I very rarely go out and dine with friends, but when I do, we all pay our fair share of the bill.

 

Offer to go out with them again. This time, make each person pay for their own order, and put laxatives in the other couples' food.

 

Well then it shouldn't be that hard to say next time 'No, I'm sorry, we have other plans' and then make plans later with just the couple that your wife is actually friends with.

The others aren't your friends, why do you give a DAMN what they think? I find it bizarre that most people care more about what strangers think than their friends and family - but I do the same, and its a really hard habit to break!

--Moony

 

You should have no problem being 'that guy' since you should only pay for what you eat/drink. If a random group of people at the table next to you told you to pick up their check, would you? Of course not. So why is this situation any different?

 

Here's an idea that I'm just going to give you:

Instead of going out to dine, why not talk it over with your friends and just invite everyone over at somebody's place for dinner? That's what my parents do with their friends; they all take turns inviting everyone to their place for dinner and then take time to play games. While it may put some stress on whoever's hosting dinner at their place to have to do all the cooking, but it beats going to a restaurant only to end up paying for more than one's share of the bill.

 

In most "good" restaurants the server,who sees several couples, will immediately ask if this will be separate checks or on 1 check, if they don't bring it up, then you should..tell them right away, my wife and I are on 1 check, then it opens the door for the others to speak up about paying their checks..problem solved..I dine with friends all the time and that's what we do..we know that taking care of our own portion of the bill is the only fair thing to do..keeps friends being friends and not friend-enemies.... 

 

Unless they were really, really, GOOD friends, and you were willing to do it for JUST them, I wouldn't have split the bill, but make them pay for their own dishes and foods.

 

Never been a fan of splitting the bill that way... just never works unless money is no object.
I'd go out with the same group in about 6-8 weeks and even up the "average"..

 

The only time I ever split the bill evenly like that is when there is no clear answer to who got what, like when at our favorite Bubble Tea place, they have a menu full of appetizers, and we order what everybody wants, and people tend to pick off of whatever plate they feel like.

But in TJ's situation, I would have said something. The person who ordered more can pay more, we don't have to split it exactly based on what we ordered (Which BTW, not hard to do as I do it often...) but as long as you pay for roughly what you ate, it doesn't matter if everybody either overpaid or underpaid by like $5. As long as you aren't paying a LOT more than what you ordered, if that made sense.. >.>

 

I don't really understand why splitting the bill accurately is difficult. You look at the bill, see what you ordered, put down the money for those items... and that's it. Where's the problem?

 

There are just some truly lazy people out there who appear to have too much money to bother wasting their own time to consider other people's budgets.

But like I said earlier, if they're truly that lazy, why don't they make it easy for everyone else and just pay for the whole dinner? That's the easiest solution right? Don't even need to do any math for that.

 

I have a good friend and we take turns getting each others meal, regardless of the price. Since I don't drive, on rare occasions we'll go eat together, he'll fly, and I'll buy, as it were.

In this situation, I would have spoken up. But that's me.

 

Well, I guess for this particular situation I didn't want to speak up. Call it pride, call it saving face, either way if I spoke up I'm sure my wife would have had felt the collateral damage embarrassment of my unwillingness to just split the bill in order to save a few bucks. I guess I can think of it as paying cash for a pleasant drive home...   In the future though, I think I may ask for separate bills when we order just so the waiter will have the heads up and everyone will have no choice but to pay for there own damage.

And BTW the waiter was a total douche. Like who the hell sits 5 couples and doesn't think that they may want separate bills...

 

Could eat for free, just follow this guide-

guy1 -"I got it"

guy 2- "Nah dude I'll get it"

guy 1 - "No man don't sweat it"

guy 2- "Seriously dude, let me cover it"

guy 1 "Back off man, I got this"

guy 2' "screw you bitch, Im paying"

guy 1 "whoreface"

guy 2 "your mom!!"

NO U

NO U

*fight breaks out, until they're thrown out of the place"

guy 1 "sorry brah, I was only bluffing anyway, I have no money"

guy 2 "Me neither"

 

I would've said, politely, that I don't find it fair to decide that after the meal and that they should've considered that before ordering so much. I would've offered to pay for what I ordered and stood firm.

I say I would do that because the exact situation happened to me at an eat-in resturant in town about five years ago.

 

Honestly, that's a tough one there. First off, you shouldn't have had to split the bill evenly. Having said that, sitting here in front of a computer it's pretty easy to say that I can speak up and say something. But at the moment? I think I would have done the same you did and just eat it to save face but more importantly the wife's face. Other's have already offered some ideas for the future so that this situation would not happen again in the future and they are good ideas so I don't have any more to add in that regard.

On a side note, having everone figure out how much they need pay for their own stuff alot of times don't work out that well either. There always seems to be one or 2 people/couple that puts in short of what they ordered (I think most times they only look at the amount of their meals and don't figure tax and tip). That happens quite often actually during dinners I have attended and we end up being short a certain amount and everyone looks at each other until someone finally throws in the extra to cover the difference (and it's usually not the person(s) who shorted the bill).

 

Same here. Almost all of my friends have far better paying jobs than me, and drink more than me, and yet they still try this "Let's split the bill, it's easier" crap.
I only ever pay for what I had, plus a share of the tip; usually that's all I can afford to pay for. If anyone suggests splitting the bill, I say that I simply can't afford to. I don't see why, as the person there who usually has the least money, I should pay for someone else's food just because they're either too sodding lazy to work out how much they owe, or too cheap to actually pay it.

 

Carry a calculator. When ordering write down the price of every item that you order, add it up figure tax and tip. When the bill comes, have your money ready. Explain that it's all you have, which is why you ordered what you did.

Many years ago, I was with some friends. With little money I ordered a salad and water as that's all I could afford. They ordered pizza with appetizers and drinks. At the end of the meal they had the nerve to expect me to pay for food I had neither eaten or drunk. "Sorry", I said. "I ordered only what I could afford and I didn't eat any of your food." We were still friends even after that. They never tried that again.

Good Luck.

 

I only split the bill if money is not an issue. If I'm low on money, a friend usually spots me and vice versa. I get them back at the next outing.

I'm not surprised that the server didn't ask how everyone wanted to be billed. It happens quite a lot.

 

Hell, most mobile phones have one built in. Anyone trying to pull "it's easier to just split the bill evenly" is either trying to get away with paying less than their fair share or has more money than sense. If it's the former, fuck them. If it's the latter, let them pay for you as well.