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Perhaps nothing is more annoying than splitting a restaurant bill after a group dinner. It’s often like being graded on a curve, where the people who spent the most get a discount and the people who spent the least pay through the nose.

The pressure inspires many to just reflexively go with the flow, but the dynamics quickly get weird, frustrating, and awkward. Such was the case of one woman who’s now in hot water with her co-workers after insisting on only paying for her own meal. They all thought she was annoying, but pretty much everyone online is on her side.

A woman has been iced out by her co-workers after she refused to split a large dinner bill.

Personally, I’m the go with the flow type on this topic precisely because people get so heated about it, I don’t want to be involved. The insistence that everyone should just shut up and split a bill equally is every bit as weird as some people’s adamance about quibbling over $10, and I refuse to give time and energy to it. The extra $50 I don’t even owe is worth not having to listen to the rest of you argue, so just run my credit card and let’s go. Release me!

In this case, a woman took to Reddit arguing that she wanted to pay for exactly what she ordered and nothing more. For her co-workers, that was a big no-no, and now they’re acting strange around her and avoiding her at the office, and even accused her of being childish.

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The woman’s meal was half the price of everyone else’s, but they accused her of being cheap.

This situation really is ridiculous. “I ordered a more standard dish and a drink, which came to about $32,” the woman wrote in her post. “[The others] ordered appetizers, expensive dishes, desserts and various drinks, and the bill for the table came to more than $400.”

Even as an inveterate “here’s my credit card, I can’t be bothered to care about this person,” out of the gate, I’m annoyed. One dish and one drink is so many orders of magnitude different from three courses and several rounds of booze that splitting this equally is unreasonable.

Anna Tarazevich | Pexels | Canva Pro

Nevertheless, that’s what was suggested, and when she balked, it got tense. “I said I didn’t think it was fair, since I had spent less than half of what they had spent,” she wrote. There was an immediate vibe shift. “The atmosphere became strange. Some colleagues said that ‘the fun is in sharing’ and that I was being cheap.”

Okay, but did you “share” though? It doesn’t sound like this was a tapas bar or a family-style meal! Accordingly, the woman paid her share and left a hefty tip, but her co-workers have been unforgiving. “One of them even commented that I ‘ruined the night’ and that ‘adults know how to split the bill without complaining.'”

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Someone at the table should have taken the initiative to point out that she only spent $32.

People who quibble over a $10 discrepancy at dinners like this are one thing. People who quibble over being asked to pay $60 when all they spent was $32, as happened in this woman’s case, is quite another. That is an unreasonable expectation.

Commenters took huge issue with this too, especially her being called “cheap” and being accused of ruining the vibe for simply not wanting to double her bill. Several said that the bill’s handling should be hashed out before ordering to avoid such issues. That’s one way, and another is to do what I usually do: have the empathy and emotional intelligence to notice that someone at the table had nothing but a Diet Coke and an appetizer and speak up about it when the bill comes.

Personally, I always suggest that this person pay less and then the rest of us split the difference, to give the person an opportunity to either get out of overpaying or make clear they don’t care and are happy to split it regardless. That way, you avoid this awkwardness and “vibe killing” and can just enjoy yourselves, and nobody leaves aggravated.

“That’s not my job,” you complain. Yeah, you’re right, it’s not. But you also don’t get to get mad when someone justifiably doesn’t want to pay $60 for a $30 meal. That’s not their job either! See, this is why I just throw my credit card down and immediately go to the bathroom. You people drive me crazy. I am never leaving the house again!

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John Sundholm is a writer, editor, and video personality with 20 years of experience in media and entertainment. He covers culture, mental health, and human interest topics.