Originally Posted by
transparent
I find it annoying and unfair for the check to not be split according to what people ordered if the ordering is not even among everyone at the table. Because some people can't be bothered to do a few minutes of math to make things fair doesn't make others "cheap". Think of the situation where one person orders a salad and no drinks (for diet or other reasons) and another orders 4 cocktails and a steak. Why should the salad person subsidize the steak person? It should be embarrassing to expect someone else pay for your more expensive order.
That being said, if everyone pretty much orders evenly, then splitting the check evenly makes sense too.
I'm talking about situations where everyone orders pretty much the same or similar.
Obviously in the extreme example above, then of course the person who orders the steak pays more. In fact if someone just ordered a salad and no drinks while I wolfed down a steak and cocktails, I would probably insist on just paying the full check myself.
I am referring more to a situation where one person's main course costs €0.40 less that someone else's and another person's glass of wine costs 20c more than my beer. These things come and go - next week it will be the other guy ordering the 50c dearer dessert.
If people are so anal about +/- 20c they should eat alone or just stay at home. In fact the situations I have witnessed, where debates literally come down to 10c one way or the other, have made me so uncomfortable that I have started doing just that and letting them get on with saving their 10c.
Interestingly, I find it is always work colleagues who do this, i.e. professional people on decent salaries. The bartenders, apprentices and students I choose to hang around with outside work are the complete opposite. The 50c or €1.00 differences go back and forth between everyone and nobody cares.