If it happens consistently, then speak up and ask for a separate check. I don’t see the problem there. If it has happened once, suck it up and don’t be a cheapskate. That’s not going to impress a new girlfriend, especially when meeting her friends.
And maybe I’m imposing my own standard of behavior on others, but I can’t imagine ever ordering above 50% of the cost of anything and asking someone to split the bill evenly. If it’s a petty difference, I’ll be okay with their telling me, “Nah, that’s ok,” but I would always offer to pay more than half. “Hey–mine was more than yours, so how about I pay 12 bucks and you can give me 8?” , like that. It’s not difficult.
This is EXACTLY, PRECISELY what I’ve done, and what I’ve gotten called all sorts of names of names for here: passive-aggressive, irrational phobi[c], etc. it happened once, I didn’t let on that it bothered me, I posted about it here, I got shit from Dopers.
+1
Ah ok, I missed that part. My apologies. If you are being taken advantage of regularly, then I am completely on your side. Why not ask for a separate check for you and your girlfriend at the start of the dinner?
I remember years ago in a Miss Manners column someone asked correct way to respond to a restaurant refusing to give separate checks. She said the correct response was to crumple your napkin, place it on the table and leave without ordering. She ended her answer by saying something to the effect of you’re not there for the restaurant’s convenience, the restaurant is there for yours.
Those people victimized prr. They virtually gang raped him. Then the poor fellow comes here looking for comfort and assurance and what happens? You people berate and insult him. You might as well have called him “anal whore” or “butt slut.” This place lacks compassion.
Don’t listen to them, prr. You’re the victim here. Your gf and her predatory friends will use you, abuse you, discard you like a used condom, and then laugh uproariously in later years when they revisit the places where you were their bitch. I’ve never experienced it, myself, but I can believe it must be horrible for you to be the ATM (in both senses) for that witch and her posse. I think you should start keeping a journal of every time you are wronged. Be detailed. Paste things like restaurant receipts in it. Reread your entries frequently. Keep it with you everywhere so you could even do stuff like describe the next time they make you squeal like a pig while it is happening.
Remember, per, I’m the only one in this thread who is really looking out for you.
Unless you made a point of announcing that you’d only had salad and water, then they probably didn’t know splitting would cause you to significantly overpay. I know that when I go out with a group, I rarely monitor what others are ordering. Especially if those other people are strangers, like you were essentially were to them. Did they know you only had salad and water?
Your GF, presumably, would be more likely to pay attention to such a detail, though. She also would have been a better position to advocate for you. So how did she handle this? Could she sense you were bothered?
prr, think about it this way.
These people have a system. The sustem has presumably been in place for some times, and has worked happily for the duration of their friendship. The system is functional, has internal logic, and like most systems probably serves a useful purpose, even if that purpose is not immediately apparent to outsiders. In the right circumstances, an even split is a great way to do things- it’s fast, it keeps the flow of the evening going, if everyone agrees to it it reduces the chances of someone getting butthurt, and it encourages people to keep the drinks flowing as long as the conversation is lively.
You have come into this system with an unusual behavior (not drinking) that they system was not designed to handle. You have introduced an element of chaos, and that predictability threw off the balance.
Now this isn’t your fault or a bad thing, but you can at the least make an effort to restore balance and refine the system so it works again- by, for example, proposing a new system (separate checks, splitting a single bill on different cards, etc.) This will probably have it’s drawbacks for them- and not just monetarily. But I’m sure they’d see your logic.
I mean, it’d be different if they saw you were drinking water and decided, “Hey, this is our big chance to drink on someone else’s dime!” But if it’s what a group does customarily, typically your options are to go along or propose something mutually agreeable.
Given that, on the basis of that once, you regard them as having a “character flaw” for failing to notice that you weren’t drinking alcoholic beverages like they were, even though you’d done nothing to call it to their attention, what sort of reaction would you expect?
My stepmother is one of those people who notices what everybody’s eating and drinking, so she can file it away and say to herself, “X is coming over, he doesn’t eat seafood. And Y doesn’t like asparagus,” and plan the menu accordingly.
Just FYI, most people aren’t like my stepmother.
I stood out like a sore thumb. The waiter kept coming over to check if anyone needed a fresh drink? “Fresh drink? Drink? Can I refresh that? You still on water?” If they didn’t notice that I was drinking water for a hour while they were getting new cocktails, again, this comes under “insensitive.”
“The other night we went out to dinner with our good bud and her new boyfriend. Right away we noticed he wasn’t drinking, when he excused himself we discussed what we should do about the tab. After much discussion we concluded the sensitive thing to do would be to just ignore it. I mean how insensitive of us would it have been to point it out if this guy was a recovering alcoholic.”
Just keep sucking it up, paying, and keeping mum and you will never be wanting for dinner invitations my friend. 
Is the whole splitting the bill thing some kind of regional thing?
I grew up/still live in the south. I’ve NEVER done that when out to eat with friends and I can’t imagine any situation in which it’d be necessary/preferable to do so.
I also grew up in and live in the deep south. Straight out simple check splitting (take bill, divide by X people regardless of who got what) isnt something I’ve encountered on a regular basis. I wouldn’t say its rare but IME its not the norm either.
I don’t eat out often, but when I do we split the bill evenly. Stay taken advantaged of my friends…
It might be regional, it’s pretty common in DC when you go out among friends. I’d say you’re more likely to divide it based on what people ordered when you don’t know the other diners well. There was a Friends episode on this exact issue, Phoebe, Joey, and Rachel all resented that the other three wanted to split the check. It was neatly resolved in 30 minutes, oddly enough.
And in that episode it just hadn’t occured to the others that there was a money issue at play.
I’d say that PRR is waaaay overplaying this and being all passive agressive about it…
FFS - “they should notice”? That sounds like a wife, not a group of friends..
All good. The GF and I had a talk over the weekend, and passive-aggressive me waited for her to bring up the inequity of her drinking and me not-- we came to an understanding that works for both of us. Thanks for the support, folks.