To object to paying seventy quid for a couple of sandwiches?

[Sarah2506]

So we go for lunch with a big bunch of friends and kids. We are vegetarians and order sandwiches and chips at 6 quid each plus a couple of soft drinks. Everyone else orders meat dishes. The kids all have children's meals. The bill comes and someone divides it up equally and says thirty five quid each. DH just pays our share while I'm in the loo and I explode when he tells me later- I would have gone mad if he'd told me at the time but he doesn't think there is a problem with it.

I am annoyed because the bill was split between all the adults, which means we've paid for the kids food. We have a baby who didn't eat. Shouldn't the parents of the kids who ate pay for them? Also someone had the best part of a 45 quid bottle of wine to themselves. Shouldn't he have paid for that?

I'm on maternity leave and not being paid. It's not like we can't afford 70 quid but it will be at the expense of something else and our lunch came to 20 quid max. And so I'm furious that the bill wasn't divided up a bit more fairly. DH takes the view that it wouldn't be the done thing to object and that 'you win some you lose some'. No we don't, non drinking vegetarians never win some!

AIBU?

I've stopped drinking alcohol when I go out for big group meals. I just say that I'm driving and can I be taken off the drinks bill (which is usually about 50% of the total). I made this decision after having one glass of wine at a big Christmas do and ended up being charged the same as those who had had a least a bottle each.

And why it is always those who have had the most who are the most insistent about getting their change at the end? ("No, no, I think you'll find I'm owed £1.37 back", etc etc)

Sofia, there is an alternative to Parmesan that tastes very similar, IMO - link here.

Most French cheese still use calf rennet. Most vegetarian cheeses are listed as such (in UK supermarkets at least ). If they don't say they are suitable for vegetarians, they probably aren't.

I can't stand people who really split hairs with bills 'oh I didn't have a pudding', 'Some of us didn't have coffee' etc. But there has to be some balance - if someone hasn't had any alcohol they should automatically be excluded from the drinks bill; if someone knows they have ordered the most expensive main course, several side orders and were one of only a couple in the group who had dessert, they should have the decency to throw in an extra tenner etc.

People who always insist on only paying for exactly what they ate are mean; people who sit back and let the bill be split equally when they know they've had a lot more to eat or drink than others are also mean.

Your DH should have questioned this at the time of paying, however, it is
sometimes difficult in larger groups to know what everyone is eating/drinking. A month or so ago a group of us sat down to eat and the bill should have been split between the adults. Group was 2 adults,
Another 2 adults, then 2 adults with older kids 14/18 so counted as 4 adults and a pair of adults with a 3 year old. Everone ordered their food and a drink and at the end the bill came and we said OK 10 splits, - the bill was £235 so it was £23.50 each which we said was £25 each to cover a bit of a tip - the 2 with the child said, we only ordered 'starter' dishes at £8.50 each, whilst the mains had been £17 each and they did not want to pay their 2/10th - we did agree to absorb the child as she usually eats bits off her parent's plates and just has a drink.
So, after a bit of a moan they paid £25 and the rest was split.
On checking the bill afterwards we found that the cheeky feckers had eaten/drank between them 2 starters @ £8.50 = £17.00 a childs meal
at £8.00 = £25.00 a childs fresh orange juice @ £4.00 = £29.00 2 pints of beer at £4.10 per pint = £37.20 and she had 4 (yes 4 !!) glasses of wine at £6.50 per glass = £63.20
Moral - just because some one appears not to be having much, unless you are sat exactly over them all the time you don't really have a clue.

Vintage, surely if you make it clear from the outset that you're only paying for your own, that's ok? Where's the objection to that?

YANBU - the £45 wine drinker was clearly taking the piss.

however, i do hate it when non-drinkers assume that just because they've not had alcohol their bill will automatically be cheaper. Soft drinks can be expensive, and sometimes nearly as much as a glass of wine, especially there's some sort of happy hour type discount on.

I've been stung before when a friend has ordered three soft drinks, and I've had two glasses of house wine. My drinks bill should have been a couple of quid cheaper, but they just chucked some cash at me, stating "you had wine so you'll need to put more in".

That is SO unfair. I cannot bear that kind of behaviour. Fine to split if you've had roughly the same but not if someone's had a £45 bottle of wine! That would put me off someone very quickly.

Yes as Charlotte says this can go both ways...

I went to a wedding once and was sharing a room with 3 other people for 2 nights and we were all charging our drinks to the room. I ordered a couple of bottles of bubbly - fine, this was more expensive than the others gin and tonics so I said I was very happy to pay more. What I wasn't happy to do though, and what caused a argument, is pay for my bottles of bubbly AND split the rest of the drinks bill 4 ways as while I'd been drinking my bubbly I hadn't also been drinking their gin! And they really really couldn't wouldn't understand this.

In the end I paid for my bubbly and contributed a bit more and left them to sort it out. Especially as one of the 3 was my notoriously tight friend who never went to the bar when it was her round!

And then there is always the person insistent on only paying for their main course as they didn't have a starter or desert and only drank tap water...

Apart from 'tasting some starters, taking a spoon and helping themselves to my desert and helping themselves to a glass of wine from the bottle we were sharing. Grrrrrrrrr!

In conclusion, people who expect others to subsidise them, whether that's by splitting the bill when they've had more than their share or expecting to taste everyone else's food and wine but only paying for what they actually ordered, are cunts.

YANBU - I hate the assumption that everyone will cough up equal shares. The person who had the £45 wine and the families with kids but be feeling very satisfied with themselves today. Having been stung few times over the years I now announce that I will be paying for my own, either at the beginning or the end of the meal when the bill arrives - it shouldn't matter to anyone else when I say it - and then leave everyone else to split the remainder or pay for their own too.

YANBU. As a vegetarian I always find I end up paying way more than I should whenever I go out to dinner with friends. Last weekend a friend ordered a £25 steak while I had a £7 vegetarian dish. Others had a meet dish around £15/£16 and when the bill came the bloke who'd had the steak didnt say a word while the bill was divided equally.

Luckily someone did pipe up 'x had the steak so he should pay extra'.

As it was I threw in £25 and felt taken advantage of!

YANBU - that's pretty outrageous, especially the 45 quid bottle of wine. Some friends!

This is why I like going to set menu places with first drinks included That or Nando's (etc) where you pay before the food comes.

SirChenjin is right - it shouldn't actually matter when you say you'd like to just pay for your own because the only way it makes any difference to any of the others is if they were hoping to get away with not paying for everything they've eaten/drunk and wouldn't otherwise have ordered it?

We obviously have much fairer friends! I'm currently pregnant so when we go out as a group am not drinking alcohol, and don't want too many sweet soft drinks so often skip when the round of drinks is ordered. Also if the menu choices for starters or desserts isn't preg friendly I will skip those, especially as I get bigger & the tummy capacity decreases. We go out regularly with the same close group of friends, and I know that once baby arrives things will even back out (yay wine!) so would have no problems with equal splits, but there is no way our friends will entertain the idea, and they always reduce my share when the bill is split up. I can't help feeling that real friends would want to show this kind of consideration in the OPs example...

Reading threads like this is a complete eye-opener as to how differently people think.

Sofia I'm with StuntGirl Your OH is a PITA food wanker and not representative of vegetarians. I would (and have) sit and happily eat side veg and a bread roll with no complaint whatsoever to make sure I wasn't spoiling anyone else's enjoyment or making things awkward food-wise for a host.

I also don't find veggie mains are that much cheaper than meat mains so usually wouldn't grumble over the even splitting of a bill, and certainly wouldn't play the vegetarian card to justify it, unless I have eaten noticeably less than everyone else. The main fault in this case lies with the exorbitant booze bill which should not have been added to anyone's total except the drinkers'.

The booze bill AND the fact that she paid for other kids food

As a family we are veggies and a lot more skint than many of our friends. When we go out, if I think it's going to end up being an expensive meal as a whole, I'll actually say something along the lines of 'we're not eating much / DP and I aren't drinking today, so we'll just sort ourselves out with our own bill if that's OK'. No one has ever commented or complained about this. Usually someone in the group remembers at the end and says, oh N and family are paying their own way, take what they paid out and divide the rest. It's just a bit of a heads-up to people that we're probably spending a lot less than them. But it does rely on your friends being sensitive about it, I realise!

I don't drink (couple of time a year at most really) and always feel lumbered with the drinking bills of those who possibly drink a little too much. alcohol disinhibits too so people will not bother so much about taking care to be fair.

I do try to use a fairer system when I am the one doing the inviting even if it takes longer. Better that than somebody going home feeling angry and resentful. That takes longer to get over than divvying up a tab.