Summary

The article discusses the cultural differences in attitudes towards splitting the bill when dining out, questioning whether the American approach of exacting fairness is a reflection of broader white cultural values related to fairness, capitalism, and call-out culture.

Abstract

The author reflects on their experiences in Nepal and Peru, contrasting the American tendency to split bills precisely with the more communal approaches to dining expenses in other cultures. They suggest that the American obsession with fairness and tit-for-tat in social settings may be indicative of a larger cultural emphasis on linearity in financial transactions, which is rooted in white culture and its values of capitalism, purity, punishment, and fairness. The article challenges the notion of strict financial reciprocity among friends and family, advocating for a more fluid understanding of money as an "ebb and flow" and encouraging generosity without immediate expectation of repayment. It also touches on the concept of social and knowledge capital as forms of wealth beyond the economic, and questions the societal norms that prioritize transactional interactions over the quality of relationships.

Opinions

The author acknowledges their personal sensitivity to not being a financial burden due to their adoption background, which influences their desire for fairness in splitting bills.
There is a critique of the Western, particularly white, cultural fixation on time efficiency and product-oriented approaches, as opposed to valuing human connection and flexibility.
The article points out the inefficiency of nebulous time commitments in a business context but argues that among friends, such flexibility does not negatively impact relationships.
The author challenges the practice of call-out culture, where individuals are penalized for mistakes, suggesting a "call in" approach that focuses on restoration rather than retaliation.
The meditation teacher's advice to "Let the money flow" is cited to illustrate the idea that holding onto money too tightly can negatively affect one's mindset.
The author questions the fairness of expecting someone to pay more just because they have more economic capital, emphasizing that generosity should not be contingent on the ability to measure and even out contributions.
There is a recognition that not everyone has the economic independence to eat out, and thus the discussion around splitting bills is a privilege not afforded to all.
The article suggests that relationships should not be reduced to transactional economics, and that the value of interactions with friends and family cannot always be quantified in monetary terms.
The author criticizes the hypocrisy of individuals who claim they cannot afford to give to those in need while simultaneously spending money on non-essential items.

Is Splitting the Bill Part of White Culture?

Let’s look at the US’s obsession with fairness and tit-for-tat when eating out with friends and family: Is this another symptom of Call-Out Culture?

Photo by Adrienn: Photo by Tingey Injury Law Firm on Unsplash Adapted by Author on Canva

When I was around twenty-two, I visited one of my good college friends in her home country, Nepal. Frequently we would go out to eat, along with another young woman from the United States who was doing a Fulbright in photography. When it came time to pay the bill, we US citizens would pull out our calculators on our phones and divide up the bill fair and square so that everyone paid for their own meal. My Nepali friend once said, “This is so American. In my culture, we don’t spend the end of the meal divvying up everything, someone just pays.” Or something to that effect.

This is true. Oftentimes, friends or family can get very exacting with money, especially around eating out, or I Owe You’s. Some people might call this “fair,” that each person is responsible for the exact amount they ordered and ate. I could understand this. As an adopted person, I have a high sensitivity to not being a burden, even financially, to others, so it is sometimes part of my own adoption issues of self-worth to make sure I “pay people back,” or “pay people properly,” or that I am not making someone pay more than their share on my account. On the other hand, I am trying to free myself from the idea that money is linear.

What do I mean by that? Of course, I understand that people make a certain amount of money every month, provided they have a job. What comes in goes out in monthly expenses as well. During graduate school, I enrolled in a savings match program that taught budgeting classes where we literally nickel and dimed our whole lives down to the very day, not in an effort to be strict on ourselves but to have a good sense of what comes in and what goes out. My Nepali friend’s comparison between divvying up the bill or having one person pay reflected a “people-centered” approach that I witnessed in Peru with respect to time. Whereas Western societies (read white) prize time and also product-oriented approaches, Peru was more driven by connection than timeliness.

For example, I lived nearly six years in Peru I learned that a friend could show up an hour (and a half) late for an agreed-upon meeting, and the other doesn’t get mad because they are simply happy that they could meet. Spending time with a person is more important than “wasting” people’s time, as though time were simply a commodity. Back in the United States, I volunteered as a simultaneous translator from English to Spanish with an organization, and when I explained the accepted lateness in Peruvian culture, one of the organizers said, “Now that won’t do, will it? No, no, no, we don’t do that here.”

Sure, nebulous time commitments could be very inefficient in a business sense, but with friends, I never noticed it to be a relationship issue. Once I was an hour and a half late to meet someone for a language exchange because I was lost navigating the Lima streets and he was perfectly polite and happy to see me, no passive-aggressive remarks, no comments. He displayed a warm, people-centered approach to my lateness, yet my Puritan upbringing, mixed with my adoption trauma, wanted to be punished for it and expected a scoffing remark, or that he threaten to leave when I texted him from the bus already 45 minutes late.

Now, I’m talking about friends and family here, but as you can see, I’m entering into the general concept of what it means to have enough money to eat out, and also when you don’t. In Peru, for example, many people gave money to singers or performers asking for money on the bus, and I know people make up to $9 a day, yet they gave to people who had less. I’m also entering into the idea of white culture and values of capitalism, purity, punishment, and fairness. I’m not here to bash white culture, there’s a lot of good that came out of it. But I’d like to challenge the idea that fairness and tit-for-tat should be a strong element our relationships. If I reach far into the underlying support for tit for tat, “meeting halfway” and other ideas of so-called fairness directly from the white culture playbook, we land at the call-out culture.

Wrongdoers are sought out and meted out their just desserts to “pay” for the bad acts they’ve engaged in. In these situations, a person who has committed a mistake is ostracized or forced to pay a social or monetary penalty. Many people reject this practice on individual and societal levels and urge us to call in rather than call out, restore rather than retaliate. So, I’m asking people to reflect on what it means to insist on evenness in money when it comes to friendships and family.

At the same time, I think of what my meditation teacher once said, “Let the money flow.” What he meant is that money is an ebb and flow, and when one holds onto capital (economic capital), the mind becomes poisoned. The other thing that comes to mind is that money isn’t the only capital there is, how about social capital and knowledge capital. I’d like to place friendships and relationships outside of this economy.

So when I think about not being linear about money, I mean to say that life goes on and money comes and goes. Even if you will never see someone again, is it really necessary to nickel and dime over food? Many a time, my friend in Nepal just paid for everyone’s meal because she was tired of the heckling about how many dollars more one was paying or not even though she had less economic capital than either of us US folk. Mind you, there are people who simply don’t have money, and often those people can’t afford to eat out at restaurants (fast food, you don’t count at this moment), so there is a level of economic independence that comes from having the choice to eat out at all.

Fairness is often interpreted in Western society as “Tit for Tat,” “Equal treatment,” and transparency as synonymous with justice. Sometimes we need to move out of a transactional interpretation of our time with families and friends, and not reduce it to how much someone ate and who owes whom, which is also predicated on the idea that spending time together is linear. There will be other times when a friend helps you out, and maybe you can’t measure that in money, but if you want to think of it in that way, it will “even out.” And in the future, you will eat out again with your friend again, and maybe next time they will pay more unless you think that’s the Last Supper.

Of course, there are moochers who never seem to have money when the moment comes, but I don’t personally know any of those. I also know generosity breeds generosity, and even if it doesn’t, what kind of person would you rather be? Tightfisted and upset, with a mental checklist about who owes whom what and calling it “even” or “fair” or being open to the extent of your ability to help someone out, and take the financial responsibility once in a while?

Another friend once said, “I can’t afford to give a dollar to someone who is begging outside of the grocery store,” and I thought, “well, you actually can because you spend probably $300 a year on eating ice cream and drinking coffee which is not a necessity. What you mean to say is that you don’t want to give someone a dollar” (maybe because they don’t ‘deserve’ it according to you).

I suppose we are all made of contradictions, or we can’t see past the ends of our noses, as Mary Poppins liked to say. We won’t pay for our friend’s dinners, but we’ll buy ourselves a $100 worth of coffee every month. Maybe it’s something I have to work on, not ruminating on where and with whom the buck ends. I would rather focus on the richness of my interaction and time with people I care about.

Thanks for reading!

~MJ