It’s nice to drink with friends, but if the friends are Larry David-esque tightwads, it’s not necessarily so nice at the end of the evening. A few years ago, I found myself in the rather fortunate situation of having 20 or so people to go out and drink with on a semi-frequent basis. This was good for a number of reasons, but could get bad depending on who I had the pleasure (or terrible misfortune) of sitting next to as in the group because of body smells and bad conversations.  

The worst part of the evening always came at the end of the night when it was time to pay the tab. The particular establishment we frequented liked us all to pay together, which should have been no problem, right?

Wrong. There were always people who would strategically leave the table after consuming four beers, three shots of Jack Daniels, and one "Blow Job" and carelessly toss a tenner on the table to pay for their drinks, as if it would cover their entire bill. In that little group, there were also people who generously left without paying a dime, confident in the fact that the bill would somehow miraculously “get taken care of”.

By last call, half of us would be drunk off our asses.  We would have a ginormous tab, leaving the drunkest stragglers to try and determine who should pay what. The designated drivers would rightfully argue that it wasn’t necessary for them to leave thirty dollars for their two diet cokes, the rest of us would bicker amongst ourselves, and the waitress would stare at us with absolute hate in her eyes. Eventually, more of us would be coaxed into paying way more than our fair share, and the generous tips we would have normally left became negligible.  

The next day, the Facebook wars would start as the angrier members of our little motley group would try to rout out the cheapos. Sometimes it was a genuine mistake, but more often than not, it was the youngest guy at the table, who had somewhere along the way failed to learn the lesson that not all beer is free.

Once we singled him out, it was easy to get him on the straight and narrow. All it took were a few empty threats and the not-so-subtle theft of his Harry Potter book, which he carried around with him for reasons unknown.

Looking back, I am trying to figure out what we should have done to avoid the problem in the first place.