A random thought after tonight's dinner with a group of frens.

Let's say there are more than 10 people at the dinner, each ordering something different. Of course there were finger foods as well that everyone ate. Also, there was jugs of beer which only some drank.
When it's time to foot the bill, how would you have paid your share?

Group1: For the sake of simplicity, just divide the total?

Group 2: Take out a calculator or your handphone and calculate right down the last cent for the share that you ate?

Well, I happen to belong to the first group, I mean not that I super rich or what but really I will not lose sleep over that few more dollars.

Of course not that the second group of people are in the wrong of course, but then I just find that it is not socially gracious to be so calculative, especially since it is really difficult to split the bill right down to the last cent, with all the GST and service charge, and when there are so many diners...

Of course some of you may argue that there could be people with special food preference such as non drinkers or vegans. Well then, fair enough, just take out the booze and the vegetarian item and the rest can still be split among the rest right?

Otherwise, who would dare to settle the bill first with their credit cards? Everybody else will be busy calculating how much they should be paying and I tell you most often than not, people will 'conveniently' overlook the taxes. Imagine a dinner bill for 15 pax amounting to $500 over, the tax alone will have made up 17% of the bill total. The poor soul who swiped his card would have been $40 plus poorer, for helping to settle the bill? How's that for being gracious?

Yeah, we can always ask the waiter to come back later, after we work out how much to pay mah. Sure, then everyone start digging into their wallets for notes and coins and fussing over change and how much each should pay... Thank you very much, but I find that quite embarrassing...

Well, I suppose there's no ideal solution to this problem as there'll always be people from both sides of the camp but one thing is for certain, I'll not organise dinner for this group again, at least not the whole group lah, only those who are belongs to group 1, like me...