I’m not saying that you’re lying, but I seriously can’t imagine it barring rent control or HUD.
Comfortable involves air conditioning, cable tv, high speed internet, a car, and 40$ a week for entertainment not including food, at least to me. Anything below that is ‘getting by.’
And I’m usually eating maguro or spicy tuna rolls. Previously frozen sushi, when it comes to anything that’s not cooked or isn’t vegetarian, tastes like shit. I’ve been known to drop 300$ for two people at a sushi bar and not think that was expensive.
It definitely depends on what you order. Goin for the Breakfast Smile with coffee or water can get you out for under 10$ including tip.
Neither was rude. But it sounds like everyone had the same objectives with different requirements.
Their first objective was to have dinner. Their second objective was to spend time with you.
Your first objective was to have dinner. Your second object was to spend time with them.
Had your first objective been to spend time with them, you would have said “sure” then ordered off the appitizer menu and stuck to water. Had their first objective been to spend time with you they would have said “well, we’ll eat at Greasy Spoon.” Since neither of these things happened, I can only assume spending time with each other was no ones primary objective.
Next time, get together with these friends to watch a movie at someone’s house. Or take a walk. Or have a picnic in the park (bring your own).
To your last question, we almost always pick up the check. Sometimes we say so in the invite (“we haven’t seen you guys for a while, want to go out for dinner, we are buying!”), sometimes we spring it on folks when we see the look of dismay as they review the menu. Occationally, we don’t catch the dismay until the check comes and we just grab it. With some friends, we never volunteer until the end because we don’t want to pay for their expensive bar tab, but if they think they are paying, we will pick up the tab at the end (with a reasonable or non-existant bar tab).
I live in a small country town, so prices are pretty cheap compared to the rest of town.
I just had a couple of friends come 90 miles to visit and we went for the special half-price offer pub lunch: £5 ($9.33) for two courses.
By the time we had a starter and a couple of drinks each, the bill came to £12 each ($22.40).
Well you have to consider that for many people a convention is considered a time to splurge and have some fun. I’ve never been, but I’d think this would be especially true at a leisure oriented event, as opposed to a business convention. I would be surprised if at the average con of this type you don’t run into lots of folks who not only want to dine expensively, but barhop afterwards.
So true. I don’t know what kind of conference this was, but most of the ones I go to are boring. The evening is when you can let loose. I consider myself to be a cheap date, but I don’t think I would have been thrilled with Steak n Shake after a long boring-ass day at a long boring-ass conference. (Although the frisco melts are scrumptious!)
I don’t think $10-$15 is that expensive. I think you sacrificed fun when you didn’t have to. Sure, the gang could have decided on a cheaper place, but cheaper places don’t offer the diversity of entrees that more expensive places do. You might have had your taste buds set on a greasy gyro, but maybe other folks wanted pasta or steak or grilled portabello mushrooms. It’s hard enough settling on a place when everyone is willing to splurge. Maybe they felt that $10-15 was the best they could do while keeping most people happy.
I think you missed an opportunity to adapt. You could have ordered (discreetely) from the appertizer menu. Or you could have ponied up $10 (again ten bucks doesn’t seem like much to spend on a night out with friends) and skimped somewhere else later in the week. It would have been nice if your friends had offered to throw some bucks your way, but maybe they didn’t want to embarrass you. Don’t kick yourself over it, though. You live and you learn.
When I first read this, I thought, “Wow! Isn’t that a classy move of the OP, simply admitting she had erred, and acknowledging the benefit of receiving others’ opnions here.” At the same time I thought how nice it was for folks to help each other figure out what can be difficult social situations. Wouldn’t it be nice if more threads followed such a course?
But I’m a little unclear why, after the OP acknowledged her error and deferred to the prevailing opinion of the other Dopers, folk feel the urge to check in and essentially say, “I also think you were wrong.”
Just don’t really see the purpose, and impresses me as a tad mean.
As for you, you could have eaten something cheap beforehand and gone and just gotten a drink or water at the restaurant. Or you could have gotten a side salad or soup. Also, it’s not clear that you were specific about how much you could afford. Like many said, it would be a common assumption that $10-$15 is “cheap.”
On the other hand, they were dicks for not offering to chip in for you, or changing the restaurant to meet your needs.
I agree that they were are pushing the lower end of what is commonly acceptable for a friendly night out. Any lower and they would be getting into the territory of eating saltines and sardines under a bridge. I am a little shocked that someone would think $10 - $15 per meal is extravagant in any way. I didn’t think that back in 1989 when I was in high school making $3.35 an hour. I don’t see how the friends could have known either. Judging by the selection, I am sure that they were in fact trying to make it affordable.
My only concern was this. If the OP went to a con (which I am imagining as a convention, like for comic books, sci-fi, or some kind of collecting or hobbyism or fandom crowd), she no doubt had to drop some dough on admission, and said she had a budget for other things (buying stuff). I’m a collector who attends two comic and toy conventions a year, and those things can be pricey, that’s for sure. I usually try to go cheap on lunch and accomodations, especially if I have to travel out of town. Sometimes I get annoyed if friends I’m meeting suggest extravagant lunches or dinners, but I’m usually so happy to see them (especially in a convention atmosphere), I begrudgingly pay for the restaurant experiences and end up enjoying myself anyway.
Not mean, but more like WTF? The OP asked for opinions and then came back into the thread to declare how she couldn’t believe how anyone could spend $15 on dinner. The OP admitted that having someone treat her to a meal was out of the question:
So, the OP missed out on an opportunity to spend time with her friends because he/she is either too broke or to cheap to spend $10 on a meal (including tip? Come on!) and refuses to have the friends either chip in or treat. Heck, order a drink and eat later, if it’s that big of a deal. Sounds to me like the OP wanted the friends to acquiesce and got pissy when they wouldn’t.
I would’ve ditched the OP, too, if she was so unreasonable as to not buck up, have a saltine and spend $10 fricking dollars for a good time out with friends or graciously accept an invitation to enjoy dinner on me.
Being angry at folks for insisting on eating at a reasonable place over “spending time with you” is more a bit misplaced. For many people eating, especially eating out with friends, is something to look forward to, not to get out of the way.
Count me in as another person (from NYC, admittedly) who is flabbergasted that a $10-15 meal is “tony” in anybody’s book. Less than $10 is fast food (even a McDonald’s meal is about close to $6 after tax), and we’re talking about a sit-down meal and leaving a normal 15-plus percent tip, right? Unless you’re ordering nothing but dessert and coffee, how are you getting out for under $10?
Even if you go to a bare minimum “going out to eat” place like Applebee’s or your typical roadside diner, we’re talking $7.99 entrees not including a soda… And assuming “going out with friends” means you’re either sharing appetizers or getting dessert afterwards, or at least getting a beer instead of a Coke, $15 seems like a minimum expected cost. $20 is the “yuppie food coupon” as a friend of mine used to call it (back in our early 20s).
It seems to me that if “food is just fuel” to you and that “over $10 is extravagant”, that you should have just arranged to meet them after dinner or scarfed a sandwich or something and hung out with them just ordering some chicken wings or dessert or something. Or let them pay for your food. Split between several people it wouldn’t be much of an imposition.
Or, insisted on going somewhere casual and more hangy-out, like a pizzeria. Few people would object to pizza and pitchers of beer at a 'con. (From the gaming-type conventions I’ve been to, this would actually have been the norm.) I bet the per-head cost would run to $10 at a max for that.
Ergh, 5$ would mean McD or BK only, pretty much, wouldn’t it?
I imagine they never realized you couldn’t pay 15$.
The hen’s night for a high school friend mixed two very separate groups: the girls she’d known before high school, all of whom were still working on their GEDs (working is an euphemism here), all of whom had tons of relatives in town who gave them pocket money whenever they saw them; the girls from high school, whose families had higher incomes but also daughters in college (us) and who had very little money on hand.
The “other” girls asked for huge dinners, much bigger than what’s normal for Spain. They all chose the most expensive main dish (lobster) and a minimum of three dishes. “We” chose one dish each, generally in the lowest half of the price range. When it was time to pay, our common friend left - this was expected, since normally the friends cover the hen’s part. “We” agreed to split her part but completely refused to pay for the other girls’ half-eaten lobsters; each his part except for the bride.
Talking with one of them a few weeks later, I showed her my bank’s account “book” and she was shocked - she’d received a million pesetas (about 6K euro when the trade-in took place, only this was 25 years prior) on the day she’d turned 18; some others had received more. I had to explain that 1M was my living expenses for one year in college, including books, room, boarding and transportation but not tuition; same for all the other “rich” college girls. So our parents had been saving more, yes, but it was being spent on college. She got redder than the wall behind her; they’d thought we were just being snotty misers.
As it happens, I was at the same con as davenport avenger and even ran into her there. About the only places to eat nearby for less than $10 were Burger King, Steak’N’Shake, and the food court of a nearby mall. The way the con is scheduled, lunch is out because there’s a ton of interesting stuff going on at midday, but almost nothing going on between about 6:00 and 8:00 pm. Indeed, on the Saturday of the con, the schedule itself read something like “Dinner. Go and get yourself something to eat” for 7:00 to 8:00 pm.
I think what I would have done in her situation is go along and try to find something on the menu that would fit my budget, maybe an appetizer or dessert. I’ve been on a tight budget, and it can smart a bit sometimes, especially when friends don’t seem to understand how tight money really is.
Oh, and davenport avenger, if you go next year and you’re interested, dinner can be on me.
To offer a solution should the situation arise again: Order down. Very simple. You have a salad and a bowl of soup and tell everyone you’re on a diet. Works for me.
Seems a lot has been covered already but that has never stopped me from adding my two cents before.
Regardless of how much the meal was, when you made it clear that it was not within your budget (which you claim you did), it was extremely rude of your friends not to choose another place where you would be more comfortable. It is only dinner after all.
I wouldn’t count them as good friends and I would feel just as slighted. At that point they had two options, pick another place or offer to pick up the tab. They choose the third inappropriate path of going without you. I would be hurt and angry too.
Um, no. The friends only had one choice since the OP has posted that she would not have accepted if they had “offered to pick up the tab.” Since they are her friends, they know this about her, just as they know about her being cheap/broke.
So, a group of people has to change their plans to accomodate one person because she is too stubborn to pay $10 for dinner. If I were her friends, I would have felt insulted that she wouldn’t pay a lousy $5 more to spend time with me and enjoy a night out with friends. The OP was the rude one.
If she’d gone to dinner, two weeks from now she wouldn’t even remember the extra $3 she’d spent on dinner. Now she gets to remember not going to dinner with her friends for the rest of her life.
I notice you explicitly state that you’re willing to pay extra $$$ for sushi, but nothing else. So paying the extra $9 isn’t a matter of economic reality, it’s a matter of priorities. (And seriously, if you’re so flat broke that you can’t afford $9 to spend time with friends, you’re not managing your money properly.)
$10-15 per plate IS dirt cheap. (Full disclosure: Yes, I’m from California. But food prices are pretty much the same everywhere.) In fact, it seems like your friends were compromising on their own, willing to spend less money than they’d normally spend, and felt a bit slighted when you refused to match them. As for not covering your tab…why should they? Unless you’re sick and/or unemployed, there’s no reason for them to do that. (For cripes sake, it’s only nine bucks!)
It does sound like there’s a lot more to the story than you’ve told us – did you suggest going out for sushi instead? Are they aware of economic situation? How often do they visit, and how often does this penny-pinching topic come up? Not to pass judgment, but maybe they’re just tired of dealing with your cheapskate attitude and didn’t want to spoil the rest of the evening.
Well, I’m sure I can get some bills together before then. [insert smile emoticon here] Sorry I didn’t see you after I came back but I didn’t go to the play, I wanted to be somewhere quiet so I went to a reading instead. I’d still be up for getting dinner another time, maybe with other Dopers, although now I am busy every weekend so weekdays might not work for others.
How did Gavin enjoy the last day of the con?
Don’t worry, I think about everything for the rest of my life.
It’s true, I’m a shithead. I’m an obsessive cheapskate who can’t make a decision, will regret every decision I make, and yeah, probably would obsess over an extra $9 because I obsess over everything and have to justify every decision through a million channels, and by that time, dinner is over. For that, I deserve to be roundly spat on. You should be glad you don’t know me! I’ll make your life hell.
(Actually, that last paragraph is completely true, if sarcastic. I am a cheapskate. And it makes my life hell. I have to stop posting personal threads now, don’t I?)