Gut busting with chicken chow mein, nursing a fried rice hangover, your frenzied hour of pillaging the steam trays quickly dissolves into a table full of sticky-smeared plates, bloated bellies, and quiet groaning.
Folks, if you’re like me this scene is called The End of The Buffet, a dimly-lit freeze-frame featuring you and your friends lazily sliding in chairs with slack jaws and heavy eyelids.
And it gets worse, too.
The chipper waitress drops off the bill and everybody just eyes each other suspiciously. Who owes who money? Who ordered drinks and who didn’t? Is anyone riding a fat paycheck high and feeling generous? Since I am an extremely cheap person, I generally choose this exact moment to skedaddle to the bathroom in the hopes that everyone else will overpay and allow me to just drop a fiver on the stack before heading out.
Of course, it never works out that way.
Instead, I return to an untouched bill and generally get pegged as Math Guy, also known as The Job Nobody Wants After Dinner. See, my friends start chatting about what movie to see and I’m suddenly stuck with my head down, brows furrowed, figuring out tips, collecting cash, and trying to follow the paper trails of who paid what.
If you’re hanging out with me and my friends then Math Guy is a doubly terrible job because we’re always forty bucks short. People shrug, eye contact is avoided, and there are some phantom wallet reaches, until we figure out that two people didn’t add tax and tip and one guy still needs to get cash from the bank machine.
Holla if you been there.
Math Guys and Math Girls of the world, we feel each other’s pain. It’s tough asking people to put more money in and sometimes we just reach into our own wallets to get the job done. Twenties are broken, coins are counted, and there is constant checking and rechecking that it all adds up right.
Yes, if you’re picking up what I’m putting down, then you know that moment of quiet satisfaction when you finally close that sticky, vinyl, duck-sauce smeared billfold over a stack of crumpled bills and sliding coins.
Because at that exact moment the shackles of Math Guy are finally busted.
And you’re free.
AWESOME!
Huh. I’ve never had this difficulty. We all just go to counter and pay separately, telling the person what meal/drink we had so we can pay the exact amount. And then, sure, someone might be generous and cover the shared appetisers. But a Maths Guy/Girl has never been established or needed.
Haha, I always used to get food with a few friends at places where each entre ordered was no more than $12 or so, yet for whatever reason we always brought $20 bills to pay with. “All I have is a 20”, is pretty much what each of us would say. Ideally, we would all go to the cashier and get change for our 20’s to make dividing the bill easier, but of course we were all stubborn. I was usually the guy that ultimately had all the 20’s thrown in front of me and was told to “just make it work”. This always led to a confusing argument about who owed what tip, and how much each person should be getting back. I’ve finally learned to bring cash in increments of 5’s and singles, or just use a card.
You realize, I hope that you can say “no” to being the math guy. Let someone else do it and liberate yourself!
I think the only time I’ve done this is with my bff. We usually just try to make it even though or if one doesn’t have cash, the one with the card can pay and the one with cash can tip and buy us ice cream later.
I HATE being stuck in the position of math girl! When we go out for big family dinners with extended family, there was always someone who shorted their share by a $20 or more and as math girl I’d be stuck putting in that $20…grrrr! I was always relieved when someone else would take over as math guy/girl so I wouldn’t be stuck shelling out more money. When it all comes out evenly and correctly, that IS blissful relief!
Thinking that the popcorn chicken is over and then finding one last piece