Hi all. Just a short blog for you today, on the subject of how to split a bill. A seemingly simple task that invariably ends up being a lot more complex than could have been imagined. I’ll warn you now, I offer no solutions in the below; it’s simply an opportunity for me to moan (again!). Without further ado, let’s get cracking. Check this out:
Sorting out who pays for what when out with friends or family can be surprisingly difficult. It’s not too bad if you’re in a small group, but any more than six of you can lead to some tricky decisions.
For example, let’s say you’re on a night out with a group of mates. And, for the sake of this argument, it’s not a bunch of couples (as it is quite easy for each couple to just sort themselves out for drinks). It’s just a group of individuals. Let’s also say that you’re in a group of eight.
Now, one very easy way to fairly sort who’s buying the drinks is for everyone to just buy their own drink all night. I don’t know about you, though, but I’ve never once been on a night out where this has happened. Not only is this considered a bit rude and strange, but it’s also a bad strategy, particularly if you’re in a busy bar; to wait ages to be served and then just order one drink for yourself, if you’ve got mates who need a drink, is unthinkable.
So, what usually happens is that you will buy rounds of drinks. Lad one goes up and buys a round, then, when everyone is ready, lad two gets a round in. So on and so forth. However, this system is fraught with issues.
Firstly, what happens if all eight of you don’t stay out long enough for eight rounds of drinks? If a few drift off home early, that means the people who buy the first few rounds are having to buy eight drinks, whereas the people buying rounds later might only have to buy five or six drinks. This is doubly problematic if people slink off early without having bought a round themselves, effectively having a free night out.
Now, there are ways to mitigate against this. You can split into smaller groups. The big group of eight could become two smaller groups of four, safe in the knowledge that four rounds of drinks should be easily doable for everyone. But, what if one of the group of four decides to go home after round five or six? You’ll still end up with an unequal amount of rounds.
The only surefire way to combat this is by pairing up. That’s right; the group of eight becomes four groups of two! This may sound a bit drastic, but at least you know you’re always on par with your partner, as long as you both follow the unwritten rule that you can only leave after you’ve bought a round, i.e., if your mate bought the last round, you’re obliged to buy them a drink before you go.
At this juncture, I want to acknowledge that a lot of this may sound overly formal. It must sound like I go on nights out with a clipboard full of rules, ruining everyone’s fun with nitpicking. On the contrary, these ‘rules’ are really just common courtesy, which most people follow instinctively anyway.
The very simple rule is that if someone buys you a drink, you buy them one back. As I say, most people will do this without a second thought anyway. But you do get the occasional person who always seems to go missing when it’s their turn to pay. That brings me to the one potential problem with pairing up to buy rounds.
It is very handy if you pair up with someone who drinks at roughly the same speed as you. There’s nothing worse than buying someone a drink, then realising they are drinking at less than half your speed, you’ve nearly finished your pint, but they’re barely a third of the way through!
Some people do this on purpose, too, when they know it’s their round next. They deliberately drink slowly, knowing that there’s a chance the others will get tired of waiting and will just go buy their own drink. Or, someone else who has already bought a round will get another round in, whilst Senor Slow Drinker gets away, scott free.
Of course, the opposite is true, also. Someone’s bought you a drink, and before you’ve even had time to get properly acquainted with it, they’ve nearly necked theirs and are waiting for you to sort them out. So, pairing up, though probably the best option, can still be dicey.
Ok, you’ve sorted out your groups, and now you can all just enjoy the night, right? Wrong. All is well if you stay in one place all night, but what if you change venues? As I’ve written about before, there are numerous options for a tipple, and the drink prices can vary dramatically.
If you start off a night out in a pub, drinks will be (relatively) cheap. If you’re buying pints of beer, you’re probably paying between £4-£6 per drink, depending on where you are geographically. For example, pints in London will generally be more expensive than pints in more rural areas.
If, later in the evening, you move onto a bar or, worse, a club, the drinks will be much more expensive. We’re talking possibly double what you were paying in the pub. As mentioned above, if you’re paired up, it’s not too bad, as you just try to ensure you buy an equal amount of rounds in each venue. But if you’re doing rounds in a larger group, the people who buy their rounds earlier will likely be spending less money than those whose rounds fall later in the night.
This is further exacerbated by the fact that not everyone will want to drink the same thing all night. Say everyone is drinking pints of beer to start with. There is some variance in price depending on what brand of beer you get, but mostly, a pint will more or less cost the same. However, if some – or all – of you move on to more elaborate drinks later in the evening (spirits and mixers or cocktails, for example), the people buying rounds later will definitely be shelling out more per round.
There is only one surefire way of guarding against people leaving early, moving on to more expensive venues or people moving on to more expensive drinks: the whip round. In short, a whip round involves everyone putting in a set amount of cash into the “whip” at the beginning. It can be any amount, but £20 is usually a decent amount to be getting on with.
If there are 10 of you, as you math whizzes will be able to confirm, that will give you an opening whip of £200. One person looks after it, and you use that money to buy any and all rounds of drinks. When the money runs out, everyone puts another 20 quid in. It really is simple and effective.
The beauty of having a whip is that it doesn’t matter how pricey an establishment you end up in, as everyone pays an equal amount each time. Of course, the pot dwindles faster if you’re in a more expensive joint, but at least it’s a fair way to split the cost.
There are, however, two drawbacks to the whip system, one of which I will cover later. But one issue is again if some in the group are drinking more expensive drinks than others. If their drink costs £6 and yours costs £4, but you’re both putting in £20 a time, they’re getting more bang for their buck, so to speak.
You may think that it is the drunken state of people that leads to these money disparities on nights out. Though there may be a little merit to that, you also see these issues crop up in non-drinking situations. Take eating in a restaurant, for example.
Dining out in groups of six or more often leads to unmitigated disasters financially, in my experience at least. Unless you’re dining with one very generous individual who offers to pay for everything, things often get tricky when the bill arrives.
The easiest solution is to just split the bill evenly. It sounds fair enough, but it’s only really fair if everyone eats and drinks roughly the same. I was at a restaurant once, and there must have been at least 10 of us. For whatever reason, I wasn’t that hungry, so I just ordered a simple meal and a beer. Another guy in our party went the complete opposite way. He got a starter and ordered a few extra sides to go with his main meal. He was also drinking cocktails.
The bill comes up at the end of the meal, and it’s deemed that everyone needs to kick in £30 to cover it. That isn’t an extortionate amount of money, but my meal and solitary beer can’t have come to more than £15, so I was effectively paying double what I should have. The alternative is arguably worse, though.
Sometimes, people will realise that it isn’t fair to split the bill evenly. So the bill gets passed from person to person, with everyone adding up what they had and then putting the requisite money in. Every time I’ve been involved in a situation like this, the final pot has ended up short. Be it people sneakily trying to pay less or some people simply being bad at maths, the money on the table doesn’t add up to the total on the bill. It’s a bit of a nightmare, and it usually only gets resolved if one person decides to make up the difference, whether it is their responsibility or not.
These issues can be bad, but in some ways, they’re nearly obsolete. Remember above when I said there were two issues with the whip system? I spoke about one issue already, but the other one also affects dining in large groups, too: hardly anyone carries cash anymore.
More often than not, people exclusively use a card to pay for near enough everything. The fact that contactless payment is available in most places, not to mention the added convenience some people have of being able to do contactless payments via their phone or watch, means that physical money just isn’t used as frequently as it was even five years ago.
So, whip rounds are basically completely out of the question, and staff at restaurants are put out because they now often have to produce multiple bills per table, so that each person/couple can tap their card for only what they consumed. Don’t even get me started on how the prevalence of card payments has a negative impact on tipping for restaurant staff.
Perhaps inconveniencing a waiter or waitress is a small price to pay? “Yes, I know it is annoying, having to produce 12 separate bills for one table, but there’s a dozen of us. At least it’s fair this way.” Though, probably only say something like that once you’ve eaten. Nobody wants spit in their food, no matter who’s paying.
Thank you for reading. The eagle-eyed among you might have spotted in the intro that I said that this would be a short blog. You may have then been surprised at how long I prattled on for. This was a classic example of me writing about a subject that I didn’t think I’d have loads to say about, only to discover as I was writing that I actually had lots to say.
Believe me, it’s much better this way round. The number of times I’ve started writing something, assuming that I have a plethora of opinions and witty observations on the subject, before realising that I only have a couple of vaguely interesting ideas to share. In those situations, I either end up deleting the post entirely or hastily finishing off an embarrassingly short blog, hoping that nobody realises what’s happened.
Anyway, now you know how the sausage is made, I hope you still join me next time. Until then, take care.
Rob Recommends
The Boys – TV – 9/10
Incredible! If you haven’t watched this yet, what are you waiting for? If there is a reason some have chosen not to watch, the only one I can think of is that they’re sick of superheroes. There is an abundance of superhero content these days, to be fair. However, The Boys is not your usual hero shtick.
Essentially, the show asks two questions. 1) What if superheroes really existed? And, 2) What if those heroes were terrible people? This reality would be a terrifying one to live in. And The Boys shows you this time and time again. The shenanigans kick off almost immediately in the first episode, and the show never lets up from that point. It’s frenetic stuff.
If I’m going to mark it down for anything, it has to be for Karl Urban’s accent. Now, let me be clear: Urban is amazing in this. He’s damn near perfect, except for the accent! The accent is so bad that I wasn’t sure where the character was meant to be from. There were times when I thought he might be Cockney, but others where I thought he could be playing an Australian. It wasn’t until a few episodes in when another character referred to him as “some British guy” that I realised he was supposed to be from the east end of London.
Now, to be fair, the accent did improve somewhat from the start of season 2, so I’m sure it’s something Karl Urban worked on. I’m also not entirely sure many other people would have been bothered by the accent; certainly not American audiences. I don’t live in the east end, but I do have roots there, and I have always lived close by, so I think my ears are more sensitive to bad Cockney accents. Putting my issues with that aside, though, I have to stress that you need to watch this programme. It’s outstanding.
Fool Me Once – TV – 9/10
Michelle Keegan is fast becoming one of the most talented actresses in the country. She received widespread acclaim for her role in Our Girl, and she is wonderful in Brassic. But, the very best actors keep appearing in good stuff, and she’s done it again with this.
I think my favourite thing about Keegan is her adaptability; she seamlessly moves between drama and comedy and action, sometimes all within one scene. There are rumours that she could be in line to be the next Bond girl. If that’s something she’s interested in, and she gets offered it, she really deserves it, and good luck to her.
In terms of Fool Me Once, it is a fast-paced, tense, exciting whodunit, with more twists than a Curly Wurly! It really is riveting stuff, and it keeps you guessing right until the end. Don’t miss it.
A Rob Blog 