Enjoy!

A million dollar interior is not covered by a water and a salad. Trendy panache is not covered by your single glass of iced tea and appetizer.

If you came alone to have water and a salad you would not get a table.. because you generate a loss and take up space somene else desires. Why do you think you can come with a group and just pay for your water and salad? You are asking the group to subsidize your enjoyment of the amenities.

If you go out with friends be prepared to be generous. Your friends will appreciate the offer, even if they don’t accept it. One day, when you need a friend, you will be glad your friends are prepared to be generous.

I don’t drink wine, I don’t drink alcohol, but I do drink a lot of water, usually at least one or two, and if I find something nice on the menue I like to order more - but as I am picky too, it may very well be that I choose only a very limited small selection. Or something really expensive.

Either way, I am usually always NEVER with what the rest of the crowd does, either I am using up much more, or much less than the rest.

I could make a smiley face and say I don’t care, but I do. I could “be nice” and just swallow it up, but I won’t because I see no reason to.

I agree with Stephanie on that if everybody pays, that is taking advantage of, and more than once I have overheard those happy “yeah we like to share and it is great!!!” people afterwards grumpling about how X did have so much more. It is fake in many cases.

It is a good reminder though to pay attention to ‘group’ habbit and make things clear in the beginning.

Something I feel comfortable with for example is a combined thing - I pay my share first (remember, this being either much more or much less) and the rest can go for a shared meal if they like, I do not mind that at all.

If this makes the rest of the group uncomfortable I am sorry, but I rather am at peace with myself than just make somebody else comfortable. Tara’s argument of “oh but that is just greedy individualism whereas the other one is cool collective” does not go with me either IN THIS SPECIFIC case.

Collective for me is not about being made equal all the time, but for me to have a choice and an agreement with the group I am in that this is the direction how we all think is good to go. There has to be compromise on both side usually, which is fine, but that is about it.

In this specific case just reading how it worked I would have expected from you to pay for the starters, since you ordered it (my perspective: usually resulting in a lot of stuff I have no interest in eating) and after that it is up to everyone to organize themselves.

The cultural side of it being that you pay for the birthday girl - over here it is more responsibility for the host to invite everybody is another dimension to it.

To sum it up - it is not easy and needs talking. But there is not the case of “my way is the only one which is the correct one”.

(In Berlin there’s a restaurant that works as the bank: Everybody just symbolically “rents” a wine glass for 1 Euro, then gets as much wine & dinner as they like. And not like a crappy buffet, but a great, amazing, lovingly created several course dinner. In the end, everybody pitches in what they feel they owe, and according to the owner, it works out just fine. The atmosphere is great, too!)

I\’ve just finished reading (with a great deal of fascination) three blogposts by three different people who were all at the same dinner party.

They present three very different viewpoints as to how the dinner bill should have been settled…

Tara, I’d like to clarify two points (of detail) you raise in your comment:

• regarding the restaurant being expensive: yes, definitely not cheap, for sure, and in my opinion all the more reason not to split the bill evenly. The pricier the place, the more budget and consumption differences are going to come into play.

• regarding the appetizers: I maybe didn’t make myself clear about how I expected guests to deal with this. My intention was not to force people to pay for expensive appetizers they had not eaten, again, because I was not expecting people to split the bill. Not eaten any appetizers? Then don’t contribute to them. Eaten a lot? Contribute a lot. Same with the drinks.

I don’t see any of my choices as being inconsistent with my defense of a “bank-like” system. I have no problem with spending money on a meal when I’ve chosen to. But I don’t want to force the group’s eating choices on the individuals composing it. So yeah, I guess, here I am definitely in “individual takes precedence over group” mode.