend who told me, 'He must be one of those guys who wants free dinners.'

"But I decided to give him another chance. We went out again and it was another expensive restaurant and he ordered a lot of entrees, mains and plenty of wine. It was very boring, he was saying the same things he'd already said before. When it came to pay, I was thinking, 'I hope he doesn't find a reason not to pay' and, if he did, I'd teach him a lesson."

When it came time to pay for dinner, Steve told Judy there was "something wrong" with his account and she'd have to pay. The bill was above $250 but Judy was ready to go ahead with her plan.

"I laughed and said my wallet was in my car," she said. "So I left and never returned. I did a runner! I was laughing the whole time, I've never done that in my life. I just walked out."

Ashleigh Clarke. Photo / Supplied

Actress Ashleigh Clark met "Ollie" at an actor's workshop and they stayed in touch before Ollie asked Ashleigh out for drinks.

"We had a lovely date, we really connected, we were holding hands and getting along really well. He stayed at my house and the next day he was staring at me in bed and said, 'You're lovely Ashleigh, you're really lovely!'" Ashleigh told news.com.au.

"I thought that was a good sign. Dating is so difficult because it's often hard to tell whether or not a person is being sincere and so you look for those signs to see if that person has some kind of feeling for you. So I saw that as a good sign."

But, after a couple of attempts to organise a second date, Ashleigh realised she was being ghosted. Sadly, Ashleigh never heard from Ollie again (for the full story of Ashleigh's ghosting, listen to episode four of Ghosted).

"I thought he was a really nice guy but there's a lot to be said for modern dating. I used to ghost people myself; if I didn't feel it for a guy, I wouldn't text and if I didn't hear from him then I'd be happy not to hear from him," Ashleigh said.

"So I would ghost them, or I'd say, 'I'm still hung up on my ex,' and be a coward about it. But then one day a guy called me out and said, 'That's not okay.' So now I realise it's better to be honest. I don't ghost people anymore."

Ashleigh has her own "antidote" to ghosting which is something she wishes everybody would adopt as normal dating etiquette.

"My antidote to ghosting is to say, 'It was lovely meeting you, but I didn't feel a spark'," she said. "And I wish them the best of luck on their dating journey. The men I've said that to have thanked me and also wished me good luck. Ghosting is cowardly, it's got to change."