Separate Checks Please

I learned the importance of that phrase after being around cheap skates for a while. There are frugal, budget-minded people worthy of admiration and then there are abusive serial cheapskates. Surely there are more descriptive words to use when it comes to these kinds of peoples but for now we’ll just use serial cheapskate.

My first encounter with a serial cheapskate happened pretty early on in Life, but I wasn’t yet equipped to recognize his overwhelming symptoms. To date he still holds the super-serial cheapskate title. That would be an uncle by marriage. He married my aunt when they were both pretty young. They proceeded to mate and produced 5 boys, one was stillborn, but the 4 that did make it past toddlerism were like all boys: loud and hungry all the time.

Given those statistics I understand their need for conservation and the like, but this particular uncle pushed it to the limit. I spent a lot of time at their house growing up- that explains my affinity for guy vs. girl friends, excessive drinking and a ton of other pluses and minuses, but that’s not the point here. I remember my aunt used to torture us by cooking the most horrendous meal of all: fish head soup. Days when the soup was the only thing to eat around the house were hell on earth and no amount of prayer ever fixed it for me. She would not allow us to eat anything else on those days, we used to have to wait for them both to go to bed and sneak into the kitchen to make ham sandwiches with lots of mustard to erase the nasty invasion of fish head taste from our tongues. The reason for the soup was always punishment I'm sure. They said it was “saving money” as the heads were almost free at the grocery store’s fish counter. The fish guy should’ve been paying them to take those away not the other way around.

Their idea of frivolous spending was to take us to Burger King. Burger King in those days had the all-you-can-eat salad bar, so this uncle being the “saver” he was used to buy one salad plate and proceed to eat to his heart’s content (which usually took a long while) and then let each waiting kid take turns using the plate. What a sight; a fast food family outing and a row of 5 kids waiting to use the disintegrating Styrofoam oval plate to partake of the Jell-O and whatever else a 10 year old finds appetizing from a Burger King salad bar. This aunt and uncle also used to sneak out of the house way early on Saturday mornings so they wouldn’t have to take the whole brood and spend too much money on breakfast. A couple of us figured it out and made various attempts at being up at the crack of dawn on the Saturdays we thought they’d make it out to breakfast, but it became increasingly difficult to track them and tack onto them as their times and exit points always varied. We once thought of spending the night in the backseat of the car, but that didn’t work out either- their ’71 Toyota Corolla always smelled of rank gasoline and stale grease.

Other cheapskates included a roommate who would, without fail, swipe the tip money every time we’d eat out. She’d pretend to go to the bathroom and wait ‘till everyone exited the restaurant, usually an IHOP after work, and then swing back by the table and pocket the tip. She also used to “miscalculate” her own tab; she’d forget to add the 6% tax and the tip for her portion of the bill. She also forgot that she used to eat a sizable portion of whatever appetizer was ordered. We stopped going out with her. The worst part about the whole thing was that she herself was also a waitress.

Then there’re two of my neighbors. I’d meet them out for drinks at the neighborhood joint and usually buy a round of beers or two- they never once bought me a beer. They’d gorge on .25c wings and $1.50 black labels, all the while complaining of being broke, and never see it fit to at least offer a beer. I later became friends with the girl who bartends there and figured they were using my tip money to cover most of their tabs- cheap bastards. That’s beyond cheap though. If you don’t have money to go “waste” money on a beer at the local bar then stay home or get a second job or cut out other stuff so you can afford the beer, but don’t jip the bartender or take your neighbor’s money to cover your own tab.

It’s always separate checks unless the group is entirely comprised of people who are aware of what they consume, can add and have no problem leaving the appropriate compensation for the bartender or server. And if you don’t think you have any cheap friends then you’re probably the cheap bastard everyone complains about in your group. And if you think you’re entitled to underpay because you think your friends are better off than you are then not only are you the cheap bastard, you are also a complete asshole as that is not your decision to make.