AIBU to think using their voucher only on their share was rude?

[Dinnerdrama]

We were invited out to dinner with friends at the weekend.They planned to visit a particular restaurant and asked if we’d like to go along.
We had a nice enough meal, couple bottles of wine, liqueurs. All quite pleasant for a Friday night.
When the bill arrived one of our friends presented a voucher and asked for the bill to be halved and the voucher taken off theirs. The waiter seemed slightly bemused and repeated back the request. Our friend repeated and clarified they wanted the bill split and the voucher taken off their half.
I almost died of second hand mortification. Is this not CF of the highest order?! I wouldn’t dream of doing this when I invited people out. If I was that skint, I’d use the voucher as a couple and
not invite others along.
For the record, I have been out for a meal previously with them where I have had a voucher and I had the voucher taken off the whole bill and split the remainder.
Cannot believe the brass neck, it has put me off going out with them again. Massively embarrassed on their behalf, not sure why, they didn’t seem to be!!

Voucher, gift card, doesn’t matter. It would have been applied to the bill in its entirety were I in that situation. People are odd.

I pay my way when I go out with them, and a bit more if I can afford it or they're struggling, if that's what you're alluding to. Do you have any friends?
Thought not...

I probably would have also shared the voucher (although I can see the rationale for why others are arguing the opposite) but ironically I think you have been far ruder on here than your friends were to you!

I don't see why you're so outraged. They didn't invite you out offering to pay for you. They were going out regardless, but asked you if you wanted to come as well. You didn't know about the voucher so went in fully expecting you would pay your £135 regardless, so how much they paid really doesn't affect you at all.

sure, I might too because I am in a lucky financial position but others may not chose to.

The serious anger from OP because they didn’t give her £50 is shocking. OP even thinks she has the moral high ground and actually she is the one being extremely grabby.

This is a silly thing to be fuming and gossiping about.

This is absolutely it.

The random hypothetical scenarios are hilarious. And maybe it would be 'grabby' if OP had suggested going to that place specifically because she knew her friend had a voucher for there and expected to share it.... but that's not what happened. It was a weird thing to do, and I'd be embarrassed to have done it.

But it’s not about how you see it in different ways. It’s a fact. A gift card is what it is. Not a discount.

Even if your mum, who lives on her state pension, had given it to you as a birthday present? Because she wanted to treat you to a meal out? But if she had given you cash you would just have put that towards your own share.

Aarrgh. I've been drawn back in. I really am leaving after this!

People seem to now be seeing the word discount as having some specific or legal standing in the context.

If I know a meal somewhere is going to cost me about £150 and I have a gift card/voucher/coupon/online code/whatever for £100 so it will only cost me £50 then as far as I am concerned it feels to me like a £100 discount on that meal.

You can argue many things but you can't argue that a reduced bill feeling like a discount is inaccurate. How it feels to me is how it feels to me. And I would share that saving/discount/money off with people I had invited.

As a previous poster said, if I really wanted to save it for me and my husband I’d have used it on another night.

Had I invited another couple, no, I would not have fished out my voucher and applied it to my own meal.

If it was a gift card they'd been given then perfectly reasonable. If it was a discount voucher then it would have been nice to share.

I was given a £50 restaurant voucher as a gift from children in my class at school- I wouldn't want to have to give half of my voucher to treat someone else to dinner.

What if, right, what if.... you had found a magic bean, or no, wait, the magic bean was given to you by your dying grandmother, and when you got the restaurant it turned into £50 credit in your bank account you didn't know about until right before the bill came, and also you were very very poor although it's then not clear why you arranged to go out, and also your arm burst and and and and....

They did a pretty rude thing. No need to make up ridiculous counterfactual scenarios.

Would this have ever been a problem if you had not already set some arbitrary precedent by using a voucher to pay for the whole meal previously?

"If I know a meal somewhere is going to cost me about £150 and I have a gift card/voucher/coupon/online code/whatever for £100 so it will only cost me £50 then as far as I am concerned it feels to me like a £100 discount on that meal."

The thing is they are legal terms, words have meanings.

The bill wasn’t discounted, the bill was presented in full.

OP’s friend had a prepaid card which effectively had paid the restaurant £100 in advance. She may have bought that herself, it is very possible.

The bill wasn’t discounted, the friend had paid in advance to the restaurant.

It is completely different. 20 per cent off the whole bill means they get to pay less and you get to pay less. Not sharing that is weird and has no benefit to them just detriment to you.

£20 off where it's a gift voucher that's like money that has been given to them. If they share it with you they are effectively giving you money or paying for part of your bill. So benefitting you by reducing your bill but detriment to themselves by having to pay more than they would have done.

If it wasn't a gift voucher but more like an online offer for £20 off that they got for free it's slightly different but still fair enough pn their part. You could have done whatever they did to get a voucher eg signed up for a newsletter, spent money there previously etc.

It’s called seeing things from different perspectives and trying to understand others motives so we don’t make nasty judgements on people for no reason.

And if this minor situation between friends was being arbitrated in court then the word's legal meaning might be relevant. But it isn't. Nor would it be relevant to how I would intend to use any voucher etc. I am free for it to remain feeling like I've got a left discount, to want tk share that and to not expect others to feel the same.

All anyone is arguing with me now is that I shouldn't share something I'm happy to share given that I've said repeatedly I wouldn't expect others to do the same. Why is anyone trying to argue me out of wanting to share something?

A gift card is the equivalent to cash; I don’t know why they’d be expected to share it. It’s not free, someone has paid for it, and so it has that cash value to them.

Who has said you shouldn't share your vouchers?

Anyone still arguing that me feeling it is a discount means I am wrong and telling me it isn't a discount

I think simple words such as 'discount' should be used correctly.
It’s how we communicate.

I’m not about to start saying blue is black because they are both colours.

It's not a discount. That doesn't mean anyone thinks you shouldn't do as you wish with your gift vouchers.

A percentage off the bill would come off all the bill so it was obviously a gift voucher.

Tbh I’m quite generous in that sense so I’d take it off the bill. However it wouldn’t bother me if someone else had a gift voucher that they took off their half, especially if it was a gift from someone.

Did they ask you along and say they were going to use up their voucher (so you assumed you would get a cheaper meal) or just whip it out on the night?

The bill would have been £300. It is now £200. That is a discount to me because I do not have to pay £100 of it. I am happy to have the £100 taken off the entire bill, not just my share of it. My discount is halved to £50. Everyone has a nice meal. Lovely.

Whether it means the legal definition of a discount is immaterial in the circumstances because I'm making no demands that anyone else sees it that way.

I have done this as I had a gift card as a present which I used off my part of the bill. No way am I using it to help anyone else out! I had already found a discount voucher which I had used across everyone's bill so they weren't getting my gift card too!