How to Fight for Justice Over a Dinner Check

A bold new strategy for dining with drinkers

Welcome back to Geoff Rodkey’s Bad Advice! Today’s question, from a reader I’d call Designated Driver if he didn’t live in New York City and actually owned a car, lies at the tricky intersection of friendship and economic justice:

“I don’t drink. When I go out with friends who do, we split the check evenly. Should I confront them with the fact that I resent paying for their alcohol? Why don’t they realize the unfairness of this?”

I can empathize, D.D. This has been happening to me ever since I hit my lifetime quota of alcohol consumption and quit drinking in the late 2000’s.

Here’s what I’ve come to realize since then: most of the friends I go out to dinner with don’t pay any more attention to my drink order than they do to the color of the waiter’s shoes. When the check comes, they’re not thinking, “I ordered a sixteen-dollar martini, and Geoff only had a three-dollar club soda,” because they never noticed what I was drinking in the first place. 

Hey, look, a martini! (just wanted to plug my last book)

There’s one big exception to this rule: dining companions who have a drinking problem. THOSE folks are counting other people’s drinks the way gamblers count cards. But that’s a subject for a whole other advice column. 

(Note to readers: do you recognize yourself in the paragraph above? If so, ask me about your drinking problem! No matter how bad it is, I have advice that can make it worse.)

Getting back to the subject at hand: D.D., your friends are never going to realize on their own that they’ve been screwing you. So the fix is going to have to come from your side of the street.

I’d suggest that the next time the check comes, you raise the subject in a lighthearted, “hey, so didja ever notice I’ve spent the last few decades financing your booze consumption?” kind of way. Except that the verbs you employed in your question—“confront” and “resent”—are bristling with so much hostility that I’m pretty sure if you broach the subject, all those years of repressed anger are going to come pouring out of you like molten lava, and it’s gonna get ugly.

But if you’re too emotionally raw to raise the subject without setting fire to your friendships, how can you restore economic justice to your shared dining experiences?

I’m tempted to ask if you’re sure it’s really necessary. I mean, if you think about it…

Why do you go out with friends in the first place? 

Is it the food and drink? Or is it the companionship? 

I suspect it’s the latter. In which case, here’s a follow-up question: does the alcohol make your friends more fun to hang out with? Some of mine get a whole lot more entertaining when they’re a couple drinks in, but your mileage may vary.

Even if they’re not more fun when they’re liquored up, friendship is one of the few spheres of modern life that transcends financial calculation. Its rewards that can’t be quantified in dollars. And if you focus too closely on the numbers, you might wind up cheating yourself out of some fraction of the spiritual nourishment and emotional connection that constitute the true benefits of friendship.

But let’s not kid ourselves. You’re pissed. And what you want is justice. So let me tell you how to get it: 

Keep score.

Ruthlessly. Maintain a running tally of everybody’s tab—write it on the tablecloth if you have to—and don’t let a single goddam person at that table outspend you.

You’re going to be way behind on the drinks, so you’ll need to make up the difference in food. For every drink somebody else orders, pile on an appetizer. 

Did the college friend sitting across from you ask for an Aperol spritz? Get yourself some jalapeño poppers. If the poppers cost less than the spritz, throw in some cheese fries.

At no point should you offer to share your appetizers. That would defeat the whole purpose. This is your food. Not theirs. 

It goes without saying you’re going to have to order the most expensive entree on the menu, every single time. That’s usually steak, so I hope you like red meat.

Doesn’t matter if you don’t. You’re still ordering it.

Are your friends moderate-to-heavy drinkers? If so, you’re going to have to train yourself to eat way past the point of discomfort. 

Don’t try to save room for dessert. If you’re keeping the scales properly balanced, there won’t BE room. But if anybody orders a post-dinner bourbon, you’re on the hook for a cheesecake. Dig deep and power through it.

Don’t worry if you start to sweat. That’s a normal physiological response to overeating. Just keep going. If you have to, excuse yourself and head to the bathroom for a quick purge. When you get back to the table, make sure you haven’t missed another round of drink orders. If you did, double down on the cheesecake.

This won’t be easy. But it will be fair. And when you walk away from the table, assuming you can still walk unassisted, you’ll do so with a feeling of quiet satisfaction that more than compensates for the heartburn, disrupted sleep, gastrointestinal distress, and possibly cardiac episodes you’ll experience over the next twelve to fourteen hours.

Thanks for your interest in my bad advice! If you know anybody who might find it unhelpful, please share it with them. And keep asking questions! I can’t do this without them.