Help settle a restaurant debate.

[IcedTeaForMe]

I wasn't one of the people in this scenario but I was having this discussion with a friend who was.

There are five people out to dinner and they're splitting the billl. One person(my Friend) Karen has a gift card for the restaurant given to her by her employer. The gift card more than covers her share so she generously says that the rest of the gift card can be used to deduct from the bill for the other diners meaning that they'd pay around ten pounds less than they would have without Karen's gift card. One diner objects and says that the remaining bill should be split between all five(including Karen) and not the remaining four because she hasn't actually contributed any money to the bill, only a gift card that she didn't pay for.

It seems pretty clear cut to me who was in the wrong, but I'm curious to know what MN thinks?

Karen is generous and the objector is a twunt. Unless the restaurant was more expensive then their usual budget. And as long as Karen covered the tip in cash.

grumiosmum
The polite thing to do would be for Karen to ask for the gift card to be deducted from the total, and then all the diners (including Karen) pay an equal share of what remains.

Why?! It's Karen's gift card, she received it as a present instead of cash/wine etc, why should she share it?
It's slightly cheeky if she chose the restaurant, but she didn't, of I were her, I'd have rescinded my offer, paid in cash and gone back another time to use my voucher.

Really hope she kept her voucher for another time!

We had a similar scenario recently. We suggested friend paid with her voucher but took our cash so she wasn't saddled with a voucher and could treat herself to something else wherever she liked. Karen's friend is a greedy bitch

The polite thing to do would be for Karen to ask for the gift card to be deducted from the total, and then all the diners (including Karen) pay an equal share of what remains

Eh what? Why the fuck should Karen pay twice. It's irrelevant if she pays with salary her employer gave her or a gift card, or her bloody benefits, no one else at the table is entitled to a free meal on karen,.its beyond odd you'd think you should get a free meal out of her.

Karen has a gift card which was given to her and is equal to cash in this restaurant.

She is very generous to offer the remaining amount to be deducted from the bill and if I was her I wouldn’t have paid anything except maybe a few quid tip.

Friend is, in effect saying, 'subsidise my food with the balance of the gift card then subsidise it some more, Karen, by paying twice'. Entirely unreasonable and in no way has Karen been impolite in my view. Friend has been impolite and bonkers, not an excusable combination.

Karen asked Ian/complaining diner if he'd rather pay an extra ten pounds and that she'd keep the rest of her gift card for another time. He changed his mind then and she used the remainder of the gift card as planned but says that if it wasn't for the other diners(whom she likes and who were very grateful) she would have rescinded her offer.

Ian complained about it again after that. They aren't friends as such but members of a club. He's never been her favourite person but even less so now.

She should've said ah ok, we will each pay for our own then and kept her £40!

I SO would have done this! My old work used to give me a cash bonus. Was it ok to use that when dining with friends, or should I have paid for them as well?

On the plus side, Karen now knows who her friends are (not).

Karen was very generous. It would have been perfectly fine to use just the amount for her meal from the gift card and for her to keep the balance, let alone kindly offer for the balance too be used towards everybody else's meals.

PLEASE tell me she didn't bow to the horrible grabby fucker?!

That would have really put a downer on my evening and I would have rescinded the gift voucher offer entirely and paid my share with cash for the principal of the thing. And then invited everybody but CF out to the restaurant at a later date to use the voucher

Cross-posted. Why the fuck does Ian care enough about it to keep going on about it? Some people just mystify me.

Personally I'd have used the rest to help pay for the other three and left him to cover his own bill entirely plus tip but she's nicer than I am.

I think if I had been gifted a voucher from work I would have just chucked it into the pot and reduced everyone's bill accordingly.

It was their first meal out as a club. It might be their last.

The objector is a bell-end and Karen needs to find some new friends!

Same as @XXVaginaAndAUterus

Karen is definitely in the right! What if she'd taken cash that had been given to her for her birthday, would the people here saying she was unreasonable to only pay for her own meal with this gift? It's no different!

I see it as a bit of a social faux pas personally to use a gift card for yourself in a group setting, so I think both are BU, although the objector more severely so.

A voucher is just an amount of money that can only be spent in one place. To work out whether or not anyone was a CF we can replace the work voucher with the word Cash Gift in the OP

So, Karen went for a meal with some friends with some cash she'd received as a gift and when they split the bill she paid her own share and also £10 each of her friends' contribution.

How oh how can the objector be considered correct in this scenario? It beggars belief.

@grumiosmum are you the angry objector?

Well presumably the objector would also not have liked it if Karen chose to pay using eg Birthday money because it was not "her own money". I don't understand objectors logic at all. I bet the objector didn't refuse the ten pounds off their own bill in the end though did they.

Not only it's not socially unacceptable, but it's very generous!
If that was not acceptable to some, she could get her gift card back, and everyone pays more. Great.

That attitude of being so jealous and bitter about what you think is a possible advantage is what is so wrong in this country. So many MN seem to suffer from it (favour to a friend? So it would be FREE? NEVER!)
It's very sad when you think about it.

Why woukd you do that pink? I don't see any difference between a gift card and cash in this case.
What if another person had been given £100 by their parents (say) as a gift. Should they have put it all in?

Can't believe some people think Karen should donate the whole card AND then pay her share. WTF?? That's just ridiculous.

As other more sensible people have said, she's paid her share and then some! Any objecting to that should be on the receiving end of a swift verbal slap for their stupidity and cheeky-fuckery.

I'm genuinely astounded anyone can feel so entitled as to demand another party subsidises their meal with their gift card, or any other method of payment for that matter. So unbelievably rude and grabby.

The polite thing to do would be for Karen to ask for the gift card to be deducted from the total, and then all the diners (including Karen) pay an equal share of what remains.

Why? By this argument, if you have 100 pounds in your wallet, you should contribute this and then we split the rest of the bill equally. That would be crazy!

She paid her bill and contributed to everyone else's bill. That was enough (and generous).