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Picture this: you’re out to dinner with your friends. Drinks are flowing, food is hitting the spot, and conversations are thriving. Then, the check gets placed with a fake “no rush at all!” from the waiter. After a few quick glances to your left and right – all that fun exits and the new pain sets in. Everyone hates this part – but what’s worse? The excruciating 5 minute ordeal about to occur, or being those assholes that ask the waiter to split up the checks 6 ways? Below are the different types of people at every dinner outing when trying to pay the bill.
Jessica: the first one to grab the check. She takes a pen out of her purse and immediately starts going on her calculator app. She flips over the receipt and neatly prints her last name, the last 4 digits of her credit card, and the amount (not including tip). She lets everyone know exactly how much to add onto their total for the appetizer and tax. Hates when anyone tries to pay with cash, as it messes EVERYTHING up.
Haley: she’ll order an appetizer for the table without consulting anyone except for a quick “is everyone good with mozz sticks?” (while the waiter looks on, no less, impatient and annoyed that they didn’t discuss this before he walked over.) At the end of the meal, she tries to overpower Jessica and simply tosses her card in the middle of the table and tells everyone to split it evenly, which upsets Tiffany.
Tiffany: had one less round of beers than everyone else, and didn’t take any of the mozzarella sticks. She purposely did both of these things to pay $8 less, but is far too timid to actually speak up when the time comes. She will be passive aggressive for the remainder of the night, and text her boyfriend about how her “friends” just don’t understand that she doesn’t make as much as them! Ugh.
Mike: the one who pays cash. In addition to paying cash, he only has $20 bills. His portion came to $42, so he throws in $40 hoping no one will notice. (hint: Jessica notices and tries to get him to ask the waiter for change). He does this because while Jessica is annoying, she is also hot.
Zack: the one who didn’t listen to Jessica and doesn’t add any money for the appetizer and tax which ends up screwing over Jason. This is not his first offence. Coincidentally, he is also the guy that power-housed the mozzarella sticks. In fact, no one really knows why he keeps getting invited?
Jason: the poor, poor soul who is last in the rotation of check passing. The unofficial duty lies in him to double check everyone’s math and make sure the totals add up. He mumbles under his breath about how someone messed up but too easy going to call out Zack; therefore, he has no choice but to make up for the $20+ deficit. Him and Tiffany find solace in one another afterwards, and continue to complain about everyone else for the rest of the night.
With these friends in the back of your mind, go forth and enjoy your dinners out – until you have to pay for it, that is..
Respond
These people all suck and I’ll never dine with them again. If you’re not splitting the order total evenly among however many people are there (barring some extraordinary circumstance), you’re a trash person.
Isn’t that what Haley did? but also, +1 on splitting the tab evenly.
She ordered an appetizer that only she wanted without really consulting with others. That’s also a trash move.
I misunderstood what she did then. Yea, trash move.
Combat Split: don’t be upset if you got the salad and a water when everyone else got a steak and multiple drinks
Recently had to be the Jessica at a bachelorette party dinner at a steakhouse because we had a pregnant woman and nursing mom both not drinking and a vegetarian who just got a salad so I wasn’t about to be the asshole who made those people subsidize everyone else’s steak and multiple bottles of wine. But that’s definitely extraordinary circumstances.
What’s the deal with check splitting on here? When we go out with friends, we just tell them to do a check for my wife and I, and my friends do the same.
I hear about check splitting a weird amount of times. Is it something in bigger cities?
Some restaurants refuse to do split checks for large parties, or just in general refuse. This is starting to become more normal for pricier/fancier restaurants.
Gotcha. Not an issue where I’m from. Most restaurants just know to do separate checks to begin with. I live in a small city of about 70,000 though.
Easy… no split check, no tip.
I worked at a restaurant that required the manager to enter in his code in order for the waiter to split the check. Imagine putting a coke on the wrong persons tab and needing to get a manager to enter in his code again, and again, and Again, and it’s a packed restaurant. The customer would have to wait a long time for this to happen when everyone could’ve just put in their card and say split evenly.
I remember a table that wrote down how much to charge their cards on the back of the receipt. It took ten minutes for them to do intense calculations of what they ordered and how much tax, tip etc. The 3 totals they told me to charge ended up being within 20 cents of each other ($20.10, $20.30, $20.40).
I just don’t understand why it’s an issue to do 3 checks from the beginning. If there are 3 couples, just write up 3 checks. I understand that splitting them after the fact is a pain in the ass, but shouldn’t be super hard to begin with.
Same amount of work for the kitchen regardless.
Splitting 3 checks isn’t an issue. It becomes an issue when you have a table full of 20-30 people with a huge tab, all 20 want separate checks, all want appetizers and deserts split 7 ways somehow, everyone is drunk and obnoxious, no one wants to claim the 2 patron margaritas that were ordered, everyone keeps switching seats making it more confusing for the waiter, etc etc hahah.
Maybe we’re just lame and don’t get rowdy, so it doesn’t matter haha.
what about one person covering the whole bill and sending venmo requests?
Think that’s fine if you’re dividing the tab evenly, but otherwise it’s not much different than the pen and paper add up person.
I think it’s pretty different because you’re not stressed out the waiter as much.
True. Speaking as a former waiter, the move here is to ask if it’s separate checks or 1 at the beginning. Takes all of an extra 20 seconds at the POS and save a lot of time at the end.
I hate it. A friend of mine would notoriously pull this move. He would buy rounds+apps and tell everyone “he’s got this one” only to send out venmo requests the next day (when he is sober) for drinks and apps we don’t want and the stupidly large tip he put down
I don’t think your friend understands how the phrase “I’ve got this one” works.
No no no, that’s a completely different and very shitty thing. The right move is for someone to put their card down and specifically say they will Venmo charge everyone else the next morning
Jason and Tiffany are going to poundtown
Poor bf
Meh, I’ll just make the server get everyone separate checks then tip incredibly well to make up for the inconvenience.
No shame in Mike’s game. That annoying yet hot combo will get you to do loco stuff 10/10 times.
Had to deal with this a while back when one person in the party refused to let everyone split, then wanted everyone to pitch in cash. Ended up having to have someone cover me because I wasn’t planning on needing $150 in cash, then because they weren’t close friends I see all the time I had to find an ATM before we split for the night.
Just tell the server upfront how to split it, and if you feel like you’re being really inconvenient offset with a good tip. No need to ruin your dinner/rest of night because of awkwardness splitting the bill.
It seems the characters’ name selections are drawn from aggravating real-life dining experiences.
My buddies and I had a system where no matter what we got everything was split evenly on the bill but with a catch. We’d divide all the food into two categories: entrees and table food. Table food wasn’t counted against if everyone partook but the more of your entree/entrees you had left unfinished the higher percentage of the total bill you paid. Kinda a reverse payout at a golf tournament. As a result no one over did it on beers and apps (for fear they wouldn’t be able to finish the entree) and if you ordered extra food you’d almost certainly end up paying more.
Maybe I’m an asshole but my group of friends have always asked the waitstaff before we order to put the orders on separate tickets.
Give me those sweet, sweet CC points
Ask for separate checks the moment you sit down and your waiter comes over. If the restaurant doesn’t allow it, someone fork over their credit card, get some points racked up, and tell everyone you’ll send them Venmo requests. Saves everyone time and effort. Easy
Man ya’ll forgot the mooch. $40 tab, “hey man you got this? I’ll get us a beer at the bar”
So I was at dinner this past weekend with about 15 people. I only had one drink and no food bc I wasn’t feeling well. Check came before I told the waiter to break mine out separately and everyone else was splitting evenly. I tossed in a $20 and bailed out. Trash or not trash?
As long as you tell the server what’s happening before the check hits the table, it doesn’t matter. Yes, we would like to swipe one card or give back change to one person, but all it changes for servers is how long we stand in front of the computer and talk about the customers to our coworkers
Not trash. If anything, you probably paid 80-100% in tip, assuming food and tax pre-tip was around $10 total. It’s unreasonable to expect someone to split the bill evenly if they have just one drink while everyone else orders $30+ worth of food.