Thinking of the three people I eat out with most often: One always pays, because he insists. Another usually pays, but I get the movie tickets – this reflects the difference in our incomes. A third is usually more or less Dutch – we look at the check, each throw in about as much as we owe, check to make sure that the tip will suffice, then one or the other of us will throw in another buck or two if we’re light. Other times with this person, if one of us has the tickets to a concert or something, the other will buy dinner.
We think he regrets about doing that but then he has his angel and the devil-self on each shoulder + his some type of personality disorder makes him do this from time to time… perhaps mildly bi-polar or something. He definitely has contrasting 2 sides that you don’t know when they might flip and to what intensity. We’ve known him a long time so we put up with it but sometimes…
Half my friend group is in the ‘beginner working professional’ stage and the other half is in the ‘poor student’ stage. If I know someone is on the verge of Ramen Week I’ll offer to get them something though.
We typically do separate checks, but if they are combined, we usually have everyone calculate out what they got and chip in accordingly, unless everyone got more or less the same thing, in which case we just chip in equally.
For example, if me and a couple of guys go get lunch, it’s likely we’ll all end up with some variant on some kind of sandwich (burger, philly cheesesteak, chicken, tacos, etc…) and fries with a soda. We’ll all pitch in equally if we get a combined check.
If a bunch of us go out for sushi, it’s split equally, because it’s family-style.
If we go to a nice steakhouse, it’s honor-system divided up; the differences in cost can be pretty large.
It only gets weird when someone spazzes out on the calculations or is stingy with the tip- they usually get gently admonished on how it’s done.
I also have a friend who rarely leaves any tip or at most $1. He rarely goes to restaurants with us because he thinks paying the kind of money for eating out is ridiculous… or we go to extremely economical places like Chinese buffet: he believes in spending money on getting substantial tangible stuff. I/we always let him walk out first to leave proper tip. He is a super nice guy but this is one of his quirks.
This is how we’ve done it. There’s no need to balance it to the last cent, you know what you bought, you round that up to the nearest buck and the server gets a bit more of a tip. Sometimes somebody picks up the whole tab but among my friends it mostly balances out. I have one friend who makes quite a bit more than the rest of us and he treats more often than we do. He likes eating with friends and otherwise he wouldn’t be able to do it as often because some of us are poor, if roles were reversed we’d do the same for him. I’d never invite myself or hint that he should pay, it’s always at his request so I don’t sweat it too much.
There have been moochers in the past that take advantage and do invite themselves but they tend not to stay in our social circle for long.
I got out to dinner with a group of friends every few weeks. We just divide the bill in four. If one person ate/drink considerably more or less than the other three, we might adjust the bill a bit but generally we all pay equally.
I vastly prefer to pay for myself. I don’t mind paying for someone else on occasion, but a lot of people think that taking turns picking up the check is fair. Well, it is if the group goes to about the same place every time, but if you go to the fancy steakhouse one time, and the little diner the next time, the cost isn’t going to be nearly the same. Especially if some people will guzzle down half a dozen top shelf margaritas, while other people will either not have alcohol at all, or have one beer. And it’s odd how the drinkers seem to be VERY thirsty when it’s someone else’s turn to pay.
I’d rather pay my own share, and not resent someone else’s alcohol intake. If someone wants to drink, s/he can pay for it out of his/her own pocket.
Edit: I DO understand the concept of buying rounds and taking turns…and if everyone is consuming at about the same pace, then it generally works out. But when one person will consistently run up a $40 bill when someone else is paying, but only a $15 when s/he is paying, and the other person consistently runs a $15 bill no matter who pays…well, sooner or later the person who is NOT drinking starts adding up the cost of treating her friend to booze.
It depends on the situation. I’m happy to split the bill if it’s all approximately the same amount, but if someone buys something expensive just for themselves, like a cocktail, they pay for it themselves. This seems to be a universal unspoken rule among the people I dine with, it’s never been an issue that I can recall.
I eat out almost every week with a friend and wife and we mostly pay our own bills. Once he paid the whole thing and I paid the whole thing the following week. Essentially, I like to keep it in balance, although I won’t become compulsive.
One exception: I have a friend who was one of the initial founders of SUN (he was the one who created their cool rhomboidal logo) and is worth about $100 million (until he was an early investor in Google, so probably much more now). When I go to dinner with him, he always pays and I make no attempt to reciprocated. Except once when we bought a lunch in a Thai noodle kitchen that had been set up in the basement of his building at Stanford and I paid his $4 tab. No joke.
My group of friends usually splits the check evenly. If not, we get separate checks (usually when one person is/isn’t drinking or ordering just soup or something).
Trying to calculate who owes what from a single check never works out for us. We always come up short. You would think a bunch of CPAs and math geeks could figure it out, but we don’t. Someone always forgets to consider tax and tip. Splitting evenly is just easier.
As the others have said … it depends a bunch on who we’re hanging with.
For just wife & me, I generally pay although we have totally common finances, so it’s really just a matter of who signs the cc slip, not who “pays”.
With friends of much lesser means than us, we have the staff split the check properly or we buy the whole shebang with no expectation our friends will ever return the favor 1-for-1. They’ll probably get even later with a home-made lasagna at their house or something else equally enjoyable but more budget-friendly.
With friends of similar means to us, we generally all throw in X bucks apiece, ensure the tip is fat, and call it close enough.
I don’t hang out with people who’ll short the wait staff or who’ll order a salad if they’re paying & the lobster if I am.
With co-workers at lunch it tends to be dutch if we’re a group or tit-for-tat if there’s just two of us. I try to keep some track of who I owe one to. I have no idea who might owe me one.
Huh, hadn’t considered that. Then again, if any of my friends suddenly developed odd behaviors I’d be confrontational and tell them to cut the shit. (I have few, but very good, friends)
It does but most of times he’s just a good time happy go friend… except whatever triggers this ridiculous impossible side of him. Doesn’t anyone have a friend or a family member like this? One my aunt is another one who would turn around and goes home without almost saying anything to anyone because some minute little thing that no one even noticed triggers her unstoppable anger. My dad used to turn around from car trips only after 2 hours into the trip (of some 10 hr drive) saying it’s no use because we will all get lose anyway (obviously before GPS)… I don’t know when that side of me will show up if it does at all.
Until I came to the Dope, I’d honestly never heard of this idea that you are supposed to pay for everyone. Sure, you might be nice and pay for someone who can’t pay for themselves, but that’s nowhere near a requirement. When my cousin was going to pay for everyone’s food at Thanksgiving one year (as we hadn’t had time to prepare due to a death in the family), it was considered the most generous thing ever, and he had to even remind his wife that they had enough money, so ingrained was the idea that you don’t do this.
I still wonder if it’s an older custom, or if it’s just one of those things people with money do. Did y’all do this in college when you didn’t necessarily have extra money? Did you avoid going out with friends if you couldn’t afford to pay for them?
