Have you ever done a credit card grab?
 

Basically, a group of people between 5-10 or more would go out and eat. When it comes to pay time, everyone puts their credit card in a bag or bowl and lets the waiter draw from it. The one that the waiter picks is the card that pays for the entire group's lunch/dinner. :)

I did this a couple of weeks ago with some old high school friends. I don't think everyone wanted to do it, but we decided why not and did it anyways. Thank goodness my credit card was not drawn because it probably would have gone over its limit :D. There were 9 of us with each meal costing between $8-$12. The guy that "won" the drawing had money and he didn't seem to care much. Everyone tossed in for the tip.

The other side of this is called "the Business Lunch."

That's where a group of businessmen or women get together for lunch and when the bill comes, everyone looks the other direction in hopes that someone else will grab and pay the bill and charge it to her/his company.

The other funny thing about the business lunch is the use of "Yuppy Food Stamps." Since everyone uses ATM's, when the bill comes, everyone has $20 bills (YFS's) so everyone has to get change.

I've never heard of the credit card crab or the Business lunch (although I haven't been in the working world too long.)
This reminds me, when I went on a trip last year to DC with some high school friends we went out to dinner one night. One of the girls said it was proper etiquette to just split the bill evenly between everyone rather than worrying about dividing it up. I think my meal actually cost more than most (I got a beer or two) but I did not want to just split it evenly because I thought that it was absurd for us to pay for each others, especially when some checks were less or some could not afford it. So we had a big discussion about what you would do if one person ordered surf and turf and another got a house salad. We ended up getting the waitress to split it up. Has anyone else heard of this or does anyone actually do this?

When a few of us go to lunch, we generally just split the meal equally -- unless someone has a steak and everyone else has burgers.

LOL

Yeah we did this in college and high school. A few times we'd have fun with new friends and everyone would use the same type of credit card (ie Visa) while the new guy would put something different (ie Amex) so he'd end up losing.

-Rudey

This happens a lot when I go to dinner with friends, especially when DPhiE has their AA dinner meetings. For the most part, people's meals all cost around the same so if everyone throws in the same amount it works out, especially in covering the tip. Usually restaurants charge the tip in with the bill for big parties though. There has been times though where I've gone out with people and they've ordered drinks and stuff, left, threw some money on the table, and we were short at the end for the bill. That is annoying. I think it is fine if everyone pays the same thing if your meal is around the same amount. I don't care about a couple dollar difference. I did go out one night to a family style place and a friend showed up and just got a salad so we didn't have her pay, especially because the meal ended up costing us each about 40 bucks.

Re: Have you ever done a credit card grab?
 

Someone told me that he and his buddies do this every time they go out to eat. There aren't quite that many of them though, and he said things always balance out in the end.

Normally my friends and I are bastards and ask for seperate checks because there's a few people in the group who screw us over everytime...if it's the normally people, we use one account and chip in, and we all usually round up to the $5 or $10 to cover tip as well.

cough cheap ass cough.

-Rudey

When I was working at the firm I was at before the layoffs, it was nice they had what they called a expense account but they put it on a Visa card and each designer got a card with their limit, the bills go to the owner/boss, but we could use that to take clients out to lunch or dinner. It was nice to not have to put it on your own card then get reimbursed. I liked that and we had a seperate card for use to buy supplies and such needed for clients homes. Once we were doing a million dollar remodel and the client had all these furnishings she wanted so I charged them all to the card and my boss got it and thought I was using it for my own stuff at first till I explained it was for the "rich ex" we called her. She would get a hubby, then divorce him after getting a ton of stuff. She was on hubby 8 when we did the remodel.

We did have a guy who used his expense credit card to pay for drinks out with his friend. He later got into a ton of trouble and no more card for him lol.

We have a group of people that we love going out to eat with but they always want to divide the check amount the number of couple. My husband and I are not huge spenders when it comes to eating out and they are. Most of the time I end up paying about three times the amount that we actually should. Sometimes it isn't big deal but sometimes it is a lot.

We usually pass the bill around, see what we ate, and divide it up that way. It helps when the tip is on the bill. I think that most people are pretty honest. The main problem comes when everyone takes out their $20 bills from the ATM, and we need to get change. It helps to bring singles and fives when we have dinner meetings.

Back when I use to be gainfully employed and had extra money lying around, I would treat my friends to lunch and dinner every once in a while. I like being generous my friends, especially the ones that I don't get to see that often, who aren't pulling down the moolah at their entry-level jobs.

Now, I'm a poor graduate student and I barely have enough to feed myself, let alone my friends. Maybe one of them will take my place and feed me now? ;)

I prefer the "everybody pays for what they ordered" method. Call me cheap if you want, but that way nobody gets screwed. It is annoying when our group at work goes out for lunch, though, because we do the thing where we split the bill evenly. It really sucks when you wind up paying $15 and the sandwich and water that you ordered totalled $6.

Either we ask for seperate checks, or one person pays with their credit card and everyone else gives them enough cash to cover their part + tip. Otherwise, we all just sort of work it out with "you got last time I'll get this time" kind of stuff.