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Thanks to Venmo, We Now All Know How Cheap Our Friends Are

nytimes.com

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Re: Thanks to Venmo, We Now All Know How Cheap Our Friends Are

#41

Post by R_haterade »

Overtonwindow wrote: post #32

I don't use this app and this article kind of explains why. If I go to dinner with friends, or anything, I'd rather pick up the check than worry about splitting it. The next time, they'll pickup the tab, and so forth. That's what friends do. I don't know if I'd want to go out with someone who is going to bill me for it later, or wants to use an app to split things up. For me it just makes things superficial, awkward,…

Agreed.

I think it's simple common courtesy that the person extending the invite picks up the check.

Re: Thanks to Venmo, We Now All Know How Cheap Our Friends Are

#42

Post by cheapsteak »

mabbo wrote: post #17

I think the problem here is expectations. If you went to dinner with a friend, and thought everything was covered but then later received a bill in the mail there's an aspect of unexpected demands in it. If your friend said ahead of time "hey I've got this app that will let us split the bill easily, that okay?" then you'd be expecting it and there's no social transgression. Social norms and expectations are the ficti…

We seem to not live in the same Toronto

Plenty of places will give you a hard time if you try to split a bill. Kinton ramen refuses to split for parties larger than 4 (and is completely inflexible on this)

Re: Thanks to Venmo, We Now All Know How Cheap Our Friends Are

#43

Post by lawnchair_larry »

Overtonwindow wrote: post #32

I don't use this app and this article kind of explains why. If I go to dinner with friends, or anything, I'd rather pick up the check than worry about splitting it. The next time, they'll pickup the tab, and so forth. That's what friends do. I don't know if I'd want to go out with someone who is going to bill me for it later, or wants to use an app to split things up. For me it just makes things superficial, awkward,…

Weird. Perfectly normal for any groups I've ever eaten with. Easy to ask the server to split the bill.

Re: Thanks to Venmo, We Now All Know How Cheap Our Friends Are

#44

Post by thaumasiotes »

harryh wrote: post #5
broknbottle wrote: post #3

I don't understand why Venmo is such a popular app. I've always used Square Cash and just recently tried Venmo for the first time. My sister and I had dinner and she offered to split the tab. She refused to try Square Cash and had me download Venmo. On the iPhone it felt like buggy port with some weird social feature that allows users to see public transaction.

Venmo significantly predates Square Cash, and once you get used to using a particular app for a task switching is a burden, especially for something like this with a powerful network effect.

As far as I remember, Paypal significantly predates Venmo. What happened there?

Re: Thanks to Venmo, We Now All Know How Cheap Our Friends Are

#45

Post by pyrrhotech »

>“It’s making people less generous and chivalrous,” Ms. Pennoyer said. “It used to be you’d go to a restaurant, and you’d put down your credit cards and split it 50-50, even if one person had steak and one had chicken. But now people pay exactly to the cent.”

How is this portrayed as a bad thing in the article? This solution to this problem is the ONLY reason I use Venmo. Perhaps the author was always the one ordering steak and misses his old friend-subsidized lifestyle.

Re: Thanks to Venmo, We Now All Know How Cheap Our Friends Are

#46

Post by closeparen »

Overtonwindow wrote: post #32

I don't use this app and this article kind of explains why. If I go to dinner with friends, or anything, I'd rather pick up the check than worry about splitting it. The next time, they'll pickup the tab, and so forth. That's what friends do. I don't know if I'd want to go out with someone who is going to bill me for it later, or wants to use an app to split things up. For me it just makes things superficial, awkward,…

Reciprocity like that is easy when you're eating with the same person on a regular cadence, but harder when it's highly irregular (i.e. you meet up because you happen to be in the same city) or you see different combinations of a large group each time.

I'm not wild about blowing my entertainment budget for the month in one meal, which is what would happen if I paid for 4 people, though on a long enough time horizon (decades?) it might work out the same in the end.

Re: Thanks to Venmo, We Now All Know How Cheap Our Friends Are

#47

Post by deorcness »

R_haterade wrote: post #41
Overtonwindow wrote: post #32

I don't use this app and this article kind of explains why. If I go to dinner with friends, or anything, I'd rather pick up the check than worry about splitting it. The next time, they'll pickup the tab, and so forth. That's what friends do. I don't know if I'd want to go out with someone who is going to bill me for it later, or wants to use an app to split things up. For me it just makes things superficial, awkward,…

Agreed. I think it's simple common courtesy that the person extending the invite picks up the check.

In my experience, that's culturally exclusive to the upper-middle and upper echelons of society. In working class groups, no single person is expected to pay for everything; it's split relatively evenly.

Re: Thanks to Venmo, We Now All Know How Cheap Our Friends Are

#49

Post by closeparen »

kurthr wrote: post #25
maaaats wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I second that it removes friction. I hate the "lets split the bill evenly"-approach. It makes me feel like I leech of others if I want something expensive, and the other way around if I'm not very hungry but have to pay for everybody else having three courses.

Yeah, they ought to use bill roulette (choose a penny out of the bill to choose who pays). You still get the jerk who doesn't tip, though.

Wow. I tend to think of "not randomly destroying each other's finances" as a baseline criteria for friendship.

Re: Thanks to Venmo, We Now All Know How Cheap Our Friends Are

#50

Post by jdavis703 »

nitrogen wrote: post #27
mabbo wrote: post #17

I think the problem here is expectations. If you went to dinner with a friend, and thought everything was covered but then later received a bill in the mail there's an aspect of unexpected demands in it. If your friend said ahead of time "hey I've got this app that will let us split the bill easily, that okay?" then you'd be expecting it and there's no social transgression. Social norms and expectations are the ficti…

Restaurants are definitely accustomed to splitting bills in Salt Lake City as well. I was surprised to come to a larger city like San Francisco and have to chase people for their share since most restaurants won't give individual receipts.

I've never been to Toronto, but in general it seems like more popular restaurants give you a harder time splitting the check, where as empty places will sometimes ask if you want the check to be split, without even having to prompt them.
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