the old 'splitting the bil'l with friends!?

[cutewithsharpteethpossibly]

so we(me, dh & dd) went for a meal with another friend, her dh and their dd, they also brought sil. I wasn't drinking and just drank the water due to a run the next day, so there was lots of wine flowing and it was a really good night, lots of catching up and nice to meet sil. So at the end of the night my friends dh said 'lets just split the bill', which meant we paid for half of all their drinks and sil meal. Now I'm annoyed, I'm not normally mean but I just don't think it was on? I also think my DH should have just mentioned it before agreeing to pay half? Is it me, I don't mind being told if I'm being petty!

I can see why they just split it, you were 3 did they were 3. Depends on age of the dd I suppose. If they were on the kids menu then splitting it won't work but they could be in the normal adult menu.
The drink is separate thing. Generally if I know I am out with friends who split bills, I make sure I have expensive mock tails if not drinking myself and maybe a pudding when they don't.

Yep always the ones who eat the more expensive meal and drink like fish who want to split the bill.
I don't mind if it's a reasonable amount I pay, so if my meal is £15 and i pay £20 im ok with that.
If I end up paying £30 then no, I'm not happy with that.

I also prefer to pay beforehand and pay for our own drinks.
I'm not drinking at the moment and saving up for a big event.
Otherwise I don't mind so much.

No they were 4 @burnoutbabe - they were 3 adults and a child, the OP was 2 plus a child

I'm not a tap water drinking penny pincher. I dont drink alcohol. I will pay for soda water but some places we like to eat provide big pitchers of (I assume tap) water filled with ice and it's lovely...oh and free

I've always been very happy to split bills evenly or do the whole "you get this one I'll get the next" thing with close friends. However, now that I am pregnant I really don't think it's fair! If someone has a couple of glasses of wine and the different to the bill is minimal, no problem. But bottles of wine and I have to pay 20£+ more? Not ok. And it is embarrassing because the assumption made you will just split it makes you look mean somehow if you don't.

I have a friend who is teetotal but we all remember to take off the alcohol share from his part of the bill. He is a good friend though.

Open questions to all: Are these actual / proper friends who want you to subsidise the alcohol part of the bill?

After being fleeced so many times by my eldest sib we've learned to ask the waiting staff to do our bill separately as we were getting too scared to go out with them in case they split it and we ended up paying for their eldest dc who drink & eat a lot. We just ask at the beginning of the meal to keep our bill separate and they are fine with it. Probably happens a fair bit these days what with all these CF's about.

@somethingsneverchange

How did they react once you started changing the bill paying?

I’m not a bill splitter. I don’t drink and usually get a jug of water for free. I choose food based on my budget and rarely have a starter or desert. Mostly my friends these days are sympathetic to that and will often tell me to pay for what I’ve had and they then either do the same or split the rest between them.

The other issue comes with splitting the tip!! We went on a big work do and a service charge was automatically added if 10%. I had a £5 pizza and free water (this was about 15 years ago). When the bill came they wanted to split the whole bill including the service charge so wanted £10 something off me. So I was paying a 100% tip while others were possibly paying 0% tip and jist their food! I argued and didn’t back down but was basically labelled a trouble causer.

Five of us went for a meal last night and the bill was £280. One person was on a diet and didn't drink so she paid £40 ( her share). The four of us split the bill, I'm not going to argue about who had the most wine or a dearer meal.

• this is a case of you not speaking up at the time.

It's now too late to sort it... but make sure next time your out you order expensive if it upsets you... to even it up.

I remember going out with two other couples and a single man

Me and the wife in one of the couples had a bowl of chips (both pregnant) and our dhs had a normal priced main (£10ish I think)

The third couple... Had alcohol, the wife had a more expensive main and her dh had a 20oz steak

They expected to split the bill. Nope we are not subsiding your meal

At a meal out with some friends, I was pg but not telling anyone (4ish weeks so quite early) bossy woman kept trying to get me to drink-I hate alcohol anyway but refused

Just had a pizza and tap water because I love water

When the bill came in I put in what I had ordered which came to much less than everyone else's because they'd all been drinking cocktails

They all looked quite surprised how high their bill was

YANBU. I would only suggest to "just split the bill" if I was the one who had the less expensive meal. I like the way the Germans do it where the restaurant will automatically split it for you so there's no awkwardness.

The worst actually was a woman I used to work with. She didn't have kids and made a massive speech about how she wasn't going to split the bill because some of us had kids with us and she wasn't going to subsidise them.....that would have been fine (no one had suggested splitting the bill anyway) the kids meals were about £6 each and she had had one of the more expensive adult meals (plus cappuccinos and glass of wine etc) when we added it up she ended up with the most expensive bill and she then tried to back peddle and say actually it was fine to split it! Cheeky cow!