The dinner bill dilema

[looblee]

Here's one for you...

We are off out for a meal with a big group of friends Saturday night with some BIG drinkers who like to buy the best wine! To set the scene we are frantically trying to save money for my year off work when the baby arrives but really want to go as it is a good friends birthday so should not be missed.

Last time we went out with one of the couples attending they almost insisted on splitting the dinner and drinks bill despite them having two bottles of wine to my husbands 4beers and my solitary coca cola. The term what goes around comes around never does with these two!

What i am getting at is there an etiquette to politely suggesting that splitting the bill equally when we go out isn't fair for me, 9months+ of not drinking and desperately trying to save all adds up!

Or?. are we just going to look like moaning tight wads putting a dampner on the evening!

I imagine the people in this thread who are saying this is such a terrible social faux pas are the same people who are happy to have their meals/drinks subsidised by the non-drinkers/light eaters.

Seriously, I'm glad it was sorted. I think it shows that you weren't BU especially in light of the fact that other people complained about the same thing. It's one thing to be picky over a spare 5-10 pounds between friends, but completely another to be expected to pay 50+ more than you're consuming!

I'm a veggie so invariably, with also my teetotalling due to pg, my share is the bill is always technically considerably less. this irks me a bit - especially when we went on holiday with two other couples and this was happening at practically 3 mealtimes a day - plus the supermarket shops that consisted heavily of beer, wine and great hunks of gourmet meat. And we are also skint and trying to save up for imminent arrival. I just didn't have the guts to say anything though unfortunately as "money" conversations like that make me squirm. So we just coughed up I'm afraid.

Glad you got it sorted looblee

We used to go for the simpler 'split the bill by the number of people' option until a couple of years ago when we got stung for £25 as our share of the drinks bill when DH and I had had 1 coke each! Since then we've always added up what our food/ drink cost, rounded it up to the nearest £5/ £10 and paid that. Caused a few raised eyebrows at the start but all our drinking friends are used to it now.

Wow, I'm surprised so many people don't split the bill! I don't think I've ever been out for a meal where somebody says 'Let's just pay equal amounts', it's always been split since uni, in all our friendships groups. Nobody bats an eyelid because it's normal.

It's interesting how people do different things.

I meant, in my above post, that people don't pay for what they eat and drink, plus tip, only! Confusing myself here...

To recap - we never split the bill, we have always calculated.

Is it too early for medicinal wine yet?

Nope, always just pay my share of the bill and the tip and leave it at that - but at the grand of age of 40-something I now don't care if I piss someone off who thought that they could get away with scoffing 3 or more courses and packing away the drink when others at their table are only having one or 2 course and a soft drink - and benefiting from the subsidy when the bill comes!

There is no other situation where you expect someone else to split the cost of what you've purchased for your own use. Can you imagine going clothes shopping with a friend, she buying a pair of tights, you buying a suit and then standing at the till saying "shall we split the bill?"!!

It's always difficult. I tend to split the bill equally, whether I have been drinking or not, just because it seems a bit petty to start pulling the bill apart. Although, I would always offer to pay extra if I was drinking, or reduce a non-drinker's bill.

As a short hijack of the thread, we once went out with a group of friends (4 couples in total) and their children, pre-Christmas to Pizza Express. When the bill came, my H paid double what some of the other couples had paid. When I asked him why our bill was so big (each family was the same size, one of us was driving and the kids had the set meals), he said that the wife of his friend had split the bill and said 'you can afford it'! I said that we would never go to a restaurant with them again - and we haven't.