Paying for Power : How We Divvy Up a Dinner Tab Says Lots About Our Egos

Suzanne Lane and her date, both professionals in their 40s, had agreed to share expenses. She would handle dinner and cabs; he would pay for the movie.

But the plan hit a snag when Lane asked the waiter for the check.

“My date asked, ‘You’re really going to pay?’ ” recalls Lane, who as president of a Manhattan public relations firm is accustomed to entertaining clients.

“The food’s not free,” she joked, trying to smooth over the moment.

“What will the waiter think of me?” her date fumed.

“What do you care?” she shot back.

Obviously, he cared enough that when the waiter took the check, he blurted out, “It’s my birthday. That’s why she’s treating.”

A Los Angeles man invited 10 friends to a no-host birthday dinner at a moderately priced restaurant. When the check came, one guest got out his pocket calculator and started to add up his portion of the bill. A tipsy dinner mate, viewing this as petty, started calling people names, slammed down his wine glass and stomped out of the restaurant. (He eventually stomped back, put his fair share on the table, mumbled and left.)

How is it that one tiny piece of paper can turn otherwise worldly wise people into check-grabbing or check-ignoring fools? It happens among friends and lovers, at business and social functions. It happens when one person is a hefty tipper and the other’s a Scrooge. And it happens in groups when some members want to split the bill and others want to pay for just what they ate.

Although the experts agree that talking over the tab well ahead of time will greatly reduce anxiety--not to mention indigestion--people seem to opt for the heartburn route.

The process of settling a restaurant check is chock-full of ego issues, says Marc Schoen, a psychologist at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. How we handle a check--who pays, how big a tip--”reflects our place in the world and how we fit in,” however temporarily, Schoen says. “When money issues come up, people get uncomfortable.”

Brentwood psychologist James W. Gottfurcht puts it more bluntly: “Whoever pays the check is the more powerful, the one who is in control.”

This issue might have been what made Lane’s mind-changing date squirm. Splitting expenses might have sounded good initially, speculates Warren Farrell, the San Diego-based author of the 1986 bestseller “Why Men Are the Way They Are.” But when the tab came, the man might have felt cheap and embarrassed that he was not playing the stereotypical masculine role, Farrell says.

When women treat on a date early on, Farrell adds, some men read it as a message that the relationship is destined to be platonic. He contends that there is a simple way for a woman with romantic interests to pick up the tab without dashing her date’s hopes.

As she reaches for the check, Farrell suggests simply saying, “I would love to see you again.”

(Lane opted not to communicate that message.)

Dinner tab Angst wouldn’t be complete, though, without the cheapskate, tightfisted tipper.

Take the party of four that arrived in a jovial mood at an Italian restaurant in Washington. The waitress--a cordial and accommodating sort--delivered the meals, but one entree was wrong.

Realizing that the cook had erred, she whisked away the dish and redelivered the proper entree just three minutes later, apologizing along the way.

The bill came to $80. The man whose dinner arrived last was treating the table. The tip? $4.

“That’s insulting,” the waitress fumes, still angry weeks later.

Ah, but that’s power, because no one in the group stepped forward to protest the small tip.

Cheap tippers are often on a power trip, contends Schoen. Leaving an inadequate tip gives them a sense of superiority. “They are saying, ‘I’m in charge here,’ ” he says. “It is abusive control.”

Or consider what happens when one diner wants to pay only for what has been eaten and others prefer to split the bill.

The person with the calculator was probably just trying to be practical and fair, observes Gottfurcht. But for the drunk diner, the after-dinner bookkeeping spoiled the mood.

And, according to Cynthia Burnley, an associate professor of sociology at East Tennessee State University, this also went against the way things are done.

“Men are more likely just to divide a check. It’s ego. Women are more prone to figure it out, who owes exactly what,” she says.

A diner who demands that everyone pay his or her fair share--or who demands separate checks--might also have a need to define his or her identity, says Gottfurcht. “My boundaries are here, yours are there.”

Of course, those who demand separate checks might just be stingy sorts or they might have been badly burned in the past, talked into splitting a check when they had a beer and chips and their dining companions had a five-course, two-martini feast.

According to an Ohio State University study, people who split the check equally are perceived as having healthier relationships.

Researchers asked 66 college students to rate the relationship between two diners who divided the tab either equally or equitably. The students perceived those who split it down the middle as liking each other more, having a closer relationship and being more likely to see each other in the future.

Which brings us back to Suzanne Lane and her “birthday” date--whom she hasn’t seen since and whom she doesn’t plan to see in the future.

Since their night out, Lane reports that she’s successfully settled about 100 tabs with clients and has plans to keep her social life just as smooth.

Her solution: “I will either date very rich men or just let the others pay,” she says, tongue-in-cheek.