To hate splitting bills at restaurants?

[AtticusFrost]

We socialise a fair bit but do not have a high income. We do this by being careful about how we spend our money. So I absolutely hate it if in a restaurant at the end of the night someone says forcefully we should just split the bill.
No! I know it is easier. But myself and DH have chosen cheaper options so we can afford this. And it always people who have spent loads who say this.

I just don't get this if I've had a salad and diet coke and the steak eating red wine guzzler says let's just split it you can just say no sorry that doesn't work for me here's £20.

It can be hard if you're in a big group and "the group" agrees to it before you've had a chance to realise what's going on, and then suddenly it feels awkward singling yourself out and being the one who makes life complicated for everyone. That's where I've always ended up falling into that trap anyway.

I don't think it does.

I generally ensure I put in more than my share so that's not thoughtless!

It makes me cringe just reading this. Getting your calculators *

Me too!!!

We went for dinner with friends. We'd just bought a house so we're keeping the bill low by choosing cheaper meals. Friends drank through four karafes of wine, dessert, etc and were shocked we refused to split the bill. Theirs was 3x ours. I wasn't paying for their fun from my savings. I suspect they drank so much thinking we'd split.

I now only go to order at the counter restaurants & avoid going out with SIL as she encourages us to take turns paying for FIL, which I'm not doing as we can't afford. FIL and SIL can easily afford.

I only say it if I’ve had less than everyone else (which is rare). If I have more then I pay what I owe. YANBU, people who have loads and insist on splitting are fairly selfish

It's petty and annoying to not split the bill when out with friends

The worst is when you're invited out for someone's birthday/hen/other occasion then on payment someone pipes up "it's an extra tenner each to cover birthday girl, that's ok isn't it?" And you can't exactly sit there and say "well no.." 🙈

Been there though not a birthday..

I was on a course, funded by the Princes Trust (my place anyway, not the others). I was 19, the others were in their 40s/50s, on the course for a jolly mostly.

We all went out for a meal, I had just enough for my meal and tap water, I had NO idea about the whole 'split it equally between us' malarkey, I'd never been out for a meal out with a bunch of bloody strangers before to a reasonably nice restaurant (nothing special... just, nice enough).

It came to £40 a head, I had spent £15, I had pasta, no starter, no pud, and tap water. They all had fucking starters or puds, wine, more expensive mains etc.

One rather repulsive chap (called us all 'girlies', was in his mid 50's big moustache, braying voice.. that sort of thing, I was the youngest there by 25 years) had rather taken over and domineered the whole night and made me feel about 2 inches tall when I said I only had a £20 note on me and would need change. Really laid into me how that wasn't 'proper' and what did I think I was playing at, implying I was scrounging, in that jovial but not actually joking sort of way. No one else said a word, awkward silence... most of them thought he was a riot, except one other lady who was too quiet to stand up to the prick.

Fucking horrible experience. Quiet lady did come back to my room after for a coffee and she was kind, just not up to defending someone against such a bullish twat - thank god she was or I think I'd have quit that day and not finished the course!

Yes I have eaten out with those groups of people, and never had the experience of “steak and red wine guzzlers” tricking me into subsidising their meal, which is very lucky

Where I live (Aus) a lot of restaurants are byo which is fantastic for groups. It won’t totally sort the people who order three courses but it is usually the booze that causes problems. We generally go to fancier places either just as a couple or with family where we pay or with close friends who don’t take the piss. The other popular option here is clubs where you would usually order and pay at the bistro counter or even better, the new trend ( here anyway) where you order and pay through a QR code on your table which is totally CF proof 😁

I'm a nosy fucker tbh so I notice if someone is only having a main and one soft drink etc. I don't comment unless members of the group who've had more suggest splitting the bill, but then I would pipe up and say that's not fair, some of us have been knocking back the wine etc and others haven't. If everyone is ordering similar then fine, but it isn't ok otherwise.

youd hate my work even more, when we go out for a meal everyone preorders and we do an excel spreadsheet which tallies up what everyone has. Works well though and we have actually found a few times in some restaurants where things have been added on we’ve not had that if you were splitting bill you wouldn’t notice couple of extra pounds per person

With regular close friends we split the bill , no one takes the piss and it's swings and roundabouts . With a social group I go out with the bill is split according to what you've had which is a ballache because there's about 12 of us and it takes forever at the end of an evening with one person huddled over her phone calculator and everyone else scrabbling for the right money and not having it so you begin a game of swapsies , anyone got two fivers for this tenner type stuff .
FWIW I think it tends to be people on tight budgets who prefer to split on the basis of what they have

Recently went to a meal where I didn't know everyone well. I had a £21 main course and drank tap water. Another person, who I didn't really know, had an £11 salad, so when the bill came insisted in paying less. BUT, she'd had three cocktails and when I said "but I didn't drink if you want to be like that" she told me I should have drunk cocktails. My £21 main course cost me £38!

but if you don't know them well, this is the time to say "nope, I'm not subsidising your 5 quid cocktails" and pay your own share. If you don't know them that well, why care if it bugs them?

I'm a 'splitting the bill' person. I'm normally one of the ones who has had less (I tend to order a salad and don't drink alcohol with a meal). I find the 'I had this, you had that' annoying and as someone else has said, when that happens you always seem to end up short. That being said if I'm out with just one other person and I've had more I'm happy to do a 70/30 split or whatever.

I can remember my sister once insisting paying for what she'd had when she was out with my Husband and I once as she was sure we were conning her by splitting the bill. She ended up being £3 worse off.

If this thread teaches us anything is that you need to say you want to pay separately BEFORE or at the BEGINNING at the meal. If people get pissed off by this then they aren't real friends

It makes me cringe to think people need calculators for something as simple as adding a few numbers. Even more so a pp suggesting it takes 10 minutes! This is primary school maths!

Pfft I have a maths degree and often use a calculator for quick arithmetic

I am not sure I would find this worse. Presumably that's done in advance? Or at least just by one (organised) person. It's everyone getting their phone calculators out and grabbing for the bill, it's the fact it always comes up short and everyone knows who hasn't accounted for their 3rd pint, or tip, or side of fries but they are suspiciously quiet, it's the fact I am almost always the one who can't bear the awkwardness so ends up covering the entire tips because I don't feel it's on that the waitress should suffer because John and Sue "accidentally" forgot to add theirs up properly.

As others have said, the above exercise takes something away for the good feelings of an evening.

And my experience is the opposite of what many are suggesting on here. it's not the people who want to benefit from the splitting that suggest it, it's the ones who are generous and prioritise ease and good atmosphere over accidentally paying £1.55 of someone else's consumption. The really tight ones do the "oh I added it all up in my head and owe £15, better shoot off, bye!!", having forgotten at worst their entire drinks tab or at the very least not included the tip.

That's the wildest thing I've read in a while.

How so? People always attest on threads like these to people who admit, or otherwise let it slip, that they're planning on going to town and taking advantage of bill splitting to cash in themselves.

I've seen a lot of reports of people who will sometimes say in advance of the meal (or even after the bill has come) that they want to split and sometimes that they'll pay for their own, depending on which works out cheaper for them.

You can't tell me that child-free adults who eat out with parents and their kids and then insist on splitting it per person - so that the parents end up paying the same for each of their little ones' turkey dinosaurs and orange juice as Charlie Big Potatoes pays for his sirloin steak and merlot - haven't carefully calculated it.

If this were not the case, then why do so many insistent bill-splitters actually get angry and start shaming when their anticipated mark declines? Not just bemused or a little irritated at the extra couple of minutes to work out who owes what, but actually publicly laying into their expected meal-ticket for thwarting their plan?

I do get hacked off at the idea that if I can only afford my food and drink, and have to pay for JUST mine, I should not come out, that coming out and socialising is ONLY for those who can afford to pay for more than what they've had.

It's absolutely brazen, isn't it? Shaming somebody who can (and is willing to) pay for their own share when you yourself can't (and/or aren't willing to).

How do you judge 'affordability' - is it that everybody can afford to significantly overpay for what something costs or that nobody can? It's got to be one or the other.

It's like saying that you shouldn't feel socially justified in using your Fiesta on the public roads if you can't afford to buy or insure your boss/relative/acquaintance's Porsche; or you can't afford to buy a loaf of bread in the supermarket when you've only got a couple of quid, because the person behind has two jam-packed trollies!

It's unkind and inconsiderate to not take into account that some of your friends might be harder-up than you, and that extra 7 or 8 quid is going to cause them hardship. Is it really worth making your friends feel like that for a couple of minutes of "annoyance"?

everyone else scrabbling for the right money and not having it so you begin a game of swapsies , anyone got two fivers for this tenner type stuff @hattie43

Almost all restaurants these days will let each person pay for their amount separately by card. You just say to them "can I pay £21.33", "can I pay £32.44" etc., going around the table, and then at the end the waitress will let you know if anything's been missed off/you haven't reached the total.

Ref PP where the last person pay the "rest" which, given people round up and inlude a tip is sometimes just a couple of quid. Yes, that seems much fairer!

If I’m in a group what we usually do is pay our own by telling the waiter “I owe £35” and they take card payments individually, then everyone makes sure they have a few quid in cash for the tips.

The nightmare comes when someone has miscalculated though.

It’s a very English thing I think. DH’s family are Irish and it’s normally a competition to who can go and pay for the whole table first 😂