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?

They're not 'friends' though, are they, Unihorn? They're colleagues.

Do you not have access to a menu? With prices?

Even though many, many restaurants manage to take this 'ridiculousness' in their stride and deliver the service that the customer wants without fuss?

No wonder the hospitality industry is so fragile with businesses closing down every day.

If the customers are capable of remembering what they had in order to tell you, they are capable of adding it up and putting their share of the bill into the pot for the whole group.

What happens when the last person goes up to pay and there are items left that they didn't have?

When I work away I often eat out with colleagues, we all pay separately so we can claim expenses. However we work that out process and then day to the waitress 'can I pay £25 please, I'm paying £27' and so on and leave a tip in cash. We all take a photo of the bill for expense purposes and keep our individual card receipts. With contactless or didn't take that long. I've worked as a waitress so understand your frustration, but few people carry much cash anymore and bill splitting is often necessary. Having said that the way this party have behaved is rude, they should've just worked it out themselves

I’ve seen a few big do descend into a total rammy about a bill
Went on a PTA meal.peole ordered wine,champagne,huge food.copius spending
PTA Wanted to just split bill, let’s go equal.it is less faff
I paid my share jumped in a cab leaving them to all argue over a large bill
As when it came to paying equal, it seems all are equal but some are more equal than others

Haven't RTFT but in our restaurant- on occasions where this has happened we just give one of them a fully itemized receipt and get them to sort out what they have each had. Normally people are quite obliging, they try and make the cash work out between themselves, or someone will take some of the cash and put several peoples bills on one card. It is still a faff if you have a large group to count up the cash and then do numerous card payments as that can take time, but no where near as bad as having 23 individuals coming to the till as OP described.
The other thing that would annoy my waitress with that kind of thing is either no service charge will have been put on the total bill, or you can bet your life by coming to the till, not one of the left a tip! (Although I realize tipping - or indeed whether you should - on MN is a whole other discussion )
Apologies for the american spellings - can't be bothered to amend

We often go out for a meal as a 23- family. Everyone takes cash, one person is responsible, and we hand our money to that person, so say the meal comes to £24, we hand £30 and the remainder is a tip. So they do end up with a large tip at the end, serving that many of us, it’s worth deserved. We pay for drinks individually at the bar though.

It’s a mn thing to abhor individual bills,paying your share
In RL it’s accommodated on mn it’s an anxiety inducing faff
It really is not a thing,only on mn do I read it being so convoluted

I must be very lucky that I go out to eat with reasonable, nice people who don't take the piss.
If they did I wouldn't want to go out with them.

LyingWitchIn if the till failed then I would use a calculator. I'm not good at maths, never have been. Should I be sacked then?

The order and till system improves efficiency so much that it wouldn't be worth going back to pen and paper because of the difficulties that the tills going down causes once a year.

Pp's saying about changing the till system, they cost so much that there is no way they could just be changed at the drop of a hat. And it wouldn't be up to the servers anyway (the ones who have to use them).

I think it’s pretty rude of the customers to expect you to faff about with individual bills. I find it all a bit childish. Why can’t they work it out with their mates and pay what they need to pay. While you’re faffing about with their bill it will inevitably have an impact on the service all the other tables/customers are getting.

Generally if everyone has roughly the same amount I.e 3 meals and 2 drinks then I would split it evenly 23 ways and add a couple quid each tip. My friends and I wouldn't be too fussed about potentially losing a few pounds though but i understand some people do have to count pennies a bit more. Paying individually does seem a bit ridiculous though imo

It’s only a faff if the restaurant has not worked out a system
The faff is the restaurant hasn’t caught up with customer preferences

How much did each persons bill vary? I bet it was close - which means they should have just split the bill by 23 and just pay an equal amount each; sounds tight to be me!

LettuceP, you're just being argumentative for the sake of it. If you can calculate a bill (if needs be) via pen and paper, calculator or out of your head, what does it matter? The bill's done.

But that's not what the thread's about even, is it? It's the fact that OP doesn't want to have to do individual bills even if her customers want that. That is the crux. As a customer, I'd pay the (eventual) bill and leave never to return.

I'll just add that some waiting staff really do go over and above in their jobs and those are the ones that I tip (really well). It's not unreasonable to request a separate bill and that's part of the job, it's not tip-worthy, it's part and parcel. But all waiting staff feel entitlement to a tip. No wonder the culture on tipping in the UK is changing and I'm glad about that listening to the moans and gripes from staff having to do their actual job.

it must have taken forever, each person going up individually. Once the meal's done I just want to go.

Same places around here dont let u split the bill. You have to pay as a group

The investment required to install a new software system (ours is all singing and dancing but 10 years old and cost over £5000) for the odd large table who isn't to happy to divvy up really wouldn't be worth it.

bestbefore How can you 'bet that it was close'? That's nonsense, isn't it? It might have been close, it might be wildly different from diner to diner.

@Sparklingbrook Weren't we having this discussion on another thread a while ago wrt threads we avoid as they're invariably tedious? Someone goes to dinner with the world and its mother and each want to split the bill but someone ordered a glass of tap water and a biscuit whereas someone else ordered a bottle of champagne and a sirloin steak?

Have to pay as a group?
Don’t have to go to such an establishment and I wouldnt

I would have killed them all by about customer #4, so kudos for not doing that, OP.

Partly because I hate this sort of behaviour, I often end up being the person who sorts out who owes what. Usually a straight split, unless it includes someone who's drunk nothing and only had a starter, or someone who's had three double g&ts before everyone else got there.

I think it would be totally reasonable to have rules, epecially around large groups - 23 people would in most places have to pick from a restricted menu or pre-order, and often pay a deposit and nominate someone to be the contact, IME. I say this as a veteran of a million meals with the various choirs I sing with.

I get your point but i dont think u can tell people how to pay really-what if they do do it on calculators get it wrong then youve still got to sort it all out

As has been mentioned upthread, in some countries, it's completely normal to split the bill and everyone pay separately.

It also happens a lot here. Usually it's been the customers working it out and then saying, £26.59 on this card, £32.78 on this one, but I've been in places where the waiting staff have asked at the outset if we would want separate bills or would be paying together, and I would have thought this was a sensible approach for most restaurants with parties of people.

I haven't seen anywhere that says "no split bills", but quite often I'm alone when I eat out, so I might have seen it and just ignored it as irrelevant.

If I were running a restaurant, I would expect parties to ask for split bills and would want a system that could deal with it - it can help with serving, too, as you know that the chicken was at seat 4 and the beef for seat 7, rather than walking round asking who had chicken or beef. It's easier to add 20 separate bills together than split one into 20, so if you have a system which starts from that premise, it will be easier all round.

We always have our group meal in a pub rather than a restaurant that way we order and pay separately, although we did have a bill after our Christmas meal but as it was a set menu and we'd bought our own drinks that was dead easy to separate