A close female friend of mine recounted a rather horrific dating experience: she had been called by someone she had just started seeing (she wasn’t particularly fond of him, but thought she’d give it a chance given the lack of other opportunities). He called her relatively late into the evening, but torn between preferring not to see him and the English attitude of being polite irrespective of the situation, she reluctantly answered the phone.

To her surprise, he wanted to go out for supper, but my friend was dressed for bed. Ignoring the reasonable voice in her head and the feeling of not being particularly hungry, she agreed to meet him at a pizza place. To cut a long story short, my friend decided after getting there that she wasn’t hungry, however he ordered and ate like the end of the world had been declared just minutes before.

But here’s the clincher: When the bill arrived, he insisted THAT SHE PAY FOR IT.

For many, when the bill (or cheque) arrives, a human routine is initiated where one person will lunge instinctively for the bill and then pull away as the other person does the same. So let’s get our David Attenborough on and get a deeper insight by observing the various species involved this routine.

The Splitter

As soon as the bill arrives, one person instinctively says “Split It”, indicating that they’d like to divide the amount by half. While this may work perfectly well most of the time, where this gets interesting is when the bill doesn’t split evenly OR the idea of splitting the bill evenly isn’t agreed upon by all parties. Let’s say that someone has had wine and the other didn’t, the scales are knocked off kilter quite significantly. If one is particularly money conscious or is an ardent believer of “fairness”, the polite thing to do would be to either mention it diplomatically, or if being the wine drinker, offer to pay a little more. The less polite thing to do would be, as the person who didn’t order the wine, to say “Do I look like a toilet?! Because it seems you’re taking the piss!”.

The Gazelle and The Lions

This one is always fun to watch if only to take bets on who’s going to win. Basically when the bill arrives, it’s as if a single gazelle has descended unknowingly into a pride of hungry lions. Or if you’ve seen “Finding Nemo”, the scene where the seagulls all start yelling “Mine”. As the name of this dance suggests, each party yells “I’LL GET IT, I’LL GET IT!” until like the Serengeti, the strongest of the pack gets the bill and makes a dash to the counter to pay. This one is particularly common amongst those who earn quite a bit and want people to REALLY see it. This is especially true when it’s a group of ten or more.

The Feeder and the Leech

Oh and haven’t we all eaten with one of these? And like their blood sucking mucousy counterparts, they just sit there when the bill comes and don’t offer any contribution at all. But as with most parasitic relationships, simply paying and repeating this dance ad nauseum only feeds this negative behaviour, and in the end you only to have yourself to blame for the rather large blood sucker in front of you. A variation to The Leech is the Forgetful Leech who after the bill has been paid says, “I’ll get the next one” and inevitably doesn’t. As with real leeches, get rid of them quickly by throwing salt at them, or simply just flicking them out of your life.

The Opportunist

Refer to the story that my friend told me. This is never acceptable. Ever.

The Equaliser

Similar to the The Splitter, except each party insists on paying for what they consumed, which is fine between two to four people. When the routine includes 20 parties and the bill is passed around to 20 individuals, this is entirely impractical and splitting the bill between 20 should be done instead as a bill should never take 30 minutes to resolve. I learned this once where after a meal, I had sprouted a long grey beard waiting for the bill to reach me.

The Smug

You can offer to pay a bill on a date, but for goodness sake, don’t be smug about it or make it gender related by exclaiming, “Well, because you’re a woman, you shouldn’t have to pay!”. For goodness sake, women have been earning their way for decades and can more than afford to take you out, shag you and then turf you out leaving you at their mercy. By the way, the fifties called - they want their chauvinistic tool back.

My simple but yet effective rule is that be it a casual dinner with friends; work dinner with colleagues and my boss; or a date, it’s always polite to at least suggest contributing or picking up the tab by reaching for my wallet. And most of the time, people are quite amenable and will make a contribution, and things go from there. Conversely, if someone offers to pick up the bill, I will at least offer to make a contribution, because although I may not always mean it (especially if I didn’t pick the fancy restaurant), the gesture or the mere suggestion is always appreciated - but I’m never more insistent than that because my first offer is my finest and my final one. But there is never an excuse for a David Attenborough special.