I think that it is more widespread (the situation is also non-urban). I also think that gentrification contributes but is only one factor. My feeling is that college is definitely a huge factor as the article mentions. I wonder though if this is nothing new, someone is just choosing to write about it now. I will have to think about it more.

My guess though is to say that friendships come and go for different reasons that are more significant than who pays the tab at a restaurant.

Oddly enough there was a Friends episode about this year's ago. (I never thought I'd bring up Friends on this blog, but isn't Jennifer Anniston in Friends With Money?)

Some of the Friends suggested a night out somewhere, and the others refused as it was too extravagant of a place. Feelings were hurt when the suggesters said that they would pay for it.

The restaurant tab thing even applies to people in the same socio-economic class. Some just want to spend more at restaurants. My mom laments about a friend who only orders a salad and water, but then insists on splitting the bill.

One summer during college I befriended a guy because we had the same attitudes towards spending money. Whereas my roommates wanted to stay home and eat ramen, we wanted to go out for dinner most nights. This friend still refers to one of my roommates as a cheapskate.

Also I thought it was very New York Times to refere to someone who gives a two million dollar donation as "well off".

as regards splitting the bill, my rule is you only get to suggest splitting the bill if you spent the least of everyone at the table on the meal. if you spent one dollar more you don't get to initiate that discussion. Having said this I'm now wondering if at some point I'm guilty of violating my own rule. Money can make things weird.

I don't get it: your mom's friend orders salad and water and then insists on splitting the bill? Why would someone do that? And why would that annoy your mom? Isn't she making out in the deal?

As for splitting the check, I actually think that (while it hugely depends on who you're with) unless someone gets like 5 vodka tonics while others drink only water--or some other huge discrepancy, when dining with friends it's better to split. I think it's petty between good friends to count nickels, you know? I mean how many times does 5 dollars go back and forth over a lifetime of friendship?

With Jon May? Once : )

I didn't mean to highjackt this thread towards a restaurant check splitting theme, but it looks like that is where it is going so I will share this anecdote. This weekend, my girlfriend and I went out to dinner with another couple. As we had gotten drinks and the other couple had not, I suggested that we split the bill and then we would add on tip. When the waiter came my friend and I each handed the waiter our cards and told him to split the check half and half. Well when the waiter came back he told us that he had put another $20 on my card as we had had drinks. Now while the waiter was trying to help out and maybe he understood "split" the check as put what we owe on one card, and what they owe on the other, everyone felt that he was sort of overstepping his bounds. (Couple this with the fact he screwed up and put both amounts on the same card, which was quickly cleared up.) "How does he know that I don't owe you money?" my friend asked.

Onto the subject of drinks, have you ever found yourself ordering a drink cheaper than you would usually go because someone offers to buy it? If my buddy is drinking bud light draft, am I a dick for wanting a Grey Goose martini?

Back to check splitting. I think it depends on how close you are to someone. Chances are if you go out with someone a lot, sometimes you'll luck out when you split the check, sometimes your friend will, but in the end it will all work out and you'll have saved yourself the headache of doing all the arithematic to only pay for what you ate. Unless of course your friends with Jon May and then you'll quickly come to realize that you've bought the kid meals time and time again.

Hey Jen,
My mom was making out in the deal, but does that not induce guilt?

Went recently to a japanese teppan place and the couple who shared the table with us insisted on paying for our drinks -- two beers and a bottle of sake. Nice people.

Sorry you're getting the brunt of the mockery today, jmay.

Of course financial divisions between friends is nothing new. Thats a weak trend to write an article about, although lord knows I shoehorned in plenty of weak trend stories when I was writing for newspapers. (Because the actual news is really boring, at least when you write about partner moves at large law firms.)

The interesting parts are always the statistics, like the thing in this article about how an associate professor's income hasn't risen as fast as a first-year associate's. I bet if you looked into THAT, and maybe compared it to executive pay, you'd find that there's a widening gap between the rich and the middle class.

this may be cynical, but, i really really prefer to split because otherwise it becomes painfully obvious who severely undertips, and THAT shit could ruin a friendship. i don't trust undertippers; there's always one. tragedy of the commons and all that.

as far as the general issue, i think the greatest divide (which naturally and unfortunately plays out largely in terms of class/race/income) is education. i would feel weird censoring or otherwise consciously structuring my comments or vocab to someone of less knowledge/education/intelligence, because i would feel like i was acting and patronizing; and I definitely have experiences alienating people when i'm not. that's not to say that people with little formal education can't be incredibly curious and overcome that difference (ie artists), but in general i think that education among friends is waaaay more important than who has what or comes from where. i also loathe small talk and prefer to almost always discuss politics/religion/etc, so i clearly have been socialized to like those people that share those preferences (which people thankfully include my higher Ed-less parents). anyway, i don't know how elitist and horrible that is: does anyone here have great and close friends who have no higher Ed, and it's not an issue?

and just to anticipate jeremy's comment and sum up, from now on, unless you went to harvard law, you're dead to me.

I should add that Jon May has actually bought me groceries once or twice out of guilt for finishing the last of something. Maybe Roden and Anthony just don't give good enough blow jobs.

zing.

apparently i have a reputation that i didn't anticipate. i guess i owe some dinner when i'm in new york.

Oh Jon, you know I was just kidding (oh, and also being anti-semetic).

i actually thought it was more personal -- i can recall very many times you have bought me drinks and I have not repaid the offer as often as I would have liked. I'm now taking comfort in the fact that you were just making a jew joke. I thought to myself: "did I underpay a lot during trivia? What must they think of me?!"

While it is true that I have bought you lots of drinks, I never expect anything in return (not even a bj). Plus, when I was in college, whenever I went out with someone who had a "real" job, they would often spring for stuff, saying "you're a student." And that has always been my philosophy: buy drinks for those poor students. They often don't have the cash and they need the alcohol. You can buy me a drink when you get your PhD Jon (and make us all so proud).

So now you know why I stopped short of the PhD -- why would I want to pay for other people's drinks?

I thought we learned from the article that associate professors (new PhDs) are dirt poor.

flea: I have a friend who has no higher ed, and I don't think it's an issue, probably because he's certainly capable of success in higher ed. But I would never have guessed any of that just from knowing him casually. Which IS elitist in a way.

One of my roommates has been through college and almost only ever wants to talk about bands I don't give a shit about. Anytime my other roommate and I (check the grammar, please) would start talking about politics, he'd start throwing out these weak non-sequiters and made shit really awkward.

I get paid to tutor in the writing center at school- the other day a girl (I should be saying 'woman' now, shouldn't I? well I don't say 'man,' either, man, so whatever) from the same masters program as me came in- actually, she had a paper from a class with a professor I too had had, and I did well in the class. I have no idea what the background of the student is, but for some reason (and I've never done this before) I suddenly found myself avoiding saying that I'm in the program with her, which also meant pretending that I didn't know who the professor was. Just like a complete jackass- and I couldn't tell if she was on to me or not. Once I started, I couldn't stop.

I was actually wondering about a tangent to this the other day- as time goes on, I find myself more and more committed to my political outlook, which if I take it very seriously stands in staunch opposition to some of my closest friends. And I thought, if we keep on our various paths, what will the outcome be? But then I thought, even moreso than with money, if I'm truly tight with someone then this kind of divergence might make things interesting, but doesn't have to end a friendship. I guess that might be obvious, but it wasn't to me for a minute.

And yeah, I hate finding out bad tippers.

that seemed like three separate thoughts.
1) are you saying that level of education isn't really important, but liking to talk about the same things, more or less, is? I'd certainly agree with that sentiment.

2) wait. what happened with the girl? did it affect the way you tutored? Was it fun? Was it scary?

3) I find it hard to get into truly deep political discussions with those I fundamentally disagree with...something always gets awkward and I don't want to dig below a certain level. That is, unless I'm already tight with someone and know it won't really matter. Do you worry about more money and kids affecting your political outlook in a way you hadn't anticipated? A few years ago I was (mildly) aghast to come home and hear my mom proudly state that she wasn't drinking french wine. I think that was a temporary lapse of reason, but still...will money and children make me more conservative? It can happen to the best of us.

Definitely three somewhat separate thoughts.
The tutoring went really well, but I felt like an asshole and suspected maybe she knew what was up. The point of the first two examples was kinda to suggest that, like flea, I think education can be a very influential factor in terms of the kinds of relationships one tends to form, but then to say that at the same time (inverse of what flea points out about her/his ;-) folks) it can play out in wierd ways- like, some people gain access to these opportunities but I'm not always sure about what they make of them- because meanwhile, there are other people who don't gain access to such opportunities, and one can only guess what they might have done with them. I think it's a wierd matrix.

That last bit's really to the point of what I was thinking- my intentions are to base my decisions, related to issues such as children and money, on how they will impinge on the mental course I've set for myself, rather than accepting the opposite as a necessary outcome. In the end though, the answer is basically the same, with a different spin- to keep focused on the path, what will that mean for the kinds of decisions I will inevitably be faced with. And then, therefore, how will that affect my relationships with other people who make fundamentally different decisions for myself.

*who make fundamentally different decisions THAN I do.

I order less, I should pay less. Don't ask me to split the bill because the math is easier on you. If you want to tip more than I do, feel free.

I just got burned on a thing this weekend where I went out to a big event, didn't order wine, had the waiter spill the wine on me, and then was requested/required to split the bill evenly because, hey, it's easier.

I left a tip of zero, because the waiter spilled red wine on me. Seemed reasonable.

Do you really think you should ask me to pay for the wine that I'm wearing home because it's easier?

While it may be easier on the relationship for you to split the check evenly, it most certainly isn't easier on me. I was fuming by the time I got home.

did the waiter apologize or offer to pay your drycleaning bill? If not, a tip stiff of some sort is in order -- in fact, a mention to the manager is probably in order. But otherwise, what about the rest of the service? Have you ever messed up at work? Were you docked 1/15 - 1/30 of your wages for the day for every error, even if you apologized? Because by tipping zero that's what you do. Not as bad this time because you were in a big party, but if you do that when you're dining alone or in a small group it's a big deal, and the waiter had better've really deserved such a huge punishment.

jesse, in response to your comment about values/politics and friends on divergent paths, and jon's about the awkwardness of digging too deep- I have to say that I agree with both, and my relationships with politically divergent friends have suffered, in spite of my 'best intentions', because i feel our interactions have gotten more surface-level, and therefore tedious, as far as i'm concerned.

i think this goes with trappings of income because suddenly there's a whole class of shit 'adults' don't talk about. but i think that only applies to what i perceive as political effects of income, because with people who were more conservative when i MET them, the ability to discuss that or not doesn't change (i.e., angiven is a libertarian, and i do not find that alienating, because s/he was honest, open, and curious when we met). It's when people who USED to be rather open, are now flowering into the post-college reality of their chosen/anointed class, that are awkward for me.

and i do think a substantial part of my feelings that i don't want marriage or kids is a deep abiding fear of my future self. tats are at least a way to embarrass that self. :)

Honestly, I was already in a bad mood, so I was more upset by it then I probably should have been. The waiter was filling someone else's glass and was holding the bottle way far out away from his body... at which point he lost his grip on the bottle and dropped it on the table splashing wine on me and the person sitting next to me.

They cleaned it up very quickly. They did quickly apologize (although it seemed rather perfunctory and not sincere, for whatever that's worth). They made no mention of dry cleaning. A few minutes later a waiter came by and asked if we would like anything from the bar. He didn't specifically say "on the house" although I assumed that's what he was talking about. Since I wasn't drinking anyway, this wasn't really a great offer for me. Nobody took them up on it. The real kicker was that they charged us for the full bottle of wine that they spilled on the table. If I had been on my own, or in a small group, I would have spoken to the manager, but people were already tiring of my being grumpy so it wasn't really a good plan.

The answer is that yes, of course, I've made mistakes at work. I can recall a specific instance when I cost the American Repertory Theater $100 because I locked my key in an office. This might not be the best example, because I immediately offered to repay that out of my pocket. They turned me down, but I offered. The waiter most certainly didn't offer to pay for the spilled wine.

The problem with being a waiter is that your salary is based on my evaluation of your performance. You don't really have a lot of duties. Take my order, bring the food, fill my water glass. Spilling red wine on someone who wasn't even drinking wine is probably the second worst thing you can do (the first being open rudeness/hostility toward the customer).

If I'm obliged to tip the waiter regardless of transgressions, I question the point of the tip in the first place. If it's mandatory, just include it on the bill and be done with it. Add it to the price of the food, hand it straight to the waiter, and don't allow anyone to recieve tips. I'd be a lot more likely to go to that restaurant, I prefer that style.

Yeah!

Flea thinks I'm the coolest!

I win.

Ingen Angiven, of course their are instances in which you should politely speak up to whomever your eating with and say that you would prefer to pay a little less since you didn't drink or whatever. I mean, we're all human beings who can communicate. I was just saying that over a lifetime generosity with friends goes a long way. I have gone through times where I've had not much extra cash, and friends have covered me (thanks, flea) and vice versa beccause usually spending time with the friend is more important.

But, as someone who has relied on waiting tables for a few years, I find your flippant description of a waiter's job pretty offensive. I believe that many servers do not take seriously the fact that they are working for tips, and I do not always give 20% if I feel something when wrong that they could have/should have handled better. (I never stiff them, though. Ever.) On the other hand, a lot of people, as they would in any job, take their responsibility seriously. I know it sucks to have wine spilled on you, so I sympathize with that. But also remember that people make mistakes. Spilling something is pure accident. I am a very good server, but I once spilled an entire glass of red wine down this woman's white tank top. She was upset (and wet), and I felt humiliated. All of the best servers I've ever known have had something like this happen at one time. Whatever, I don't care if I change your mind about how high spilling ranks on your list of waiter "sins." I encourage you to think about your attitude toward people in service positions and how hard you think they work. From my perspective, your comment sounded fucking rude and pretty elitist.

Which begs the question: could our friendship survive? ;)

Looks like this one's headed into overtime.

Ha, am I elitist? Flea? CrazyMonk? Jon May? JBG? Let me know... I'd actually be curious to hear an honest opinion.

People who are, or ever have been, waiters/waitresses seem to have a fairly monolithic opinion about tipping. Maybe part of the difference here is my own employment background.

After college I worked for four years in professional theater and would often interact directly with the public. Unlike in restaurants, in theater you're selling nothing but the experience. At least in restaurants people go home full, in the theater if people aren't pleased you'll quickly go out of business. I've handed out my share of refunds to deal with unhappy customers. Admittedly, those refunds didn't come out of my pockets (although I did put $20 in the till once to cover mistakenly gaving a customer too much change).

But the difference between me and people who like tipping is that I don't see tipping as any different from the bill. It's part of what I pay to go out to dinner and hence the restaurant as a whole is responsible for creating an environment where I'm treated well. The restaurant is a business and should be treated as other businesses are treated.

If I were to go into Radio Shack and get shocked by an employee passing by with a faulty toy car, I would most certainly leave without making a purchase. The store failed to create a good shopping environment so I would choose to revoke my custom. In a restaurant I've already consumed my purchase by the time any service faults become apparent, so the only discretion left to me (besides opting not to visit that restaurant again) is in the tip. If the restaurant provides poor service, it seems unreasonable to hand them more money.

Again, I'm sorry that people have chosen to rely on my generousity for their paycheck. I usually leave tips that are perfectly acceptable. I can't think of another time when I've left a tip of zero, but spilling red wine on me and then charging me for the pleasure is really beyond the pale.

Jen, I'm not sure that I know you, but I'd be happy to be friends. Political differences in friendships don't bother me at all, I rather like them. That might grow out of the fact that I can't think of anyone with whom I actually share a political philosophy, but someday I might.

Who knows... maybe I'll find a kindred spirit waiter to be my friend forever.

I was trying not to jump in and talk about being a waitress here, but I guess the floodgates have opened.

After reading this, I asked around my co-workers to see what they think they would do if they accidentally spilled wine on someone, and the response was generally apologize, clean up, and either discount the wine or offer you another drink (or maybe offer free dessert, which is easier to get our managers to authorize -- it's not like they just allow us to comp whatever we want). That's more or less what happened to you. What else can you reasonably do?

I have no problem with stiffing people who do something to deserve it I still regret tipping this waitress last year who called me fat, but at the time I wasn't a waitress and my perspective was that people should get paid for their work. Now my perspective is that she obviously didn't care whether she got paid for her work if she was acting like that, so fuck her.

I don't want to fight about this too much anymore, so I just want to say that working in restaurants is a great way for some people to make a living--either for a short period of time or for their whole life. These people shouldn't be looked down upon for choosing an industry where the pay structure could probably be improved. I mean in our country people tip servers; I don't think it is the responsibility of an individual server to start a revolution in terms of this. That's why I take offense to your comments, Ingen--b/c you seem to imply that servers don't work hard and that it's somehow despicable that they've even chosen to work in the service industry. Lorelei, your points are well taken. As in all lines of work, some people are selfish fuckers who just want to do as little as possible and collect their $$, and some people really care to do the best they can, in terms of how they relate to people and how meticulously they fulfill their responsibilities. These latter ones should not be punished too harshly for mistakes any human being might make. Accidents happen, and, as Lorelei said, a good server and a good restaurant should try to make ammends, and you--the customer--should do just what you might do if someone spilled wine on your lap while eating dinner at a friend's house: mop up the spill in your lap, suck up your aggravation and go on enjoying yourself. Life's a little short to get all twisted up over a spill. If service has otherwise been good, don't punish too harshly.

Also, I find it interesting, in your comparison between theater and restaurants, that you are not able to realize that restaurants are also selling an experience. While huge chains, like Friday's or something are a little more like food factories, privately owned restaurants are huge financial risks for the people who open them, and, if they don't do their best to serve their clients, they run the risk of being unable to sustain themselves for long. Going out to eat--for most people--is about a lot more than stuffing your face. As someone who also works in the theater, I've always found the two experiences fundamentally similar in many ways. (Also, in case you didn't know, restaurants also give out a lot of comps and refunds etc to complaining customers.)

Ingen, thanks for the image of being shocked by a defective toy car at Radio Shack. I'll think of that image the next time I need a parallel
to the image of Eric Bana orgasisming in a sweaty fervor. They're not
related--- just kind of cool in a David Lynchian kind of way. I think
I'll go make movies.

I certainly don't look down on waiters and I don't think they've chosen poor jobs. It's a job I could never do. I'm always impressed by the feats of memory that some waiters can pull off. I don't have the people skills or the memory to handle it all.

What I guess I don't do is seperate waiters from the establishment in which they work. Some stores have employees who work on commission. Imagine a salesman does an otherwise good job, but slips and uses a derrogatory term for a passing female customer (I'm sorry, I'm having a hard time coming up with a comparable salesman foible... but I've had cabbies do this so I know it happens sometimes). It was a mistake and if I act offended I'm certain he'll apologize, but I'm simply not going to buy from him or the store. Nobody would argue that I should hand him a few dollars because he still did a pretty good job, and because he's relying on the commission money.

If there were some way to know ahead of time if I was going to be happy with the level of service from a waiter, I would make my spending choices accordingly. However, we have a special relationship with restaurants and special rules apply. I can't anticipate, so I can only take action after the fact. We've set up a system that encourages rewards and punishments... it's up to each of us how we want to implement those rules.

1) Was that really Slater? Was that some reference I (finally) didn't get? That seemed like the most un-slater like comment ever.

2) Ingen, you asked if you are elitist, and I'm guessing you didn't mean it as a rhetorical question, cause you're not really a rhetorical question kind of person. I'm having a hard time figuring out an answer to the question in general. In some ways I would characterize your attitudes as resulting from an elitist perspective, but in other ways not at all.

However, as regards the way Jen called it, which is to say, from the attitude of a customer-employee relationship, I would say you have put yourself into a self-defined elite category, in that you separate yourself and fellow customers from the class of workers, when you and they are acting in that capacity, and thus expect a certain relationship to play out and roles to be followed, and given the nature of the relationship (i.e. "the customer is always right") you, the customer, are in a superior position, and thus in the elite. I recognize that you also fill the role of worker at times, but you have pretty definitively cast the customer's rights and responsibilities as different from the worker's when the two people are in that relationship. (I think I said that twice)

To further explain and differentiate, the non-elitist take on this situation would be to not recognize any real difference between the customer and the worker, except for the physical activities they perform (i.e. worker fetches things, sells, customer consumes, pays). The non-elitist wouldn't recognize a power differential for either side - once entering into the relationship the two people would only relate to each other on the human level, they would go about their transaction, and that would be it. Like when you talk to someone at a party and realize they're a jerk. You finish up the conversation and choose not to enter into it again, but you don't assert your power over the other person because you can, since you have no pre-defined power over that person from a social perspective.

So I guess I would conclude that by deciding how much to tip or by abandoning a transaction based on something like an electrical shock, or more precisely by fulfilling those societal roles you are being elitist, though in a way that is generally condoned by our society. And based on my knowledge of you I would say that you are fine with, and even really into, the nature of the customer-clerk relationship from both its sides, as we've talked at length about weird experiences from both sides in the context of the roles. And I would say I am elitist in this regard to some degree as well, as are most of the people I have known, but there is a spectrum. Hope that hasn't been too boring for anyone else. I wonder what you think of this analysis. Does it jibe with what you would say?

Yes, that was really Slater.

Word. Nice analysis, Jon May.

Sorry I've lost interest in this topic a little bit. But I'd still stand up for my brothers and sisters on the front lines of service in almost any situation that doesn't involve them being out and out rude or negligent. I'll have to think about what Jon May said as I engage in other situations where I have potential power over other people. You know, like on the playground or something.

Truce, Ingen Angiven?

I haven't responded to this thread due to the fact that I haven't looked through all the posts, but Coen Bros. got on me about not responding, as I have worked as a waiter, so I'll just make one comment.

Ingen,I don't think your analogy with the salesman making the derogatory comment really works. This slip reveals a character flaw of the saleman. However, all your waiter was guilty of was being clumsy or worse careless. The first isn't a character flaw. Now, it is a stretch, but I guess a salesman could bump into you or drop some merchandise on you.

Your mention of derogatory comments reminded me of something I always wanted to try at Chili's. I wanted to address children seating with their parents as littel cocksuckers in the most pleasant of tones. I'd act as if the term was synonomous with whippersnapper or such. If called upon it, I'd either totally deny saying it, and point out the absurdity of the charge or act as if I had no idea the term was offensive. A weird fantasy, but the job got boring.