Splitting the bill - from a waitress’s POV.

[MazDazzle]

If you’re out for a meal in a large group and you want to pay individually, how do you go about it?

I’m a waitress in a smallish bistro. It’s a nice place and we do our best to accommodate our customers. We had a table of 23 last night: starters, mains, pudding and some sides, plus cocktails and coffee. Instead of asking for the total bill, each person came up to the til one at a time and asked to pay for what they had.

I had to listen patiently while each person tried to remember what they had. It’s a long process; I had to log in/out multiple times for each customer, shut down screens, open new ones, trawl through the very long bill trying to find each item, create a new table for each customer, cut and paste it to a new bill... this is before we get to the cash/card payment. 23 times!

It took a good 3 mins per customer, so for over an hour the restaurant floor was one person short. It happens all the time and both the restaurant owners and staff are sick of it.

WIBU to say ‘Sorry, we’re unable to make up individual bills, but I’m happy to print out multiple copies of the total bill and provide a calculator. Each person can pay by cash/card, whichever is easiest.’

Would you think it was rude if a waitress said this to you?

Much easier to for diners to ask for the bill and split it themselves. The obvious way is to just divide equally but there is invariably some CF who had 3 courses, a side, 3 glasses of wine and a coffee when everyone else had 1 course and a drink

@ThumbWitchesAbroad

Sorry - NotOliviaMN (got a bit carried away there)

Sorry to get your hopes up, ThumbWitches -

Seems wrong for any of the rest of us to use her catchphrase without a nod to her name, though.

I love a good profanity too Fizzy,I’d never dissuade anyone from a good blast
I just think your posts are touchy
And I love lippygal, wish I’d picked it as a mn username

I live in the US and it is the norm to do separate bills. Waitresses ask as they take the first order, and keep a separate bill for each customer (or pair) - sometimes on paper, and other times they just remember and write it down elsewhere. Then we all get separate bills presented when we say we'll pay.

If someone orders a bottle of wine to share, they ask which bill to put it on, or sometimes will split it 50/50. But every single thing is decided at the time of ordering, so no chance of 'forgetting' or having to wade through a long bill one at a time.

Can you not just ask at the start?

Surely everyone orders coffee/dessert later, so that's the same.

I used to do it like this. More for not having to ask who ordered what, but makes splitting the bill dead easy.

Should have added. While everyone is getting seated you can draw your table plan and discriptions of who is sitting where - from a distance. And NEVER write anything dodgy on it (such as 'Loud Woman' or 'Bald Bloke') because they may see it!

I'm not going to fork out £700 from my account and then carry £700 in cash for the rest of the night. And I wouldn't expect anyone else to. Ridiculous suggestion.

Lol. Every Christmas, MIL treats the whole extended family (can be more than 20 of us, now that her grandchildren have partners) to a 3-course lunch, plus drinks. She arrives with at least a grand in cash, which she's drawn out of her savings so she can settle the bill! She's 80, and she doesn't seem phased by it at all.

I have never been to a restaurant in a group where people ask for separate itemised bills, or have to think through what they had while the waiter punches it in separately... diners should definitely do this themselves, either from the bill or from the menu. When I've been out it's always been a case of either:
a) splitting it equally or
b) getting the bill, working out your share then telling the waiter "£30 on this card please".

So when I’ve wanted to split according to what people had the restaurant provides an itemised bill and one person works out who had what and how much they owe. I wouldn’t see this as the restaurants job.

What happened with these diners was ridiculous. I think you should point out to your manager that it is very easy for customers to either forget what they had or take advantage of the system. On top of this they’re not even paying for the service, which actually cost your manager your gross wages plus anything else he pays for you on top. If your manager still refuses I don’t think you should be made to pay a short fall.

Even when I’ve been out with another say 14 people we have always managed to split the bill appropriately amongst ourselves.

Did they at least leave a good tip?

I'd never dream of doing that. Whenever I've split a bill, we've worked it out at the table and then all put in the cash, or just told the waiter how much to put on each card. Seems very rude to do what those customers did!

No worries, NotOliviaMN - I like that you give OliviaMN tribute in that way :)

I guess it's different here in the US, I think it's more common to split the bill here. Waitstaff always asks at the beginning is the meal how the bill will be split.

I think it would be perfectly reasonable. I prefer to just split the bill anyway, including alcohol...and I'm teetotal.

I think in a group that big it's reasonable to say no. I can see that is a complete waste of your time.
They should agree upfront to have same amount of courses or split it after.

We are guilty of doing this. We work away a lot and meet up with other colleagues and eat together. In order to claim expenses we need an itemised bill each which is a pain. The restaurant however is often getting 25 people spending a minimum of £25 each on a weekday night so whilst an inconvenience surely the money it makes the restaurant is worth it? We would choose somewhere else if they couldn’t accommodate this.

Whenever I organise a big group meal now I ask for everyone's orders in advance, make a list for the restaurant and add up their costs. It's up to everyone to order drinks from the bar / pay the waiter for them then. Ordering on the night always makes paying a nightmare!

In Norway it's very typical for each person to go to the bar, recite what they had and then pay for that (adding a tip each). But the systems here are set up to make this super easy. It works well for everyone! And because it's normal people are good at remembering what they had.

I wouldn't be offended if you said what you suggested to me. But I think your boss needs to fix the till system so that it's better for everyone instead.

I would never expect a waitress to do the calculation. Someone always takes charge and adds up. We try to go to the bar for drinks if possible so bill is just food. Ridiculous to take up this much of your time.

I would say that people should either order individually on a tab and then pay their own tab at the end or order as a group and then work out who owes/is paying what themselves as a group. Saying “£25 to pay on this card, please” is fine, but expecting the waiting staff to calculate what proportion of the joint order is yours is unreasonable. Nobody would share a taxi with people joining and leaving at slightly different points and expect the driver to work out exactly what each passenger should fairly pay.

As well as the issue of bottles of wine and side platters ordered for sharing, I imagine that there would likely be several incidentals that people wouldn't remember (or would deliberately overlook) – the extra roll with the soup, the side order of chips, asking for pineapple AND egg with the gammon, another drink etc. Even when they do remember everything they had, they’re likely to say “I had the steak” but struggle to remember any more detail when the table’s order included a 6oz rump, 10oz sirloin, T-bone, fillet – not to mention who opted for an additional sauce.

Having to rely on everybody telling you what they had before paying based on that and leaving is bound to end in trouble, when you get to the last person, who insists (probably correctly) that they didn't have certain of the remaining unaccounted-for items and so are thus not going to pay for them.

Some people may have genuinely forgotten or got confused whilst there will be those who use this as their regular premeditated MO in order to cheat either their co-diners or the restaurant – carefully note the cheapest meal that any of their number orders, exclaim “Is that the time – the babysitter will think I've forgotten her”, jump up and head to the till, claim that they just had that cheapest meal and tap water, pay and leave, dishonestly saving themselves a packet. Any queries after the event will be blamed on ‘that stupid, rude waitress, who was obviously trying to rip us off and double-charge to score herself an extra tip’.

If people aren't ordering separately, then giving them a printout of the entire itemised bill and leaving them as a table to collectively take responsibility for each item (or query if a mistake is suspected) is the only reasonable way to do it.

I work in an environment where people split bills all the time. Usually we go through the bill, work out what we've had, add it up and split the service charge/tips. Sometimes people want to pay their bit on a cars, others by cash. It isn't usually a problem. Ive only once had a scenario like the OP's and it was an end of term meal for a language group I attend. It was mostly older people who seemed to go off and pay their bit of the bill. It did take forever with 20 people paying bit by bit.

Perhaps restaurants should tell large tables that the bill will be broken down into groups of 4-5 people in sections of the table? Then it's easier to work out between themselves? In a lot of places it's possible for seperate bills, but even that can be slow in a big group. Whatever is happening should be decided before the meal, and if the restaurant has a large booking they should tell whoever books if they aren't able to facilitate seperate bills. To be fair, if the restaurant knows they have a large group booking they ought to have a little extra staff on as it always slows things down.

I have never heard of people splitting the bill like this - it is for the customers to work out/remember what they had surely 🤷🏼‍♀️

You can quite easily “split the bill” by people calculating their own chunk and paying that. Doing as described by OP would be a complete pain in the arse. Hope they were good tippers?!

Any table over a certain number shouldn't be allowed to do that. If it was more than 10 I'd be fine for someone to say that to me. What faff!

I think when I've been out in big groups we've usually had to order in advance, so pretty much knew what the bill was going to be.