There are a huge number of tales, stories and proverbs in the world that tell what people are ready to do for various freebies. Sometimes the very realization that, for example, at a restaurant, someone else has shouldered the burden of paying turns quite modest and well-mannered people into unbridled gluttons.
Here's more proof of that: this story from the user u/Dandylius625, who, while treating his friends in a restaurant, carelessly didn’t specify the limits of his hospitality. And one of the party participants clearly overused this... However, let's not get ahead of ourselves.
More info: Reddit
The author of the post hosted a friendly gathering at a restaurant with 7 guests invited
Image credits: cookie_studio / Freepik (not the actual photo)
The man told them that everything was on him, and the guests only had to pay for their drinks
Image credits: Dandylius625
Image credits: drobotdean / Freepik (not the actual photo)
There was a lady, the author's friend's girlfriend, who picked the most expensive meals, resulting in nearly half of the total bill
Image credits: Dandylius625
Image credits: freepik / Freepik (not the actual photo)
The author could afford to pay this bill, but he was incredibly confused by her picks and behavior
Image credits: Dandylius625
So the man refused to pay for her - and was called out immediately for doing so
The Original Poster (OP) says that he invited a group of seven guests to a restaurant - his girlfriend, her sister, his friend with his partner, and some mutual acquaintances. The restaurant had a hard time finding a table for eight people - but soon all the guests were seated, and our hero thought that all the difficulties were behind him... How wrong he was!
The author told the guests that everything was on him, and they began to place orders. However, one of the women, the OP's friend's girlfriend, picked almost the most expensive things on the menu. As a result, when it came time to pay, her order came to £113 ($151) of the total £260 ($347). At first, our hero even thought that she was trying to make a fool of him this way.
However, it turned out that the woman simply loves tasty and expensive food. No, the original poster, despite the fact that he had some difficulties with money, could still afford to pay this bill - but still, when one person made up almost half of the total cost, it seemed a tad bit strange to him.
In short, our hero declared that he wouldn’t pay her share of the bill - and, of course, was accused of being stingy and being a jerk over this situation. It's a good thing that everyone paid for their own drinks, as everyone had initially agreed. But this woman's reaction made the author strongly doubt that he was right. So he decided to ask the netizens for advice, just in case.
Image credits: freepik / Freepik (not the actual photo)
"On the one hand, refusing to pay after you've already volunteered to do so and everything has already been eaten is definitely quite an ugly act," says Vlad Ostrometsky, the administrator of the UNIT Cafe in Odessa, Ukraine, whom Bored Panda asked for comment here. "On the other hand, overusing someone else's hospitality is also wrong. Especially if you're responsible for half of the total bill."
"I understand that the host had never seen some of the invited guests, but it is for such cases that it’s nice to stipulate the approximate budget of the gathering - so that the guests can have an idea of how much they can use the generosity of the host."
"In any case, since this wasn’t done - then, in order not to lose face, this man most likely should have paid the entire bill, and only then drew conclusions, such as whether to invite this woman to any gatherings in the future, or not. Here, the misunderstanding ran into some kind of entitledness, and nothing good came of it," Vlad concludes.
Most people in the comments were also surprised at how entitled that lady was to run up nearly half of the total bill, but some responders reasonably noted that the original poster, seeing how expensive her dishes were and in what quantities she ordered, could’ve tried to warn her in advance. Anyway, what do you, our dear readers, think about this situation?
Many commenters were also baffled by this lady's order, so they mostly sided with the man
