For the lurve of all that is good and holy, would you please split your check!

I just got back from a late dinner (or very early breakfast, depending on your view and personal timezone), and was subjected to the most frustrating experience short of on-line dating; to wit, the dining party which fails to foresee the tedium and confusion of splitting a complex check.

In my role of sitting at the bar/counter, and in the case of this particular establishment, typically near the register, I see and hear of all sort of ass-hattedry by thoughtless customers, but tonight was a cake-taking event. A party of eight, having spent a considerable portion of the evening consuming various delictibles and beverages, proceeded to cash out. However, unable to divide up the check themselves and in any case, not having cash, they presumed upon the waitress to do their accounting chores for them and ring up each individual’s bill on separate bankcards. Being, as I am, a casual student of the grift, I sought to follow the exchange that occured in front of me and ensure that the serviton in question (one of my favorite waitresses, a lass of exceptional class and quite fun too boot) was not left short, but even my skill with arithmatic and pedantic attention to the process was insufficient to make sense of the exchange. It did seem that each individual member of the party paid some portion of the bill, but without the capability of a powerful spreadsheet application I would be unwilling to commit to the claim that all accounts were properly settled, and I have my doubts that a suitable net tip was actually rendered.

Nonetheless, the server in question, a consumate professional that shames me with her ability to maintain composure in the face of utter inanity, remained cool, ran the numbers to the best of her (self-admittedly limited) ability, and kept a charming countinence in view until the party exited the premises; and even then offered only the slightest of snickering, whereas I was ready to absorb a flood of profanities and invective in the service of mitigation of this intolerable situation. They easily squandered ten minutes of this young lady’s time without additional compensation, though to be fair I should acknowledge that they were aplogetic about the fiduciary mess they’d created in their obliviousness.

Anyway, a word of advice to all far and wide who may not be so familar with the challenges and tribulations of those in service positions: please, if you’re in a large party and are not prepared to pool your resources to pay the check in toto, indicate up front to the server that you would like to pay on separate checks. Although some restaurants inexplicably forbid this, it is in general a much easier and less confusing situation for the waitron than having to perform stupendous feats of spontaneous accounting on your behalf.

Else, if you do it in my presence, you may be subject, at the very least, to a sneer and a nasty glare, and consider yourself lucky to get away without sutures.

Stranger

Serviton? Waitron? I’ve never heard these terms before.

Please, are the complimentary or derogatory?

Can I just say, as an ex-waitress and current bartender, that it has never ceased to amaze me the way in which groups of people can all go out, buy drinks, eat at some big ol’ table because it’s SO important they hang out, have a “fabulous” time together, etc., etc…

And then, when the bill comes, when the piper must be paid, they suddenly act like perfect strangers? Like, if they pay for one-tenth of somebody else’s appetizer, it’s a federal crime? And then, if the party has any say in it, there are generally about five/six things left on the bill that nobody will claim?

I have had this happen so many times that if I ever owned a restaurant, nobody would be able to split checks. Ever. Period. You can divvy it up amongst yourselves, and pay cash and credit with whatever amount you deem necessary, but I’ll be damned if I have to spend twenty minutes splitting a check at the end of a meal, figuring out, after the fact, who had what and who didn’t. It’s bad enough at the beginning of the evening, but it’s an absolute nightmare if it isn’t mentioned til the end. It’s a massive headache, it takes valuable time away from other patrons who are wondering where their waitress is, and it’s not productive in any way I have ever been able to quantify.

Not to mention, as the OP inferred, it’s never been profitable, because everyone generally assumes that somebody else tipped, so the waiter/waitress usually ends up with the short end of the stick. After all that time-consuming drama.

Restaurants who refuse to split checks are heroes, IMHO.

Stranger -

You need to start hanging out with a better class of people and stay out of the merchant marine dives. :slight_smile:

The OP should have been longer, I like that type of writing. Really. :slight_smile:
Anyway, I’ve been involved in situations (as the customer) where the party failed to give appropriate pre-order instructions to the wait-person that the bill should be diveed up. What I always have recommended at this point is to delegate one party to pay the bill in its entirety and then the other couples can re-imberse them at their leisure. Usually the party that is delegated is the one that looses the game of odd man out, or rock-paper-scissors. Or the one that forgot to leave their wallet in the car. :cool:

And please (though I’ve been as guilty of this as anyone) if you are planning to eat at a restaurant with a group of people, please, bring cash in the form of something smaller than a twenty*. It is incredibly silly to take forever to pay your bill because you have 4 people and 4 twenty dollar bills. And the total check was for $28. As it turned out, three of us paid ten dollars apiece, one paid two or three dollars.

*I’ll make an exception if it is reasonable to think that each person will be responsible for paying twenty dollars or multiples thereof. Such as the day that about 15 members of my family went to a diner together and did not ask for separate checks. Every male over the age of 25 paid for his meal, his wife’s meal and maybe chipped in a little extra for any children they brought with them. The guy who put the whole mess on his credit card may have had to contribute more than his share- but he didn’t complain because he’d been willing to pay the whole thing.

Well, as another ex-waitress, I think people should be allowed to split their checks (when announced BEFORE ordering commences).

I don’t know why people don’t like to ask, so I always take this task upon myself. It’s easy…“Is is possible for us to have separate checks please?”

I think restaurants that don’t allow this should be allowed to dwindle out of business.

Today’s touch screen computer systems that most restaurant have make it easy to make out separate checks. Admittedly it’s harder if you don’t have that system, but no one ever said waiting tables was an easy way to make a living. A clever waitress/server/restaurantron will observe the large party and ASK if they would like separate checks, thus sparing the customers the dreaded task of requesting them, and sparing themselves splitting it up at the end.

If I’m in a party eating at a restaurant, usually it’s determined beforehand how the bill would be paid. When my brothers and sister last took the parental units to dinner, my next oldest brother and I (as the oldest and ones most able to afford it) already had agreed to pay. I think I used my card to pay for the whole thing and my brother gave me cash to make up his half, other times we’ve done that the opposite way and I gave him cash. No problem.

If we were splitting the check, we would order on separate checks.

If it came up that I was in a party that went the way the one in the OP did, I would pay the whole thing before putting the server through hell.

Neither; they’re just the gender-neutral terms used by the food service industry as a replacement for the now socially unacceptible “waitress” and “waiter”. “Server” is kind of bland, and “food slave”, while accpetible when self-applied, is kind of offensive otherwise.

They’re a hell of a lot better than the more corporatespeak “service partner”, “customer service representative”, or “client interface” (I kid you not…and you’d better be wearing your 17 pieces of flair, minimum).
And apparently I screwed up the title, because there should be appended “…before you order”, but I don’t know that this would fit anyway.

Yeah, if you want to divvy up the bill at the end of the meal, you should do your own accounting and hand the sum total including a good tip for the server who devoted her time to a large party. I remember one night, at my local Old Town haunt, the waitron came from the back room absolutely fuming. She’d spent two hours largely taking care of “one” table of a dozen or more people and they left her…a $1 tip.

No jury would convict…at least, not one comprised of people who’ve had to wait for a living and live on tips. Everybody should have the experience of having to support themselves in that type of job at least once in life.

Stranger

Ah, the twenty. The yuppie foodstamp.

I hate eating with large groups of people because of this. I rarely have cash so I have to hit up the ATM prior to meeting and dining. Inevitably, I’m going to have anywhere from one to five twenties, depending on the eating establishment. Also, if I don’t have time to go to the ATM, I usually offer to charge it and have everyone give their share of the bill to me. Unfortunately, there’s always someone else who wants to do this because they get double-extra-bonus-mileage-reward-platinum-megapoints and, of course, fisticuffs ensue.

When my lunch buddy and I go to lunch, we always split the bill in half. Sometimes she fares better; other times, I do. It works out in the end, though, and we’re not petty enoough to squabble over a few dollars here and there.

That’s an interesting cultural difference. Here everybody paying for himself is perfectly usual. It’s the default mode for any group isn’t a couple or one family. You also don’t annouce it in advance.

A restaurant refusing to split the bill afterwards would be unthinkable.
(But it would sure be fun to watch if they tried…)

Why wouldn’t the waitperson—or whatever you want to call 'em—just ask at the very beginning, “Will this be separate checks or all on one ticket?”

They do and then the group says “one check” for reasons that are not simple to fathom.

When I am hosting, I arrange with the waiter to bring me or my husband the check. This is especially helpful when dining with check grabbers like my father.

When I am with a group of cow-orkers, I just want to crawl under the table. I try to remember to bring something smaller than an twenty, but enough to cover me and someone else if need be. I really don’t care if I get change, I just want the whole process done with, to have visibly paid my share at least, and the waitron to get a decent tip.

What I hate is when I overpay, assuming the ‘over’ part is going to the waitperson and then some other knob-shine in the party counts all the money, reverse calculates their monetary obligation (much less than they would have owed if I hadn’t overpaid) and then only leaves enough for a minimum tip.
Bozos.

This is one reason I refuse to go with large groups to a restaurant.

Used to go with some theater people between shows and it drove me nuts. The bill would come and the idiots would hand me exact change, minus tax and tip, and then wonder why there wasn’t enough money to pay the bill.

Then there are the idiots who say, “oh, let’s just divide it equally”. Uh, no…you had 4 beers, an appetizer, the most expensive steak on the menu and the mile high chocolate cake. I had a salad and ice tea. I am not dividing this check equally.

However, in those instances where we asked for seperate checks, it never failed that we would get major attitude from the wait staff and 99% of the time, they refused - claiming some mythical policy against doing it.

A lot of restaurants do, in fact, have a policy against it. It’s a real pain to have so many extra checks to account for, and all of the additional change to make, and the kitchen doesn’t know which orders have to go together so they can’t time or expedite all the plates to one table, so for the rest of the operation it’s easier to insist on one check per table. But if you’re going to insist on paying only your portion of the check individually, you’re tying up the serviton and making her do your accounting for you, which is even more obnoxious, preventing her from serving other customers.

The proper thing to do is to have one person (at the table) tally up the accounts, collect payment, figure the tip, and hand it to the waitress with a request for the denominations of change (“two tens, three fives, eight ones, keep the rest”). The server knows that he or she is getting paid in full, everybody gets their appropriate change (assuming the appointed accountant is capable of basic arithmetic) and everybody goes home happy.

Oh, and regarding Uncommon Sense’s “knob-shines”; we had one of these at a place two jobs back, a real swell guy and a charmer with the ladies (obese, poor hygiene, interrupting conversation, backstabbing…you name it, he did it). He’d wait for the money to come around, take out his wallet, sort of fiddle with the cash, put his money back in the wallet and pass it on, presuming that the tip would cover his meal. The first time I saw it I couldn’t believe it; I figured I just missed him throwing in, so I mentioned it to another coworker, and the next time we both saw him do it, and tactfully called him out. That didn’t shame him enough to prevent him from doing it a third time; after that, we just didn’t invite him to lunch, and when he tried to invite himself along, pretended to forget about him when designating the rally point. I probably should have just confronted him, but since I had to work with the ass-weasel on a regular basis I didn’t want to invite even more backstabbing and resentment.

Stranger

I hate this! Perhaps even more than the cheap bastard who puts in enough to cover exactly their entree, without including tax, tip or that pitcher of beer they shared with the table.

Thankfully, I tend to eat out with people now who don’t mind just splitting the check evenly and letting any differences average out. It’s so much nicer.

My problem is the cheap-ass sister-in-law who Will. Not. Pay. a PENNY. over her portion. She nitpicks right down to…“I only had three wings, so I owe 78 cents. And I didn’t use any of the blue cheese sauce…only the ranch dressing”. I want to fucking kill her.

We’re going out in a couple weeks. I dread it. There’s a group of six of us, and she ruins it every time.

I am sure it is easier for the wait staff, but I call bullroar on the “policy”…so what if, instead of the 8 of us sitting together, we sat at four tables, or we all came in alone? It is called customer service for a reason, and I think a lot of struggling restaurants would love to have the problem of too many extra checks to account for.

Don’t mean to dump on you, Stranger, but whenever I hear this bullshit policy about having to put it all on one check, I almost feel like the staff and management deseve to get stiffed by the yokels haggling over who had the side order of fries and who ate the most of them.

Actually, it’s a more of a problem for the waitstaff, who have to split the check between eight different bank or credit cards, or figure out each component of the bill, and so forth. It’s a lot easier for the waitron to deal with separate checks up front; it’s just more a problem for the kitchen (keeping all the plates “together”) and the management, having to total up extra checks (though I can’t imagine that with a computerized ticket system it’s all that big of a deal). Many restaurants, especially the corporate chains, have all kinds of policies (probably written by accountants) that are not remotely in the interests of the customers or the servers. As a customer, you don’t generally see most of it, 'cause the server takes on the burden, but some places do in fact have such a policy, especially with large groups.

And it’s the waitstaff, not the management, that have to suck it up when they get shorted. Get stiffed on a tip or come up short because you got confused trying to break up the check while keeping up with your other tables? Tough nuts; it’s your check now.

IMHO, when you walk into a restaurant and order collectively, you are agreeing as a party to pay the tab and deal with the distribution within your group. If you want separate bills, ask up front (and even if it’s against policy, the serviton might just do it anyway, or at least she’ll know to mark on the bill which items go to whom). It’s just curtesy to the overworked, underpaid, and undersupported working class of service persons.

And lest you be suspended by your toenails over a vat of fuming nitric acid in the afterlife, don’t expect the server to arbitrate the division of culpability for a shared dish. I swear, some people never emotionally graduated beyond kindergarden.

Stranger