General Etiquette > Life...in general

Seperate Checks

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miranova:
I was also wondering about the business expense accounting before it got brought up.  I know that my ex's company was very strict about expense accounting, he once got called to the carpet because his receipts from a local hole in the wall catering joint were too generic and looked like something you could purchase yourself at any office supply store, probably because that's where the restaurant got them.  Of course the credit card statement showed the name of the restaurant but that wasn't good enough....they didn't like the handwritten itemized ticket and basically accused him of forging it because it didn't look "official" enough.  There is no way these people ever would have accepted only a dollar amount from a restaurant with no itemized ticket.

Someone mentioned spouses getting seperate tickets, my husband and I actually have to do this sometimes, because every now and then I will accompany him on a business trip.  His meals are provided by his company, while mine of course are not.  He hates asking for seperate bills but only because I am his wife and he feels like he has to explain it to every server so they don't think he is just cheap and refusing to pay for his date's meal.   :P  I keep trying to tell him that the server has no idea who we are and is not going to think less of him. 

lowspark:
I was just in Dallas this weekend with 5 girfriends and we ate out at table-service restaurants for five meals. Two of those meals were at upscale restaurants, one being a chef-owned very classy place. Of the five restaurants, we only remembered to ask one time to get the check split as we were ordering. Every other time, the server asked us if we wanted it split, including the chef restaurant. Not once did they indicate that it was any inconvenience or even any extra trouble. It was just a matter of fact question of which option we wanted, asked in the same manner that they might say, "do you want the soup or salad with that?"

My son is at the University of Texas in Austin and we've visited him many times over these last four years. Not once have we eaten at a chain restaurant. Like I said in an earlier post, I never eat at national chains unless I'm with a group and that's where the group has chosen to go, and rather than cause upset, I just go along.

Some (note that I didn't say "all") people who live on the east/west coasts believe that "flyover" country is homogenous and everything is a chain restaurant.
Yeah. I think that's the general impression. In fact, however, it's nothing at all like that in any of the cities in Texas that I'm familiar (or at least somewhat familiar) with. Houston, where I live, Austin, San Antonio and Dallas/Fort Worth all have an abundance of independent restaurants and local chains.

By the way, my other son recently graduated Columbia University in Manhattan so I've also been to New York many times. We never ate at any chains there either, but I did see that there are many representatives of those national chains in New York just as there are in other parts of the country.

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