Group Of Women Expect The Only Man At The Table To Pay $700 Bill — 'You Invited All Of Us'
There was no splitting the bill with this group.
Sebastian Coman Photography / Unsplash There are few moments as awkward as the one at the end of a dinner out at a restaurant when it's time to pay the bill. So many questions come up. Who should pay? Should it be split in some way? If so, how?
While countless etiquette experts have offered their opinions on the matter, it ultimately falls to each group out for dinner to decide how to answer these questions, as one group of friends found out themselves.
A group of women expected the only man with them to cover their entire dinner bill.
A TikTok user named Jerry posted a video that has racked up over 1 million views and caused quite a stir on the app. In the video, a group of friends was gathered to celebrate a birthday. The group consisted entirely of women, except for one man.
When it came time for the $700 bill to be paid, the server set the check down on the table. The lone man at the table, David Shands, immediately asked, “Can you separate it? I’ve got the birthday girl and my wife.”
Around the table, a chorus of, “Separate checks?!” was exclaimed.
The women appeared incredulous as they argued with Shands. “You’re the only man at this table. Why are we doing separate checks? It’s all women here,” one said.
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Shands was adamant. “I’m not responsible for paying [for] everybody,” he responded.
“But you invited everybody,” one of the women said.
At this point, the woman whose birthday they were celebrating, Donni Wiggins, stepped in. “Hold on, this is my birthday,” she said. Shands was no doubt hoping he would receive some support from the birthday girl. Instead, she sided with her other friends. “Shands, are you being cheap right now?” she asked him.
The table once again erupted into chaos before someone asked Shands’ wife what she thought. She sided with her husband and said, “I really feel like it’s not his responsibility.”
Finally, Wiggins got up and walked out with one of her friends. “Y’all are so embarrassing,” she stated. On the way out, she turned around to address Shands one more time. “You don’t come to no establishment like that talking about splitting checks. I don’t do that. I don’t split checks.”
As Wiggins left, one of the other women was heard saying, “I’m not paying for anything! He’s the man at the table. He needs to pay.”
Commenters on TikTok were shocked by the video. “Why would they assume he would pay?” one person asked. “This table is full of audacity!” said another.
Who really should have paid the bill in this situation?
It seems like there is an etiquette tip for everything, and this case is no different.
Southern Living listed several different dinner scenarios and explained who should pay in each. For group dinners, “these days it is considered acceptable and still polite to split the bill between individuals or smaller groups within the larger group.”
The advice is similar for celebrations, with the only difference being that “the person of honor is not supposed to pay for his or her meal if celebrating a birthday or special occasion.”
In this case, the person whose birthday it was was covered. Shands said he would take care of Wiggins’ meal.
However, the women were certainly not willing to split the rest of the bill. They seemed to be harking back to a more traditional time when men always covered the bill for any women eating with them. However, that is more common on dates and is not typical for group meals.
Instead, it felt downright old-fashioned that these women would expect Shands to pay for their meals just because he is a man, but maybe they should have all talked about it before the meal to ensure there were no surprises once the check arrived.
Mary-Faith Martinez is a writer for YourTango who covers entertainment, news, and human interest topics.