Slightly awkward situations
Yesterday I invited choir friends out for lunch to celebrate my birthday. I made it clear that I was paying for the meal and we had pre-ordered. ( In the past we have split the bill, but this was a special occasion and my way of thanking them for all the support they have given me since my husband died).
I had also asked them in advance to purchase their own drinks at the bar on arrival. (Maybe that was rude of me?) It was lunch time and the bar was not busy. It was not as if they were likely to be ignored or outmanoeuvred by men at the bar. However they just stood around chatting, not ordering drinks. After a few minutes one of the men arrived and ended up buying everyone’s drinks.
I found this really awkward.
Have you experienced an awkward situation?
I had also asked them in advance to purchase their own drinks at the bar on arrival. (Maybe that was rude of me?) It was lunch time and the bar was not busy. It was not as if they were likely to be ignored or outmanoeuvred by men at the bar. However they just stood around chatting, not ordering drinks. After a few minutes one of the men arrived and ended up buying everyone’s drinks.
I found this really awkward.
Have you experienced an awkward situation?
Comments
I never know whether to put my confusion down to my hearing meaning I might well not have heard something vital about what is happening or if it is just my lack of picking up the vibes of a situation due to my personality.
I wouldn’t assume that the others who were just waiting and chatting didn’t know that people were to get their own drinks.
I think most of the ladies are unaccustomed to buying their own drinks.
Anyone else had any awkward situations?
IME, men in particular are socialized to buy a round of drinks. It would be an unusual man (particularly a British man) who would go to the bar to get himself a drink without offering to get the drinks in for anyone in his group who was in the vicinity.
I think that the social expectation that men go to the bar to get drinks, and women sit at a table and are brought drinks is a lot weaker than it used to be, but it's still there, particularly amongst older people and amongst those who are not habitual pub drinkers.
I had occasion to chat to one of Mrs C's Girl Scouts the other day, while she was waiting to be picked up. Nice girl - I've known her since she was little - and we had a whole conversation where she tells me what she's been up to recently, how her older brother is getting on at his new school, and so on, when suddenly I noticed that she was wearing a hoodie with her sister's name on the back (I think it was from her soccer team). And so I had a sudden horror that she was in fact her sister, and that I had been addressing her by the wrong name for ten minutes.
I hadn't - she's just small, and fitted in to her sister's hoodie. But for a few minutes it was fairly horrifying, until I was able to discretely verify with Mrs C which sister I had been talking to.
Who pays when we're out is always awkward, particularly with family as I always want to treat the children and their spouses if they're with us, and my husband balks at that ("they're earning, we're not"). Also, more generally, it's awkward when out with friends and how to split the bill and whether you just split it equally or unequally if someone had something more expensive than someone else, and whether the service charge is included or not and whether you pay it or ask them to take it off and then tip with cash to make sure the staff get it and it doesn't go into the establishment's general funds.
We have to resort to subterfuge to not let my mother pay. Usually someone will "go to the bathroom" and intercept a waiter on the way to pay.
This was easier when everyone used cash regularly, because we'd all throw cash in a heap in the middle of the table, and people who ordered significantly more than the norm would naturally put more money in, so as long as you went to eat with decent people, it wasn't a problem. These days, nobody seems to have cash, so we're either getting separate checks (which is awkward when you're sharing starters and bottles of wine) or Venmoing money back and forth which feels very much more awkward.
"It's my round" is a very common thing here if you're out with a group of friends.
When you say he "does the same kind of thing about Trump and Farage", you mean he attacks them to get a rise out of people who like them, OR he defends them to get a rise out of people who hate them, OR...?
PS - there's a great passage in Spufford's 'Unapologetic' about (Field Marshall) Montgomery on his deathbed, and green shoots of new growth coming off gnarly old, almost dead, wood. I need to read the whole thing again.