I agree…I find that after my friends and I count up the money everyone threw in for their meals, we find WAY more money than it takes to cover the bill with a dcent tip yet everyone insists they paid only their share and aren’t due any change.
The U.S. is complicated by weird taboos on discussing money (and yet a fascination with discussing money), computer systems that have to ring your bill a certain way, tipping policies that discourage separate checks (parties bigger than six or eight will sometimes get the tip auto-added by the computer - generally a good deal for the waiter who doesn’t need to worry about getting undertipped or stiffed), people who never carry cash, etc.
The taboo means you aren’t always clear up front about how this is going to work in the end. It would be best if - sometime before getting to the restaurant - it was agreed “separate checks” or “split the bill.” But this doesn’t always (seldom) happens and usually the decision is made IF the waiter asks “will this be one check” by whomever the waiter chooses to ask.
(And then I’m sitting there when the person says yes thinking “damn, I don’t have cash. I have to run to the ATM after I order, ask to have mine split out, or pick up the check - and offer to pay the whole thing because some of these people ALSO will not have cash on them.”)
I’ve only been to one restaurant ever that refused to split a check when asked, and that was in Milwaukee. I was pissed - it was a $300+ bill for a table of four and you can’t be bothered spending a minute or two to please a customer?
All of my friends and family ask for separate checks if we’re provided a single one. It seems to be the standard around here. The waitron will come out after the meal and say “how are we splitting these up?” and I’ll say, “those two, those two, one single check here” or what have you. The couples generally pay together, but take turns. If we’re ordering alcohol, we’ll frequently let them know up front so they can keep separate tabs.
Restaurants are in the service industry. If they can’t be arsed to keep track of what I owe, I can’t be arsed to frequent their establishment. The waitron is getting, what, 20%+ now? And they can’t be bothered to break up checks? Ridiculous. I don’t want to have to shake down my friends for change, thank you very much.
I’d say it’s 60/40 cluelessness. I have run into some cheap creeps trying to get away with stuff – Count Blucher, I’m amazed that anyone at your office ever spoke to Miss ‘I-only-put-in-5-dollars’ ever again!), but I think most of the time it’s just inattention & poor math skills.
Being out with a poor group exacerbates the problem, as Larry Mudd mentions. Back when I was young and poor and ran around with other young poor people, we were all on a budget and were trying to put down just what we needed to cover our share. Nowadays, my crowd has more money and everybody just throws down a figure they know will generously cover their share. And extra $5 or so doesn’t even register to us nowadays. So we frequently end up with the opposite problem – way more money put down than we need and having to figure out who put in too much…
Whenever possible, we just get separate bills – it’s so much easier all the way around!
Preach it! It’s ridiculous, IMO, for them to refuse to split checks. And so many places have a rule that if you have 8 or more, there’s an automatic 15% tip required, so you’re paying extra upfront for the service. In the above case ($300/table of four) I would have paid it and let the manager know that he had seen me in his restaurant for the last time.
Other points re the OP:
Life got more complicated with the advent of plastic. Used to be you had to make sure you had sufficient cash to cover your meal, which probably made ppl more careful in ordering in the first place. Now, you can put it on the plastic so you might go overboard, but you’re still covered.
And a lot of ppl are mathematically challenged, to say the least. But, if they’re conscientious people they should be asking for help and not burning their friends.
That’s a problem, too: more and more people run around with basically no cash on them, planning to use plastic for anything over ten bucks or so. Get together a party of six people with four of them no-cashers, and splitting up a check can be very awkward.
Separate checks all the way.
I used to (not so much now that I’ve moved to NC and he’s still in Chicago) eat out with a friend. If we went to some place like Portillo’s we would each just get our own food, but if we went to a sit-down-and-order restaurant we usually didn’t bother getting separate checks. Both of us prefer to charge everything to take advantage of our credit card’s cash-back bonuses, which sometimes led to a bit of good-natured jockeying over who would pay for the meal. But it generally worked out about even. And sometimes one of us would treat the other to a meal in exchange for some favor that had been done recently.
The VOTE!why wasn’t I told about this?
!!!
How is it possible that no one went up to Ms. Suzie HandNoser and said “You didn’t put in enough $$ Suzie - you owe me $10.”
Seriously - that’s not even snarky - it’s factual.
This situation is what seems to always happen at my friends or family get togethers. Everyone ends up rounding up when they throw in their share and I always end up being the one to try to figure out what to do. No one wants money back and yet, I haven’t even put in my share and I already have too much for the ticket and a 20% tip.
So yes, the waiter always ends up making out great.