To think you don’t get out of paying the bill because you don’t drink?

[ThatHardyWaspAgain]

I’m sure this has been done many times before by people in similar scenarios.

I went out for a bit of lunch with two friend’s and one of them brought another friend along that I’ve never met but was nice enough.

However, when it came to the bill, she said ‘’Can we please calculate it all with the alcohol you’ve had separately paid for? Because I only had classical cokes’’

So, we did as she asked. Added up everything but removed the drinks. So 3 of us paid for our drinks in a split, and then did another split for the rest with her and her food and classical colas.

The annoying bit is, she had 3 of them. And they weren’t really much different in price to most of our alcohol.

We all had the same roast and mango cheesecake.

I wouldn’t mind but she kept insisting we all had a dessert so she didn’t feel alone in having one. We’re adults after all but it is a bit annoying

Separate thread to come to see if I would be U to tell my friend not to bring her along again

She also didn’t tip.

Becuase she asked to split out the alcohol but didn't split out her own drinks. Nobody wanted her to subsidise their drinks and they wouldn't have minded if she'd paid for her own instead of expecting everyone to split them.

I don’t want to pay for everyone else’s bottles of wine, thank you. If I’m not drinking. And I also don’t tip. Anywhere ever!

Thanks for your note about tipping. To be honest I had never thought about it that way before. You’re going to save me a lot of money! I always give my hair dresser an extra tenner but I’m going to stop doing this if it’s actually causing harm so it will be win win if it makes her life better too and I save a tenner a month.

In the scenario you give it doesn't sound like splitting the bill would have made much difference. However in MOST circumstances a person having soft drinks would be at a huge disadvantage to those drinking alcohol. A bottle of wine shared or a round of cocktails and the person drinking coke is going to be hugely out of pocket.

YABU to suggest its not ok to ask to pay for what you have eaten/drank.

This
I've been known to like a drink or three and wouldn't dream of someone else sucking up the cost of my wine or whatever!
Not fair when you're only on a few cokes/lemonades.
YABU

Unless you're in the US, you don't need to tip in the UK as we actually pay workers properly.

Who are all these mad people, who think that, if you have soft drinks, all the people at the table drinking alcohol, should pay for their own drinks and also club together to pay for your drinks? I'm sensing some animus towards drinkers here, but this is ridiculous.

Tipping exists in certain industries for a reason.

Minimum wage means minimum effort. Fine if you're just stacking shelves at Asda. But people don't go to restaurants because they are hungry, they go there for the experience. Having a shelf stacker speak to you in a rude, sullen manner when you asked where the Beans are is understandable. But when you're paying £100 or more for meal in a restaurant, you expect more than minimum effort from the staff. A rude server can ruin the atmosphere. So tipping is an incentive for the restaurant staff to provide a level of service over and above what minimum wage would imply.

Too late to edit, but...it would have made sense if the non-drinker was designated driver. But she wasn't, I assume.

I don't drink and splitting the food/drinks bill separately has never been a problem.

If it is a 2-4 person dinner and everyone has had a drink, I don't mind a simple split as some soft drinks or mocktails cost the same as a "proper" drink anyway, and what's a couple of quid between friends?

If we are a larger group and multiple alcoholic drinks or a couple of bottles of wine have been ordered, we split the food by number of people and I just pay my part plus my soft drinks. They split the alcohol between them.

It sounds like only the alcoholic drinks were taken off the bill, but if you are splitting by drinkers/non-drinkers, all drinks should be taken off the bill and paid for separately, IMO.

You all sound very passive.
No one would get most people to eat something they didn't want.
As for paying for her cokes?
Sorry, but you are mugs.
She's just another CF, and you got stung.

I think you should have paid for what you had in that scenario because a coke isn’t exactly free.

With all the splitting of different bits of the bill you were doing, since there were only four of you, I should think it would have been quicker for you each to pay for exactly what you had.

Whoever added up the bill made the mistake. It doesn't seem like it was intentionally done, best to calculate exactly what you had.
Lesson learnt..

Yes, we often do this too, but I was replying to pp who suggested every restaurant will accommodate paying using multiple cards. Many will, but not all.

I did think they would allow 3 people to pay separately, but this particular restaurant wouldn’t.

Nobody thinks that though.

Whoever split the bill here made a mess of it 😁

44% seem to think that.

Not at all.

For a start the voting is confusing as the OP puts two questions and we don’t know which one voters are answering.

‘AIBU to think you don’t get out of paying the bill because you don’t drink’
(most would vote yanbu to this I’d say)

or

‘to see if I would be U to tell my friend not to bring her along again’
(many would think think OP was unreasonable in this case as it is generally reasonable to ask to pay separately.)

Personally I think whoever split the bill was the one who messed up the calculations,
but it’s small change anyway in this particular case 🤷‍♀️

My partner doesn't drink at all, I like a glass of wine or a couple of beers sometimes.

I always pay for my own drinks, on our food shop and at bars, as it's not on him to buy me alcohol. He will do a round with our friends occasionally at the pub, and he covers wine on dates etc if we go to a restaurant, but generally when we go out with friends we each pay for what we had.

Yanbu . I experienced something similar. Went out as a group of 5. Four of us had £15 worth of wine per person , the fifth person had 3 mocktails totalling £36. They asked not to pay for the alcohol we drank but happily allowed us to split their mock tail cost between the 5 of us.

it was a couple of years before the four us realised we were individually seething over it .

Sadly when we go out with this person we individually pay for what we have eaten and drank.

They asked not to pay for the alcohol we drank but happily allowed us to split their mock tail cost between the 5 of us.

But why didn’t you all just split the bill properly instead of seething for years about it?
I mean, you didn’t have to split the mocktail cost between 5…who worked that out?😅

There should be a very simple system whereby the kitchen receives it all as one order and you can just pay for your own meal and drinks at the end. No fuss.

There is? It's called "work it out yourself." Pretty much everywhere I've ever eaten out over the last few decades we've done it this way. Bill arrives for £100, person one ate £20 worth of food so pays £20, person 2 ate £30 worth so pays £30, people 3 and 4 ate £25 worth's each so pay that each (simplified example).

I've no idea why so many people seem to think this is so hard, inconvenient or awkward (or "sad" as the poster above has called it!), when it should just be the norm. You wouldn't subsidise other people's purchases in any other scenario - if you and your friend were both shopping and she bought an £80 coat and you a £100 one you wouldn't say "oh let's just pay £90 each".

It's not as if anyone carries personal calculators with them at all times that make it simple...oh wait, they do, all phones have this feature!

I've never been to a restaurant where they haven't accepted several different forms of payment as long as the overall amount is paid.

Christ, 3 cokes in a single sitting is like a week’s worth of recommended sugar. Probably far more unhealthy than a single alcoholic drink

I've never been to a restaurant where they haven't accepted several different forms of payment as long as the overall amount is paid.

I have.

It is reasonable to ask to pay separately. But it seems the CF asked for only the alcohol to be taken off before the four-way split. Of course OP could have refused, but perhaps in the moment didn't realise how much the CF had spent.

It wasn't small change: the CF got £7.50 off her drinks bill.

I agree there are at least two AIBUs here.

One. ....to think that the prices were so close that we might just as well have gone for a straight four-way split (debatable, but not crazy)

Two. ...to think that, whilst I'm happy to sub non-drinkers to a modest extent, she was taking the piss by expecting us to pay an extra £7.50, particularly as she wasn't willing to sub us even to a modest extent.. YANBU surely?