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He didn't want to chip for his friends' orders, so he dipped out before they could ask.
By John Sundholm — Written on Feb 13, 2023
Splitting a bill at a restaurant can become a sore subject when one person orders far less than the others at the table.
A man on Reddit offended his friends with his solution to this problem.
Posting in the "r/AmITheA--hole" (AITA) subReddit, where people go for input on whether they were in the wong in a conflict, he described his sticky situation.
He wrote in his post that since he doesn't drink or eat much, he almost always ends up ordering less than his friends.
To avoid having to split the restaurant bill evenly, he snuck out of the restaurant—an 'Irish Exit.'
The man writes that he makes quite a bit more money than his friends, so he is generous when they go out, often covering the tip.
But his friends always want to split the bill evenly. Since he never has more than one drink and often doesn't eat the things his friends order for the table, he's become fed up with the bill-splitting.
On a recent outing to a Mexican restaurant, he had a meal and a margarita. But his friends, many of whom brought dates, ordered far more.
And at the end of the meal, they ordered several more rounds of drinks and desserts, and one person even ordered a takeout meal for their roommate.
The restaurant bill came to almost $700, only $55 of which was his.
So he snuck to the bathroom, and while there, he paid his $55 and the appropriate tip, and then left.
Shortly thereafter, he started receiving texts from his friends wanting to split the bill, including their dates' meals and drinks.
When they asked where he was, he told them he'd already paid his share and had gone home.
The splitting of the bill got very messy—one person ended up paying for three meals, and another person who came alone insisted on only paying for his own meal as well.
As a result, his friends are now all angry with him and the other man who insisted on only paying his own share.
The man says he feels bad that he didn't say goodbye before leaving, but is not backing down because if he "had stuck around I would be subsidizing food for strangers."
Most Reddit commenters agreed that the man shouldn't be expected to pay more than his own share of the restaurant bill.
Many agreed that he had dodged a bullet by "Irish exiting." As one user put it, "good job reading the room."
Others noted that it only seemed to be the money, and not the lack of a proper goodbye, that had set his friends off.
One user pointed out that the man "should also note that there wasn’t a single complaint about the Irish goodbye, just that there were problems splitting the bill."
That same user felt there was no reason for evenly splitting the bill nowadays. "In the age of Venmo," they went on to say, "who the hell splits a bill evenly anymore!?!"
Not everyone agreed, however. Some felt it just wasn't worth the trouble to split the bill properly and an even split was just easier.
One person wrote, "It is just not worth it to me though...I am not going to calculate and try to remember if I had 2 or 3 drinks just to spend 2 euro less because I had the slightly less expensive meal lol."
But, that person also pointed out that their friends always order similar amounts of food and drinks—unlike the Redditor's friends.
Others echoed this, like one user who said, "If you're with decent people, it's easy enough to split - people who ordered more drinks automatically put in a bit more, and it works out OK."
That is of course not what happened in this case, and it left several commenters feeling like the Redditor was getting taken advantage of by his friends.
As one user put it, "time to make an Irish exit from this 'friend group' as well."
John Sundholm is a news and entertainment writer who covers pop culture, social justice and human interest topics.