DEAR MISS MANNERS: I have a number of friends I regularly meet for meals out, as well as for friends’ birthdays. We’ve been friends for going on 40 years and first began socializing after college, when all of us were starting our careers, paying off loans and living on shoestring budgets.
Decades later, we still keep up the tradition of paying for our own meals, even on occasions such as birthdays. The group always covers the check of someone celebrating a birthday, but we don’t consider these gatherings to be occasions where a “host” pays. Someone will just send the group a text saying, “It’s Bob’s birthday on Tuesday, so where should we meet?”
If, for example, we celebrate with a cookout in someone’s yard, we all happily chip in for the groceries.
Are we violating any principles of etiquette by continuing to gather on these terms? We’re all still happy with the arrangements, and for us, it’s the company that matters rather than protocol around picking up the tab.
GENTLE READER: You have all been friends for 40 years, your system works, you’re having fun, everything is going fine — so are you seriously asking Miss Manners to barge in and spoil it all?
Why would you want to do that?
Perhaps because you have been hearing of the prevalence of bait-and-switch entertaining, where people issue what seem to be hospitable invitations — and then, after these are accepted, they spring the requirement that the guests must cater or pay. Yes, that is a dirty trick that Miss Manners has been trying to squelch.
But it is the deceit involved that makes it wrong. There is nothing bad about people deciding to go out together and pay their own way, or getting together for a cooperative meal, where each contributes food.
But there would be something mean about an outsider’s condemning their enjoyment.
Please send your questions to Miss Manners at missmanners.com, by email to [email protected], or through postal mail to Miss Manners, Andrews McMeel Syndication, 1130 Walnut St., Kansas City, MO 64106.
