I don't drink

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
61

But what’s your point? Firstly, I don’t exactly “compute” anything, I just go with my gut and either speak up or don’t. But if it bothers me even a little bit, then I speak up, because the threshold for being bothered will always be way above the threshold for being comfortable speaking up.

And either way, I don’t worry about it afterwards and second-guess myself and think about whether I should avoid those people all together so I don’t risk making the same mistake again. Lots of decisions (probably all) have borderline cases where it could go either way. This morning I had to decide if I should hit snooze again or get up. I didn’t “calculate” exactly how sleepy I was on a ten point scale and compare it to a chart of how long I feel like spending brushing my teeth. And you know what, maybe I made the wrong decision, after all I was almost late for work. But I didn’t feel compelled to post a thread about what a shitty alarm clock I have because of it.

62

This probably isn’t much help for the OP, but since others have mentioned how they handle it when a group of co-workers goes out to work, here’s how we do it: one person puts the lunch check on their credit card and makes sure to get an itemized receipt.

If you’re the one who paid, then back at the office, you open up Excel, enter in the items ordered and their menu prices, then apply the tax and tip to all items, and total up the rows to come up with a price for each item including tax and tip. Then you email the spreadsheet to everyone who was part of the lunch, and people identify what they had and pay you.

Doing the spreadsheet might take 15 minutes or so, but everybody knows exactly what they owe, and we’ve never had any arguments about it.

63

This thread reminds me that Homer Simpson was right- alcohol is the cause of, and solution to, all of life’s problems.

64

Well, I guess that makes you a finer human being than I am. Congratulations.

65

Talk about damning with faint praise.

66

If y’all want to exchange insults, go do it in the Pit.

twickster, MPSIMS moderator

67

Yes. Totally not unusual, in my experience, although it seems Chicago restaurants have gotten a lot better about it in the last few years. New York, too, I remember being problematic at places for large parties to get seperate, itemized checks.

I remember being shocked when driving down to Memphis a couple years ago, and every restaurant there up front asked us if we wanted seperate checks. I’ve never experienced that around here.

68

I can see it being a problem with large parties. Not with four.

69

Where I was going with the “irrational behavior” comment is really in reference to this line of thinking. You are holding something against these people because they have, in essence, failed to read your mind that splitting the check is a (legitimate) issue for you. Like you say, maybe they are people who don’t mind paying an extra $20 on one dinner check because they might underpay on the next check, and they are assuming that you might have the same approach, because you aren’t saying anything to the contrary.

The standard that your are holding them to is entirely reasonable… If you would verbally raise the issue of the fairness of the check. Not saying anything and being strongly annoyed that you are ripping them off sounds to me about as rational as my significant other waking up in the morning and being mad at me because of something “I” did in her dream. How am I responsible for someone else’s dream? How is someone else acting poorly for not living up to an expectation that is never expressed?

70

Also, it is entirely likely that they didn’t notice that you weren’t drinking or that you had not ordered as much food as other people. You can’t expect people to instantly recognize that you are being treated unfairly, it’s nice when they do, but if they don’t realize their mistake, you should give them a chance to do the right thing before you get offended.

71

The point of the part where it doesn’t bother you is that is literally the point where it does not bother you. It literally does not bother me to overpay by two or three dollars. That has zero effect on my life. That’s pocket change. If I won a two dollar lottery ticket, I probably wouldn’t bother to collect it. Overpaying two dollars, even consistently, would just roll off my back. But overpaying $20 is bothering you. It’s not below the line.

The hip thing to do these days is to grab a pen and write your last name on the back of the check along with the amount you plan to charge to your card (pre-tip, unless the others are paying cash or the tip is included. You can add your tip when you sign the card). Then you can say “Hey guys, I’ve got my card, so I put in $20 for my salad and water, and I’ll handle my share of the tip. I’m not sure if you guys want to do the rest in cash or add your cards- it’s all you.” Chances are at that point they will split up the rest between the three of them, and everyone will be happy. Anyway, the “write down what to charge” method is a lot easier to manage than going through the drama of asking for separate checks after the fact. Or you can just say “I’ve got a fifty here. My share works out to around twenty bucks, so if I can get thirty back that’d be awesome.”

If someone pre-empts you with a “let’s share the bill”, you can often use your method of payment as an excuse. if you are paying cash, say you have to put it on your card so you’ll just charge your $20. If they are paying by card, bust out cash and say “Oh, I have just enough cash to cover my salad and water.”

Another more subtle way to do things is that if the math works out, suggest that they cover the tip. If I’m eating dinner with someone and our dishes have a $5-$10 difference, this is often what I’ll do. I’ll say something like “So my hamburger comes in at bucks. I’ve got a sawbuck here, so if you can handle that tip I think it’ll even out.”

Anyway, I wouldn’t get too worked up about it or consider calling off friendships for it. It seems like a social group where the norm is to get drinks and the norm is to split checks. As a non-drinker, you’ve thrown a wrench into the system. It’s a pretty big part of a lot of social cultures to be generous with alcohol purchases, be it buying rounds, bringing more beer than you could possibly drink to a party, splitting bills, Unless you were sitting around saying “Hey, this is nice SODA. I’m enjoying my SODA which is not ALCOHOL” they may have noticed that you didn’t order drinks but didn’t fully process it. When it came to pay, they defaulted to the socially acceptable method that’s worked for them previous. You being an outlier throws new variable into things, and the best thing you can do then is propose an alternative.

72

What fun would that be?

73

You (and I) might not, but not restaurants I’ve been to have. It’s not unusual, in my experience, for a restaurant not to want to give four separate checks to a party of four. YMMV.

And, for an actual cite, look at the menu here. (I’ve never actually been to this place, just Googled some search terms.)

(Emphasis mine.)

Not no separate checks for large parties. No separate checks, period.

Or here

This is very much dependent on where you live and your local dining culture. It’s not unusual where I’m at to have restaurants refuse separate checks.

74

I am really glad I have friends/family who don’t quibble over $20.

75

“Insensitive to other people” covers that. If you’re a party of four, and three of you are drinking like it’s going out of style, and one of you is ordering tap water, sorry, it’s on you to notice that his tab is half of yours.

76

I’m really glad your friends and family are in a financial position where throwing in 20 bucks for somebody else’s booze on a regular basis doesn’t put a kink in their budget. I’m not saying that’s true of the OP but for some people it is.

77

You expect the drunk people to be the sensitive and keenly aware people at the table?

78

My point was that it evens out in the wash. Sometimes you spend a little more, sometimes a little less. If $20 makes or breaks you, maybe you shouldn’t be going out in the first place.

79

It doesn’t even out in the wash, though, if one person CONSISTENTLY is ordering $20 less than the other people. If one person has an average tab of $15, and another person has an average tab of $50, every time they go out, then the second person is getting subsidized by the first person, if they alternate picking up the checks. And this is what is going to happen if one person doesn’t drink alcohol, and the other person doesn’t consider the meal complete without having three or four drinks every time.

Tell you what, let’s go bookshopping together, and we’ll put our purchases together and just split the tab. Thing is, you only want $15 of books, but I want $50 worth. Let’s do this every week, and we ALWAYS both get about the same amount of books, that is, you get one hardback, whereas I get a hardback, a movie, and some magazines. Every time, I chirp up and say “Let’s put it all on your card, and I’ll give you $35 in cash, that’s fair, right?” Hey, I’m paying MORE THAN HALF. Do you think that’s fair, that I expect you to subsidize my habit?

If one person consistently orders more stuff, and more expensive stuff, but expects to split the bill evenly, then guess what? That can add up.

80

I expect people not to use their drunkenness as an excuse to behave like assholes. If going out with you means I’ll have to deal with shitty selfish behavior, I think I’d just rather pass on that opportunity, thanks very much for the invitation.