Splitting the bill - ended up paying 3x my consumption

[Jyas]

Not an AIBU but more a WWYD…I’m in a hobby group and about every 2-3 months we treat ourselves to a nice dinner. There’s usually 8-10 of us and we always split the bill. It’s normally around £50 per person. This week we went to a restaurant which was more on the upper end of what we usually go for. Mains were £25 - £45. We all chose our food, but when ordering, the waiter managed to talk 3 of us into trying ‘the chefs special’. This was a rather elaborate and unusual dish, he didn’t mention the price but I would have thought it would be between £55-£60 at least from the description. When the bill came, they realised that it was over £90. The 3 offered to take one bottle of wine out of the total and share it between them to make up for their expensive dish.
In the end we paid £110 each and they paid £125 each. However, my main was £25 and plus drinks (i only had one water and one glass of wine from the shared bottle, others had much more to drink, and most had a starter but i didn’t). I would have paid around £40. So I ended up paying 3x as much.

We all really don’t mind if we pay a bit more than we consumed and we regularly go out eating together so things balance itself out. I was aware that the bill would be split and I was happy to do as usual (before knowing what their dish costed) so I couldn’t really say anything and I just paid, but I feel that £40 compared to £110 was just too big a difference on that occasion.
Would you have said anything, even tough everyone knew in advance that the bill would be split?

Absolutely dick move for those 3.

I'm shocked noone said anything.

I wouldnt let that slide

I’m rubbish at speaking out in these scenarios so you have my sympathy, but maybe text everyone tonight and say ‘Was great to see everyone tonight and catch-up, nice to hear about X, Y and Z. I think next month we should go to a Wetherspoons or Nandos at a push - I’ve just realised my food came to £40 but my share was £110. Let’s hope the waiter is on commission as he really unsold those specials. Ha ha! #COL!! Xx

I can understand the concept, but it's when it goes pickles that it can alter the $$

Agree with this. I think it's the restaurant that's at fault here, I would be complaining to them

Agree with PPs, I would say something now - and would expect the other guests to be relieved that someone else reckoned the chef's special diners should pay their difference. But I probably wouldn't have said it when younger, despite being fairly outspoken. I'm still smarting from the £300 round of slammers I paid for in 2002!!!

There was a thread on here recently where the OP said she always asked for a separate bill. She was labelled mean, tight-fisted etc, but having read the OP in this thread, it's exactly the type of situation that could arise when being in a 'split the bill' scenario.

I usually just split the bill, and that's because the friends I eat out with don't take the piss, none of us drink alcohol and the meals we order are usually around the same price range.

In this situation, I'd have said something to the effect of the first reply on this thread and I'd pay for what I'd ordered.

I think the 3 that ordered the £90 meals sound really fucking cheeky expecting everyone else to pay more.

In your situation OP I wouldn't have hesitated to say I only wanted to pay for what I'd actually had.

I’ve always split the bill when it’s been roughly equal, but if I’d been a £90 main person I’d have insisted on paying for my own. I don’t ever take the piss with it and I’m always happier paying more than my share, never less.

When I used to go out with an old group
of friends, one of them didn’t drink and also due to a health condition ate far less than us. We always insisted she paid for what she had only as hers was cheap and then we split the balance between us as we always had roughly the same.

The only time I hate it is when people pay for their own and count it out to the last 2p (people that are not hard up-just miserly). If it’s within £5 just suck it up or don’t come out.

But £110 for £40 is totally unfair. I would never allow a friend to pay that.

YANBU they should have checked the price before ordering and if they still wanted to have the special pay for it themselves.

I think that although @Jyas has said they'll let it go now, threads like these do illustrate the frustration many feel at worrying about looking 'rude' or 'difficult' in a social situation.

It's much ruder to be someone who consumed a lot and blithely expects the bill to be split equally as they don't like haggling over who had what. (I know this wasn't necessarily the case with the OPs friends.) And yet somehow it's generally seen as ruder to only pay for what you had. I'll never understand the reasoning behind that.

My heart sinks when people suggest splitting the bill equally. I'm not a drinker and don't have much disposable income so always have to speak up. It's much nicer when everyone agrees to pay their share!

I have friends who are happy to split bills, and friends who will calculate their share to the penny.

I don’t mind either, because I’m not a dick - the friends calculating to the penny might have budgeted hard to afford a meal out, it would be awful if they felt they could t attend because someone might try to shame them into splitting the bill!

Your friends are cheeky fuckers, OP, they should have paid their individual share then the rest could be split if the others agree. Funny how you felt too bad to say anything, but they had no qualms about a massive cross subsidy!

But you see, I’ve done this and my friends HATE it. They always say how they don’t like ‘quibbling over the bill’ and prefer to just split it
Tough really, it's not quibbling over a bill, it's settling your own.
I go out with a group of friends regularly and I am happy to split the bill as we have never had any problems ( except for once when someone invited someone new to the group and things got awkward but that was ages ago)However one of the group always prefers to have an individual bill. It's fine, it doesn't affect me and she is happy doing that. She amused me one time, when the waiter said it wasn't possible to do an individual tab for a group sitting she just said 'Of course you can do it darling, it's not complicated' and let him get on with it.

The 3 who knew they had a £90 main each only offered to pay for one bottle of wine outside of the bill split? Absolutely CF’s

If that was.me and my friends those of us having the expensive meal would definitely insist on paying more and saying it’s nit right for others to subsidise us.

I'd have backtracked in that situation for sure - I'd have said since there's such a disparity in the expensive specials and the value of my own meal was about £40, how about we all pay for what we consumed this time round and go back to splitting the bill next time. Nobody can reasonably object to that.

Yes, what was the dish? Hope it came with fellatio and a fag

The £90 people should have paid up
And whenever I'm in a group with non drinkers we take theirs off first then split the rest. I'm not having someone on water paying for my wine

I can't believe you paid that!
I despise awkward situations but my willingness to not be fleeced by my friends would override that

Take cash next time and say 'oh ive only brought enough to cover my share and tip..'

🤣🤣🤣

I think the whole 'paying individually is petty' idea was dreamed up by some lobster-munching, cocktail-swigging cheapskate who wanted to use people's fear of looking stingy against them. There's NOTHING stingy about not wanting to pay for someone else's meal, and the sooner we all fight back and remind ourselves (and everyone else) that the real stingy thing is expecting others to cough up because you're not willing to pay for your own food and drink, the better.

This movement needs a snappy catchphrase to use when someone suggests splitting an uneven bill - suggestions welcome, but I'm going to suggest:

Don't be tight, pay for yourself tonight.

It's shit to split.

Fair's only fair if the fare is fair. (This is impractical as it would take a lot of emphasising the different spelling in person, but I was proud of myself for thinking of it as my brain is addled!).

I'm another one who needs to know what this £90 delight was OP!

I used to work with a CF who at a works dinner one time asked the group at the time of ordering whether we were going to be splitting the bill or paying for what we were each having as that would influence what he ordered. Imagine asking that! 😳

Its so shit when other people do this. They know how much they owed. Next time as your ordering just say shall we just pay for own separately this time as I got stung a bit last time. This is why I don't go for meals with my work colleagues as there are a few of us that drive and then we end up paying for the alcohol than the others order as they can't be arsed to sort out the bill and would rather parasite off of others.

That's actually disgraceful, I would be raging!

This used to happen to me so often as I was always the driver and would also only have 1 course with everyone else having three, so in the end I would just say, “look I feel awkward because I want to order something expensive so I’ll just have a separate bill” and told the waiter to make sure my bill was separate. Of course people would say that it evens itself out but by then it was fait accompli.

Awkward situation.

I'm not sure how I'd handle it, but I can say if I was one of the £90-ers and hadn't been told it was £90, I'd be as shocked as the OP. They may not have chosen it knowing that. So, they did get the benefit but it wasn't knowingly so - in some sense it's fair that shock is absorbed by the team because they were all in the same boat - anyone could have done it, and to get lumped by that single-handedly is a raw deal when you didn't know?

Tricky - can also of course see it's unfair on OP.

There was a similar (well, different) situation recently with a hen party group where it was like 4 groups of 4 for the hotel (I might have the numbers wrong), but one person dropped out. Obviously, that person should have still paid, but they didn't. The debate was whether the now how to cover that cost - should the 3-person group should be more (as in, it's the cost of the room, now split 3 ways), or it get split evenly so everyone in the whole party was paying the same rate. Consensus on that thread was it went to everyone. Which would translate here to 'split the bill evenly'. Interesting to compare?

One person was apoplectic over it and said if she knew she had to pay for what she ate, she would have ordered much less. It was ridiculous as she was furious she had to pay for what she ate as she expected everyone else to subsidise it. It was pure greed too.

Most people aren't quite as brazenly honest as she was; but it's a very common attitude that many people have.

Usually, they will go for the angle of "You shouldn't have agreed to come out tonight if you knew you couldn't afford it" - you also see that perspective more than occasionally on bill-splitting threads on MN. Blatant gaslighting, of course: to blame and make YOU the dishonourable, tight-fisted one for not wanting to subsidise THEM in their deliberate gluttony.

I also remember with a chuckle on one thread the poster who had a 'friend' who would sit there quite openly at the end, going through the bill carefully with her calculator, and then either suggest an equal split or each pay for their own, wholly depending on which would give her better 'value' on each particular occasion!