This reasonable word, why do you use it to apply to everyone…? It isn’t reasonable for YOU. That doesn’t mean other people don’t pick up $800 checks when they invite six people out to a nice dinner…if I didn’t find it reasonable, I wouldn’t do it.
That’s fine. I am speaking for myself and using my experiences to predict a reasonableness standard. If you prefer – I do not consider it reasonable to expect someone to pick up an $800 check because they invited people to join them at a restaurant for dinner.
If someone wanted to pick up the check, as in your case, that’s your prerogative and very generous of you. If I were invited to the dinner, I would not expect you to pay for me.
Better?
This is not consistent at all with my experiences.
I am the asshole that gets appetizers when others are getting appetizers, drinks proportional to the rest of the table, and offers extra when I decide I want something outside of the norm. I am also the person who will suggest that we lower someone’s share if they did not order consistent with the rest of the table. I expect the same of the people I’m dining with and have never had any problems or objections.
I’d rather not deal with the hassle of someone picking apart the bill, annoying the server, breaking out calculators and generally disrupting the flow of the dinner to argue over tax and tip. It strikes me as cheap. If my dining habits were that much different than the people I am dining with, I’d reconsider my eating companions.
This is also what I do.Pay what you owe. It does not take a calculator to understand that your $40 lobster costs more than a $10 salad.
If people quibble about a buck here or there they should not be going out to eat.
The whole meaning of this thread is about people showing up hours late to a reservation. It makes no difference what type of restaurant it is. Those that arrived on time should have just ordered. Those that where late are on their own.
IME, yes, it’s regional. It’s SOP in New York City but I’ve seen it happen only rarely in Chicago. In NYC it was considered rude to bother the server with separate checks, which doesn’t seem to be such a big deal in out here in the middle. It’s not the default, but you don’t look like an asshole for asking.
I recently went to a birthday party at a Pub and Grill type place here in Chicago, it was 10-15 people who came and went, some got food some didn’t. I came late and my boyfriend showed up later. When it was time to pay the server cheerfully brought separate checks to everyone, apparently someone had asked for it at the start of the night before I got there. AND THEN when he figured out that myself and my boyfriend were together, he offered to combine our checks. That would never happen in New York.
I have to go with **Long Time Lurker **on this one. I hate nickle and dimeing over the bill. You split it even and if someone went overboard, they toss in a bit more.
Not likely.
I’m from the “you invite, you pay” school - which involves no quibbling…or the separate check school - which also involves no quibbling (And isn’t a big deal here in Minneapolis). While I’ve gone out with people whom I’m never worried about ending up with enough (those “I think we tipped 40%, does anyone want a few bucks back” dinners)- I’ve also been on the “bend over” end of Ms. Sushi Cosmo and $10 in her wallet…and I’ve been there at times when I can ill afford to support someone else’s sushi and cosmo habit.
Ms. Sushi Cosmo, if you’ve ever run into her, is never your friend. She is the friend of someone else who you only sort of know from gatherings like this.
I hate Ms. Sushi Cosmo. I know her too, with her overuse of the words “like,” “amazing,” and “whatever.”
You sound kind of like an asshole here. I’ve been to V&A’s, etc, but hell, I like Taco Bell too. Either way, ordering a strip and veggies doesn’t sound too sophisticated to me, at least not enough to go into histrionics over people questioning your definition of “high brow”.
Your description of the wait staff and the seating says to me it’s some sort of higher-end Hard Rock Cafe tourist trap. I don’t see why you are so defensive about naming the overpriced “meh” TV chef place you went.
The girl I know is carrying a Coach purse and wearing $200 shoes, but can’t afford her own booze. Same girl?
Same cooze.
These differences of opinion about how social duties like organizing parties and divvying up payment ought to be handled are precisely the reason we have etiquette rules in the first place.
Many reverse-snobs like to sneer that etiquette conventions and etiquette authorities are just obsolete elitist survivals from the days of footmen and finger-bowls, but they’re not. The whole point of real-life etiquette is so that people can have a shared set of expectations about how social interactions work.
Here are some examples of the way the etiquette norms of Miss Manners resolve some of the disagreements in this thread (some of them have been noted by other posters already):
Q. Should the guests at a restaurant dinner pay for their own dinners, or is the host obligated to pay for all of them?
A. If the dinner was planned as a shared outing rather than as one person inviting the others to be treated to a meal, then it’s pay-your-own-way. However, in that case the participants aren’t technically “guests” and the organizer/initiator isn’t the “host”. The terms “host” and “guest” imply occasions where somebody is offering hospitality to someone else at his/her expense, not occasions where co-diners mutually decide to join forces on going out to dinner.
People should not be shy, although they should be tactful, about getting clear about which kind of occasion they’re dealing with before they say yes or no to it. It is not fun to suddenly find out when the check arrives that one person believed they were a guest while the other person didn’t mean to be a host. (It’s less awkward if the misunderstanding is the other way around, although even that can produce potentially awkward fights over the check.)
Q. Should co-diners get separate checks from the waitperson, split the bill evenly, or contribute different amounts to a shared bill?
A. All of these options are acceptable from an etiquette standpoint, if they’re accepted by all the participants. The co-diners should agree beforehand on an option that all of them are comfortable with, and stick to it. If there are differences of opinion, they should be resolved as tactfully as possible.
Making a big deal out of scrutinizing the costs to ensure that one isn’t paying a penny more than one’s own rightful share is an etiquette error, but thoughtlessly under-contributing for one’s own share so that the other co-diners have to either chip in extra or let the waitperson be stiffed is a worse one.
Q. Should most of the co-diners at a celebration dinner pay the share of the person who’s being celebrated (birthday girl, etc.)?
A. If they’ve all agreed to it among themselves beforehand, it’s a very nice thing to do. If the “special participant” is the one who organized the event, that person should scrupulously avoid any shadow of a hint of a suggestion that the other co-diners ought to pay his/her share, and should strenuously attempt to pay for him/herself even if the other co-diners spontaneously offer to treat him/her. If they insist, the special participant should give in, with warm expressions of thanks.
If no arrangements were made beforehand about treating the special participant and one of the other co-diners decides when the check comes that the SP ought to get treated, that co-diner should go it alone on the treating, as in “Put your money away [birthday girl], I’m paying for you”, not “Put your money away [birthday girl], we’re paying for you”. It is not nice to suddenly assume that all the other co-diners should pay part of the special participant’s share when they weren’t expecting to.
Q. What should be done when some co-diners are unexpectedly very late for the dinner?
A. The late ones should call another of the co-diners as soon as possible, with profuse apologies for their lateness, and urge the rest of the party to go ahead and have dinner without them. The other co-diners should be willing to delay their own dinner for a reasonable time so that the late ones can join them (and how long a “reasonable time” is depends on the circumstances and the people), but after that they should just go ahead and order.
But you see, this is because you’re not an asshole. You offer extra. In my experience, there are a lot of jerks who are not as nice as you. I was at a birthday dinner out when I was in NYC. It was a nice Malaysian restaurant that was cash only. I had enough cash for my meal, tax, tip and my share of the birthday girl’s dinner. This wasn’t Fine Dining, but I had budgeted accordingly.
I’m not saying I had a salad and water. I had one or two cocktails, shared an app and had an entree. The problem is that there were about 6 (out of 12 people there) who, on top of that amount, also ordered:
- at least 1, sometimes 2-3, more cocktails each
- shared something like 3 platters of sushi amongst them
- bought two more appetizers
- got really expensive entrees (literally twice the price of what I got, which wasn’t the cheapest thing on the menu).
Then the bill comes and those six, surprise, want to do an even split. Absolutely no offer was made for them to contribute more, even though they had all of that extra. It literally doubled my “share”, and I hadn’t taken that much cash out. Sure, I had a bit more than what I budged for so I’d have fudge-room, but not double what my food and drinks cost.
In my experience, it’s ALWAYS the ones who ordered the most expensive items who want to do the even split, and it’s precisely because they know that they’ll come out ahead if everyone is polite.
I don’t keep these people as friends, but sometimes, when one works with a group of people, one learns that Suzy from Accounting or Bob from Marketing will be only too willing to drink up and order only the most expensive when they know that someone else will be subsidizing their ticket. I have no qualms about saying “separate checks” in this situation, as these people are not really my friends. I do, however, have problems when they’re my in-laws. They’re family, but they’re people I’d really rather not associate with, but I’d also like to stay on somewhat friendly terms with them. I’ve learned that my best option is to insist that we all go somewhere like Golden Corral (a moderately priced buffet), which certainly doesn’t offer much in the way of fine dining, but at least there are no separately ordered appetizers, and Boozing Bert is going to have to stop at his usual watering hole before or after, because he can’t get drunk on someone else’s dime here. The bonus is, as long as you can arrive a little earlier or later than others in the group, you can easily get a separate check, as it’s produced when you go down the line to get drinks and, if desired, order a cooked-to-order steak. I wouldn’t go this route with my friends, and I’d really prefer to eat at a nicer place, but it’s sort of a defensive action that I’ve learned.
Paying what you owe doesn’t have to mean poring over the bill and dividing it to the penny. You can round off and pay an appropriate amount for what you ordered.
Exactly. And then you are the one who looks like a cheap asshole if you say anything about it. And in the example I gave, I was friends with two of them (the ones I was visiting); everyone else I basically hadn’t met before. So one: I didn’t feel comfortable speaking up since I didn’t know them, and two: I’d never dine with them again and have the chance to screw them over by ordering expensive shit. Grrr!
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I understand it’s a long thread, and at this point it would be a burden to go back and read every post, but I will help you out a little since you chose to respond without fully reading all of mine, and for about, the third fucking time, point out, AGAIN that it was not a chain restaurant, therefore its not The Hard Rock Cafe. I don’t know the Hard Rock Cafe very well, but as I also pointed out, the restaurant I went to is named after a famous TV chef, and the last I checked there is no Chef Hard Rock. Do they even take reservations? If not, wow, you are way off.
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The actual name and location of the restaurant is neither here nor there. The point of the thread, again, is consideration for other peoples time and the restaurants time when it accepts reservations. Unfortunately, a handful of smart-asses and wanna-be Anton Egos thought this was Cafe Society and have decided that they are going to try and hijack the thread by mocking my apparent lack of knowledge of how to properly classify a restaurant.
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One of the joys of the BBQ Pit is to anonymously vent at the behavior of others. In the one in a million chance any of the people described in this thread happen to stumble upon it, not naming the restaurant gives me deniabilty that it was indeed me talking about them if ever confronted. And frankly, even if that was not a concern (and given the boorish behavior of this past weekend’s dining companions, it isn’t that big a concern) I would not give some of the posters mentioned in Point #3 the satisfaction of naming the restaurant anyway. Fuck 'em.
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I have done more than an adequate job of describing the place in question. To review, for those Johnny-Come-Latelys who have decided they must jump in with their barbs on Page 4 and 5, it is an establishment located in a casino, it is not a chain, it is named after a famous TV chef, it serves steak as well as other food, it takes reservations, it is pricey (I’d say for most people, it is), and has a reputation as a “higher” end restaurant, versus most others in the area. I even revealed what my meal for 2 cost.
Based on their vast wealth of knowledge about restaurants, I am sure that description is more than adequate for the handful of the so-called Michelin Star experts on this thread to judge whether this restaurant was a fine dining establishment or a fast food drive through.
Just tell us what the name of the fucking restaurant is already. Christ!
I’ve never split a bill even, unless we all obviously got the same thing or it was just a ridiculously cheap meal. The idea wouldn’t even cross my mind. How hard is it to make a mental note of what you ordered and throw down with a little extra? No need for separate checks. Just pay for what you eat. It’s not rocket science.
But then I know you big city folks have so much money that you’d consider it extremely rude to care about ten bucks here and there. Well, I don’t have a ton of money and ten bucks is something to me. Doesn’t make me a bad or a low-class person. Doesn’t mean I should stick to eating Taco Bell and TV dinners. Elitist much?
Then invite them someplace you can afford. Or call it a “dinner out” and not a “party.”