Dear Quentin,
I even have friend whom I like very much. He’s one in every of those people I feel very comfortable around, as if I even have known him for years. It’s hard to make friends in Recent York. People have so little time for friendship after work, the gym, kickboxing classes, therapy, checking their stock portfolio and, frankly, plotting their next move to climb up the company ladder. I grew up within the Midwest, so I expected people to have more time to develop friendships. This friend has put in the trouble, meaning we meet once per week for dinner for about one and a half hours.
He called me this morning to ask me to a concert at Carnegie Hall. I’m not an enormous classical-music buff (I often go to sleep at operas) but I said I’d go and would attempt to develop a taste for classical music. It beats sitting at home or sitting through all of those advertisements on the cinema. He said, “Great, I sit up for seeing you.” But before we hung up the phone, he added, “What can be nice is if you happen to took me to dinner.” It was 8 a.m. — early to call anyone, but my point is that I used to be drained — so I said, “Sure!”
Nonetheless, I used to be shocked and didn’t know what to say. I even have invited him to the theater prior to now and didn’t expect him to purchase me dinner. In truth, the last time I brought him to the theater, I also brought one other friend and ended up bringing that other friend for dinner! I didn’t mind, as I see it as “what goes around, comes around,” in way. I try not to maintain an accounting of who’s inviting whom, and assume that all of it works out square and even within the wash. But now I’m faced with a night with this friend where I feel obliged, or forced, to purchase him dinner.
It takes the great out of the gesture if you have got been instructed to take out your bank card. What would you do? Is that this normal behavior?
Friend In Need
Related: ‘I felt humiliated’: She slipped the waiter her bank card on her option to the restroom. Is it emasculating for a lady to pay for dinner on a primary date?
“Some people have certain social protocols to make life easier, especially in an expensive city like Recent York.”
Dear Friend,
What can be nice — to make use of your friend’s phrase — is that if he had worded his query in another way: “Would you prefer to see this concert at Carnegie Hall? I’ll get the tickets, and you’ll be able to get dinner.” It’s not essentially the most polished way of proffering an invite, but at the very least it establishes the conditions up front. You wouldn’t like to simply accept a free ticket from a stranger on the road who then pointed at a close-by restaurant and added, “Now you have got to purchase me dinner!” Taking him to dinner seems fair, but being asked to accomplish that after you accepted his theater invitation is a rug pull.
There’s one other, unspoken issue here. The invitation seems pointed, and if it seems pointed, it probably is pointed. You may have your individual social contract, which could also be less transactional on the surface but may not work as consistently, leaving room for a missed dinner invitation here and a missed theater invitation there. That may leave individuals who have a special mode of behavior with a bee of their bonnet — “I paid the last time we went to Carnegie Hall, and he didn’t even buy me dinner!” — even if you happen to feel such as you returned the favor in other ways.
Some people have certain social protocols to make life easier, especially in an expensive city like Recent York. For instance, if one person buys a $20 glass of wine, it’s polite for them to inform their dinner companion, “Let me leave the $20 tip, as I had a drink and I don’t think it’s fair that you must pay for my alcohol.” And the subsequent time they meet and the identical thing happens with the opposite friend, they will say, “I’ll get the tip.” That’s, the protocol is known. The issue here is that tickets to Carnegie Hall range from $81 to $224, so it’s not an inexpensive night out.
What do you do? You won’t benefit from the concert, especially as you’re only going because he had a spare ticket and you think that you’re doing him a favor by trying to not sleep through a recital. And also you actually won’t enjoy your meal, knowing that you have got been instructed to provide your bank card at the tip of it. The fantastic thing about offering an invite is that it’s a present, a present with monetary value, sure, and in addition one that claims your friend desires to spend time with you. So that you won’t be doing him any favors by going now.
If you have got, say, three days or more before the event, decline. Make a polite excuse, and the subsequent time you meet for dinner, pick up the bill.
You possibly can email The Moneyist with any financial and ethical questions at qfottrell@marketwatch.com, and follow Quentin Fottrell on X, the platform formerly referred to as Twitter.
The Moneyist regrets he cannot reply to questions individually.
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