I'm curious to get people's take on a situation I was involved in a few days ago at a restaurant where there were three of us for dinner.
I'm in a long distance relationship with a guy I'll call Tom. Tom came to spend the weekend, and we decided to hang out with a friend of ours who I'll call Josh. I like Josh well enough, but frankly I prefer to not hang out with him in person all that often because he very frequently annoys me in various ways. In general, he's a very nice person, but he's just kind of loud, which annoys me. He also tends to be kind of inconsiderate; he once stayed over at my house for a night because he was having a dispute with his roommate, which was fine, but he drank all my gin (ok, not all, but almost a full bottle) and never offered to replace it. He's just kind of not my cup of tea.
But Tom wanted to see Josh, so I agreed, since I find Josh lots more tolerable when Tom is around. I texted Josh and said that Tom would be in town this weekend, and I asked if he wanted to hang out with us and have dinner, pretty much in those words. Josh said that he did want to hang out with us, so I told him we'd be at such and such restaurant at 5:45 pm.
Tom and I got to the restaurant early, and I texted and asked Josh if he could meet us a bit early, as well. He said he was sorry, but he couldn't, because he was just hopping into a cab and would be there at 5:45 pm. Ok, fine. At about 5:45 pm, after we were sitting down (we had a reservation), Josh texted and said he was sorry, but he would probably be there around 6:15 because he had lost track of time. Annoying, but ok. Josh finally arrived late and the restaurant was fairly empty, although there were people seated quite near us. At one point we got into a political discussion and he referred to Hilary Clinton as, and here I quote, "a fucking bitch." As always, his voice was loud, so I was embarrassed.
Anyway, at the end of the meal, I took out my credit card to pay. Tom asked me how much he owed me, but I waved him away, because when we go visiting each other, the one who's hosting pays. At that point, I kind of expected Josh to offer to pay, but instead, he just said, "Hey, That Darn Sock, thanks for dinner, I really appreciate it."
I was really irritated by this, because I did not offer to pay for his dinner. I asked if he wanted to hang out with Tom and me, which to my mind is not the same thing as saying, "Hey, can I take you to dinner?" To me, it's a totally different thing if two people are a couple and one pays for the other's dinner, and it's not license to assume that the person is paying for your dinner as well. I wound up paying for Josh's dinner too, and was really annoyed for the rest of the evening. (Tom agreed that Josh was out of line.)
So, how should I have handled this? I probably handled it badly; I probably should have just told Tom he owed me 20 bucks or whatever so that Josh would have understood that I wasn't picking up the tab for his dinner. Or am I just being unreasonable because it's usually assumed that if I pay for one person's dinner, I'm paying for everyone at the table? Or am I just annoyed because I'm annoyed by Josh in general? |
Video
Web
Image
Music
BlogU
