Simple, obvious and useful – the waiter enters the number of diners into the EPOS machine before they print the receipt. Why doesn’t all EPOS software have this functionality? In Switzerland, where eating out is expensive, restaurant staff always bring diners all their own separate bills. No awkwardness, no “But I just had a salad” issues. I’m interested to know what the standard is where you live… Comments please!
Many thanks to Phil Guilfoyle of Online Logic for noticing this and suggesting this post.
Separate bills = great. 3 way split = not as great if someone’s meal was more expensive.
As I understand it, in Japan waiters are happy to work out the bill per person (so not evenly split but working out what each person had).
@AlexG That’s what makes eating out and going Dutch such a fascinating psychological experiment. The altruist puts in a small or normal order, assuming or hoping that everyone will do the same. The egotistical or greedy person goes all out, to prevent having to pay for somebody else, even if it means ordering something they didn’t really want. It’s a great way to get to know the mindset of your fellow eaters –but possibly at a price.
Ditto to Alex :)
Still, this is better than nothing.
They print a ‘fortune telling’ on local supermarket checks btw.
I like the way Steak n Shake does it. Each seat at the table is listed with items, subtotal, tax, and total, then the bottom of the receipt has a grand total. You can pay separately or together, or in any combination you like and their computer does the work for that bit; just tell the cashier you’re paying for seats 1 and 3 or the whole tab or just seat 2, etc.
In Montreal, most restaurant staff will ask you how many bills you want as they usually tally the orders separately anyways. Much better than the dumbfound or angry look you get when asking for separate bills South of the Border, where they often can’t be bothered to keep tabs on who ordered what and leave it to the client to figure it out: annoying!
Exactly. If I’m the guy who got the Chang Beer, I’d be pissed.
In Vancouver, BC and most of Canada from what I’ve seen, there’s never any fuss – you get separate bills if you want them, and that’s that.
Recently I also noticed a big difference in billing depending on the country.
Here in Germany a waiter usually asks if you want to separate bills. Most of the times you get separate bills. Sometimes if they’re lazy they bring just one bill for the table and calculate for every person at the table.
In South East Asia I often saw a bill like the one you showed above. If they don’t have bills they always tell you the total amount for the table. I think they do it like this because of a different cultural background. For example if you go for dinner with a group of people in Thailand you always share and split up the total! So if you only got one Chang Beer and didn’t order anything else, it’s your own fault. :-D
Someone thought the split 3 ways was a good thing: http://37signals.com/svn/archives2/2005/03/an_idea_for_rec.php
But I think this one is better: http://www.cabel.name/2009/10/best-fast-food-receipt.html
If someone combined that one with the Steak ‘n Shake receipt of by seat, it would be the ultimate receipt.
This topic was my mania for a while, and I did some research. From what I read, point-of-sale systems used in restaurants in the US are ready-made to make it easy for waitstaff to produce separate checks for each diner. Many restaurants won’t, simply because …? I think they’re concerned that it will suck their time, but I bet it sucks more of their time to have parties hogging up a table for 20 minutes trying to figure the bill & then giving the waiter 10 different payment methods with obscure instructions. Not that this is a peeve of mine :-)
Obviously, not all restaurants have p.o.s. systems.
In Russia we just have one receipt for everyone with all the meals in random order, and then everyone is trying to remember what they were eating and count how much that costs.
And there’s always a chance that waiters would put in the receipt a bottle of expensive water, hoping that noone figures out this water wasn’t ordered and noone even actually saw it.
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I live in Switzerland and it is true, we can pay separately directly to the waiter if we want, since the meals are normally seriously expensive. But I come from Brazil (Rio de Janeiro) and there, this “split” costs for the number of people in the table is a default information in most of the restaurants and bars because in Brazil no one has a lot of money to invite other people for dinner, but we are also very friendly to share the costs with all the others, even if you had a drink or 2 less, of course only if the difference is not that big. With this way everyone one goes home happy. One thing important, the waiters always have a calculator on their pockets in case of splitting differently amounts. I guess it all depends to where you live and how is the general economic situation of most people. Pure sociology study!!!