Druff's story on radio made me think of a situation I found myself in several years ago I thought I would share.
I was a collections manager for Sallie Mae back in 2008. One of my employees played in a small band and invited me and others to go to a local bar to watch one of their shows the coming weekend.
I called the bar ahead of time and told them that there would be 14-20 of us, and if possible we'd all want to sit together. The obliged.
There ended up being 17 of us. Myself, 1 other manager, several employees of Sallie Mae and their significant others.
We got to the bar around 6pm about 1 hour before the band was scheduled to go on because the bar served food and we decided we were going to get dinner there. We are all sitting at the same string of tables they put together for us. As the waitress starts taking our orders, we explain that it will be several separate orders. She claimed to have understood.
We all order food and drinks. Most of us started a tab, but some of the group was just paying as they went. As the night went on, some of in the groups started buying shots for the entire group.
At some point in time, our original waitress was no longer taking care of us and a new waitress started handling our group. We didn't think anything of it.
Around 10pm we are ready to leave, the waitress comes out and puts 1 huge bill on the table. I can't remember the exact amount but the bill was around $1.3k - $1.5k --- This was 1 large bill for all 17 of us at the table. I told them that our orders were suppose to be separate and she responded with "Oh sorry, we forgot to do that" She also claimed there was no way for her to now separate the bill and that we'd have to figure it out.
So you have 17 buzzed/drunk people trying to remember what all we've drank/ate over the last 3-4 hours. Some are arguing that they did order shots but paid for them via cash at the time they ordered them and that they think they were still on this bill.
After about 20 minutes or so we got most of the bill sorted out but there was still around $100-$150 that was accounted for.
The waitress claims "Well, it has to be paid by somebody" I ask to speak with the manager.
The manager comes out and is immediately angry/defensive saying that it's not his fault that we cant figure it out. I chime back that it is their fault as we clearly said the bills would be separate from the first time we ordered. He threatened to call the police on us if the entire bill wasn't paid.
Eventually the other manager and myself agreed to split the remaining balance.
I was 22 y/o at the time. Looking back now, I wish I would have handled the situation differently and let the police come and sort it out.
****My #s of those attending and the amount of the bill may be slightly off do to just simply not remembering all the details....I possibly have told this story before on here so if I have, don't hold it against me if the #s are slightly different LOL*****