What does it mean to be "cheap"?

Today, I have a request for you. List for me, in the comments, some of the behaviors you categorize as cheap rather than frugal.

(And here I mean “cheap” with all of its negative connotations. We’re in the neighborhood of things like “miserly”, “skinflint”, and “scrooge”, ok?)

My theory has long been that when you exercise extreme frugality in ways that only affect you, it’s fine, but when you start negatively affecting others, then you’re veering into cheap territory.

I wrote about this in some greater detail in 2022 (Am I frugal or just ridiculous?), but some examples:

If you use a raggedy bath towel for yourself, fine. If you make your guests use a towel with holes in it, that’s cheap.

If you get a free unopened bottle of ketchup from your Buy Nothing group, fine. If you take 32 packets of ketchup from the cafeteria, that’s cheap (your excess use affects the cafeteria, not just you).

If you serve yourself beans, fine. If you serve beans to someone who hates them, that’s cheap. Get some chicken, and eat beans some other time.

Basically, if you are selfish and inconsiderate in the ways you spend money, then you’re being cheap.

But now that I’m thinking about it, I suppose there are other ways to be cheap. For instance, if you save money by staying in a beach hotel that is a dump, that might be cheap, whereas if you find a discount off-season in a nicer hotel, that would fall into the “frugal” category.

Or, let’s say you took free food intended for hungry people, even though you are not anywhere near going hungry. That seems cheap to me, and it also seems to fall under the “selfish and inconsiderate” umbrella.

Help me come up with a working definition!

I want to hear all of the things you think of as cheap behaviors, and then we can figure out how we define cheap vs. frugal. I do think my “Who does this affect?” theory at least partially explains it, but it feels incomplete.

So, tell me: what money-saving behaviors have you observed as cheap, not frugal?

P.S. In this context, we are only considering instances where money-saving is a choice. In other words, this is not a discussion of poverty, because in such cases, there is little choice involved.