Couple leaves narky father-in-law shocked with their hilarious response after he calls them 'wasteful'

At least once in our lifetime, we have all heard old people finding fault with the younger generation and bragging about how their generation was better. This sign of old age often leaves people who are at the receiving end of the criticism irritated. But this couple handled the prickling of their family member in a witty yet inoffensive way. u/PickledCarrot19 posted on Reddit explaining the "low stakes" petty revenge she and her husband pulled on her 67-year-old father-in-law (FIL) and people find it amusing.

The woman said that her FIL wasn't always grumpy but has turned sour over the years and wrote, "He is always complaining about something constantly going on right-wing political tangents, always inserting his opinion even if he isn’t involved in the conversation and constantly whining that my husband and I never make time for him despite having him over for dinner every other week." She always handles his sourness like handling a child, saying, "Wow, what an interesting thing to say," and moving on. Recently, as the couple was reorganizing their kitchen, they found many unnecessary mugs and set them aside to donate later. The father-in-law, who visited them for a Christmas celebration, noticed these mugs and pointed out how wasteful the couple was.

"He immediately started rambling on about how we use something for 30 seconds and then throw it away, how his generation would always use an item until it fell apart and then they would mend the item and keep on using it. He finished it off by saying someone his age would never consider discarding perfectly good items like that," mentioned the woman. A few days later, the couple met with the patriarch at another celebration where they exchanged Christmas gifts. To the father-in-law's wonder, he received a box of those 17 used coffee mugs as a gift from the couple.

The woman's husband pointed out to his father, "You were so vocal about how we shouldn’t get rid of perfectly good mugs, so we decided to gift them to you since you clearly wanted them." When the old man said that he didn't need so many mugs, his son wittily replied, "I’m sure you’ll find something to do with them. Your generation is very resourceful." Having a taste of his own medicine, the old man asked the couple multiple times to take back the mugs, but the woman simply told him, "It would be wasteful for us to take them back. Thank you so much for saving the perfectly good mugs!"

People cheered on the couple's clever comeback to the condescending father-in-law. u/RealUltimatePapo commented, "You are what you put out into the universe. Maybe this will teach him not to be such a 'mug.'" Sharing another similar story, u/Lone_Buck wrote, "We did a more lighthearted gift for my dad one year. There was a day he kept leaving his tape measure in places he forgot, going back and forth between the upstairs, the basement, and the garage. We weren’t there for it, but my mom was lightheartedly roasting him at a gathering for how grumpy it had made him. Every gift he got at Christmas included a tape measure." u/BAT123456789 joked, "Wait for the long game revenge. He's going to buy 20 more and leave them all to you in his will!"