3 ms·

I get that part of the reason is credit card merchant fees -- someone is paying for my 2x dining-out credit card points, after all. But part of the reason also

I get that part of the reason is credit card merchant fees -- someone is paying for my 2x dining-out credit card points, after all. But part of the reason also is wait staff time... time spent running six separate cards is time not spent getting drinks or food. Maybe I'm just a tech-city millennial who hates interacting with people, but I've always kinda wondered why there isn't any POS system that prints out a QR or text code you can punch into your smartphone to pull up a digital receipt that you can claim what items were yours, auto-tally tax and tip, and just pay for it digitally or yes, even venmo-invoice everyone in the group. Yes, I realize this is exactly the behavior the article was talking about it, but honestly, that article was a little "get off my lawn"-ish. If it's a beer, sure, I'll get a round, but if it's a 6-person birthday party where some people get the $12 salad because they're making teacher salary and the tech-bro's get the $36 steak but you all still want to be friends without the awkwardness different financial or socioeconomic situations getting in the way, then yes, everyone paying whatever they ordered makes sense. Technology enables new behaviors and new norms, honestly. If it means the guy or girl who gets 2x points on restaurant bills and making tech money fronts the bill and venmos what everyone ordered later, so be it. I would ask why isn't that even easier yet with my self-invoice-via-digital-bill-and-save-the-server-from-running-6-separate-cards app?

SomeStupidPoint 9y ago
Red Robin has little tablets at the table you can use to select your items and pay your portion of the bill (among other things, like signal a waiter or play silly games). I thought it was clever. That said, the situation where someone ordered a $12 entree while someone else ordered a $36 one was solved when everyone paid in cash -- you just throw in your portion. It was only when everyone was trying to pay by card that this became an issue (which Venmo and ilk addressed). People claiming that paying different amounts is some kind of "modern" problem are just ignorant of history -- everyone paying by card and splitting a bill being difficult is the modern problem.

SomeStupidPoint 9y ago

Red Robin has little tablets at the table you can use to select your items and pay your portion of the bill (among other things, like signal a waiter or play silly games). I thought it was clever. That said, the situation where someone ordered a $12 entree while someone else ordered a $36 one was solved when everyone paid in cash -- you just throw in your portion. It was only when everyone was trying to pay by card that this became an issue (which Venmo and ilk addressed). People claiming that paying different amounts is some kind of "modern" problem are just ignorant of history -- everyone paying by card and splitting a bill being difficult is the modern problem.