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Splitting the bill with friends

by Simon Longstaff

It all begins innocently enough – a group of people arrange to meet for a meal at a restaurant. Great food, superb wines and perfect ambience combine to make for a memorable evening. And so the friendships deepen as the conversation skips from the profound to the intimate to the deeply silly. And then someone asks for the bill ...

It is at this point that a happy throng can be pitched into the bowels of despondency as the need arises to resolve the question of: HOW TO SPLIT THE BILL.

I have heard tales of truly excruciating moments where someone in a group will have insisted on doing a line-by-line analysis of who-consumed-what, with every cent owed being allocated to the relevant consumer. And so it goes, “Jenny – you had two, or was it three, of the figs. Brian, did you have the entrée-size helping of haggis?”

On and on and on – the forensic deconstruction of the bill takes place until a point is reached when there is nothing left to decide beyond what might be a fair share of the tip. By then, much of the good cheer and bonhomie has grown as cold as the grounds at the bottom of the coffee cups.

Yet, what is wrong with an accurate accounting for costs? After all, the art (or is it a science) of cost accounting is practised every day without even a murmur of dissent. In all manner of institutions it is possible to find people whose entire job is to allocate costs to their ‘owners’ – and to do so in a dispassionate and disinterested manner. That the accountants should be able to go about their business without becoming social pariahs is evidence of the fact that for most people, most of the time, the work that the accountants do is considered to be fair. In its simplest form the principle invoked is that “the user pays”.

Indeed, we find this principle at work all around us. The longer the distance you travel on the tram, the more you pay. The closer you are to the action at the G, the more you pay. The more pasta you eat in Lygon Street, the more you pay. The more Collingwood wins (let’s not drift into the absurd) ...

If the bloke at the back of the stadium was asked to pay the same for his seat as the executive in the corporate box – then, if we delete the expletives, he would say something like, “No way, that’s just not fair”.

And I suppose that this is what the cost-accounting bill splitter has in mind. He probably feels aggrieved at the thought of subsidising a friend’s extra helping of dessert or the price of an expensive merlot (when all that he’s sipped is the modestly priced chardonnay). So, there is at least a plausible argument in favour of the careful allocation of costs in line with the ‘user pays’ principle.

But are there other principles that we should keep in mind? For example, should we distinguish between what might be appropriate in a business environment and the standards to be applied among friends? After all, friends are supposed to be those people to whom one gives allegiance and support without particular regard to the cost.

Indeed, friendship is one of those marvellous things that can have no price because they are ‘common goods’ beyond the laws of supply and demand. Any person in the world can have the maximum number of possible friends (all the other people in the world) without denying any other person the same opportunity. This is because friendship is not exclusive (or certainly need not be). In these circumstances, it makes sense to speak of friends having an affection (or even a love) for each other that goes beyond calculation. And one of the simplest, most elemental and joyous things that friends can do together is share a meal.

One of the demands of friendship may be that we should not create a problem, in the first place, by taking more than our fair share with the expectation that others will pick up the tab. Beyond this, we might conclude that cost accounting may be fair – but that friendship asks (and allows) for something more.

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