People will use Venmo for anything but splitting a bill. It’s fucking wild. We regularly have parties of up to 80 people in our restaurant, and they just can’t seem to understand that 80 different checks is a nightmare for the waitstaff, let alone the kitchen and the bar. They will fight tooth and nail to not have combined checks.
Edit: Guess I should have specified that these are reservations that we communicate with before hand. Typically office parties and corporate events or large weddings. You know, things that would typically go on a single tab. I don’t think anyone here appreciates how long it takes to take individual orders for 80 people. Even at 30 seconds an order, thats half an hour of order taking, not to mention the time it takes to input it. Then you have special requests and questions about ingredients. It’s a lot of effort to split that up.
you mean 80 people didn’t walk in with a joint bank account, or open a subcommittee to figure out how to pay the bill? shocking that they’d expect the professionals selling the food to tally up how much it cost.
The problem is not different bills. Is asking for a split afterwards. If you are going to demand different bills per person, then say so before ordering. Because splitting afterwards makes it prone to errors. Service systems have been designed from the ground up, from the way waiters divide the floor down to the way the software at the cashier station works, to operate on a per table basis. Often times, this systems aren’t flexible at all, so the staff has to use workarounds to defeat the system in place. Newer systems and software are better on that regard but it is still a pain having to go item per item to assign them to new bills per person.
The other side is also service quality. If you are one party, and you are attended as one party, then the kitchen and waiters can coordinate to provide all the food and drinks, roughly at the same time and the same temperature. If you demand to be treated as individual customers, then don’t get mad when food arrives at different times for different people. There’s a logistic mini-nightmare involved in the service industry. Splitting bills at the end of a service is not the end of the world, but it is an annoyance that sort of insults staff by throwing extra unexpected work right when you thought the service was done. Because now the waiter has to sit with the cashier to argue whether the chicken wings were the blond girl or the bearded guy, or if the glasses dude is on the 5th or 7th beer. Because god knows if they go to the table to ask, people will act annoyed and entitled “how come they don’t remember!?”, we don’t remember because you are the 300th person I’ve served today Karen, that’s what the system is for and you just fucked with the system by not asking to split the bills from the beginning.
I mean this is easily solved by assuming everyone gets a different bill. 80 people shouldn’t have to individually specify they will pay individually. If someone wants to combine it after then fine, don’t combine it to begin with.
Restaurants do this for their own benefit and then call it “splitting” and are then annoyed. Restaurants are one of the only places they’re pissed to have you despite being the professional hosts, expecting you to know exactly are the rules of running a restaurant to make it easier for them
Agree 100. Was out to lunch this week with two companions. When I asked for the check, the server asked whether it was combined or split and had four checks ready, for any option.
What takes more labor? Processing one large order and one bill. Or processing 80 orders with 80 different bills and payments. Go ask your local catering service and tell them you are having a wedding but each of the 80 guests have to be billed and charged individually. Take a picture of the face they make and report back. Managers call that administrative overhead, and it takes time.
Nobody likes to do extra unnecesary labor ahead of time. Huge changes in practice to accommodate a very small proportion of your customers is impractical. They’re not mad of having your business, they’re mad that you’re making their job harder when they already spent a lot of effort to make it efficient, convenient and fast for you in the first place. That said, most service will even hide their discomfort from the customers. But then accept the reality that the bills and the payment will take longer and they will ask you to wait aside for a little while for them to zip in other customers if the place is busy.
Oh so now you have to bring in weddings and catering to make your point.
Even the 80 guest issue was loaded, no restaurant will take a 80 guest reservation without prepayment, and no wedding caterer either. We had to pay at least half up front + food.
Restaurants do this with a party of 5 and whine. And yeah it’s more labor, nobody is saying it’s not, that’s the restaurants problem. Dont complain we didnt show up here with plans to pay together and split later just because the restaurant doesn’t wanna do it. On top I have to pay 15-20% extra to make up for the restaurants inability to pay staff. Fuck em if it’s more labor.
Like i said, taxes change depending on your city/county/state/year. You wont know them all in every place you go. If you’re visiting an old friend in another state and go out to eat with them at a restaurant, how are you going to know how much the taxes will be on the bill?
If you come visit me in Denver Colorado, and we go out to eat with 80 friends, lets look at something. Imagine the entire bill is $1058.60 for all of us. You ordered a $10.99 plate of food, an appetizer at $3.35 and 4x beers @3.75.
If it happens regularly why not have a system in place for that kind of thing? 80 people is bigger than even two beer-league sports teams coming in after a game, this sounds kinda special but there’s nothing ready to handle it?
well I haven’t worked in a restaurant but I imagine a queue of 80 people will have more tolerance for waiting for their food separately and not want it to arrive in a similar time frame.
People will use Venmo for anything but splitting a bill. It’s fucking wild. We regularly have parties of up to 80 people in our restaurant, and they just can’t seem to understand that 80 different checks is a nightmare for the waitstaff, let alone the kitchen and the bar. They will fight tooth and nail to not have combined checks.
Edit: Guess I should have specified that these are reservations that we communicate with before hand. Typically office parties and corporate events or large weddings. You know, things that would typically go on a single tab. I don’t think anyone here appreciates how long it takes to take individual orders for 80 people. Even at 30 seconds an order, thats half an hour of order taking, not to mention the time it takes to input it. Then you have special requests and questions about ingredients. It’s a lot of effort to split that up.
you mean 80 people didn’t walk in with a joint bank account, or open a subcommittee to figure out how to pay the bill? shocking that they’d expect the professionals selling the food to tally up how much it cost.
The problem is not different bills. Is asking for a split afterwards. If you are going to demand different bills per person, then say so before ordering. Because splitting afterwards makes it prone to errors. Service systems have been designed from the ground up, from the way waiters divide the floor down to the way the software at the cashier station works, to operate on a per table basis. Often times, this systems aren’t flexible at all, so the staff has to use workarounds to defeat the system in place. Newer systems and software are better on that regard but it is still a pain having to go item per item to assign them to new bills per person.
The other side is also service quality. If you are one party, and you are attended as one party, then the kitchen and waiters can coordinate to provide all the food and drinks, roughly at the same time and the same temperature. If you demand to be treated as individual customers, then don’t get mad when food arrives at different times for different people. There’s a logistic mini-nightmare involved in the service industry. Splitting bills at the end of a service is not the end of the world, but it is an annoyance that sort of insults staff by throwing extra unexpected work right when you thought the service was done. Because now the waiter has to sit with the cashier to argue whether the chicken wings were the blond girl or the bearded guy, or if the glasses dude is on the 5th or 7th beer. Because god knows if they go to the table to ask, people will act annoyed and entitled “how come they don’t remember!?”, we don’t remember because you are the 300th person I’ve served today Karen, that’s what the system is for and you just fucked with the system by not asking to split the bills from the beginning.
I mean this is easily solved by assuming everyone gets a different bill. 80 people shouldn’t have to individually specify they will pay individually. If someone wants to combine it after then fine, don’t combine it to begin with.
Restaurants do this for their own benefit and then call it “splitting” and are then annoyed. Restaurants are one of the only places they’re pissed to have you despite being the professional hosts, expecting you to know exactly are the rules of running a restaurant to make it easier for them
Agree 100. Was out to lunch this week with two companions. When I asked for the check, the server asked whether it was combined or split and had four checks ready, for any option.
What takes more labor? Processing one large order and one bill. Or processing 80 orders with 80 different bills and payments. Go ask your local catering service and tell them you are having a wedding but each of the 80 guests have to be billed and charged individually. Take a picture of the face they make and report back. Managers call that administrative overhead, and it takes time.
Nobody likes to do extra unnecesary labor ahead of time. Huge changes in practice to accommodate a very small proportion of your customers is impractical. They’re not mad of having your business, they’re mad that you’re making their job harder when they already spent a lot of effort to make it efficient, convenient and fast for you in the first place. That said, most service will even hide their discomfort from the customers. But then accept the reality that the bills and the payment will take longer and they will ask you to wait aside for a little while for them to zip in other customers if the place is busy.
Oh so now you have to bring in weddings and catering to make your point.
Even the 80 guest issue was loaded, no restaurant will take a 80 guest reservation without prepayment, and no wedding caterer either. We had to pay at least half up front + food.
Restaurants do this with a party of 5 and whine. And yeah it’s more labor, nobody is saying it’s not, that’s the restaurants problem. Dont complain we didnt show up here with plans to pay together and split later just because the restaurant doesn’t wanna do it. On top I have to pay 15-20% extra to make up for the restaurants inability to pay staff. Fuck em if it’s more labor.
🤡
Include tax in the item price and it wont be a problem then.
I’m not sure why you think tax is the issue here.
Tax rates change. Its can be a different rate depending on city/county/state/year youre in.
If its all on one single bill, all you know is the total. It doesn’t tell you the tax per item.
No one wants to calculate it. Its easier to just get separate checks and have the establishment do the math for you.
But the taxes don’t change when you’re splitting up a check and have no bearing on the extra work the wait staff has to do.
Like i said, taxes change depending on your city/county/state/year. You wont know them all in every place you go. If you’re visiting an old friend in another state and go out to eat with them at a restaurant, how are you going to know how much the taxes will be on the bill?
Restaurant ain’t moving, why you focusing on changing taxes?
If you come visit me in Denver Colorado, and we go out to eat with 80 friends, lets look at something. Imagine the entire bill is $1058.60 for all of us. You ordered a $10.99 plate of food, an appetizer at $3.35 and 4x beers @3.75.
How much are you sending me through Venmo?
That’s irrelevant to the conversation. The conversation was about how splitting a large ticket is a pain in the ass for the employees.
Knowing the taxes doesn’t factor in at any point.
Are you just ignoring a reasonable cause for that? Lol
People split the bill because its too much math to figure out how much you owe someone if they pay the entire bill.
If it happens regularly why not have a system in place for that kind of thing? 80 people is bigger than even two beer-league sports teams coming in after a game, this sounds kinda special but there’s nothing ready to handle it?
How is it any different than 80 people coming in individually and ordering?
well I haven’t worked in a restaurant but I imagine a queue of 80 people will have more tolerance for waiting for their food separately and not want it to arrive in a similar time frame.