Medication can have a wide array of side-effects, which now apparently includes penny-pinching. In the newsletter the Daily Skimm, a reader had a query for the money expert Heather Boneparth: “A close friend who’s on a GLP-1 recently asked to pay a quarter of our dinner bill instead of splitting it evenly, since she ate significantly less. Was I wrong to push back, and how do we handle the bill going forward?”
Sorry, but this friendship is doomed. The question-asker even being prepared for there to be bills going forward proves they’re big-hearted, and therefore incompatible with the subject of her quandary.
The first rule of dinner with friends club is: you do not talk about who had what. The second rule of dinner with friends club is: you do not talk about who had what. Whoever you are, whatever you ate and drank, whether you’re on weight-loss drugs or not, you split the bill equally. Any other way is mean, tedious, and, as an added bonus, makes the person taking the payment hate you.
Is there a bigger friendship ick imaginable than being with someone only half listening to the conversation because they’re so busy keeping score of who had two glasses of wine versus three? Where will it end? Somebody playfully nicks a chip from their plate, and they launch a full investigation into exactly how many were in the portion, divide that by the total cost and charge their supposed buddy pro rata?
You have to trust the process, the unspoken contract that states that, ultimately, all this will even out – you stump up more than your share one evening, but another, you stuff your face for a proper bargain. Give and thou shalt receive.
If you’re on the jabs and really can’t stomach forking out the same as everybody else, maybe don’t socialise over meals: go to the cinema or for a walk instead. And perhaps remember how many mates Scrooge had, when you’re next tempted to act like him. Otherwise, by the time you’re ready to eat your words, you might be dining alone.
Polly Hudson is a freelance writer
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