Bill Splitter

[Queynte13]

AIBU to think that the person who suggests splitting a bill evenly is usually the person who benefits from it the most?

Went out for a meal last night. I was driving so I wasn't drinking. I've not been very well lately, which means I'm struggling to eat large amounts so I just had a starter and a side dish. Genuinely not a budgetary issue, I didn't even finish all my food.

The others at the table were drinking bottles of Prosecco and pints.

The bill comes and someone says "that's £30 each". Mine came to £10! This person was drinking and I noticed their portion of the bill was the highest out of everyone (others refused to split evenly in the end).

The worst bit was that everyone scarpered and the waitress returned to the table and told me the bill was short!

In my mind a meal shared is not just about feeding yourself and paying for what you’ve consumed, it’s an experience shared and you share the cost of that experience. As someone else has said already, if it’s people you see regularly then it all comes out in the wash

It doesn't all come out in the wash because the people who don't drink don't tend to suddenly ordering cocktails and the vegetarians or people with small appetites don't suddenly start ordering steak, lobster and starters and mains too.

What you also have to remember is that many people who get fucked over by the 'lets just split it' system is those who can afford to go out but only if they have a cheap main course and one drink, so that's what they have.

So it's even more galling and unfair to them if they end up paying for 3 courses and a bottle of wine when they limited themselves to a pizza and a coke because that's what they could afford. And no, they shouldn't have to miss out because others want to consume more than they do.

@Sparklingbrook

Never encountered any ‘head girl’ types thankfully. Work colleagues and friends all totally normal in that regard.

Gosh, I don’t think I’ve ever been out for a non-shared bill meal where some bossy /organised woman (it’s always a woman) grabs the bill and starts dividing it up and allocating payments.

Luckily our friends are not generally like that, but it’s truly cringeworthy.

@KatherineJaneway

I'm from Canada. The bill comes to the table already pre divided per person with a cumulative total at the end. So there may be 6 small bills numbered throughout with what each has and then the grand total should someone be treating the group.

That doesn't happen in the UK. The bill comes for the whole table, most often including the service charge, and is presented to the person who asks for the bill. It is up to you to split the bill then and tell the server as they go round the table who owes what.

Not always; recent meal we went to the till and told the waitress what we had each had and paid separately. Was very quick. At the end she found one coffee unaccounted for (mine, oops), so I paid that. A couple of us were driving/don’t drink so no one expected equal sharing of the bill.

Yes, I know a couple like this. Last time we all went out, there were seven of us. The couple ordered really expensive champagne - fine! They also ordered steak and scallops - fine!

I was a student so didn’t have a starter, had the veggie dish, etc.

Time came and they split the bill. They’re one of those couples who you don’t really argue with so I meekly paid up.

Sting in the tail is that they’re broth on £100k+!

Mind you, it can go wrong the opposite way, too. More recently I went out for dinner, as a group of five. We all agreed to pay for what we had rather than splitting. The problem is that two of us left earlier… so they went to the till and paid for what they had.

Except, of course, they didn’t! They hadn’t thought to pay their proportion of the breads, sides, coffees etc. Plus no tip. So the rest of us had to cover it.

I don’t know why the UK hasn’t adopted the system of separate bills as standard for a group, the way they’ve done for years in the USA and Canada - and judging by another poster Germany too. I’m guessing it’s a special function on the till that breaks up the table into smaller sub groups and produces multi bills at the end for all. Surely it must be easy to do?

@BarbaraofSeville

I can only assume that you read only a few selective parts of my post because you seem to have missed the bits where I said:

“However you do have to be fair, booze should be split between the drinkers only and you should notice if someone has had significantly less for other reasons and alter the split accordingly…

That said, I don’t have any friends who take the piss and maybe I’d feel differently if I did.”

If you’ve got arsehole friends and colleagues who are ordering lobster and fine wine when you’re having a salad and Diet Coke, then yes perhaps you do need to count every penny at the end.

Plus isn’t this all part of the adult conversation you have with friends when you choose a place to dine? Eg “hey guys I’m on a budget tonight let’s just do somewhere cheap and cheerful.”

I've never really gone out where it's been an issue, I guess I pick friends who eat and drink the same as me!
The big group meals I've been on are usually set price type things, bottomless brunches or themed nights where everyone pays the same.

What I’m saying is, assuming you’re decent people, it’s perfectly possible to adopt a general split approach that makes a few adjustments to be fair without having to itemise and add up everything ordered.

To the original question, no In my experience the person that suggests splitting the bill has not done so because they will personally benefit. I cannot imagine any of my friends being so cunning or greedy, do people really have friends like that? In my groups of friends the bill has nearly always been split and there has never been issues over that.

You should have said I’ll split the food but I won’t pay for the alcohol as I’m not drinking.

I think it’s unfair they suggested splitting the bill especially if you were not drinking alcohol. My friends won’t do that to me.

It's often not easy to split any bill.

Shared bottles of wine. Or a bread service at the start. Or people sharing starters. Plus the service charge.

It's often really not possible to just go to the till and say " I had this 3 items" in a clean way. Unless you all plan from the start that you would all be doing separate bills and ensure no "complicated" items.

So doing a rough split with adjustments for non drinkers is easiest. Make sure you all eat about the same for ease if splitting is your group normal.

Shared bottles of wine are easy - if you only drink one, one person pays, the other slios them à tenner or whatever.

Here (Germany) you don't get charged for what you don't order - basket of bread brought automatically? No charge. Subsequent baskets of bread? Treat like the wine. (although I can't ever remember being charged for extra bread unless it's garlic bread or something.

And if you've been out with friends what's all this rushing away before the bill is settled potentially leaving someone to make up the shortfall? Do people really do that? I'm an ancient old crone and I've never experienced that.

There are apps where you can put stuff in and it splits it; we used one on a group holiday, but that covered everything, accommodation, self-catered food, meals out and tickets to museums, etc. It would be overkill for single meals when everyone has a calculator on their phones.

If it's an official work meal which will get claimed back, then rules are the most senior-ranking person pays.

A lot of people are saying that they wouldn't mind splitting with friends because it'll even out eventually. That's great. But these weren't my friends. I'm not going to socialise with them again.

If it were my close friends, I'd have paid it no problem. I just didn't want to subsidise a strangers alcohol, and I thought it was rude to suggest (repeatedly) that I should (at 3x what my meal cost!).

@KiwiDramaQueen

I hate ending a lovely meal with friends only to have to spend the end of it itemising every item consumed. It feels like such a tedious administrative way to end a nice evening and the number of times I’ve done it only for us to find there’s only a few pounds difference.

However you do have to be fair, booze should be split between the drinkers only and you should notice if someone has had significantly less for other reasons and alter the split accordingly.

In my mind a meal shared is not just about feeding yourself and paying for what you’ve consumed, it’s an experience shared and you share the cost of that experience. As someone else has said already, if it’s people you see regularly then it all comes out in the wash.

That said, I don’t have any friends who take the piss and maybe I’d feel differently if I did.

Absolutely this. To get to the end of the meal and have to start poring over the bill, adding together each course, drinks etc to get to the 'right' number just takes away the magic for me.

Generally we'd have a drinker and non drinker sum. And you accept that over time, it'll come out in the wash. It's much more gracious IMO.

I think meals where people are having vastly different levels of food and drink to each other sound a bit strange / unusual anyway. Usually you're all having a chilled one or all having a big one, not a mixture of the two.

@Queynte13

A lot of people are saying that they wouldn't mind splitting with friends because it'll even out eventually. That's great. But these weren't my friends. I'm not going to socialise with them again.

If it were my close friends, I'd have paid it no problem. I just didn't want to subsidise a strangers alcohol, and I thought it was rude to suggest (repeatedly) that I should (at 3x what my meal cost!).

But even with people you don't know and won't see again, there may still be a 'next time'. You could accept that this situation might arise again at some point in the future with a different group of people, and the next time it might be you being 'subsidised'. A bit like you might have bad weather on holiday one year, and good holiday the next. Life is full of a random mix of good and bad luck.

For the sake of a couple of quid it seems petty to me.

@GreenestValley

But it wasn't "a couple of quid"

My meal total - £10.

Suggested payment - £30.

I know I'm lucky that I can afford the extra £20, and this wasn't a budget issue for me, but what if I couldn't? What if I was eating little because I was broke, not because I've been poorly. That's a massive difference in totals.

Okay in your situation i would have spoken up. if i clearly had less courses than others and didn't drink I'd have suggested I pay a bit less due to that.

I wouldn't assume the bill splitter suggested splitting as they are a CF, just that it's easiest for all and they hadn't appreciated I had less.

In my group, we generally are aware of anyone who doesn't drink or has only ordered 1 course to others 2-3 and adjust accordingly.

And the person can either point it out or someone does on their behalf (and if i am being veggie that day to others lobsters and steaks, i have a pudding or an extra side to even it up sometimes)

making us all split bills when its a case of £3 seems a huge faff, so its only really done where it would make a big difference like in your case.

(and why do people leave early? well often people have trains to get to and others can just tube it/uber it so can leave later).

I hate ending a lovely meal with friends only to have to spend the end of it itemising every item consumed... That said, I don’t have any friends who take the piss and maybe I’d feel differently if I did.

Maybe you're the pisstaker? It's usually the steak-and-cocktails eater who feels that paying individually is a terribly tedious and sad end to an evening...

We usually split the bill with my friends and make adjustments for non drinkers but I've definitely got done a few times; I'd have soms wine and only a veggie main but everyone else have multiple courses with meat, drink cocktails etc.

We are good friends and that's where the difference lies with what the op has described. I know sometimes during my retraining (and therefore broke) years I've said at the beginning of the meal I'd prefer for everyone to pay for themselves as I'm short on cash and that's been fine. Similarly sometimes we have split the bill and if anyone objected we have recalculated with itemised amounts and it's been no problem.

I have had a couple of situations like the OP's where they are virtual strangers and I've always fallen in with the general consensus. Occasionally it hasn't gone well. Once there were six of us out, the first four people paid individually and included a generous tip. The last two people were a couple (I later realised really tight chancers), the husband took the bill, handed his card and told the waiter to take whatever was outstanding on the bill. So our tip money would have gone toward their portion and the staff would have received no tip at all. We all kindly pretended he had misunderstood so he painstakingly calculated what their portion cost and handed it over with no tip. It was a lovely restaurant, the owner had come to talk to us as he vaguely knew one of us, replaced our wine with a more expensive one he recommended for the same price.

@HeyDemonsItsYaGirl

It’s kind of taking the piss to selectively quote my post and ignore the bit where I clearly address the cocktails and steak problem.

“However you do have to be fair, booze should be split between the drinkers only and you should notice if someone has had significantly less for other reasons and alter the split accordingly”

Absolutely agree. We used to have this issue in our team at work. 2 people always ordered starters, nibbles, expensive drinks, sides and puddings. The rest of us just had a main or 2 courses. Was an absolute guarantee that at the end, the 2 CFs would grab the bill and tell everyone what to put in. Sadly our manager always agreed with them. A couple of times a fuss was kicked up and we paid for our own meals. The 2 CFs would Chuck in £20 max and scarper, leaving someone else to pay the large portion left (despite my manager always leaving a £20 tip too that got swallowed up in the underpayment).
It used to infuriate me so much I made excuses every time there was a team outing. I was so glad when they left the team during lockdown.

Bill splitting in a group is always difficult. I don’t mind splitting if I’m meeting a good friend for a drink or dinner/lunch even if my amount is less than half, I just feel it’s a friendly thing to do to take it in turns. However in a group, especially if you don’t really know some of the others then why on earth should you subsidise them? Very cheeky!

KiwiDramaQueen I "selectively" quoted because your post was long and long quotes are irritating. You can't on the one hand talk about how excruitating it is to itemise and then flippantly say you take into account who has had less when suggesting splitting the bill equally. Which is it?