A splitting the bill AIBU

[JamHolyMoly]

We recently went out for dinner to celebrate my step-father's retirement. There were 11 adults and 4 children. The adults, bar one, had 3 courses. Most had at least one alcoholic drink, some only had soft drinks. Money wise, most people consumed roughly the same amount of food and drink except for one person who had the most expensive dish on the menu (double the cost of everyone else's). This person also had a number of very expensive drinks as well as a couple of extra side dishes. The children all had the kids menu food which was £8 for 3 courses. They all drank water.

At the end of the meal, the guest who had the most expensive meal got the bill and told everyone that it would be £40 a head, and included the children in this. We have 3 children so by his working out of the bill we owed £200 for me, dh and our 3 children.

FYI I am not someone who ever argues about the bill and I'm always happy to split the bill evenly amongst all adults present. I don't think I have ever refused to pay an evenly split bill so I don't have form for this.

Anyway, I immediately said that DH and I weren't going to be paying £120 for our three children's meals seeing as their 3 courses totalled £24. It then became really awkward as the person who had split the bill up started getting arsey with me and made a number of rude comments implying I was being tight and basically tried to embarrass me in front of the group. I kept my cool and didn't bite back. Everyone else went very quiet and refused to be drawn into it. My dh was chatting to an acquaintance at another table at the time so he didn't even know what was going on and wasn't there to back me up. It put a dampener on the entire occasion and it's left me feeling very upset that no one spoke up to say "hey that's not fair to expect Jam and dh to pay £120 for £24 food".

In the past I have always stood up for people when they've had one course and a soft drink but been asked to pay an evenly split bill which covered alcohol and numerous course, and would never expect someone to pay for my meal if I had had considerably more than them. I told the person to remove the £24 we owed for the kids from the total bill and then we were happy to split the remaining amount amongst all adults and add the £24 onto the amount we personally owed. I didn't expect anyone to pay for our children's meals but likewise I didn't expect for us to be covering everyone else's expensive food options and alcohol consumption through our children.

Anyway, a couple of family members have since contacted me to say that I ruined the occasion and have upset SF and his (adult) children.

I honestly don't believe I was unfair to refuse to pay £120 for my children's meals but at the same time a number of people in the family disagree and think I was being very unfair. I don't understand their mindset or how they can justify this so maybe I ABU? What do you all think? Should I just have sucked it up and paid the entire £200?

Also make the most of your kids eating kids meals. Remember first time we went to posh restaurant with the kids and their share a plate meals weren’t enough so 4 adults full price it was

I think you should send the cheeky fucker a link to this thread!!!

Outrageous CF. I definitely agree with PPs that SF's son is a bully who is used to getting his way, relying on other people being too embarrassed or disliking confrontation to call him out on it.

By standing up to him, you not only 'cost' him his heavily-subsidised meal on that occasion (and he planned it all along that he would do that, be the first to grab the bill and then not even ask "Shall we just split?" but just tell everybody what their share would be); you also shamed him for his actions, showed him up and made him lose face massively - in front of a number of potential regular 'marks' who, emboldened by your stand, might now in future put a stop to his little game every single time.

I'll bet that he gave a significantly different version of explanation to the others (especially the absent aunt) - "Most people ate pretty much the same i.e. the 10 other adults excluding me, so 10 out of 15 people and we'd thought it would be nice to treat my Dad as it was his celebration well, I didn't, a kind person did, but I'll claim now I was in on the suggestion but Jam decided to quibble and didn't want to pay an immense amount more because of me than they'd eaten." Naturally, forgetting to mention how much the alcohol skewed it or that the children had been included in the split, when anybody decent would assume this wasn't the case.

It goes with the CF territory that the vast majority of them will face it out and deflect deserved criticism on to anybody else but them. You get the odd amateur who will try their luck, fail and then look sheepish and say "Oops, that was a bit cheeky of me, wasn't it?!" - but very few of them.

I don't know what kind of restaurant it was, but if it had been a chain pub with a Wacky Warehouse or similar and you'd thrown out an invitation to them all for anybody who wanted to go for a play (obviously, none of the adults would have been remotely interested themselves); maybe let the children loose for 20 minutes on the rides and the toy vending machines and amusements - and then added all those costs to the total price of the meal bill before splitting, not a single person would have thought that in any way reasonable. Indeed, that would have been just as unreasonable as expecting children to pay a share of the alcohol, steak, lobster etc when they just had chicken nuggets and water - more so, in fact, as all the booze would have cost far more than the kids' fun.

cstaff
The only reason that I can think of that your family are taking his side is because their bills increased from £40 to approx £55. There is no other reason for them to be as unreasonable as your tight ass step brother.

I think cstaff has hit the nail on the head

They should be ashamed of themselves for attempting to have you pay £120 for 3 kids meals (& save themselves £15 per head in the process )

On these threads there are often posts about the CFs who manage to pay for themselves using everybody else's tip money so I was delighted to read PyongyangKipperbang's Billy Big Bollocks story!

Of course YANBU. I actually would have suggested splitting the bill between just the adults. It isn't as if kids' food is that expensive.

If the same CF tries this again be ready to say ‘if you can’t afford the £x you ordered you should just say, so.Obviously we don’t want you embarrassed that you can’t pay your fair share’.

Or make sure you agree how you will split the bill, before anyone orders anything.

I find it's always the CF who has eaten & drunk the most who tries to bandy around words like "tight" in these situations.

Yes, me too!

Oh OP

I don’t drink alcohol.

Never have!

You can only imagine the fun I have with bill splitting.

I now always establish if we’ll ‘split’ bills. If I’m in a splitting group I always order a more expensive meal or a nice dessert!

Once or twice a CF has said ‘but you had a pricey meal/dessert so should pay more’ and I’ve replied with ‘oh yeah...I’ll get mine separately’ then I watch their faces as I pay my £25 to the waitress whilst their share is £40 each 😂😂😂

I’m only at page 7 yet.

But effectively you were being asked to pay an additional £32 PER CHILD compared to the actual cost of their meal.

Which is the same amount per child as the overall bill for ALL 4 DCs ALTOGETHER!!!!

That is definitely another way to portray it, at least to the parent of that other DC.

Well frankly it’s your stepfather who is tight. He should have stumped up for the whole thing.

YADNBU! Why should you and DH pay for other people's share of the food?
Don't eat with those people again. And do not feel mean. You did not put a dampener on the occasion, the CFs did when they tried to pull a fast one.

All the people that have said they always split as getting calculators out is pathetic - I hope you are considering the ppl in your group who don't drink or have had way fewer courses but might not want to speak up.

I'm generally happy with bill splitting if it's the same group of ppl (eg family, so it's likely to even out) or if ppl have had approx the same, but I'm very conscious of the fact that me and dh usually order more or more expensive food/drink than others (and without sounding like a dick, we are happy to spend money) so id feel mortified if eg my sister who only orders water and a side felt she had to subsidise our 2 courses and wine.

I don't really get the British embarrassment with knowing the cost of what you've ordered and paying it tbh! It's fine to pay for what you had if there's a big disparity!

Outrageous behaviour from all but especially the CF stepbrother obviously. Well done for calling him out. So awkward but no way I’d be paying an extra £100 for kids food! Ridiculous and can’t believe anyone would back him up

You are being very reasonable. We’ve always split between most adults but children eating children’s meals are just assumed into the adult costs.
Usually even young adult children costs are just split between the older, higher earning adults.
If we know we’re with someone who might be less well off we’ll just pick up the bill and say they’re our guests.
I can’t abide a mean spirit and that’s not you OP.

Or we say 'we'll split it but first we'll take off £10 for our desserts as you didn't have any' or similar

Is this how it is normally done in the UK - splitting the bill?

When we have meals with family there's always a small tussle to grab the bill, when it's placed on the table, to pay for the whole lot. Bill splitting is bound to cause problems and who wants to do maths after a lovely dinner.

Wow! What a CF! I would have been the same OP! No way I would pay £120 for £24 worth of food. I can't believe anyone would expect that!

Goneforgood - it sounds like this bill was minimum £400. Not a lot of people have sufficient to be able to pay that in one go.

OP your DS is being very unreasonable, particularly in refusing to answer that question which was exactly the point.

@Gone4Good you would pick up a £600 bill?

Yanbu. The way you suggested doing it is the right way. The point of splitting a bill is that everyone has broadly the same type of meal and drinks, I.e. from the adult menu and having drinks. Kids eating from the kids menu is not comparable and the idiot splitting the bill should know that!

I haven't read the whole thread but YADNBU

YANBU in the slightest! This is just one of the many reasons I dislike eating out tbh, people trying to pull stunts like this. And of course your fellow diners should have backed you. You didn't ruin anything, the CF did.

I will never understand how people go out for a meal with ‘friends’ or ‘family’ with the intention from the outset of getting other people to pay for them

As long as you paid for what your immediate family consumed and paid your share of your step-D's meal and tip, I don't see what the problem is.

I guess you won't get any invites from now on if Gary Gutbucket is also going to be there, but I'm guessing he's not great company anyway so no loss there.

Just to add, well done for speaking out and sticking to your guns. You have no reason to ask AIBU

YANBU. I cannot imagine anyone with 3 DCs agreeing to the split originally suggested.