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)

BRAVO for your DH, Suda!

But, like Lying, I'd have dumped both the bitches to find their own way home.

Not like they were any big loss, anyhow.

Thing about cheap people is that they have a massive sense of entitlement.

Somehow, they're so much above lesser mortals that these mugs were just born to subsidise them.

Because I've yet to meet a true cheapskate who is actually poor.

Genuinely poor people, be they people who've been poor long-term or those who were once not poor but have fallen on hard times, will either a) be upfront about their situation and request a separate bill or something like that or b) decline an invite.

Ah but Expat would you have dumped them like me or like my brother?

at your DH, suda, that's awesome!

Suda's husband is a total hero. I am very impressed.

like your brother, of course, lying!

i'm merciless, though .

it's not really that. it's that i've been burned by tightwads like this in the past and now i can sniff it out pretty well and i no longer entertain it at all.

zero tolerance.

I've met poor cheapskates. I've met rich ones. It's just people!

I am irish and usually end up with the opposite problem, as mentioned above. Everyone clammering to pay the bill even if they can't afford it. Makes for some great culture clashes with my English in-laws. My parents are baffled by them!

Expat... You just have to write book on this with 'alerts' for the unwary and tips for those of us who just find it very hard to stick up for ourselves.

I've been burned many times; each time it's spoiled the friendship to the point of no return. It's not the money at all, it's the thought that a friend thinks so little of me to 'play me' when if they'd ask - or given me the opportunity to offer - they would have had whatever it was and more.

No the other friend - 'the lesser bitch' as you call her Lesser spoke to me at work the next day and just said she didnt want to get involved as she's friends with both of us and she thought the 'greater bitch' genuinely thought the checkout woman meant our bags were individually all overweight and not just that we were responsible jointly as a group. So she thought it was less pro-active to just walk towards the shops as we all would have done if not for fall out than actually stand there with me IYSWIM - I kinda did know what she meant. But I suppose she could have said something like Sudas dumped a load of toiletries and not bought anything and we've bought loads etc so it will be our cases that are excessive but she didnt.

I've lost touch with her aswell since then - was just more gradual.

Wasn't there someone on MN a while ago who went out with her DH and EBF baby with another couple, and the other couple insisted on nsplitting the bill 5 ways because there were 5 people at the table- including the baby?

i confess I would never ever speak to such a person again.

I have a multi-millionaire uncle, who admittedly hs made his money through talent. (he is a sculptor of all things- very successful).

I went out with him, his new wife and two cousins when i was a broke university student. he ordered Veurve Cliquot and some red. I was not drinking as i was driving. He insisted on splitting the bill, but not even equally. He said it should be 50/50, between them and me, as he split it 'between family groupings' if you see what I mean- so they paid 50% and I was to pay 50%. I was 19 and had to use my emergency credit card that my dad had given me before i moved out of home. i was too shy\stupid/naive to say 'you stupid thieving fucker'.

Funnily enough, one of my cousins stayed with DH and I when we lived in London for 3 months, without contributing anything. I agreed to that to keep my mother happy. My DH who is really very laid back and tolerant said of the cousin 'she is using us and she is too stupid to even try and hide it'.

I have not spoken to any of them since we told my cousin to move the fuck out. That was in 2006.

See, Blardy, I'm a bitch, and even at 19, I didn't have an emergency credit card.

I would not have at all hesitated to tell him then and there to go fuck himself, then pay my share at the till.

I would not have given a flying fuck, either, if it upset my mother. I'd have told her to get shot of her cunt excuse for a brother who'd take his broke 19-year-old iece for a ride. In fact, if I were your mother, that would have been it between me and my brother. I'd have read him the riot act.

I wouldn't dream of treating my nieces like that in a million years. They're as precious to me as my own children. I cherish them. I love it when they ask me to chat on FB (they're teens).

I'd help them in any way I could. Anytime.

Even at 19, I'd have seen he was a dickhead, that's not the way you treat family.

So the cousin, nah, she'd not have set foot in my house.

I'd have told my mother she could put her up herself but I wasn't having anything to do with it.

I'm so glad you don't have contact with these arseholes anymore.

Did not finally put my foot down until I was well into my 30s.

I refuse to have anything to do with them now. My DM wants everything in nthe family to be 'nice' but she has been taken for a ride many times herself.

Although my father has out his foot down now too. Uncle and his wife went to theirs for Xmas and New Year. (parents now living overseas somewhere warm)They brought one bottle of wine to contribute, ate parents out of house and home and then went home WITH that self same bottle of wine, because over the course of the week it had not been drunk.

My father has finally had enough.

It's a good thing he never had me as a relative, because his little party would have been over loooonnggg ago.

:o

Holy shit, Blardy, that's awful! I'm with Expat - I remember, as a 19-yo student, meeting my uncle unexpectedly in my uni town one day. He took me off for lunch and some beers - we had a lovely time (which he paid for!).

He then had an enjoyable time winding my mother up about how this young woman had come running up to him in this town, and thrown her arms round him and cuddled him, so he took her off for lunch......... my mother can be sooooooo gullible.

Poledra.

My D Uncle is really a bit of an arsehole actually. Always has been.

WHat kind of man would DO that to a teenager?

Tbh I am really interested in WHY people want to split bills at all...what's the point?

It might save the staff time...but that's all...it seems pointless.

You go out, you eat and drink...you should pay for what you had.

I love going shopping with my nieces and buying them little trinkets that take their fancy. It can't be much, we haven't much money, but a wee pair of earrings or a cup of coffee or smoothie with squirty creme or a slice of pizza.

How awful to be so inconsiderate and selfish.

Suda-Well done to your dh it served your "friend" right!
Blardy-I cannot believe the nerve of some people, what an absolute cheek of your uncle, no wonder he is a millionnaire!!!

OMG, so I've told you about BIL's cheap mate. I'll call him TightTony.

TightTony lives with his dad in a mortgage-free flat.

He has a car, no car payment.

No debts. No kids. And no girlfriend, obviously.

As he and his dad have the flat on the market, they don't have a) a landline b) net access.

Even though the flat's been on the market for over a year (because they want too much money for it).

TightTony came here last month with BIL and tried to get free ferry tickets out of my poor, pensioner ILs.

Come to find out, TightTony has £5000 in savings!

He's too cheap to even buy a dongle for his laptop!

I hate, hate, hate it when people insist on paying "their" share rather than an equal split. It's rude because the assumption is you went out for the meal/drinks, not for the pleasure of being in the group.

I make exceptions for non-drinkers or eaters, and very poor people, who broach the issue BEFORE anyone's ordered. Everyone else should sit at another bloody table, if they're that bothered about paying precisely for what they ordered

Surely one cuts one's cloth and behaves with sensitivity, tact and fairness, whatever the circs of those one happens to be dining with?

love love love suda's husband. . Hero man