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Comment by tedivm | Hacker News Reader

I have never disagreed with something so much.

While I'm financially not doing so bad, I grew up poor. When I was college age going out with friends was complicated- if we all handled our own bills it was one thing, but when I'm not drinking and only eating cheap food to save money splitting the check would literally mean I'm subsidizing other people friends and could be the difference between being able to afford to go out or not.

Apps like this level the playing field and make it a lot easier for people of different incomes to socialize together with less awkwardness.

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I'm with you. Even without the factor of not being able to afford it, isn't having autonomy over your own purchases and finances a good thing? It's not 'cheap', it's responsible and avoids money getting in the way of friendships.

What I worry about is that Venmo is an expression of "everybody is too poor to actually cover each other", and that's a damn shame if true.

The way we, now aged, uncool, unhip folks used to deal with this was that we would cover people like you discreetly.

One of the better off folks (read: professional receiving a paycheck rather than starving grad student) would take charge of the "pot", would figure out what was lacking and generally "tell" a couple of the other better off folks what to put in. I never had an issue covering an entire bill for someone and neither did any of the other folks. 1) We asked you to join us because we appreciate your company and 2) people probably did this for us when we were the poor ones.

This works very well unless you have someone freeriding who shouldn't (we had two people in our group who were really well-paid programmers who did this). When that happens, I would itemize the free-rider in excruciating detail and if he didn't put in every red cent, I would call him out on it.

I think this really speaks to the issue - by making things quick, easy, and fair-with-documentation, we lose out on the opportunity to practice a bunch of hard-to-relearn (and imo valuable) social skills and machinery that comes with interpersonal debts. see Graeber - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debt:_The_First_5000_Years

This (widely disparate eating patterns between friends) used to be a problem, but then we hit on a solution: at the end, when the bill comes, each person adds up what they ate/drank, and adds 30% to that (which covers the tax + tip). Some items can be ordered "for all", and the persons who did that take ownership of those too. It's worked beautifully so far.

30%?? How much do you tip??

With ~10% tax and 20% tip, that seems right on the mark to me. I guess it would be less in places without sales tax.

That was one of the really weird things I noticed in the USA when I visited recently: this bizarre tendency not to include tax in the prices. Tell me what I need to pay you, not what you're going to end up having received!

Couldn't agree more. There are lots of other nefarious tactics, like "resort fees" at hotels. We're the land of the fee, I suppose.

Why not just say "separate bills" at the beginning, so that you get them itemized individually?

I do not ask for this unless the server offers it. It takes longer to get the bill and pay for it, then if the server is busy / inattentive they just dump the cards on the table and let the group of 12 adults squint at Chase cards.

I can't remember the last time I visited a restaurant where the server didn't ask how the check(s) should be handled.

I _always_ ask for this if its what I want and the server doesn't offer it. They offer up front because its 10x easier to do knowing thats the plan going into it than having to split things up afterwards.

So much for the tip system ensuring better service. I can't imagine a server doing that around here. Then again, we use Chip&Pin, so it's not like they could take them all anyway.

I'm asking myself exactly the same thing. I've never "split" a bill, but I've requested separate bills plenty of times and always gotten them, it's nothing out of the ordinary in Germany.

Imho it's also the most reasonable approach that doesn't put anybody in an awkward position.

With a large party (6+), it becomes difficult for the wait staff to track the orders. And it takes longer to get the bills at the end. Some places won't do more than 2-3 bills also.

Agreed. In my experience, the only people who ever get upset about dividing bills accurately (fairly!) are people who have money and don't care.

Why expecting people to pay what they owe upsets so many people I'll never understand..

Agreed. This happened to me when I was in college but was working a nice internship. Group lunch with coworkers: I ate a cheap burger with water and ended up helping pay for their salmon and fancy drinks. Did not appreciate it, and would have rather not gone.

You were either too proud to tell your friends the truth or had bad friends.

You haven't had many friendships with diverse income levels.

This. It's not even about whether one can afford things, but the unfairness of splitting the bill. I have an anecdote where a friend of mine had 2 glasses of juice, while her friends were drinking wine and all sorts. When her part of the bill was $4 she ended up paying $50 (currency approxm, but you get the point).

Even with similar incomes, as young adults in our mid-20's, working hard for our money, we'd like more control over what we end up paying for.

I understood mjevans as saying that they thus should have not split the bill evenly (and their friends should not insist on it), for exactly those reasons?

This problem is even worse when it's not even necessarily income levels that is the problem, but just different values around money & spending. If you have the same income level, but find it outrageous to spend x on y, you just get viewed as a "cheap ass"

It's not my fault I don't want to pay 13 dollars+tip for a cocktail when I can make 20 of them at home for the same price.

> It's not my fault I don't want to pay 13 dollars+tip for a cocktail when I can make 20 of them at home for the same price.

Oh, certainly not your fault, but you might be better staying at home. Why agree to go out somewhere with your friends if you are just going to drink water?

> Why agree to go out somewhere with your friends if you are just going to drink water?

What do you think I'm an amateur? Club soda with lime, in a highball glass.

It is your fault if you go out to bars that serve $13 drinks instead of staying home and making 20 of them.

We all have choices.

> It's not my fault I don't want to pay 13 dollars+tip for a cocktail when I can make 20 of them at home for the same price.

Then stay the hell home, please. Everybody will be happier.

When I organize something like this either A) I think the cocktails/beer/food/etc. is genuinely amazing and if you don't then you should stay home or B) I'm more interested in the company and I think the ambiance is acceptable.

Most of that drink's $13 is paying for the venue in which you consumed it. Frankly, I also dont really get why it's so much more fun to drink with friends in expensive and crowded spaces than our own spaces, but I appreciate that's a minority view.

Even if all your friends know, you will feel bad if someone -- anyone -- pays for you.

Being able to pay for yourself feels like control, and it's doubly important to have that feeling when you're poor.

Probably variable. I've said a few times that I can't afford to go out, and had friends offer to pay (to be paid back if/when I can afford it), and it never really bothered me (I was extremely grateful to have such good friends TBH).

I did make sure to pay them back when I could (a few months later), and when I had a bit more money a few years later made sure to buy them all a few rounds of drinks though.

I don't follow your logic at all. The person in this article is saying that people are being cheap by not just splitting the bill evenly. I'm pointing out that if everyone did that it would put people with less money at a huge disadvantage. The fact is my friends did not do this, and now that things like venmo exist it's even easier to manage this.

> I don't follow your logic at all. The person in this article is saying that people are being cheap by not just splitting the bill evenly.

Could be a cultural thing. I live in a small town of a rather poor country. Where I live, friends pay in turns, today I'll pay and the next time he'll pay and so forth... and not even very strict turns[1]. If could split the check in half, that's acceptable. Splitting the bill to the cent would leave you with no friends in no time.

[1]: That said, food here is cheap (dirt cheap compared to the US). If you go to the capital, it's different. I noticed that people there split the bill, but restaurants/food costs 2x or 3x up, so paying the whole thing is expensive.

> Could be a cultural thing

Also situational. When I was at university, if we went out anywhere, you'd just pay for your food/drinks individually. Now we're all in a position where money isn't as tight, buying rounds of drinks and not paying close attention to who's turn it is or the price of the drinks is much more common.

Down to the cent and quite often those that are picky are just cheap not poor.

You made that assumption about their personal situation way too quickly, based on not enough information.

Is it that much less awkward to send someone money afterwards vs figuring out the bill "offline" that the alternatives only are "venmo" or "evenly split"? (FWIW, around me the default is everyone paying for themselves, at the restaurant/bar/..., so this "bias" towards splitting seems weird to me)

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