Patty is home, and it's been super New York-y already: the other people in Terminal 8 were so excited to see their loved-ones they were blocking folks from getting out; the cab said his credit card thing was broken; the sound of the heating pipes woke us up; and there was some seriously creepy bird action this morning. Thumbs up.
On splitting the check. I understand the complaint. I don't understand why it's necessary. I've almost NEVER run into this, though. We all figure out what we owe, chuck it in, and since I've been over the age of about 25, we've usually had too much money, not too little.
Oh, right, ok. I see it a lot, actually. Which is why I think it says something about who you dine with.
The theory is that when the group is of sufficient wealth that minor fluctuations aren't an issue and sufficiently similar food-purchasing habits that everybody's share is roughly equal (or different people will be the higher one each time so it works out in the long-run), it's easier to divide a fixed number by n than have everybody calculate their share (which some people are spectacularly awful at).
It's a good theory, and I believe I've actually seen it work in some groups...
...but the reality is that there's usually someone quietly steaming about how they're being expected to pull everybody's weight, as per the article. IME, there's frequently an economic and/or gendered component to that, which probably isn't surprising.
The theory is that when the group is of sufficient wealth that minor fluctuations aren't an issue and sufficiently similar food-purchasing habits that everybody's share is roughly equal (or different people will be the higher one each time so it works out in the long-run), it's easier to divide a fixed number by n than have everybody calculate their share (which some people are spectacularly awful at).
That may be it. Most people I know well make less than median income and those few people who are well off are used to the rest of us, and so splitting checks in ways that caused someone to drastically overpay is not acceptable because it would simply be too much of a hardship. Among wealthier people, I can see the rules being somewhat different - although allowing drastic overpayment is still (at least IMHO) impressively rude. OTOH, I'm guessing that the growing popularity of smartphones & similar devices may change this somewhat.
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Date: 2010-12-15 07:23 pm (UTC)The theory is that when the group is of sufficient wealth that minor fluctuations aren't an issue and sufficiently similar food-purchasing habits that everybody's share is roughly equal (or different people will be the higher one each time so it works out in the long-run), it's easier to divide a fixed number by n than have everybody calculate their share (which some people are spectacularly awful at).
It's a good theory, and I believe I've actually seen it work in some groups...
...but the reality is that there's usually someone quietly steaming about how they're being expected to pull everybody's weight, as per the article. IME, there's frequently an economic and/or gendered component to that, which probably isn't surprising.
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Date: 2010-12-15 09:08 pm (UTC)That may be it. Most people I know well make less than median income and those few people who are well off are used to the rest of us, and so splitting checks in ways that caused someone to drastically overpay is not acceptable because it would simply be too much of a hardship. Among wealthier people, I can see the rules being somewhat different - although allowing drastic overpayment is still (at least IMHO) impressively rude. OTOH, I'm guessing that the growing popularity of smartphones & similar devices may change this somewhat.