Tuesday, July 24, 2012

quicko: split the bill

While a significant number of Australian restaurants are capable of splitting a bill, I find that it very rarely actually happens.  I can only figure that Australians enjoy sitting around spending ages working out who owes what and intermittently getting ripped off a dollar, two or ten every now and again.  For whatever reason, splitting is just not the done thing here.  I think possibly it's thought to be discourteous to the waiter or waitress -- which, speaking from experience as a former waitress, is a nice but unnecessary thought.  For goodness sake, it's their job!  Maybe you could round up a bit on their tip, but waitstaff expect to produce and split bills routinely.  At least in America.  Not sure what that precise consensus is here.

3 comments:

Mom said...

I have found recently that with computers for cash registers, even in nice restaurants, splitting the bill is very easy on the waitstaff, and often even offered by them, as it is not any more work for them than keeping the tabs together.

Laetitia :-) said...

Some restaurants will claim that they don't allow 'split bills'. However, push comes to shove and they will. It's more common to split than not split where I live.

Anonymous said...

That's probably because, as you know, everythiong is sooo expensive in australia!