Worst Group Split Check Experiences?

[Anonymous]

If I am going to a steak house to get together with old friends we are all offering steaks, having a few beers and maybe desert. We split bill evenly.

Why would someone come eat a small bowl of soup and a glass of water and sit there and watch us eat and drink then cause a headache to waiter or us on diving up bill.

Just don’t come. Or do what my one friend did text is what bar you are going after dinner and meet us there. Or pick a brunch place where it is a flat price.

And it is not just money. I had an expense account 8 years at work and would take it staff and clients and I am paying on corporate card

It is weird when someone shows up and stares at us while we eat or drink.

We went to Irish bar after big sale and I threw card on counter and one guy gave up alcohol for lent drank water and spied on us.

Or in Vegas we are all ordering appetizers, steaks, cigars, desert and the guy with salad watching weight and drinking diet soda mocking us

I went in a few dates these people and I am happy I don’t own a gun. Met a girl and a nee cool microbrewery opened near her house, I said let’s meet there get something to eat and go out.

Turns out she does not drink alcohol and a strict vegetarian. Horrible time as she told me order first as she is deciding, I got a burger and a beer.

Look I would have been more than happy to grab a salad with her and a glass of water in my apartment and has sex.

Please stay home. And also don’t order way more expensive than everyone else that is even worse

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I went to a group dinner and someone ordered a carry out meal for their husband and added it to our bill and we had to split it. In addition to all the alcohol I did not drink. Never again!

She was counting on you being more polite than she is.

We need to stop letting people turn our niceness against us. They do it on purpose and think we’re chumps.

Well we are chumps if we don't speak up.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I will pay the whole bill myself before I will let it be split into 6 separate checks or before I will sit there and calculate what everyone needs to Venmo someone else. Absolutely not.

Good for you.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If I am going to a steak house to get together with old friends we are all offering steaks, having a few beers and maybe desert. We split bill evenly.

Why would someone come eat a small bowl of soup and a glass of water and sit there and watch us eat and drink then cause a headache to waiter or us on diving up bill.

Just don’t come. Or do what my one friend did text is what bar you are going after dinner and meet us there. Or pick a brunch place where it is a flat price.

And it is not just money. I had an expense account 8 years at work and would take it staff and clients and I am paying on corporate card

It is weird when someone shows up and stares at us while we eat or drink.

We went to Irish bar after big sale and I threw card on counter and one guy gave up alcohol for lent drank water and spied on us.

Or in Vegas we are all ordering appetizers, steaks, cigars, desert and the guy with salad watching weight and drinking diet soda mocking us

I went in a few dates these people and I am happy I don’t own a gun. Met a girl and a nee cool microbrewery opened near her house, I said let’s meet there get something to eat and go out.

Turns out she does not drink alcohol and a strict vegetarian. Horrible time as she told me order first as she is deciding, I got a burger and a beer.

Look I would have been more than happy to grab a salad with her and a glass of water in my apartment and has sex.

Please stay home. And also don’t order way more expensive than everyone else that is even worse

You're implying that you'd shoot someone whose dietary restrictions bothered you? After you had sex with her, of course.
Sounds like maybe you should stay home.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Teach her that it’s easiest to just split down the middle than try to do the math and if she can’t afford to do that, don’t go out.

This. Tell her not to be the petty cheap a$$ who doesn’t want to split or else ask for a separate check right at the beginning.

So it's okay for one a-hole in the group that's getting sloshed on top shelf liquor while the others are ordering 2-4-1 rail drinks off the happy hour menu? There's one in EVERY group - people love to take advantage of split checks at the bar. No. Not okay. Not splitting the check.

The drinkers always covered the sober/food only orderer, as they were usually our driver too!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If I am going to a steak house to get together with old friends we are all offering steaks, having a few beers and maybe desert. We split bill evenly.

Why would someone come eat a small bowl of soup and a glass of water and sit there and watch us eat and drink then cause a headache to waiter or us on diving up bill.

Just don’t come. Or do what my one friend did text is what bar you are going after dinner and meet us there. Or pick a brunch place where it is a flat price.

And it is not just money. I had an expense account 8 years at work and would take it staff and clients and I am paying on corporate card

It is weird when someone shows up and stares at us while we eat or drink.

We went to Irish bar after big sale and I threw card on counter and one guy gave up alcohol for lent drank water and spied on us.

Or in Vegas we are all ordering appetizers, steaks, cigars, desert and the guy with salad watching weight and drinking diet soda mocking us

I went in a few dates these people and I am happy I don’t own a gun. Met a girl and a nee cool microbrewery opened near her house, I said let’s meet there get something to eat and go out.

Turns out she does not drink alcohol and a strict vegetarian. Horrible time as she told me order first as she is deciding, I got a burger and a beer.

Look I would have been more than happy to grab a salad with her and a glass of water in my apartment and has sex.

Please stay home. And also don’t order way more expensive than everyone else that is even worse

Clearly there is a reason why you are single. Why would you pick a brewery for a date without seeing if that meets her needs. When she wasn't ordering you should have seen it was issue. You are clueless.

[Anonymous]

Yeah, paying for what you order, plunking down your small denominations, etc. only works if you throw in the right amounts for tax and tip. Too many people just adding up the menu items. Too many stories of a group check left $100 short.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:First, try to see if the server will do separate checks

Second, if not, take the bill first if you can, so the "let's just split evenly" doesn't take it first and announce what everyone "owes." Add up what you owe and add thirty percent (ten percent for tax, twenty percent for tip). Easy to figure out because you figure out ten percent and triple. If tax is less than ten percent, just let the extra be a larger tip.

Yeah, but how do separate checks work when you order something like appetizers to share or a bottle of wine to share?

It just becomes a giant pain in the ass.

If you have a group of 10 and order say rib appetizers that 9 will eat and the 10th won't because the won't eat pork, how are you going to calculate it? Oh and then only 5 out of 10 ate the second app while 7 out of 10 at the 3rd app.


Splitting checks works to a limited degree.


Honestly, just stay the hell home of you're going to have a conniption about going Dutch. Or simply make life easier, go dutch, and ask people to figure it out afterwards. Sitting at the table trying to to figure out exact consumption especially when there may be shares dishes involved that the entire table didn't eat equally makes it a giant mess.

I think we all agree that it's petty to itemize the portion you had of each shared appetizer. It's fine to split the check evenly if your fair share would be like $10 more than what you actually consumed. What people are objecting to is being asked to pay $50+ more than what they ate or when things are egregiously unequal. If I have a group of 10 and the table orders multiple meat based appetizers as well as steaks for everyone else, but I just have a small salad since I'm a vegetarian and can't eat any of the apps or other food, then no, I shouldn't be asked to split evenly. It's the same with the people getting a lot of booze. That can add up quickly, and a person could easily be asked to foot the bill for quite a lot more than they consumed.

Honestly, you're the one who should stay the hell home if you're determined to make everyone else subsidize your excesses, and if you're not even willing to try to be fair or reasonable when paying the bill.

I think you have it backwards. You sound like no fun and high maintenance.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:First, try to see if the server will do separate checks

Second, if not, take the bill first if you can, so the "let's just split evenly" doesn't take it first and announce what everyone "owes." Add up what you owe and add thirty percent (ten percent for tax, twenty percent for tip). Easy to figure out because you figure out ten percent and triple. If tax is less than ten percent, just let the extra be a larger tip.

Yeah, but how do separate checks work when you order something like appetizers to share or a bottle of wine to share?

It just becomes a giant pain in the ass.

If you have a group of 10 and order say rib appetizers that 9 will eat and the 10th won't because the won't eat pork, how are you going to calculate it? Oh and then only 5 out of 10 ate the second app while 7 out of 10 at the 3rd app.


Splitting checks works to a limited degree.


Honestly, just stay the hell home of you're going to have a conniption about going Dutch. Or simply make life easier, go dutch, and ask people to figure it out afterwards. Sitting at the table trying to to figure out exact consumption especially when there may be shares dishes involved that the entire table didn't eat equally makes it a giant mess.

There's a button on the system that allows you to split an item like an appetizer or a bottle of wine into however many parts you want and allocate those parts to the seats indicated. It's really not that hard. That said, just split the bill, but any server who tells you they can't split a bill or an item is lying or stupid.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I was a waitress for years in college. It is not difficult to split checks according to chairs. The waiter/waitress should have taken the orders for food and drinks accordingly and they can split any joint items like appetizers or desserts into as many pieces as needed.

That being said, I just always split the bill evenly. Generally speaking it'll all work out in the end if these are people you spend time with on a regular basis.

This doesn't work out fairly at all if you have a mix of drinkers and non-drinkers. At the very least you should have two bills and split those: one for food and one for alcohol.

I'm the PP. When we're dining out it's generally with friends that we see regularly. We have each other's kids over to spend the night, etc. So when we went out to dinner a few weekends ago, for example, my husband didn't drink because he was the DD (we were going to a show later that evening) and I only had one drink. The other two couples had 3-5 drinks between them. Food was probably somewhat comparable. We just split the bill knowing that we ended up paying for other people's drinks, but then when they have our kids over the next time I know they won't ask for money to cover dinner or whatever. So to me, it does work out in the end.

If it's people you're not going to see again such that they won't be able to "pay you back" over time, then I would consider it a one-off thing and just pay more for the experience of dining with them even though it's "unfair." But if it bothers you and/or you can't afford to pay more (hence why you ordered what you ordered) then maybe don't do group dinners where this is going to be an issue. Or just use your voice and ask the server to at least split our your seat.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I was a waitress for years in college. It is not difficult to split checks according to chairs. The waiter/waitress should have taken the orders for food and drinks accordingly and they can split any joint items like appetizers or desserts into as many pieces as needed.

That being said, I just always split the bill evenly. Generally speaking it'll all work out in the end if these are people you spend time with on a regular basis.

This doesn't work out fairly at all if you have a mix of drinkers and non-drinkers. At the very least you should have two bills and split those: one for food and one for alcohol.

This, and I don't eat meat, and most things I order are much cheaper and I don't usually get an appetizer or desert. People order more knowing someone else will subsidize them.

I can only think of one person I know who acts like this (my BIL, married to my husband's sister). He will order multiple appetizers and entrees and take the food home when he thinks someone else is picking up the bill. It's gross.

Otherwise, I don't have any friends who would purposefully eat or drink more on the basis that someone else will be picking up part of the bill. If you know people like that you need to stop eating out with them...

[Anonymous]

Went to a nice restaurant with friends from grad school. One brought her teen and tween, they were well behaved so that part was fine. At the end, she suggests splitting the check evenly among the adults, which results in the rest of us paying for her kids' food (adult-sized entrees). The rest of us were all annoyed, but no one said anything.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:First, try to see if the server will do separate checks

Second, if not, take the bill first if you can, so the "let's just split evenly" doesn't take it first and announce what everyone "owes." Add up what you owe and add thirty percent (ten percent for tax, twenty percent for tip). Easy to figure out because you figure out ten percent and triple. If tax is less than ten percent, just let the extra be a larger tip.

Yeah, but how do separate checks work when you order something like appetizers to share or a bottle of wine to share?

It just becomes a giant pain in the ass.

If you have a group of 10 and order say rib appetizers that 9 will eat and the 10th won't because the won't eat pork, how are you going to calculate it? Oh and then only 5 out of 10 ate the second app while 7 out of 10 at the 3rd app.


Splitting checks works to a limited degree.


Honestly, just stay the hell home of you're going to have a conniption about going Dutch. Or simply make life easier, go dutch, and ask people to figure it out afterwards. Sitting at the table trying to to figure out exact consumption especially when there may be shares dishes involved that the entire table didn't eat equally makes it a giant mess.

I think we all agree that it's petty to itemize the portion you had of each shared appetizer. It's fine to split the check evenly if your fair share would be like $10 more than what you actually consumed. What people are objecting to is being asked to pay $50+ more than what they ate or when things are egregiously unequal. If I have a group of 10 and the table orders multiple meat based appetizers as well as steaks for everyone else, but I just have a small salad since I'm a vegetarian and can't eat any of the apps or other food, then no, I shouldn't be asked to split evenly. It's the same with the people getting a lot of booze. That can add up quickly, and a person could easily be asked to foot the bill for quite a lot more than they consumed.

Honestly, you're the one who should stay the hell home if you're determined to make everyone else subsidize your excesses, and if you're not even willing to try to be fair or reasonable when paying the bill.

I think you have it backwards. You sound like no fun and high maintenance.

This is the thread in a nutshell. One person's "no fun and high maintenance" is another person's "too poor to subsidize other people's meals." What may be nickel and diming to one person is another person's grocery budget for the week. UMC people who nickel and dime are annoying and high maintenance. But it's tone deaf for UMC people to basically mooch off of their much lower income friends or suggest that their lower income friends need to just stay home.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If I am going to a steak house to get together with old friends we are all offering steaks, having a few beers and maybe desert. We split bill evenly.

Why would someone come eat a small bowl of soup and a glass of water and sit there and watch us eat and drink then cause a headache to waiter or us on diving up bill.

Just don’t come. Or do what my one friend did text is what bar you are going after dinner and meet us there. Or pick a brunch place where it is a flat price.

And it is not just money. I had an expense account 8 years at work and would take it staff and clients and I am paying on corporate card

It is weird when someone shows up and stares at us while we eat or drink.

We went to Irish bar after big sale and I threw card on counter and one guy gave up alcohol for lent drank water and spied on us.

Or in Vegas we are all ordering appetizers, steaks, cigars, desert and the guy with salad watching weight and drinking diet soda mocking us

I went in a few dates these people and I am happy I don’t own a gun. Met a girl and a nee cool microbrewery opened near her house, I said let’s meet there get something to eat and go out.

Turns out she does not drink alcohol and a strict vegetarian. Horrible time as she told me order first as she is deciding, I got a burger and a beer.

Look I would have been more than happy to grab a salad with her and a glass of water in my apartment and has sex.

Please stay home. And also don’t order way more expensive than everyone else that is even worse

You're implying that you'd shoot someone whose dietary restrictions bothered you? After you had sex with her, of course.
Sounds like maybe you should stay home.

And also the people that don't drink are "spying" on him and "mocking" him. Can't imagine.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If I am going to a steak house to get together with old friends we are all offering steaks, having a few beers and maybe desert. We split bill evenly.

Why would someone come eat a small bowl of soup and a glass of water and sit there and watch us eat and drink then cause a headache to waiter or us on diving up bill.

Just don’t come. Or do what my one friend did text is what bar you are going after dinner and meet us there. Or pick a brunch place where it is a flat price.

And it is not just money. I had an expense account 8 years at work and would take it staff and clients and I am paying on corporate card

It is weird when someone shows up and stares at us while we eat or drink.

We went to Irish bar after big sale and I threw card on counter and one guy gave up alcohol for lent drank water and spied on us.

Or in Vegas we are all ordering appetizers, steaks, cigars, desert and the guy with salad watching weight and drinking diet soda mocking us

I went in a few dates these people and I am happy I don’t own a gun. Met a girl and a nee cool microbrewery opened near her house, I said let’s meet there get something to eat and go out.

Turns out she does not drink alcohol and a strict vegetarian. Horrible time as she told me order first as she is deciding, I got a burger and a beer.

Look I would have been more than happy to grab a salad with her and a glass of water in my apartment and has sex.

Please stay home. And also don’t order way more expensive than everyone else that is even worse

I hope this is a joke or troll. How fragile do you need to be to get worked up because people eat and drink differently than you?