How to Win in Split-Check Game

Today, we address a social problem high on the agenda of Orange County Yuppiedom. It’s called the Split Check, and it goes like this:

You go out to lunch with three people from the office. You’re not hungry or you’re on a diet or you don’t drink, so you order a bowl of soup and a glass of water. The others have a couple of drinks, a steak with all the trimmings, and dessert.

The check comes and lays there, moribund, on the table until you feel the need to leave. So you clear your throat and pick it up and say, “I figure my part of this is about . . .”--whereupon one of your associates says heartily, “Oh hell, why don’t we just split it four ways instead of nit-picking the check.”

This leaves you the choice of being identified as a nit-picker--trying to extract your numbers as the others watch disdainfully--or buying steaks you didn’t eat and drinks you didn’t drink.

This scenario plays out much the same way when you are out to dinner with another couple or two and eat lightly while the others are stoking up on gourmet food and vintage wine. Understand, we are talking here about social occasions, not business entertainment in which the destination of the check is clear from the beginning and will show up on an expense account. In the game of Check Splitting, you are dealing with your own money.

OK, what to do? Eat the check because it is terribly important to you to sustain the Good Guy image? Get out your pencil and break the check down in spite of the penurious image it conveys? Stop going out to lunch or dinner with friends where the ground rules are not explicit? Or none of the above?

In order to search out less cataclysmic solutions to this weighty question, I conducted a totally unscientific survey among some of my socially minded friends and associates I know to be veteran Check-Splitters. Several possibilities were suggested that seem useful to me, and I hereby pass them along to you as a public service of this column:

1. Turn the tables. This works best when you know a day or two ahead that you will be eating out. Miss the meal before you go out so you are enormously hungry, and order generously. Then you jump in with the split proposal. If you are unable to eat this much, even when famished, take the residue home with you and have it for dinner.

2. Ask for separate checks. This requires a certain amount of chutzpah and shouldn’t be attempted unless you are prepared to ignore the hostility of the waiter--who hates this sort of thing--and the possible irritation of your eating partners. It also won’t enhance your reputation as a social lion.

3. Take over the wine list. One of the more serious problems that arises in Check Splitting is when one member of your party picks up the wine list and muses aloud that he can’t decide between the 1975 Sebastiani Cabernet or the 1982 Martini Pinot Noir. He, alone, is privy to the price list, and you see dollar signs mounting up on the bill with such prodigious speed that you don’t even enjoy the half-glass of wine you nurture so your friend won’t be moved to order a second bottle.

The solution here is to quickly take charge of the wine list as the waiter stands hesitantly waiting for someone to claim it. You put it down firmly in front of you, unopened, and announce in a hearty voice that you’ve heard the house wine here is excellent “so why don’t we go that route?” If your dining partners still insist on looking at the wine list, at least you have made your point. And if you go out to eat with them again, make it brunch.

4. Set the ground rules beforehand. No moment is quite as awkward at a shared social meal as the arrival of the check, usually dropped somewhere near the center of the table. From that moment on, everything at the table is played out at two levels: the conscious level of conversation and the subconscious level of how to deal with the check.

This awkwardness can be avoided simply by establishing the ground rules beforehand. But someone must take the lead, and when couples are involved, it has to be one of the men. The woman’s role in this situation is to observe all the nuances carefully so she can later come down on her partner for being (A) parsimonious, (B) profligate or (C) cowardly. It has been my observation that so far, feminism has not moved aggressively into the role of dealing with checks under such circumstances, but has reserved the right to be critical.

5. Select the restaurant yourself--or at least participate in the selection. The choice of an expensive restaurant is probably the most important cause of stress on the Check-Splitting scene. If you have agreed to go out to dinner with someone and allowed them to select the restaurant unilaterally, you may find yourself plunging next month’s mortgage money on the cheapest chicken on the menu. And you hate chicken.

In this difficult social thicket, there are also some ploys that need to be recognized and resisted. One of the more flagrant is the friend who insists on picking up the whole check for a Spartan breakfast with the offhand jovial comment, “You can get the next one”--which you realize too late is a dinner already planned at a fancy restaurant. Or the dining companion who says, “Why don’t we talk a little business so you can put this on your expense account?”--when you have just been told that your company has entered a period of austerity.

One permanent solution is to select your dining-out friend exclusively from among Big Spenders who meet their own ego needs by picking up checks. This may be a little hard on your self-respect, and the talk may be boring, but look at it as social work among the rich. And have another glass of wine.