“There’s simply no reason to be nickel-and-dime-ing your loved ones in pursuit of saving $9”
I hate Venmo culture.
Yes, we’re so back. Today at last, Deez Links is launching Season 2 of Hate Read, the viral pseudonymous pop-up blog of highly specific gripes and critiques. We’ve got four perfectly catty little weeks of programming for you, thanks to our magnanimous sponsor Ruth Ann Harnisch, as you’ll see on the below banner that will accompany all of our posts. Thanks to Ruth Ann, Deez Links was able to pay our writers for their finely-honed snark and keep Hate Read free for all to read. (Obviously, if you’d like to generously support the wider Deez Links project, you know where to find me :))
Warn the menswear bros—and add your own takes in the comments, please. I’ll see you there; happy Aries season :)
-XOXO Delia
✨ Hate Read Season 2 is brought to you by the legendary champion of indie media herself, Ruth Ann Harnisch, of the Harnisch Foundation. ✨
No matter how jovial the previous conversation might have been heretofore the arrival of the dinner check, a reliably tense silence always settles over the table soon after. While that damning slip of paper sits before us, my friends and I embark on an unspoken series of calculations that, if done correctly, should result in the person who makes the most money speaking up of their own accord. I’ll put my card down, they’ll offer, and just Venmo request everyone after. And then everyone can finally breathe again, at least for a minute.
Over the years, we’ve found that this ritual makes the most sense when dining out with a group of four or more people. While a smaller table can reasonably expect the restaurant to summon separate checks or to proactively split the bill, the rule for larger parties decrees that whoever has the funds to briefly shoulder the full cost of the table should do so. What happens next is simple — rather, it should be. Because the final variable in this socio-emotional-economic ballet relies on just how miserly that night’s banker turns out to be. Will they divide the check by five, or will I wake up to learn my sweet friend of approximately ten years has been bodysnatched by Scrooge McDuck?
I’ll say it now: payment app culture is tearing us apart. Nothing ruins the honey-hued sense of community and connection of a shared meal with friends faster than a Splitwise link or the dehumanizing pixel patch of a Venmo QR code. It’s the same whiplash one feels every time you’re reminded that your boss is not your friend — except you are my friend, and that’s why we are at dinner together, ordering items of varying prices and ideally not paying too close attention to the bottom line. So yes, while itemizing the post-dinner damage is the more accurate and technically equitable way of handling the group bill, I’m brave enough to say the quiet part out loud: this kind of behavior suggests a stinginess that goes against the spirit of friendship.
In our twenties? Sure. I’d pay for mine and you’d pay for yours, because our orders reflected exactly the particular constraints of our early-in-adulthood finances. But now we are in our thirties and, in the case of my friends, all making six figures. In that rarefied context, there is simply no reason to be nickel-and-dime-ing your loved ones in pursuit of saving $9. It feels counterintuitive to the love we say we have for one another when you refuse to deploy the same discretionary funds you buy GANNI with in order to cover the $3 difference caused by one person getting a cocktail instead of wine.
I guess I’d accept splitting the bill by line item if it were just as easy as dividing by four, but that kind of real-time accounting exercise requires a level of awareness and observational skills from the designated banker. If we only just decided who was putting their card down, how do I know that person spent the meal paying attention to the exact order ratio of crispy maitake mushroom vs. tartare at this small plates hellhole, much less who ate what? Unless we’re willing to extend our restaurant visit by 15 minutes in a joint Hidden Figures effort, then I simply have to trust the calculations were correct, even when my share of the bill is unexpectedly higher than the others. I don’t want to be miserly, but you started it!
Of course, there are exceptions. If one person isn’t drinking, for instance, or someone is vegetarian and therefore likely ordering a significantly less expensive dish. (It has to be at least $10 less than the average of the carnivore dishes, though, sorry!) Obviously, if the financial situations of people at the table are wildly varied, or, I don’t know, if one person recently lost their job, a little itemizing is pardonable (though why wouldn’t you just agree to treat your laid-off friend in the first place?). Whatever extremely specific situation that specifically applied to you last weekend that you are now chomping at the bit to go full “what about” in the comments for—sure, that’s an exception, too.
Ultimately, my gripe here is not with people who have legitimate reasons to watch their dining budget, but with people who do not have those issues and yet still insist on making friendship feel so blatantly transactional at the dinner table. We don’t split the bill because we think we all ate the same number of bites of branzino. We split the bill because this meal is an investment in our friendship — a sign of trust that we’ll do this again and again and therefore, over time, everything will even out. Or not. Like I said: It’s $9.
—Nicola Dime
Sometimes Hate Read exposes me to horrors that I have yet to experience in life and I am very thankful for that
It’s funny because I’m Canadian and literally every restaurant here splits up checks by what people ordered. Like it doesn’t even matter how many people are at the table.
Still I agree with the sentiment here, but more for stuff like Ubers or maybe if a friend forgot cash and you’re at a cash only place. I’m of the firm belief that it’s a much better signal of friendship to just say “hey no worries, I get this one, you get the next one”. Whatever the next “one” is certainly won’t cost the same amount, but maybe you pay a couple extra dollars, maybe they do WHO CARES. I like this method because it implies (1) that you will spend time with this person again (2) that there’s a sense of trust and ease in your relationship.