The only time I see it as normal to have one person order for the rest of the table is when it’s a largish group, so giving the compact list to the waiter is faster and easier for everybody involved.
We’ve had many laughs about the problems my family poses to waiters who give the check to one person instead of leaving it on the table. When a bro is there, they usually hand it to the bro while we all grin on (and many times the bro just hands it, unopened, to the person whose turn it’s to pay); when it’s Mom and me… to the matron, or to the one who will most likely still have a paying job?
Ah, one of the oldest dating ploys in the book—I know it well. She is obviously challenging you to be assertive and order the meal for her, and not necessarily the one she “claims” to want. If you want to score some points (and perhaps something else), place your order with the waiter first, then, as your date opens her mouth to place her order, interrupt by saying, “little Missy here would like the Pickled Tripe, corn on the cob slathered in butter, succotash soufflé and two Harvey Wallbangers, each with a vodka chaser.” She will be serving you breakfast in bed the following morning.
AHunter3, I totally respect your preference to always to split the bill, and if that works for you then stick with it. I know a lot of women who agree with you (who also live in NY, btw). But a lot of people follow a different perspective. In particular:
If we’re talking about a romantic date, then I would replace “uncharitable, miserly, etc.” with “rude”. From my perspective, if a guy asks a lady out, and selects the restaurant (which could be his favorite burger joint), then he should expect to cover the check. Likewise, if the girl asks, then she expect to cover it. This (again, IMHO) is a good way to show someone that you enjoyed the pleasure of you company, and the gift of a dinner can be appreciated, and even reciprocated later (and I don’t mean with sex). Such an attitude does not *necessarily * make one a tramp, or immature, although it would certainly fail your screening.
I have to admit, though, my “I hope he doesn’t think I’m impressed because there’s lob$ter on the menu” was a litte snippy. But this would usually mean that he’d already done something showy**. You might not think that could happen in the first 10 mintues, but it can.
**Perfect example: Talking on and on about the place serves <exotic dish no one outside of Western Eritrea has ever heard of>.
Most dinner dates I’ve been on, we talk about what we want, and if she looks expectantly at me when the waiter asks for her order, I will order for her. If not, she will order for herself, no big deal.
As far as price goes, if I take a first date to a restaurant, I am fully expecting the lady to order whatever she wants, and prepared to pay for it. We might not go to the most expensive place in town, but I would be puzzled if a date said “Does this cost too much?” As soon as we are seated/get a menu, I say “Order whatever you like.” I feel I would look like a cad/moron if I said “Uh sorry, don’t order the lobster, get the chicken.” I wouldn’t go somewhere I thought the price was beyond my means.
Now, before the date, if she insisted on the $300 place and I could only afford the $50 place, that might not bode well for a prospective relationship anyway. I just would feel really strange going dutch on a first date. Now if she insisted on treating me, I probably wouldn’t have a problem with that.
I know I’m old fashioned, but I expect to and am happy to pay for everything on a first date.
Hell, I still feel like I should pay for every date at the beginning.
It would be my estimation that she’s thinking out loud for any number of reasons, but mostly because you’re on the other side of the table being too damned quiet and she wants some connection with you. So she says what she’s considering for her order, hoping you’ll let her in on your own thought process, however trivial: “Oh, I had that once, it was good,” or “I can’t eat that, the mushrooms make me fart,” or “That sounds good, how’s it done?”
Her message could even be as simple as, “I’m announcing what kind of food I like to eat, in the hopes that you show the tiniest bit of interest in the kind of woman I am.” You may be quizzed later on her dinner choices — believe me, she’s most likely going to remember what you ordered. She’ll recall it ten years later: “Remember that time we went to that restaurant on our first romantic date and you had the exotic dish from Western Eritrea?”
I’d expect the person who gave the compact list to the waiter on behalf of a large group would then also be the person who received the check, and I’m not sure what you’re laughing about. I hope you’re not laughing at the waiter for making him guess who’s turn it is to pay.
I agree with you 100%. To be honest I read Ahunter’s post and thought “Well, he and I are never going to date.” not that it was really in the cards anyway. I mean, if I call someone up and say “I would like to take you out to dinner.” I’m sort of expecting to take them out to dinner, ya know? I suppose it’s nice to be equitable and stuff, but it makes me wonder - if the relationship progresses do you start tallying up the cost of items used when staying over at the others house? How about gas - do you give gas money if person A drives more than person B? It just seems very…cheap and I abhor cheap, so that’s that.
I’m a dude, but I would say not a hint. I go to lunch with the guys from work every day and once we get there people open the men and start discussion what they think they are having. If someone doesn’t chime in, usually someone else will ask him what he is thinking.
For a first or second date – early dates – my expectation is that the person who does the asking pays. The way to handle the cost issue is, if he expects you to pick the restaurant, pick someplace not too expensive. Regardless of who picks the place, then pick an entree from “the middle of the menu.” Not the surf and turf, but not “I’ll have a cup of soup and a glass of icewater, please.”
In a relationship, repeated dating, whatever, my general expectation is that costs will be handled as they are handled with my girlfriends – casually taking turns paying, maybe forgetting whose turn it is, but assuming it will all come out even in the end.
I would not want a guy who insisted on paying for everything all the time. But OTOH, I also would not want a guy who kept careful track of who spent what, moneywise, in the relationship. That’s a huge red flag to me; he’s too interested in keeping score. And keeping score is IMO a bad thing in a relationship on many levels, not just when it comes to money.
If the lady was of the generation where gentlemen routinely ordered for ladies, then it may be a hint. If she’s under, say 50, I’d say no. Of course, if you want to be entirely sure it wasn’t a hint, you could always ask her either directly or indirectly. Communication is a good thing.
There are also those who feel strongly that two people should not order the same thing. It has a certain logic, maybe you get to try the baby bald eagle and the Kobe beef. But on the other hand if you both really want the same thing, why not get what you want? Still, there are those who just feel unnatural with two orders of chicken and wild rice.
I think that [n]Nava** is laughing at the fact that the waiter always assumes that the person who pays will be:
(a) a man
or
(b) the oldest person at the table.
Waiters shouldn’t make assumptions like this.
When i worked as a waiter, if a particular person asked for the check, i would be sure to give it to him or her; if no particular person did, i placed it in a neutral part of the table, where it could be reached easily by whomever happened to be paying.
I should add, also, that nothing pisses a waiter off more than making him or her the rope in the tug-of-war over who pays the check.
Every waiter has had this situation at least once. You arrive at the table at the end of the meal, and there’s two or three big shots, each of whom wants to pay the check (or at, least, wants to be seen trying to pay the check). They then get into a battle for it, with the waiter in the middle.
BigShot1: “Waiter, bring that check here.”
BigShot2: “Waiter, don’t you dare. I said that i was paying for this.”
BigShot3: “You paid last time; it’s my turn. Waiter, hand it over.”
And so on.
My strategy in this situation varied. Sometimes i would make light of it, and hand the check to a neutral party, telling them to oversee the dispute.
Other times, i dropped it on the table and left.
And occasionally, when it was clear that one person really wanted to pay the check and the other person didn’t but was arguing just to be polite, i’d give it to the former, because the odds were that the person who really wanted to pay would leave a better tip.
But in every case i just wanted to club them all with the candelabra.
Maybe. As a frequent restaurant goer, I’ve seen two things at adjoining tables that never cease to boggle my mind. One is women who snottily say to their male partners, “tell her I want blah, blah, blah” when the waitress is standing right there and has already questioned the woman as to what she wants. The other is a man who told the waitress to speak only to him, after the waitress had spoken to his partner (only saw this once). How fucking rude.
Did I miss a point in the setup where it was established that the male person has indeed done the asking?
If I’ve got time to hang out after work and call my buddy, “What’s up, wanna hang out and get some beers & chow before heading home?”, it doesn’t matter which of us suggest it, both credit cards are going down on the bill. I see no advantage to a policy of “You asked, you have to pick up the tab”. Seems like a disincentive to making the invitation.
I have no illusions that I’m every female’s McDreamy
I do tend to have an affinity for women whose first response to the word “romance” is “WARNING DANGER DANGER GIANT BATCH OF GENDER-SPECIFIC SEX ROLES WITH CANDY COATING”. For them, I may be McDreamy. Regarding the things that are major concerns for them, I am already so there and we don’t have to thrash it all out. (It may take a little while before we both become aware of that but it’s still nice)
Be careful, though. If you’re nervous, you might accidentally blurt out, “Hey, we’re both adults. Get whatever you want. Wanna go back to my place and have sex for $29.95?”
Well, great, like I said, I know that lots of women appreciate your attitude. But lots of stable, independent women (and men) still abide by “old fashioned” etiquette, in varying degress. My point is that you can at least tolerate this attitude, even if you don’t practice it yourself. Like OP said, different strokes.
