Eating out with a group..... and paying your share

In My Humble Opinion
61

We usually split the bill evenly between the number of diners but we are also quite selective over who we will do this with! In the past, we’ve been out with a group of friends who normally order the same sort of things and most of us drink so we would either include beers or share a bottle of wine - that makes it easy to split the bill equally between us with nobody feeling hard done by.

In other cases with bigger groups, we have each thrown in what we reckon to be our share based on what we’ve ordered, and invariably we end up with too much money even including the tip.

62

As a non-drinker, I found myself occasionally getting internally prickly when a bill involving rounds of alcoholic beverages was split “evenly.” My standard practice now is to ask up front for a separate bill, implying that I don’t have much cash and want to use a credit card for my portion of the bill. I’ve never noticed anyone getting prickly about that - but maybe they are hiding it, just as I did when asked to split a grossly uneven bill to subsidize drinking…

63

We split the check with most couples we go out with. We order similer items, taste each others food and beer and it is just easier to split the whole thing at the end.

That didn’t work with one couple, old friends in fact. They ordered way more food than we would ever eat with top-end drinks, desserts and extras to take home. Then they tried to make us feel like pedantic assholes for doing the simple math at the end. Basically, they were willing to sell our friendship for the 20 or 30 dollars this ploy saved them. We paid half, left the meal pissed off and swore to never eat out with them again.

64

I think it all depends on who you are and where you come from. From my point of view, you should pay for all their meals IF you invited them to eat out with you guys, otherwise whoever made the invite should pay the bills

65

My rule is: If out with friends and the number of kids are the same for each family, divide by number of families. It all evens out & to me because “friends” means a lot. You had Dom we had bottled water? Maybe next time we’ll have Dom. It all works.

Now, if you are in a group of people and its like a business lunch / obligation get together with just me? If I ate $20 worth, I’ll drop $30 in the center pile, make sure I’m not the last guy at the table & let the rest slug it out.
I know I tipped & I know some people treat tipping like flu (and will pick your pocket & laugh about it later). They can go grift somebody else.

Its also why I don’t do the "We’re taking up a collection $10 each for fill in the blanks Dead-cats-uncles-funeral. Right, so 20 people kick $10 for a Hallmark with $50 in it and a $10 sheet-cake and on a weekly basis?
Bite me, grifter-chic. You can go steal yourself a raise off of somebody else.

66

As the former “grifter chic:”

a) It wasn’t my idea. I was asked to circulate the card, and collect money for the (retirement/baby/wedding) gift from my boss.

b) It rankles you to be asked to contribute? Imagine how I felt? It was my favorite job! Besides having people believe I was harassing them every other week, I now know that some people actually believed I was PROFITING from this.

c) You admit to not contributing, yet you believe every other person does! Imagine if participation rate was more like 15%? Because that was what it was in my department. Oh, and it was the same 3 people who donated every single time. (Usually the lowest paid employees, BTW.)

d) Even when I just circulated a card, guess who paid for the card out of her own pocket? Guess how much those cards that are big enough for everyone’s signatures are? $5!

e) I NEVER came out ahead. In addition to the people who’d cheerfully sign a card and not even reimburse me a quarter for the damn card, you’d be surprised at the number of people who’d commit to contributing, either verbally or via email, then never actually hand me the money. Leaving me to cough up the difference myself!

f) In fact, I frequently lost money. Just last fall, one of the AD’s father died. I was asked by his boss to circulate a card and ask for donations to send flowers. I collected $20, and $10 of that was from the boss. Can you imagine how embarrassing it would have been to call a florist and ask for a $10 bouquet of flowers to be sent from the group…because delivery itself is $10. So I ordered the $25 bouquet. All in all, I was personally out $20 because I had to cover the difference, plus pony up for the card that magically appeared on people’s desks.

So you can take my imaginary raise and shove it where the sun don’t shine, Mr. Stingy Co-worker

67

Yep IIRC it was the guy who plays Bob on That 70’s Show.

I vote for separate checks, much simpler that way and everyone is treated fairly.

68

Which puts a guilt trip on good friends that just cannot afford to foot the bill in that fashion, and thus decline to participate in such outings after a while.

69

a) Where I worked, the boss expensed Department expenses to the Department, if it was his idea (it never was). (Some places paid him/her a bonus to cover
extra team things like that; I know because the job was one I was up for before I left that company. Not sure where that fund went; never saw it used for us.) Where I’ve worked, it was always the same
four people milling and arm twisting from one end of the floor to the other, up and down the aisles like debt-collectors.

b) It rankled me that after saying “no, I don’t participate, thank you” to three employees straight, the fourth would
come on by, arms folded, for the “hard-sell”. Everybody else in every row just tossed out money to be rid them so they wouldn’t be cornered and have to spend time away
from what they were payed to do. Four Times every time a distant relative from 20 states away passed on, gave birth, or did both (possibly in an order that would boggle even AMC’s “Walking Dead”).

c) Admit to it? Some days it seemed like I was the only person who stood up to the “cake mafia” and said, “No sorry, I don’t do that, I don’t participate in that. Thanks anyway!”

d) I’ve Never signed a card I’ve never paid for and no I didn’t eat your cake. If the person was someone close to me, I got them a card from me to them. If your Boss is making you pay for something company-based
and is not paying you back, then shame on them (and shame on you for going along with it).

e) They ALWAYS came out ahead by me; sometimes there was no money in the card at all and many was the time I actually overheard parts of laughing conversational statements like,

waves fist full of Tens
gleeful-squeal
“Look who can go *sho-*pping…!” :dubious:
[James Bond]“…That’s one Hell of a send-off…”[/James Bond]

One ex-coworker even admitted once that when her budget came up short she did it for extra cash.
“My kid’s Dad took half my rent money last May for his new girlfriend.”
“Thats horrible. How did you get through…?”
“Don’t you remember how many uncles, aunts, and cousins died that summer?” snicker
She laughed harder when she saw I didn’t laugh.

f) Sorry YOU lost money; lots of other people seemed to make out just fine where I worked.

As for the rest? Tell Lefty I don’t play “the numbers”, want drugs, or gamble on super-bowl boxes either. :dubious:

70

This thread really illustrates what a minefield this can be. Imagine if everyone posting here (or a representative sample) went out to eat together. Either half the people would feel the other half were being uptight pains in the ass, spoiling the casual dinner-with-friends vibe, or half would feel they were getting screwed by a bunch of people too lazy, greedy, or bad at math to handle doing the check properly.

I am good at mental calculations (probably like a higher than typical proportion of people here, accounting for the poll results) and my instinct is toward “fair share” which is what my knee-jerk answer was to the poll. But with further consideration, I think in the social reality we actually have to live in, this is a good way to make yourself be seen as too uptight and stingy. So after mulling it and reading all the responses, I think the best advice was this:

Yup. Think of your dinner outing as sort of like a two hour vacation shared with friends. If you know your friends like to go to expensive resorts, are you going to stay in the motel two miles down the beach and try to meet up with them during the day, as long as they don’t want to do the expensive snorkelling trip? No, you either decide they run too rich for you and stop hanging out with them, or you go with what the majority is into. So bump up the priciness of your selections at dinner, and if you don’t drink alcohol, bump them up even more.

Ha, pretty sneaky. Has anyone ever “caught” you doing this? I mean, you can argue you’re not doing anything wrong; but if your dinner was cheaper than the average at the table, then you are actually charging the others with below-average tabs more than they would pay if you participated in the per-person sharing.

71

So the best suggestion, in your eyes, is, “Well eat more then! That’ll even it all out!” How very American!

I think the solution is for everyone to mind their own business. By which I mean, do as you feel and let others do the same - without judgement.

If you only want to pay for yours, then arrange that, privately with the server when you arrive. No need to announce it to the group, make excuses, or offer explanations. At the same time, be adult enough to own and be comfortable with yourself sufficiently so as not to feel judged by your mates. It’s all in your imagination anyway. They’ll be over it as soon as you are right with it. If you feel cruddy doing so, then own that it’s your issue and grow up.

If you’re happy to just kick in and split it, then do so, with a smile on your face and a sufficient tip! And resist judging others for choosing to go a different way.

Other peoples choices are not an indictment of yours, stop taking it personally!

Look at that! Now everybody’s happy! Awesome!

72

This “how very American” jibe is so very tiresome–and I was not even born in the U.S.! I somehow doubt it would be seen as acceptable to say “how very ______” about any other nationality, as an insult.

I never said anything about eating more, only about eating something more expensive. Personally, I no longer drink alcohol, do not eat bread or anything made with added sugar, nor do I consume any meat other than fish, if you count that as meat. At such an outing, I’d almost surely be consuming fewer calories than anyone else at the table. But I’m sure I could manage to find a sockeye salmon dish or something along those lines to get my money’s worth, if I had enough money to eat at restaurants to begin with.

73

:dubious:

He was talking about financial expectations. Of course, if everyone could manage their finances in a reasonable way, we’d solve a lot more problems than dinner out.

Alas, it’s not to be. Look at how many people confess to not being good enough at math or assertive enough as adults to get this done.