I have never in my life experienced someone in a restaurant refusing to pay their fair share

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it was so embarrassing ended up with me and Friend B paying over the odds to make up for it

Chinese so all sharing all dishes, china tea, prawn crackers etc

Family A - Mum (not eating but drinks tea), Dad (only ordered soup, but gorged on everything else on table)and 18 year old

Family B - 2 adults

and US - 2 adults, 2 kids (one a 6 year old who barely eats)

Family A mum said he only ordered soup so we're only paying for one adult

divided by 8 (there were 9 of us but she didn't eat) bill was just under £20 each

she said we only pay for what we ordered
she repeated it despite minor protestations that he'd eaten everything - her 18 year old was mortified

I ended up paying £80, Family B paid £50 and Family A £20

am still aghast

would you do it? would you say anything after the fact? am so tempted to email and say wtf were you thinking you fucking freak (she a relative not a friend)

I'm ashamed to admit I actually had my purse out, when my dp (who wouldn't normally have been there) stepped in and said, no way, we're all paying for ourselves.

It got a bit ugly.

And, do you know, I felt guilty about it for ages, because this friend-of-a-friend was a single mum on benefits, and she had been told she'd get a freebie, so ordered far more than she could actually afford.

On the other hand, she should never have assumed that what she did was ok.

And, of course, i furiously resented my mate for getting us all into that situation. And now, when I visit, I make damn sure we don't meet in a restaurant. As does she: embarrassment all round.

I do completely accept my share of the blame. I should have been more clear and assertive way earlier, before it got to that stage.

Lesson learnt

I had this happen once on a hen party meal.

We ate Italian food, so everyone agreed to bread and dipping oil and garlic bread for the table. There was 8 bottles of table wine also.

I figured the bill would be split 15 ways ( minus the wine for me, pregnant).

Two girls then said, oh we didn't have any garlic bread or oil etc.

I ended up paying £42.00 for garlic bread and pasta and 2 orange juices.

It was just a bit awkward to say "no you bloody agreed in the beginning, shut up and get your purse out".

"because this friend-of-a-friend was a single mum on benefits, and she had been told she'd get a freebie, so ordered far more than she could actually afford."

There's no such thing as a free lunch........

I wouldn't feel guilty at all. It was bloody rude of her to assume that someone she'd never met would pay for her and her DC to have lunch on you!!!

and just as rude of your friend to assume that you'd pay. I'm not sure I would have continued to see her if one of my friends did that to me (not that I can see a day that I'm likely to be in a position to pay for lunch/coffee for someone else on a regular basis )

She was actually not a close friend (which made it even cheekier).

She's even less close now

no no no - that's not cheeky - that's bloody rude.

"she had been told she'd get a freebie, so ordered far more than she could actually afford"

When someone else is paying its more usual to order a bit more modestly than you would if you were paying yourself.

Exactly, MrsAlanKey!

I wouldn't have felt guilty, either, hester. Glad your DP stepped in.

'It was just a bit awkward to say "no you bloody agreed in the beginning, shut up and get your purse out".'

That's exactly what pisstakers like this are relying on. Or that there's so much crowd/chaos at bill-paying time no one will notice they're niggling out.

Within family and close friends we normally take it in turns to cover the whole meal, and say 'you paid last time, it's our turn now'. It works.

When I go out with a big group of friends we split the bill, but separate the drinkers from the none drinkers, so the pregnant pay less. The rest of us just tend to order what we want and maybe we go to places where there isn't a vast difference in the cost of a main meal. We also do a drinks kitty for the pub after where we all put in x amount and buy drinks out of that. I think this works really well and we have never disagreed about the amounts or who has had what.

Family A sounds strange for going out for a meal and only ording tea and soup. Even if he had not picked at the other food I would have felt awkward stuffing myself in front of them.

I have arrived far too late on this thread, but I can't stand the splitting of the bill!

I went out with friends a few weeks back and whilst I will happily take off my alcohol intake from the main bill, ffs, just split it equally!

It ended up with having to count the amount of cokes one person had! I wouldn't mind, but they ordered and ate far more than me, but I paid £10 more than them!

Can't be arsed with it. I've made a stand and told them, next time we go out, we go to a pub and order our own food & drink at the bar.

You need to do the same.

It's common in the US to split bills, then the cheapskates will try to slide in without paying tax and tip, which are added (and you add tip) at the end.

In our circle of climbers, there was a very wealthy petroleum engineer, a bachelor with no children, who was legend for trying to get out of tax and tip. 'Oh, mine was only $2.99 . . .'

After the first couple of times, though, people would collar him on it and calculate it in for him and tell him what he really owned.

Cheap arse.

Hester - my sister is very wealthy (she's my token millionaire!) and she often digs in and pays when we go out. I invited her out to lunch for my birthday and said "please come and don't pay. We will all pay our share - you are not just invited because you pay!"

As it turned out it shrank to me and her... and she paid (though to be fair we shared a starter and had another starter each as a main course with two soft drinks so I don;t think it bankrupted her)

I would avoid family A like the plague and refuse all invites for a meal out together.

I personally don't mind bill splitting-provided that everyone eats/drinks roughly the same. I have on occasion ended up paying at least an extra £10 and do feel miffed.
Similarly I will not buy rounds of drinks with anyone drinking shorts when I am drinking glasses of lager.

We had a friend who actually used to take a calculator out with her to work it out. We all used to buy rounds and announce loudly that we were buying for everyone just to see her order water.

the way I look at it is this; when you split the bill between everyone it's actually not that much different

so
sometimes it would only cost you about £3 or £4 not to look like a tightfisted twunt

and in my book it's worth every penny
but some people don't stop to work this out and then end up with very few friends

I went out with work friends the other day for a meal, but had actually eaten already, but ordered a bottle of wine for me and I shared in the bill which was more than the wine. Sometimes it works in my favour so I don't mind

Sometimes I go out with friends and just order a bottle of wine to drink while they eat. Im worried it makes me look like an alcoholic, but at least I dont worry when the bill comes, being completely off my face! Wahey!!

yes sometimes it might "only" be £3 or £4 (but if you've budgetted £30 for you main course, pud and glass of wine and that's what you've got with you plus your taxi home you'll be slightly stuffed).

It can be considerably more.

Personally I'd rather risk losing a few "friends" by telling them in advance I would order and pay separately - than feeling either compelled to split and pay more than I can afford...........or end up sat at home on my own.

But Baroque, a real friend, you could tell them you're skinters and they'll spot you a few quid. I would!

'spot you a few quid' so that you owe them for the food they ordered and ate??

If you are on a tight budget, paying your own bill is the only sensible solution.

If your friends have a problem with this, are they really friends?

Actually, no, HH, if it were my friend I'd probably pay for them entirely if I could, or for their taxi or something like that.

I wouldn't expect them to pay me back. Ever.

If they still wanted to pay their own bill, fair enough.

But I'd rather pay what I could for them.

thing is though expat - right now - if I'm skint, I'm skint. Yes I could borrow a few quid.......but it's not going to be any time soon that I'll be in the position to do that to someone else (so the "it all evens out" thing is unlikely to work in the long run).

If I'm going out and don't have the money to agree to split, that means that I'm not going to have the money in the next 4-6 weeks either (I am the queen of shuffling money around and "using" moeny that isn't coming in until 2 weeks time now ).

There's only so much "indebtedness" a person can take before they become miserable about it. and feels like shit (and then they don't want to go out even if they can afford to split as they're worried that they'll never be in the position to "spot" back......)

I'm not anal about it, if my wine is £3.25, my starters £4.50, my main course £7.95 and my desert £5.25 - I'll round it all up and bung in £23 (or more likely £25 as I never seem to have much change on me ) - but I've been out and found that even my "rounding up" has meant paying individually £15-20 less than those splitting the rest of the bill.

Thankfully we mostly now have the people we go out for dinner down to a group where we are all tussling over who is going to pay.

It starts out with a DH reaching for his wallet, saying 'We will get this, it has been lovely to see you' then another DH will say 'No, no, I am pretty sure it is our turn...' and so on and so forth.

I have girlfriends where we take the start of these negotiations as a sign to go to the loo or take the children for a walk, while they sort it out.

Then we just come back to whoever has 'won'.

If I notice that someone is not ordering as much as the rest of the table then of course it is fine to divvy up and pay for what you actually ordered.

But what gets right up my nose (like in the OP) are the people who only actually order a main and a soft drink and then jump into the communal starters, have a couple of glasses of communal wine and 'just a nibble' of everyone else's desserts (well actually this doesn't happen to me because once it is on my plate it is mine all mine).

Like I said in my previous post, this only ever happens once with individual people though, because I just won't go out with them again.

Sometimes the extra 3-4 pounds can make it really awkward for people.
A few mums from our baby group went out recently. We don't know each other that well yet, certainly not well enough to know each others financial situations.
It was sold as a 'cheap and cheerful night to get to know each other' local indian does a 10 pound fixed price menu. At least half of us shared jugs of tap water.
It ended up costing 20 each including tip. I felt really sorry for a couple of girls that had only bought 15 out with them. So in that case, a few people taking the piss with ordering put them in the difficult position of borrowing off others.
(Yes, I feel bitter at paying 24 for a 10 set meal and tap water - but I'll put it down to experience!!)

- Morloth - I have wonderful vision of you and your girlfriends disappearing of to the loo/taking the kids for a walk and leaving all the men being macho as to who is going to pay

Yes I hate it when I offer someone a taste/nibble of my extra food, and then they wont even pay for it! I know Ive got heaps of money and thats why I ordered so much, and they are hard up, but they still ate some of my food and so should pay me for it.
AIBU?

Actually its starting to sound a bit like dodgy conman tactics

Morloth is saying "I love eating out with rich men who pay for me all the time, but poor people get right up my nose"

Not that Im saying youre a hypocrite or anything.