agonyaunt | (no subject)

Dear Amy: On occasion my wife and I will go out to dinner with two other couples. Since none of us drink, we always split the bill and tip evenly between us.

However, the last time we all went out one of the couples insisted on separate checks. When the checks came, the wife pulled out a gift card to obviously be applied to their bill.

Quite frankly my wife and I don't need a gift card contribution when we dine out, but I was appalled by her actions.

If my wife and I had a restaurant gift card, I would have applied it to the total bill -- or at least I'd have bought appetizers for the table!

If she did not want to share the gift card's value with us, then she should have saved it for when just she and her husband go to this restaurant alone.

What do you think?

-- Appalled Diner

Dear Appalled: I think that this other couple should rethink their choice to dine with you. You are way too sensitive about how people pay for their meals.

The restaurant gift card is the equivalent of currency.

Your tone implies that because their restaurant card was a "gift," they should have shared it with the table. How do you know it was a gift? And why does this matter to you?

Must all forms of payment be sourced by you to make sure that it is earned?

It might not have been necessary for the other party to ask for separate checks. Restaurants can handle gift cards the way they handle other payment cards, if you ask them to deduct a specific amount from the card's total.

https://www.arcamax.com/healthandspirit/lifeadvice/askamy/s-2273693?fs

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

my wife and I don't need a gift card contribution when we dine out

Dude, maybe they do?

But you don't get it. LW AND HIS WIFE DO NOT. Therefore this other couple should totes have shared the largess with the group. To do otherwise is appalling, simply appalling.

Edited 2019-09-16 21:41 (UTC)

Heh.

The self-centeredness on display is truly appalling isn't it? I bet LW orders the steak and lobster without batting an eye.

Edited for the LW: "my wife and I don't need a gift card contribution when we dine out, and if we are socializing with people who do, someone must run home to fetch my clutching pearls! Have we been socializing with the hoi polloi all this time?????"

Hoi polloi, no the. Pretentious jerks gonna be pretentious pedants.

Edited 2019-09-17 05:04 (UTC)

If I understood well, the 'my wife and I don't need a gift card' means 'it's not about the money, but the act itself', because LW later clarifies if they'd had the thing they'd have shared on the shared bill instead of paying less by only their food as the other couple did. So they're calling the other couple cheap, which they might be, but LW and wife are super petty. If they're so touchy about the bill, they should ask for separate checks always from now on, and of course clarify this beforehand.

Sometimes I - *gasp* - even buy gift cards for myself because there's somewhere that's offering a slight discount if I buy the gift card via them!

One of my friends, when doing home renovations, realized that if he bought gift cards for Home Depot with his grocery rewards card, he would get free gas at the grocery store's gas station due to buying, you know, $1000 worth of gift cards. It was a pretty sweet deal for him -- he got something like 10 free tanks of gas that way over the course of the reno.

This is one of those letters where I feel like I learn there are aliens among us.

Oh bolt LW. Maybe that is how they afforded to go that month or using their voucher allowed them to do something else. Maybe it is none of your business you utter horror.