Continuing the end-of-year purge of things I don’t have time to properly blog about: be sure not to go to dinner with this guy. He might lash out at you as everyone is heading home.
“We’re going to split the bill,” said the organizer at my friend’s ninth grade birthday party. I didn’t think much of it until I ended up paying $40 for a $10 entrée. I felt cheated because I didn’t order a drink like most others. I was afraid to ruin the party mood, so I concealed my own anger, and that ended up ruining the night for me.
Now, I almost have sympathy; if you’ve ever gone to dinner with a collection of scientists, you’ll find that their vaunted mathematical skills tend to whither under the pressure of calculating tax and tip, and the person who volunteers to collect the money often ends up chipping in extra to cover the shortfall. But Mr. Talwalkar goes far, far overboard, devising an elaborate scheme by which everyone in the party receives emails ahead of time informing them that they will be strictly limited in the menu options once they reach the restaurant. It’s a common syndrome among people with something of a quantitative bent; fixating on the relationship between the money they are paying and the tangible goods in front of them in the form of food and drink, they completely discount the goods associated with having a good time in a social atmosphere and not worrying too much about who had how many bites out of which appetizer.
Admittedly, this guy probably gets more enjoyment out of solving a game theory problem and enforcing conformity with his rules than he would by relaxing and telling stories at dinner. That’s why you have to choose your dining companions carefully.
We trialled a colloquium student dinner program where the students were subsidized to $5 plus drinks. Dunno what ever happened to it, but it seemed to be a good idea at the time.
Eh. I’m all for a good company, but I’ve been burned by too many freeloading jerks too many times to put up with it anymore. Unless it’s business or family, I generally ask for my own check now. If a waitron protests, I insist. If they want to include the 18% gratuity due to party size, I never complain. But I’m not paying for somebody’s three coctails and top-tier entree when all I got was a Cobb salad and an iced tea again. In my experience, anyone stand-up enough to pay their fair share isn’t offended. If they do take offense? Guess who that guy probably would have been. Yeah. One of the jerks.
I’ve worked in a restaurant before, so while I like the idea of separate checks in principle, it usually isn’t a good idea in practise if you have an overly large table. It creates a large amount of extra work for the server, and I don’t like to do that to them. However, as Drnecropolis already mentioned, this problem is diminished somewhat if you inform the server of your payment plans prior to the order being taken. This problem has also been (somewhat) diminished with computerized ordering systems.
On a completely separate topic, I really dislike rereading my own comments on boards like this. Every time I look at a previous comment I find grammatical errors, misused words, and improper punctuation. I mean, I know this isn’t formal writing or anything, but eeesh, it still bugs me.
As somebody who don’t normally drink in joint dinners, I can sympathize with the poster.
Now, as a rich postdoc, I don’t have a problem with “subsidizing” (his words) my friends’ drinks. But the group of friends i hang out are those who are *conscientious* enough to pay for their own drinks, especially since they know I don’t drink. In fact “paying for what you ordered” is the usual way to go.
Personally, I don’t mind paying more if it is a big group dinner (say in speaker dinners where not all diners are regular buddies). But what I feel is not nice is when some faculty member suggest even split between every diner, even grad students. Everyone here was a former grad (or even current) student before, we know how poorly we were paid then. And I always notice that grad students generally go for the cheaper stuff (yes I pay attention to this stuff, since I am always curious about social issues like this). Not surprising of course….but an even split will mean that poor grad students subsidize rich faculty. Now don’t tell me there is nothing wrong with that.
Another thing to remember about separate cheques: in large groups there are very often items that are not paid for because the customer “forgot” to mention it to the waiter. So when everybody has paid, the waiter then has to scramble the remainder from the people that have not yet left the restaurant. So I think restaurants are perfectly justified in refusing separate checks for large groups.
Y’all should grow some balls and try telling your fellow diners if you end up overpaying.
I’ve always thought it best to keep track of what I’ve ordered, round up to whole dollars, factor in 25%, then never pay a dollar more. For some reason it always comes out to $25, which I don’t have on me at the time, and so I just end up taking everyone else’s cash and paying on a credit card. In which case I always come out ahead.
This situation is a lot easier to handle in the UK where tax is always included and service usually is.
Gort, I may be wrong, but you are the problem and NOT the solution. You never pay more than a dollar more but are very willing to skim the money of others. Tsk, tsk, tsk!
I used to work in Japan, and we had a lot of group dinners (often fairly liquid affairs) at places that charged a flat, per-head rate. The prof kicked in the first, and then one of the senior grad students would go round the table, applying an incredibly complicated algorithm based on seniority, and the known value of your stipend or fellowship — the result of which was that the youngest student usually paid an order of magnitude less for their meal than the prof.
irt Ron
and the odd thing is people are always happy because they think I’m doing them a favor.
Nice scam, Dork! Sorry, Gork! I mean, Gort!
takes one to know one 🙂
Pingback: Dividing a Restaurant Bill Using Mechanism Design - Mind Your Decisions by Presh Talwalkar
I have had several waitress jobs, and never would have hesitated to allow a table separate checks. I’m there to serve them, not the other way around.
It is way easier to deal with a table of 8, then 4 tables of 2. I ask from the get go – will these be separte checks or all together – and write them up accordingly.
It’s no big deal. Maybe some wait staff are terrible at math, I don’t know. I’m good at it, and it takes just a few moments with a calculator to tally a bill.
I want my guests happy. I don’t agree with restaurant policies that say ‘groups of ___ or more will be on one check, with a __% gratuity automatically added’
I think that’s really disrespectful of guests
If you want separate checks, mention that at very first contact with server.