Has anyone noticed this phenomenon where say a bunch of friends get together and are hungry, or you’re drinking and shooting the bull and need a late night meal, or you are trying to be nice to some contractors you have doing work, or you’re just being nice to someone.
So you say hey guys I’m making a run to Burger King since everyone is hungry, planning of course to get everyone Whoppers or BK Double Stackers or whatever as long as its below $2 per person. And then the assholes, it can be one or all of the group, say hey yea get me the Imported Swiss Apple Bacon Grilled Angus Shank Steak Burger Deluxe, you know the one that costs $6 dollars! Oh hell make it a combo!
:smack::rolleyes:Yes sir! Why I’ll gladly drop a utility payment feeding you all overpriced fast food burgers, in fact why am I even going to BK for that money I could get you all real good burgers from a real restaurant.
I’m really sick of it, its fucking rude as shit! Its like you offer to make a beer run and all of a sudden everyone has a hankering for the most expensive micro brew out there. No one would do that!
(My mother once offered a bunch of contractors that a guy she hired subcontracted the work out to that she was going to BK and they had the nerve to make a goddamn list which included milkshakes for some, she was too sheepish to say no but I said fuck that and just bought the two buck combo they had at the time for everyone. Soi many sad faces :D)
Beyond rude. Which is why if I find myself in the company of such rubes, I typically simply ask if people are hungry/thirsty and make reasonable purchases for everyone.
I have been known to order expensive things when sharing the bill with coworkers, but I either ask for a separate bill, or I take the cost of my meal out of the equation when coming up with the group total.
It’s relative; the OP was talking about Burger King.
To put it in Sparky’s terms, let’s say you take a bunch of friends out to thank them for helping you move. Is it OK that they all order the lobster thermadore with 8 ounce filet mignon and the '95 Chteau Margaux after seeing you order the tuna melt and a diet coke? After all you didn’t have enough money to hire professional movers; you had to ask your friends to help.
If someone offers to make a food run for a group I’m part of, I assume I’ll be paying for my share. I’ve never known anyone who just treated an entire group for no reason - I must hang with the wrong sort of crowd…
When someone offers to make a food run, I also assume that I’ll be paying for either my own specific order (which means that the person making the run has to make separate orders and keep track of the money) or that I’ll be paying an equal share of the total order. In a group of five orders, if the total comes to $25 including tax, then I assume that I’m gonna pitch in five or six bucks. If one person orders the Deluxe Supreme burger rather than the Burger Combo, then I figure that this person should put in enough extra money to cover the extra cost. It’s been some years since I’ve been in this position, though. The people I hang with usually don’t eat fast food as much as we did when we were younger.
The only time I’ve made a fast food run and actually paid for someone else’s food was when we had a couple of professional movers packing my daughter’s stuff up. I said that I was going to Sonic, and did they want anything? They did, and I refused their money. And I got them a couple of extra burgers and an extra order of onion rings, in addition to their orders, and they were happy to see this.
Yeah, I’ve always passed on offers like this since I don’t carry cash. I would never assume that the person was offering to pay for everyone if they simply asked if I wanted anything from the place they were heading.
Usually, when someone decides to treat the office, they get a mess o’ food and make a spread in the break room. They will get a few different things and have condiments on the side.
Being a snarky internet knowitall doesn’t pay nearly as well as one would think. I am pretty sure Cecil Adams is on the welfare dime and Little Ed has a second job in a sleazy tatoo parlor above a strip joint on the wrong side of town just to make ends meet.
Same here - I never assume that “anybody want anything?” means “It’s all on me, guys!”. If I have money, I’ll order whatever I want, because it’s my money. If I’m the one asking for the super deluxe burger, I’m handing him cash as I do so. If it’s made clear that it’s a freebie, then I either decline or get something small.
If you just ducked out and returned with 10 Dollar Menu burgers with or without a pile of fries they’d get eaten and your hungry friends or contractors or whoever would say “thank you”.
Streamline the process. Don’t offer a choice.
Now, if I were lounging in your house and you announced you were heading to Burger King and left if hanging in the air like a question I would hand you cash and tell you what I wanted. I would also then not expect to receive all of my change. That’s your payment for letting me stay on my lazy butt watching your digital cable or whatnot while you brave the elements to procure sustenance.
For whatever it’s worth, I tried the Bacon Bleu Cheese burger at BK this week. It was surprisingly tasty.
Yeah, I’ve never been in a situation where “I’m making a food run. You guys need anything?” means the person making the run is paying for it. You always offer to pay and, in the off chance the person making the run is being generous, they’ll say so, like “Don’t worry about it–I got it.”
When my kid was young, we’d occasionally go to a fast food place and drop a total of $4 or $5, tops, using coupons. We’d have to eat there because if we took it home my husband would whine, “why didn’t you get something for meeeee, too?” Well, hubs, A) you don’t like to eat your evening meal until 9 or 10 p.m. and you don’t like my attempts at reheating burgers, B) you want the double bacon cheeseburger, two large fries, onion rings, and a large milkshake, total of $10 or up. $10 which I DID NOT HAVE to pay for your extra costly meal. Everybody thought I was such a cheapskate, buying store brand products, small amounts of foods, generic brands of aspirin. Because I did NOT have a big thick wad of money in my wallet to splurge, splurge, splurge with. So, hubby, you miss out on the Burger King experience.
Same for me, anytime I’ve been in a situation where someone says “hey going to X, anyone want anything?” It’s never been understood this meant “and I’m buying it for you” but rather “I’ll pick up something for you and save you the trouble of the trip, but you’ll be giving me cash to cover the cost.”
In situations where I’ve bought stuff for people like contractors, or I’ve helped someone move and they buy stuff for us, it’s always been a lot different. I helped a guy move once and he had a case of beer (that he had already purchased, so no input from us on getting the most expensive microbrew) and around the time we finished a few pizzas showed up (just basic, no fancy toppings.) That’s the way you do something like that, and in that scenario if my friend had said “Hey I’m going to order some pizzas for you guys since you helped me move” I’d recognize that he was offering to pay for it and I would just say “whatever you want.” I wouldn’t ask him to drive 20 miles to the cool little local pizza place and order 5 $20 pizzas, I’d be fine with him ordering a few pizzas for $10 a pop from Papa John’s.
If someone is explicitly taking me to a sit down restaurant as a gift or thank you for something, I do generally order what I want. And it might be something like lobster thermador (fuck just reading that in this thread put me in the mood for it.) But that goes both ways, if I take someone to dinner to thank them for something or as a reward or gift, I don’t care what they order. I do usually pick the restaurant before hand (“hey I really appreciate this thing you’ve done, let me take you to xx.”) If the place I pick has $50 entrees I’ll be prepared for the fact the person may order them.
This is why one should always just pick up pizzas (half pepperoni, half cheese) for a group. Or fried chicken, or BBQ. Seriously. If it’s not someone ordering more expensive things than needed, it’s someone with a ridiculously complicated order, down to and including contingency plans regarding various seasonal products.
We used to have this issue because my husband and I were raised to look at eating out very differently. It was a major, major treat for both of us, but my husband’s father was a “feast or famine” type, so whenever they had cash, they’d go to the nicest restaurant they could afford and you were expected to order the most expensive thing off the menu. My family is all frugal ants, and every eating out experience was all about spending the least possible. It took me years to learn to even LOOK outside the “sandwiches” box on a menu.
It used to really bother me when he’d order something expensive, even when the money wasn’t a problem, because I have this instinct that it’s Just Wrong to order the steak when you could have the burger–and I kinda resented him for having steak It wasn’t until we started keeping separate budgets that I could relax and just worry about what I wanted.
