Splitting restaurant bill

[idontwanttodothisanymore]

I’m one of those people who like to pay for just my meal. I hate splitting the bill by how many people there are.

Me and DH went out with his friend and his OH the other day.

Mine and DH meal came to: £31.57
I had pizza and water, he had chicken and one coke.
DH friend and OH meal came to: £49.78
They had ribs, lasagne, chips and 3 drinks.

Final bill was £81.75
DH friend had two vouchers for £20 off, so they both used that.

Then the OH said we could pay the rest. So we ended up paying £41.75 - £10 more than our meal!!!

I had never met her before and was completely shocked that she wanted us to split by 4 when our meal was cheaper.
She was very intimidating anyway so I didn’t want to say anything.

We were going to do 2 bills but the waiter was all flustered so we said don’t bother. Regretting it now!

I know it’s only £10 but our circumstances are so different. They both work and she has one child - he works full time and she works part time. Whereas DH works part time (and overtime if there is any) but I don’t (I had to leave my job due to medically issues), and we have 2 children.

DH doesn’t think I should be annoyed but I really am!
AIBU to be annoyed?

I don’t think I’ll ever see her again anyway, I didn’t get a good vibe from her and she’s just not my kind of person at all.

The bottle of wine was £75. I'd only had one glass. It's fine though as I'm sure she'll get my cocktails next time. It all balances out

I'm guessing this friend has taken the piss before and knew you'd foot the bill.

Agree pp though

Tight so n so's not using vouchers for all of you. I would have used voucher off entire meal not just my half.

£40 on a meal is so much more than what I’d want to pay
But £32 is fine??

Sorry but for me YABU, the amounts discussed are similar and most people will split 50/50 in this occasion. if you don't it just spoils your dinner as you will spend time checking how much wine everybody drinks from the shared bottle / how mich everybody eats from the sharing platters etc. I mean isn't it why we say "sharing" a meal, not eating while seatg next to eachother...

My pizza was £10.
DH chicken was £13.
Coke was £2.80

If we went out as a couple, that would’ve been it. And we would’ve been happy. We might of got a dessert.

But his friends wanted to get a sharing platter so we paid half of that - even though DH barely touched it and I didn’t have any of it.

To be fair this is over 8 quid as the other couple paid the tip.

I think it sounds like two couples out for dinner in a venue neither couple could really afford. Neither couple were honest up front with each other,,one was paying by vouchers and the other could only spend 32 pounds. If they’d all been honest up front all this angst would have been avoided.

I went out to my Dp’s neice’s birthday meal last week. There were around 10 people I guess. My dp’s father actually got a pen and pad out and wrote down what he and dp’s Mum had and added it up on his calculator. Yes, an actual calculator he had brought with him

OP, YANBU, really.

This thread is hilarious. (And snobbish and rude to the OP and others on a budget.) Due to upbringing and the type of friends I've had throughout my life, we tend to pay what we owe. The numbers have become a bit fuzzier over the years by paying an extra pound, euro or dollar but we still add up what we actually bought/ate. Like some other posters, I'll just split it if we're all within a couple quid of each other and call it a day. But really, no, I'm not paying for anyone's drinks and they shouldn't pay for my steak or dessert. My OH is also vegetarian so there's no way he should be paying for someone's burger or steak.

I honestly don't care if some people think that's tight or not. I LOVE food and love trying new restaurants but I have a certain budget for that and my money goes to different places or priorities as well. There's no way in heck I'm paying €10 - €20 over my actual portion of the bill. The only way that would happen is if another person bought my drinks earlier or was going to buy the drinks after dinner.

Tesco Clubcard vouchers only can be redeemed against food, so they couldn't have used them to pay for their own drinks anyway.....

It sounds like your only problem here is your inability to say what you want. "no thank you we don't want to share a plate" "no thank you we will pay for our own".

It's not hard, and its not really ok to say nothing and then complain about them afterwards.

@Bluntness100 they didn’t pay the tip - we both put a tip.

Yes £2 is a 1.5% tip. Hardly worth it.

It's not about how much things cost or don't cost or who can afford what. The fact is, you are either if a generous spirit or you are not.

Calculating penny-pinchers are in all walks of life and they stand out a mile. I'm afraid to say, my own DF is one of them. Whenever we go out for dinner, he hardly speaks because he is so busy mentally calculating the value of what everyone else is eating / drinking. If my mum ever gets her purse out at the end if a meal, he pushes her hands back into her handbag! In full view of everyone. He has not contributed to one meal in 20 years. He always moans about how expensive everything is in London - as if that's any excuse! We have taken them in about 15 overseas holidays and they never buy us so much as a drink. We even bought them a house and fully furnished it for them - down to loo roll and food in the fridge. They arrived to stay in the house totally empty-handed - not even a dish cloth. I am honestly not joking about this. DF said there was no washing up bowl and he would get one. About two days later, when I took him to the shops, he saw one for £4, but refused to buy it he "could get a cheaper one up North". The most he has ever turned up with is a small packet of chocolate buttons between all my DC. I really am not joking. This is why I get wound up by people fussing over bills.

Sorry, your taste is your own but by no stretch can Wetherspoons be called lovely. It is the worst kind of mass produced, pre frozen, low quality crap.

Can I just ask when you last tried a Wetherspoons meal? I had the same view as you but went recently and was very impressed!

I can't believe the waiter was physically stressed at having to do his job.

They spent more because they knew they had the oucher so weren’t as careful.
You said you were ok to the waiter when you asked for two bills and he got flustered. That’s nothing to do with the friends. I suspect they wouod have been happy paying two separate bills anyway.

The fact they are, on paper, richer (have more income) than you is neither here nor there. You have no idea of what sort of debt have etc.... they might well be looking carefully at money, hence the vouchers.

I think on that one, you need to work on assertiveness and learn it sok to ask something like a split bill at a restaurant! The waiter getting flustered was his issue rather than yours. It shouldn’t have stopped you from asking for that bill.
Or you could have said ‘oh that’s ok. We will just calculate each amount ourselves’ which is what I do en we go out with friends....

As a vegetarian my food almost always costs less than anyone else when we eat out as a group. I would never dream of asking just to pay for my own, I'm paying my share of an enjoyable meal with friends where everyone has had what they preferred to eat. If that cost £80, £120 or £400 for 4 of us my share for a good evening out and lots of fun would be 1/4 of the total if there were 4 of us. I wouldn't dream of going to a Weatherspoons, the pleasure of good food is a joy I'd want to share and I'm afraid it is not on offer there. (It can be had quite cheaply too - there are plenty of good and inexpensive eateries if you look)

Over the summer when visiting the UK. The quality was awful, the food cold and tasteless. Yes it is very cheap, but its still not worth the money!

If you eat out in a group you have to be relaxed and be prepared to win some/lose some either way by £10 or so. I genuinely don't think other people are actually out to screw you over for £10 and anyway if you are eating out with them surely you are friends?! I would be happy to sub friends small amounts and vice versa to avoid the cringeworthy tedium of "well you had the noodles" conversations when the bill comes. Joy sucking.

Otherwise you will not have any fun and end up writing a post like the OP with sad things in it like "£31.57" and "pizza and water".

"P.s. everyone saying they should have split the vouchers- you do realise you have to pay for the vouchers? confused why should they split vouchers they've paid for?"

They didn't pay for them.

They collected them for free from Tesco and then exchanged at 4-to-1.

They aren't the same as cash.

secure.tesco.com/clubcard/boost/eating-out/4294967291.cat

Tesco don't pay the restaurant full price for the vouchers, because the places you can use them at are chain places where there are loads of discounts anyway. So the '£10 voucher for £2.50 of voucher' is misleading.

It's very different from, say, a Gordon Ramsay voucher - I bought one for my parents as a gift, and you pay the full price of the meal with no discount.

Basically the OP's friend has got some vouchers they want to got rid of, and invited the OP along to cover their service charge and drinks, these vouchers are ONLY valid for food, and they DON'T cover the service.

So basically what's happened is:

OP's friend has bought £40 of vouchers to shit restaurant for £10, but they don't cover the drinks or tips.

So OP's friend has invited OP along in order to exchange their shitty Tesco voucher for cash.

Which is not on.

Obviously the Tesco vouchers have value, but it's not £40, and it's not on to invite people to a shitty restaurant so you can use up your vouchers.

They are cheap spongeing bastards.

At the very least if you want to use your shitty Tesco vouchers offer them at a reasonable price, like 'I've got £20 of vouchers, do you want them for £15?'

Also if you are deliberately spending more to use up your shitty Tesco vouchers, then it's not on to then split the bill with people who are paying with actual cash.

It's a different dynamic from a group where all are paying cash.

Fair IMO would be offer £20 of vouchers to the OP for a discount, somewhere between £10 and £15, and then OP pays her share, so

£15 to OP for £20 voucher
plus £11.57 for the remainder in cash

that's £26.57.

At the most.

The only time I felt peeved about bill splitting was years ago when I was pregnant. Everyone else had alcohol and I had juice. I still paid the same as everyone else (I was too shy, young and new to the group as they were my ex dh’s friends I was meeting.)

That’s when it’s taking the piss if everyone had expensive seafood and wine whilst you had water and a modest meal.

One question though is what would have happened if you two had had a more expensive meal and more drinks? If the bill then came to £90 to £100, I wonder if they would have still just used the vouchers and let you pay the rest “because you had more” or whether they would have paid more and made it up to s 50/50 split bill?

If the waiter couldn't manage to produce separate bills without any hassle, I'm not sure a tip was warranted anyway. Service often isn't that great and a tip is often regarded as almost mandatory for many diners.

The OP and her DH ordered just under £26 worth of food and drink and were steamrollered into a shared starter that they didn't want or really touch. £30 would have been plenty for them to contribute to that meal really.

Sorry, I see OP only spent £25.80 on food & drinks. £6 tip on that is bonkers or have I missed something?

I think it is pretty cheap of the other couple not to throw in extra personally. Op it would have be better to speak up but YANBU. So it's only £10 but why should you spend that on other people's food especially ones who aren't good friends.

I never understand how some people think it is so difficult to roughly calculate what you had and pay your share. Just round up then add tip. Paying for what you had is hardly complicated.

i also don't see why you would have to announce you are just paying for your own food. Surely that's what's expected.

They go out weekly for meals. Definitely not penny pinching. In fact they have gone out for another meal tonight.

Myself and DH planned to go to the cinema for the “early bird” which is £4 each.
We were going to have lunch at Wetherspoons which is normally £15 for both me and DH.

We ended up going to a complete different cinema - Odeon. So tickets ramped up to £12 each straight away. Then obviously the meal.
We put them both on our credit card because we only had £40 on our bank card.