Who is really unreasonable here? I’ve been made out to be awful

[WendyToba]

I went out to dinner yesterday with SIL, her two DC, my DC and a friend of hers.

It was just a Beefeater type of place so nothing fancy. DC was asleep by the time as got there for 6 so didn’t eat anything. I had a olives, plate of chicken nuggets, chips, a coke and a WKD. For desert I had a cheesecake.

SIL and her friend had a steak each with chips, few bottles of wine between them. No desert. SIL’s DC had a kids meal each with a drink, and a desert which was separate fo the child’s one that came with the meal, as they wanted something else.

I did a total in my head for my food to have been about £21/22, so put £25 down in cash. There was no discussion of splitting the bill, the others just paid their own by card.

Received a text this morning from SIL that said her friend really likes her but they both wondered why I didn’t offer to split all of the alcohol together? So my WKD, their bottle of wines and then split that between us. Pay for our own food. I replied because my WKD was cheap? She said why do I think that?

What on earth do I reply? She’s just said that via text. I think it’s a bit off... isn’t it?

@gottakeeponmovin

I hate going to dinner with people who work out how much they owe - except when alcohol is involved. Personally I would have taken the booze off and split the rest of the bill evenly and then they go halves on the wine. Only paying for your own food and not splitting the food bill is a bit petty though

I hate going to dinner with people who are so far up their own arse that they can’t pick up on the fact that the person they are out with may be on a tighter budget, and if they’ve only ordered a starter, it is not fair not to offer to pay more! I’m not implying that this is you btw!!

OP it has happened to me a few times and it is not fair unless you have all consumed about the same.

gottakeeponmovin

Yep, that's the voice of privilege there. Some people have plenty of money and can go to restaurants, have whatever they want to eat and drink as often as they want, without giving it a second's thought. Some people are very hard up indeed and any visits to a restaurant or cafe would be completely out of the question for them.

The majority of us fall somewhere in the middle: we can save up and go out once in a while for a special treat and have a nice meal, maybe wine if we desire, but will still have to make sure we don't go overboard with what we order. We're the people who actually need to look at the prices on the menu and use them for guidance as to how we order responsibly.

However, what we can't do is to have the amount we spend taken completely out of our hands. If you're dining with a wealthy CF, they could order outrageously expensive luxury food and wines, safe in the knowledge that, although they could afford to pay for them in full, they want to get their money's worth and have you pay for half of it for them. Even if they aren't being cheeky and do always like to splurge, according to their appetite and bank balance, you still can't afford to split it with them.

If you're looking to spend the £20 that you've budgeted for and they're edging up towards £200 for their food and drink, thus costing you an extra £90 that you simply don't have, which of the two possible options is the least embarrassing for both of you:

1. For you to keep a tab of what they are spending and constantly overruling them every time they order something expensive that you know you can't afford half of, as if they were a child wanting too many sweets;
2. To accept that two adults are making and paying for their own choices, in line with what they each wish to eat and what they can each afford - and are expecting to pay for?

@gottakeeponmovin I am not hard up for cash myself but I have been seriously burned in the past. I am a single parent of one and was friends with two women, one had three kids and the other had four and every time we went out with all kids for food they wanted to split the bill three ways! After a couple of times of this I just said look, im sharing a large pizza with my ds and he is having an icecream and me a coke so I am just paying for our own from now on. These women would drink a bottle of wine between the two of them and their kids would each have a kids meal followed by a dessert and they would have an adults meal and dessert. Absolute joke.

Oh and they are both working and have husbands who work too!

I remember the first time paying just for ours it was 15euro in total plus a tip. Same place we had been to a few weeks prior and me and ds had the exact same meal and I paid my 'share' of 53euro plus tip. Nobody could ever say that is fair!

My happiest day of dining out with friends was when I was told by the waitress that she could charge each of our personal credit cards for what we had individually ordered

Here's a bit of karma about a cheeky check splitter my Dh and I knew...
We were out with CCS and his wife( my friend) and when the bill came, friend's DH said, " Oh let's split the tab".....we had come prepared with cash as he had form for this...anyway, cheeky guy pocketed our cash and gave the waitress his credit card and told her to use it for the entire sum...we kept waiting and waiting for her to return with his card ....well, she finally returned with his card alright, but it was cut in half!!! She said the credit card company said he was so far behind in paying the balance that they were declining authorization and that she should cut the card in half!!! Red faces all round... I felt so bad for his wife....
I can't remember if he gave us our cash back, but we did end up paying the entire bill.
The last time we went out with them and they divorced shortly thereafter

I normally split the bill but I couldn’t give a toss if someone wanted to itemise it. If this is what you want to do, easiest thing is to say to the waiter/ess when you’re ordering that you’d like a separate bill. Anyone who has a problem with that is an arse

The only time I did have a problem itemising it was on a hen night with about 30 people. Everyone drinking. I was in charge of payment and when I said what the split was one person piped up that she didn’t have a starter. I was a bit stunned (and shit faced) so I didn’t know what to say and in her defence she said ‘oh it doesn’t matter’ pretty quickly.

I normally split the bill but I couldn’t give a toss if someone wanted to itemise it. If this is what you want to do, easiest thing is to say to the waiter/ess when you’re ordering that you’d like a separate bill. Anyone who has a problem with that is an arse

It's not unreasonable at all. If a friend/neighbour/colleague asked you to pick up a few items of shopping for them when you went to the supermarket, nobody in their right mind would just take a rough guess at how much the friend's items cost, without looking at the itemised receipt - much less just split the bill in half!

It's also wise to guard against the people who leave early and say "I had the New York chicken, which was £13.50 - so here's £15 to include a tip"; completely ignoring/forgetting the fact that they also had the soup, three slices of bread and butter, four other side dishes, three cocktails and two glasses of expensive wine.

If you ask everybody as they leave one-by-one to 'remember' what they had and pay on that basis, without recourse to the itemised bill, it's extremely unlikely that the person who leaves last won't get landed with a lot of extras that weren't theirs.

“It's also wise to guard against the people who leave early and say "I had the New York chicken, which was £13.50 - so here's £15 to include a tip"; completely ignoring/forgetting the fact that they also had the soup, three slices of bread and butter, four other side dishes, three cocktails and two glasses of expensive wine.”

Yes, this has happened to me quite a lot, people tend to forget shared things like bread/olives and extras like coffee etc.

But then there’s the other ones who wait until everyone has over paid to include a tip and then they say to just put the rest on the card, which then means they pay less!

I hate bill splitters and people who insist on buying huge rounds of drinks...so unfair on those of us who choose budget friendly options....im older now though and state at the beginning of the night that i will be paying for myself.

But then there’s the other ones who wait until everyone has over paid to include a tip and then they say to just put the rest on the card, which then means they pay less!

I bet this makes waiting staff absolutely furious. Whatever your personal opinion on tipping, if somebody else has decided to give a gratuity to another person, how dare you decide to steal it for yourself?

Imagine if the people who do this got a Christmas bonus and a colleague who had just had an expensive new kitchen had a word with HR to try to get the other person's bonus reassigned to them. Completely theoretical, I know, but it's exactly the same principle.

I've even heard of people who will ask everybody else in a large group for the cash for their own meals - including generous tips - and then insist on going to settle the combined bill on everybody's behalf.

Thus, they don't just get their own meal subsidised by the others' tips but actually get to eat completely free and also come away with a profit. It should be properly acknowledged as the theft that it actually is.