How about this, Bill Splitters :
When 6 or more (and therefore likely to contain a wide range of flushness or lack thereof) of you decide to dine out, go to the bottom and work your way up from there. ie, try using a little of your apparently underutilised resource "imagination", and guesstimate what is likely to be the comfort zone for the least able amongst you, and suggest that place. If your pauper feels he/she might be cramping your imagined style and is happy to stretch a little to accomodate YOU, go one notch up.
Don't do what the most apalling and, yes, I say it out loud, common, of show offs does and announce grandly "oh, we'll go somewhere cheap so it suits everyone" - and then put forward a list of options that are so far outside what any sane person might consider cheap as to be laughable. this, of course, is done deliberately (though always claimed to be innocent - I mean, who knew that some folk actually thought $45 mains expensive!), to teach you proles a lesson on how the true quality lives.
Once you arrive at the bottom of the barrel or its nearest neighbour, order as many $50 bottles of plonk as you like (assuming the place actually sells the stuff, which is unlikely - BYO anyone?), eat as many lobster thermidores as you like, then plonk a gently rounded up total of your sins on the plate. Cheerfully watch as everyone else does the same, and suck up that prententious inner tosser for the duration. If I want to barter my surplus eggs for the meal, why should you care?
If I agree to wash dishes in exchange for the food, what difference can
that possibly make to you and your enjoyment of the company? Or is
fiscal difference so very distressing for you that it's impossible to tolerate,
let alone encourage? Remember why you're there, and don't be an arsehole to your friends and loved ones.
...havent logged in for a while.
ReplyDeleteBlimey Moses. Deeply melancholic festivities, what.
Not so much, Bettles. Just fed up to my rudolph with bill splitting tossbags and their sneering at the poor folk. Other than that, I'm having a remarkably relaxed and unusually cheerful festive season :D
ReplyDeleteI note you didn't weigh in on the soapboxery. on that, ran a vox pop on this vexatious question last week - coincidentally, in a dining group of 10 (though in a cafe so no possibility of bill splitting) - and it turns out 9 out of 10 detest the practice. The 10th was ambivalent, and unsurprisingly, the wealthiest of our number by a goodly margin. Evidently I hobnob primarily with penurious tightwads :D