Is your girlfriend very young? Are her friends also very young and inexperienced? Have a private talk ahead of time with your girlfriend about the issue of paying for her friends’ drinks. If this is an ongoing concern, it doesn’t sound as if you are being cheap, but passive-aggressive.
Ditto to what everyone else has said. Quietly ask the waiter, when you order, not at the end of the meal, to put yours and your girlfriend’s on a separate check. If the other couple objects, don’t argue, just stick to you guns and change the subject. If they truly don’t get it, they are freeloaders and/or alcoholics, and not going out to dinner with them is a good option. Go to movies, or to a museum, or a walk in the park, or out to coffee with them instead, if you want to continue to socialize. If your girlfriend doesn’t get it after a private discussion, you might want to consider if the two of you are a good match for each other.
In my circle of friends, we only split the check if we order things of roughly the same cost, or take turns paying, making sure that it evens out in the long run, without counting every penny. But we are older, have all been though both richer and poorer times, and all care enough about each other so that we are careful to treat each other fairly.
OP: do you have some kind of social anxiety disorder or something? Because speaking up and saying that you only had $30 of food and drink when everyone else had $50 is a non-issue. There’s no way that raising this issue (whether asking for separate checks or dividing the one check fairly) should make a scene; unless the other guests are even bigger, seriously major league a-holes than you’ve made them out to be, or you have an irrational phobia of raising such a minor issue.
You’d be surprised. No, I don’t have social anxiety disorder. But I’ve only been dating this woman for a few months, she said they were good friends of hers, I had some reason to think the whole meal might get comped, and I had every reason to expect that they would be decent and at least offer to make it right. “(Hey, you only had a salad–how about you throw in thirty?”) I felt I had to give them a chance to behave well—it cost me an extra 20 bucks to find out that they’re not so decent. I might even, if I find them offering to go out to dinner with us again, pony up another 20 to confirm it, but mainly I’ll be avoiding these people as dinner companions from here on in.
I’m totally not getting where all this “irrational phobia” stuff comes from–adjust the numbers up and down, and I promise you you’ll hit a number where you’re exactly where I am. For me, overpaying by $20 feels like not quite enough to raise any kind of beef under these circumstances. For you, maybe 5 bucks is enough (you cheap bastard) or maybe 100 bucks is just enough to set you off (you goddamn plutocrat 1%-er) --for me, it’s $20.
If you ask to pay less, and they refuse, then I’d accept that they weren’t decent people. But to sit there, quietly annoyed at what’s happening? That’s on you, not them.
The “irrational phobia” accusation (which I think is a little harsher than I would phrase it) is that this very obviously bothers you a lot. It bothers you enough to change your behavior over it, in fact - not going out to dinner with these folks again is a behavior change. But it’s a rather extreme, potentially alienating (to the boors, which you want, but also to your girlfriend, whom one would assume you don’t want to alienate) and very passive aggressive way to solve the problem.
I’m terrible at confrontation. Absolutely hate it. I DO have a social anxiety disorder, as well as a plain old anxiety disorder. I would never in a million years be able to say, “Look guys, I’m feeling cheated here.” to a group of people I don’t know well. I just couldn’t. So I get that you don’t want to do that. But several people have offered non-confrontational ways that you can change your behavior to get your needs met without confronting them. You don’t seem to want to do that, either.
So I guess I’m inclined to agree with Enginerd. It sure seems like you just don’t like them (which is totally allowed!) and you’re latching onto this problem and making it bigger than it is by declaring it Unsolvable by any means other than not seeing them again.
If you don’t like them, you don’t like them. But quit lying to yourself. This problem can be handled a half dozen other ways and permit you to keep emotionally safe and still go out with them. If you don’t want that, it’s because you don’t want to go out with them. Just embrace it and be honest with your girlfriend about it.
Would all of you just get off PRR’s back? Having dinner with those people and his girlfriend was clearly and obviously the equivalent of doing cocaine with Karl Malden. He has a right to his moral indignation.
I’m not getting what’s the matter with my ultimately deciding that people who think it’s okay to split an unbalanced dinner bill equally are not people I enjoy spending time with. They have a character flaw, I spotted it, I choose not to spend time with them, and if my GF asks, I’ll tell her my reasons: “They don’t seem sufficiently sensitive to other people.” I’m obligated to lecture her (or them) about what I deem appropriate behavior? I think not. It’s sufficent to me that I think what I think.
If its a one time thing throw in your money and forget about it. Nothing worse than a cheap bastard pulling out a calculator at the end of a meal to make sure everyone pays equal. I usually throw in extra to avoid issues.
If its going to be a regular thing split the bill.
OK, you don’t want to spend time with these people. So don’t.
I wouldn’t tell her this. She presumably likes these people, even if you don’t. You don’t have to spend time with them, but you don’t need to bad-mouth them to her, either. That’s likely to cause a fight. Just don’t go out with them any more, and let it go at that.
I don’t think anything is wrong with it. But because I’ve gotten burned a few times in the past, I go into all these situations and do an evaluation…would I pick up the entire check? Would I feel fine with even splits? And, do I want my own check (or one for my own subparty)? The answer changes depending on the circumstances, but I go into the situation and then try and configure it going in so the outcome is acceptable. This will not be the only party of inconsiderate boors you go out with in your life, even if you never see these particular boors again, particularly if you tend to go out with drinkers and not drink. Changing your own behavior might leave you a little less disappointed in humanity.
It’s not totally unheard-of here, especially for large groups. Some restaurants just won’t do it.
The problem I’m having with your decision is that there is still (in my mind) reasonable doubt as to the motivation of the group of people to ignore the fact that you ordered a much less expensive meal than they did. If you had pointed it out to them and they still insisted you pay an equal share, then I’d agree with you - these people are social louts. At this point, I’d suggest you talk with your girlfriend and mention this incident in a non-confrontational way - “Hey, when we went out for dinner with your friends, no one seemed to notice that they had a lot of drinks and I had none. I don’t really want to pay for their drinks - any suggestions for how we handle this in the future?”
No I wouldn’t. There would be an amount that of money that wouldn’t bother me and I wouldn’t speak up about, and an amount that would bother me and that I would speak up about, but there would be no amount that would bother me but that I wouldn’t feel comfortable speaking up about.
The amount at which I would feel comfortable speaking up about it, in fact, is LOWER than the amount at which it would bother me. (I probably wouldn’t speak up if it wasn’t enough to bother me, but if I was worried about the precedent or thought someone else was being cheated or had any other reason to mention it, I’d feel comfortable doing so.) The amount at which I would feel bothered enough to complain about it on a message board or consider not going to dinner with someone or think less of them even though I’d tacitly agreed would be considerably HIGHER than any of those points.
Actually, complaining on a message board or thinking less of them wouldn’t happen at all unless I’d said something and been rebuffed. Wouldn’t even occur to me.
What magic number? The point at which it would go from not bothering me to bothering me? Hard to say, it would depend on my mood at the moment, how much I liked the people I was with, how recently I’d been paid, and a host of other things. Probably around ten or fifteen bucks.
ETA: The point at which I’d be ok with speaking up would also vary, but would probably be about four or five bucks.
This “mood” shit is backing up my point, isn’t it? If it changes from day to day, then there’s a figure at which you’ll need to compute if the current number is enough to make you feel like making an issue out of it or keeping to yourself. If you’re overpaying by $4.50, then you need to figure if today is a four dollar day, and you keep still, or a five dollar day and you speak up.
For me it would have to be $20. Probably more. That is for a one off event. If it was a regular thing I would rectify the problem at a lower level. I don’t think it would ever bothe me that much.