Comments on: But I Only Got the Soup…

By: Dividing a Restaurant Bill Using Mechanism Design - Mind Your Decisions

Dividing a Restaurant Bill Using Mechanism Design - Mind Your Decisions — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 04:31:58 +0000

[...] But I Only Got the Soup… Personally, I am with you. Establish a grand total, including the tip. (You would be surprised how a group is all too happy to have someone be the designated bookkeeper at times like this–might at well be you.) Split the check by the number of people. Couples pay the two-fer rate, singles pay the single rate. Easy. Except when seven credit cards get tossed at the server. “Put $50 on this Amex, $22.50 on the two Visas,” and so on. Such a pain. [...]

By: laura

laura — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 01:31:10 +0000

I mostly dine with friends who do ‘family style’. We do several courses and We get to try a lot of different dishes and usually spend the same as one plate a person or more. We tend to frequent restaurants that are friendly regarding bringing wine. We are all collectors and enjoy sharing numerous bottles in an evening as well. Happy to pay a reasonable cork fee. Family style is a fun & fair way to handle the check. Everyone pays the same amount.

By: Split-decision

Split-decision — Tue, 01 May 2007 14:31:54 +0000

wineward – ha ha, the show Friends is exactly what I was thinking. Money is such a touchy subject!

By: Tiana

Tiana — Mon, 30 Apr 2007 16:04:49 +0000

And what’s the problem with getting seperate bills? We almost invariably do this in groups and at most restaurants (in this town anyways) it is the default.

By: Liquor Store Stories

Liquor Store Stories — Fri, 27 Apr 2007 18:25:20 +0000

When I got out to lunch with my labmates, we usually ask to split the check. The three or four of us pay with credit cards, but we’re all generous tippers, so I figure it’s worth the trouble. I don’t see why that is such a big deal, especially in a day and age where people carry less and less cash (I rarely if ever have cash on hand). As long as they tip in the neighborhood of 25%, I think customers who ask to their server to split the check are pretty reasonable.

I suppose I’m lucky that most of the people I go out with are very good about chipping in their fair share. I’m usually the one who pools the cash when we pay together, and I rarely come up short. Then again, I’m not afraid to bug my friends to chip in a little more to make the tip fair. Besides, we’re all poor and no one ever orders anything really expensive.

Steve

By: wineward

wineward — Fri, 27 Apr 2007 17:45:38 +0000

The wife and I recently dined at a Smokey Bones in our area (a casual barbeque concept). I was blown away when the waiter asked if we wanted separate checks! We were a couple sharing one side of a large booth and holding hands! Nobody else was at the table with us.

Has it really gotten so bad that even couples on a date routinely ask for separate checks? I could understand the question if we were business-attired and sitting across from one-another, but sitting closely on one side of a booth?

This issue is so high in the public conciousness that it was even featured in an episode of the television show Friends. Yes, I watch Friends (hangs head). In the episode, the three friends who didn’t have big salaries were complaining that the three friends with high-powered jobs were always dragging them off to expensive meals, ordering expensive items, then expecting them to split the check evenly. Hi-jinks ensue.

On the flip-side, it used to be considered declass� to ask for separate checks, at least in the context of fine-dining. In certain circles this is still true. Almost as annoying as the “split the check 5 ways” people are the ones who engage in mortal combat over who gets to pickup the entire check.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been assaulted by a guy who feels I’ve belittled his manhood becuase I wouldn’t allow him to pay. “I’m dreadfully sorry, sir. We have a firm policy that the first person who asks gets to pay”.

Many times, when two or more people were arguing about who would pay, I wanted to drop the check folder onto the middle of the table like a hockey referee, and let them fight it out for real. Hi-jinks ensue.

By: amsNYC

amsNYC — Fri, 27 Apr 2007 13:17:36 +0000

RG – what a great topic… clearly you hit a nerve!
Being a control freak I usually am the person organizing a group meal and I almost always take control of the chq – after telling the server to add 20% for tip BEFORE she brings the bill to the table if we are more than 4. If 1 or more person has had significantly more or less to eat/drink I tell them what they owe (incl tax/tip) subtract that from the total owed and then divide the rest evenly (thank g-d for cell phone calculator!)- rounding up to the nearest even $ or sometimes to the next # that ends in 5 or 0. I never allow more than 1 or 2 CC’s and usually remind people to bring cash and give them an idea of $ range in the final email confirm before the dinner. Even with a firm plan in place though, I can’t count the number of times people have been petty over the chq or tried to argue that I am overtipping!
One time we went out with another couple – an old friend and his wife (who doesn’t like me). We went to a good friend’s restaurant, a place I go at least 3x/month and she, knowing I was trying to win my married friend’s wife over, went overboard…. sending out a an appetizer plate, a round of drinks and 2 desserts on the house. I had explained the idea of splitting the chq and given my friend a good estimate of the pp cost beforehand. When the chq came he grabbed it out of my hand – took a look and announced that since they had shared an app and didn’t drink any alcohol (only 1 alcoholic drink was on the bill since we had bought/paid for a bottle of wine at the bar before they came) they owed X – about 1/3 of the total – I was horrified! My husband swooped in at that point and told him not to worry about it and paid the entire bill. Needless to say we have not been out to dinner with them since and his wife likes me even less now

By: Induced Homomorphism

Induced Homomorphism — Fri, 27 Apr 2007 13:09:04 +0000

There is one thing I want to ask of Restaurant Gal and the other restaurant people here. I went out to dinner with a group of students once (some of them friends, some of them weren’t), and we ended up having about three people wanting to pay for their share on their cards. One of the girls in our group wrote the names of those three people, along with the amount to be charged to their cards, on the back of the receipt. That way the waiter was able to just flip the receipt over when at the pay station and see exactly how much to charge to each card. I assume that would make things go a bit more smoothly. Is this common practice, and if so, does it make things easier on the waiters and waitresses?

By: Smithee

Smithee — Fri, 27 Apr 2007 02:43:47 +0000

While I’ve been visiting your site for a while now, I’ve never felt compelled to write before. Maybe it’s just a Southern thing, but I’ve rarely ever been in a situation where it wasn’t just assumed we would get separate checks. We always tell the server upfront that we’d like to do it that way, but then again, they usually ask us first. Or maybe it has nothing to do with geography and more to do with the fact that most of my friends and I are all in different financial situations, and we don’t want to put an unnecessary burden/pressure/embarrassment on someone who is watching their pennies. Or it could be that my friends and I are all cheap misers who don’t want to inadvertently pay for someone else.

Truthfully, I think it’s because we just find it simpler to pay our own way. Everyone pays for what they ate and drank, their own tax, and their own tip. If there are things like shared appetizers, then one of us puts that on our bill (this would be the one who wanted it the most/suggested ordering it in the first place), and the others throw a couple of bucks our way if they have the cash. And if someone doesn’t have the cash, we don’t worry about it. When you’ve been friends since kindergarten and have seen each other through careers, broken hearts, weddings, divorces, children, miscarriages, etc., you know it really will even out in the end. And that there are much more important things in life than who had the extra potato skins.

By: Katie

Katie — Fri, 27 Apr 2007 02:28:20 +0000

I work in a casual dining estabilishment. When I have a party I will ask right away if it’s on one check or split. That way there is no fighting when the check comes.

When I go out with my friends it depends, most of the time we will do the 1 person pays and everyone else pays that person thing. Otherwise, if we decide to split the bill, we always let the server know as soon as we put in our first round of drinks.