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?

How about when doing the order asking people their name and on your order pad put Bob and his order and Sheila and her order? Might make it quicker for you

I think expecting one person to put 23 meal bills on their own credit card is a lot to ask of friends

Agree

I think expecting one person to put 23 meal bills on their own credit card is a lot to ask of friends

Doesn't usually work like that for us. Generally we all bring cash, if someone hasn't remembered, we pay most of the bill cash and that person pays their share by card.

This really winds me up. Whenever we go out for office socials, everyone thinks it's fine to have someone come to the table and take 15 card payments. I put my foot down at the last one and said it was going on my card and everyone could go to the bank on the way back to the office if they didn't have cash. The server thanked me

I wouldn't be thanking you - would just think you were pompous and sanctimonious and would go out of my way to avoid any future dining experiences with you

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.

This!

Yes, they did order in advance Honey.

It’s a nice restaurant, serving steaks, seafood, cocktails, champagne. More of a special occasion place, than an everyday place. with half of the restaurant formal seating and the other half sofas where customers have drinks/nibbles before and after meals. The bills are usually long with people often staying several hours. It really isn’t the kind of place where we’d hand out wooden spoons with numbers on them.

Those asking about a tip, some of them (6 I think) left between £1-£3, but the rest left nothing. I don’t expect tips, but someone further up thread asked. We don’t have a service charge for larger tables either.

Wow - 23 people all calculating what they had and percentages for tips? YANBU OP. I think I would lose the will to live in that scenario.

I thought people stopped doing this kind of thing once they were about 17?

So this was 23 separate people? No couples or families? Was it a work do or something?

Normally, someone would just pay and then split the bill and say, “You all owe me £xx - thanks.”

I was out for lunch yesterday to a new restaurant with newer software than ours. I asked the server how easy it is to separate bills if everyone orders together. It seems it’s very easy, so long as there’s 6 customers or less! This wouldn’t have helped my scenario.

Asking tables up front how they intend on paying (separate bills, splitting the bill or one bill) seems very rude to me! Most of our clientele would be miffed by this. I’ve never been asked this and I dine out plenty.

Ridiculous! What tight arses. They should
Split the bill evenly or not bother going out for dinner, very pedantic behaviour.....

Pa1oma, yes it was a work do. Someone’s leaving party I believe. Def not the type of place where individuals would be claiming expenses, so they didn’t have that excuse. Most paid to the penny, so they didn’t leave a tip. This isn’t unusual though.

We sometimes get groups of teenagers in for special occasions and they all manage to divide up the bill themselves!

Anyname1 that’s a good system. I’ve used similar before if customers say at the start they want individual bills. Very, rarely does this happen. I think only once in my memory!

Hi BC! Once the order has been out in together, the software isn’t designed to make it easy to split bills for a table of that size, but as a small family run business it would be a huge expense to change it and it works perfectly in every other respect. I def. think it’s a British thing that there’s an awkwardness around discussing money and who’s paying for what.

Going off at a tangent here but how mean they were with their tips! I know you have very nicely said you never expect at tip, but really you must have worked damn hard for that table of 23 and they should have left 10% at the very least. Tight bastards.

Yes. You can’t dictate how people pay.

Of course they can.

But in a group that large, surely not everyone is leaving at the same time. If its a works do, I always tried to leave before Carol from accounts got pissed and embarrassing. Or Gemma started reading out the angry texts from her paranoid knucle dragger and before Lee trys to drag everyone clubbing and calling us boring. People have trains to catch, sitters etc. Non drinkers/drinkers usually leave earlier don't they?

MrsSarah I’ve been waitressing on and off since my teens and I’ve seen a shift. 15-20 years ago most of my customers were an older crowd (45+) and were careful with their spending. They usually tipped. Nowadays it’s a younger crowd (late 20s-30s) who eat out more often, spend more money (craft beers, small batch gin etc), but don’t tip.

They left in dribs and drabs KC. One or two were very early a few stayed late, but most left at round about the same time. There was a steady stream of them at the til one after the other.

How annoying! People should work out what they had on their own and work out how much to chip in. I’ve got a group of friends who insist on paying their share on a card - so that can be 4 or 5 different cards for one table! Why can’t they just come armed with some cash? Gives me the rage!

YANBU, I cringe inside when a group of grown adults (with calculators on their phones) can’t work out between them what they owe.

Yanbu can’t believe that those people didn’t realise how much time you would have to spend fannying around with 23 bills. What ridiculous people.

They'd probably be the kind of people to complain about slow service if they waited while you took 23 payments for another table as well

My restaurant makes splitting bills and separate payments pretty straightforward but if someone was serving five 6 tops who all wanted split bills it would definitely slow everything down for the rest of the place!

YANBU. A group should decide how they pay beforehand. If they want to sit together and be served at the same time, they should treat paying the bill the same. Ridiculous to expect to pay separately 23 times.

It should have been outlined when they reserved the table, and should be for all tables of 6 or more.

The system needs to be changed or reformatted.

If you want bills paid a certain way it is up to the business to make this easier, not the customer because the business owner hasn't organised for big parties.

23 covers paying individually is awfully unusual.

Experienced waitress here - talk to your boss, see what they want you to do. They won't want you out of action for an hour, either.

You get the feel for the type of people they are when they first arrive. If you think there's a danger they'll be a PITA to faff about paying, ask at the beginning when you first start to take drinks orders, "would you like this on separate bills or all together?" - just make sure you have a system either put the order all through at once then split it, or let the kitchen & bar know it's all to come together.

Otherwise it's just a brazen "here's your bill, a pen and paper, I'll be back when you're ready to pay with the card machine if any of you don't have cash :) "

"Can we split the bill?"

"Sure you can pay individually - just take a look at the bill and let me know how much of it you'll be paying."

I owned a restaurant for a long time. The way to deal with is to suss out the 'organiser' in the group' Don't wait for them to ask for the bill, plonk it in front of the organiser, with a calculator and notebook. That way they always sort it out for themselves!