People Really Love Restaurants That Auto-Split Checks. Do You?

Dining situations can often get more tense than they need to be. Sometimes it’s a great move to pick up the bill, show the people around you you’re doing well, or that you care, or a simple gesture of good will. Other comfortable groups of friends naturally ask for a split bill. What do you prefer?

I once attended a low-key dinner with a group of friends at a rather nice restaurant of which all 6 members of our party staggered in at different times, ordering drinks, appetizers and finally our main courses at different points throughout the evening. We were all sitting at the same table, and we ordered well into the evening.

By the time our check came, the waiter had brought out six different bills, without us asking for it. He mentioned he did it because he saw us “stagger in,” could that be a good sign for a waiter? We didn’t mind, we paid separately, and went on our merry way.

Also fair to think about — for every restaurant that’s happy to split the bill, there are others who find it really tiresome and do it begrudgingly (many also have a finite limit of ways you can split the check). So during my daily Reddit.com perusal, I found that the most trafficked post of the day was this simple picture of a restaurant bill that arrived to a table, already split.

The title of the post? “If you’re a restaurant that does this, you’re awesome.“

From the details on this check, it looks like there were six guests total, so even though the image is cut off, we’re going to assume the waiter was able to split the check six ways:

There are tons of people to consider in a situation like this: the waiter, the restaurant, the customer and the situation.

When should a restaurant auto-split a check? Is there a point when splitting a check is too unreasonable? Should a restaurant assume the father is paying for the family, or that a group of teens is automatically going to want a split-bill?

Talk about it in the comments, we’d love to hear your thoughts.