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edges of reason

bottom of the bottle

from the cellar

The Splitting Headache

from the cellar

in good company

edges of reason

bottom of the bottle

The Splitting Headache

words

Moira Tirtha

Claire Adey

images

No items found.

Do you split the bill? Is reciprocity truly possible? Where do you draw the line?

MOIRA
I want to talk about splitting bills on dates.

CLAIRE
Yes! I want to talk about splitting group bills too.

MOIRA
Well, what prompted this was that [REDACTED] went on a date, and at the end, the guy asked her to transfer him. She dropped the most iconic line: “I just feel like [REDACTED] forgot that I’m a beautiful woman.” I cackled. Because honestly, men on first dates really are thinking that the splitting bill is the equality that feminists are fighting for.

CLAIRE
It’s not equality. Show me how a cis man has their life, money and privilege systematically taken away by childbirth and rearing children. Not to mention the pay gap, domestic labour, career penalties. Impossible in a way that knows no bounds.

MOIRA
And have we culturally forgotten about romance?

CLAIRE
[REDACTED] went on a date last night with a guy, we were talking about it and she was like, “I don’t know, it didn’t feel as sexy as I thought it would.” And my response was, did he pay? It’s not that I give a fuck whether he paid or not, but my mind automatically went there, which tells you how loaded that signifier still is. It’s a cultural conversation.

MOIRA
It is romantic to be generous, to spoil someone and take them out. It also leaves the door open for them to get the next date. Splitting the bill does,unfortunately, break the whole fantastical nature of a date – and I imagine that’s why restaurants don’t let you split the bill either. As soon as it is an object on the table, you become a customer, not a guest, doing math at the table.

CLAIRE
You remember the drinks you forgot you ordered.

MOIRA
And I personally hated splitting bills when I waited tables because I’m lazy and it kills your chances of getting a tip, but I did have to check myself on that, because the no-split rule works in favour of people who can afford not to think about it. The people most affected by an evenly split bill are the ones who can least afford it. And beyond that, someone has to front the money, someone has to chase, someone has to carry the cognitive load of splitting it afterwards. That labour falls to whoever is most financially anxious, not whoever can most afford it.

CLAIRE
I don’t think the answer is to never split evenly, but I think that the real conversation topic is, we all need to be way more okay with talking about finances and talking about money. If we understood each other’s financial situations better we’d all feel a lot more comfortable saying, “I actually can’t do this”. If you could just have more open conversations about it, it wouldn’t matter.

MOIRA
Or do the easier thing and go to a pub where you pay in rounds and don’t have to talk about it. Probably why they’re a good first date option.

CLAIRE
I also think this is why the rise of ‘Feed Me’, the $39 unlimited X, the $70 steak plus sides blah blah blah. Because people love the idea of going into a venue and going, I’m going to spend $40 and I know I’m gonna spend $40. Do you know what I mean? That’s become such an enticing value proposition.

MOIRA
I love that take. And, classic me to make everything about race, but there are racial dimensions, or cultural complexities to this. My migrant mother continues to be shook to the core when I’m to birthday dinners and we all split the bill. Because in Indonesian culture if you’re being invited somewhere, hosted by someone, the idea that you would pay is berserk.

CLAIRE
Well that is interesting.

MOIRA
I think when migrants, POC ones at least, find themselves in these situations, they’ll often do the polite, culturally ingrained thing and pick up the whole bill. But when that gesture isn’t legible to the people around them, it leaves them open to an ongoing deficit. Because paying for someone is cultural, it’s a gesture of respect. It means something different. You see those videos of Asian families racing to pay at restaurants, that’s more than a bit, it’s a deeply embedded social script. Which makes building the ‘it all comes out in the wash’ life a lot harder when the wash is running on a different cycle to everyone else at the table.

CLAIRE
And it’s not something that they feel comfortable engaging with – different cultural rulebook. If that’s you in this story, sorry, we haven’t included you.

MOIRA
There’s an impossibility to reconciling all the different cultural systems around this. Maybe that’s why some people just opt out of the accounting entirely.

CLAIRE
Sarah Huyler famously says in Anatomy of a Fall that reciprocity in relationships is not possible. There is no way to get full parity in any relationship you ever have. That’s just the nature of human beings. And I think we’ve gotten so obsessed with everything being fair that we’ve spent all this time trying to make it equal, when it just isn’t. That reciprocity does not exist is part of the buy-in of having relationships with people.

MOIRA
And it’s genuinely hard to practice. Like, we cook for our friends constantly – not because we want them to cook back, but because we want to. And yet if someone turned around and said, “Can I throw you some money for that?”

CLAIRE
I would be like, absolutely not.

MOIRA
It’s completely counter–

CLAIRE
–intuitive to what you’re doing, but it’s–

MOIRA
– also like, you know, how are you calculating this? Is this based entirely on the price of ingredients? What about my time, or my skills and experience? What about the care that I put into choosing what I’m cooking for you because I know what you like, your dietaries and not eating at the moment. Can you really put a price on that?

CLAIRE
I make you dinner, I buy steak, I buy a bunch of fancy vegetables, I make dessert, you come and you bring me a thirty-dollar bottle of wine. Great, amazing, perfect. Second concept. I make the exact same meal, you arrive and you’ve hand made a loaf of bread. In those two scenarios, one has way greater value to me and it’s a 30th of the price. How much is flour, salt and water?

MOIRA
Exactly.

CLAIRE
And that’s what I don’t like.

MOIRA
Thinking about reciprocity through the lens of money implies a tangibility or a certainty around what is and isn’t valuable, or how much value a thing has. It’s using market logic on human relationships.

CLAIRE
I want to be clear that I’m not dismissing the shame around not having money – that’s real and I take it seriously. But I do think people can also be very quick to say, “I wasn’t really part of that” or, “I didn’t get that thing” as a way of opting out of the discomfort entirely. And those are two very different things. If you’re with people you actually like and you genuinely can’t afford something, nine times out of ten you can just say so. And if you can’t – that’s worth clocking.

MOIRA
Clock your homies.

CLAIRE
There’s absolutely nothing worse in this fucking life of sin than trying to give someone something nice with absolutely nothing expected in return and they say “no” under the concept that they can’t immediately give you that exact thing back. What is the point of doing anything pleasurable and giving anything? People have absolutely lost their mind. You know when you’re like, “I’d really love to buy this for you”, and they’re like, “No. Oh my God, I absolutely could not let you pay for this”. It’s okay to say no once because I think that gives everybody an out. Any more times after that, I actually think you’re being a cunt.

MOIRA
It’s your own people pleasing issues. Do you keep count, consciously or unconsciously?

CLAIRE
No. Because to be honest, I am very lucky in the fact that lots of amazing things have happened to me. And I keep it at the forefront of my mind when I’m thinking about the way I interact in the world. I will also say this, when people aren’t like that, it becomes very apparent. And people just course correct.

MOIRA
Imma have to disagree. I think people whose entire world exists within one social class often can’t recognise generosity because they’ve never had to, nothing is ever a sacrifice. But I do think you’re different. There’s a cognisance on your part about how much you’ve benefited from other people’s generosity. Not everyone has that. We all know someone who always goes home with a full bag after a night out while everyone else’s is empty.

CLAIRE
And you know what? That will come back and bite them. Do you keep count?

MOIRA
I fear I am starting to. And I know that’s because I’m unemployed at the moment, so I’m feeling a way about not being able to be generous and I think that’s pushing me to keep count more. Not counting is a privilege.

CLAIRE
I think I have a smaller circle than you. You have a very big circle. I remember you telling me that you were having dinner with some people, and they were all like, can you send me $4.50 or something. And I was like, God, we’re going to hell in a hand basket if we’re asking everyone at the dinner to give me five bucks. Jesus Christ. So, what are Moira’s life rules for bill splitting?

MOIRA
Honestly, I think the rule for me is to just pay attention. I feel I have been so looked after by the universe that I’m still trying to repay the kindness that strangers and people have shown me. So even indirectly, I’ll keep putting generosity out into the world. But I think the ‘it all comes out in the wash’ philosophy only works if you’re lucky enough to have the right people around you. Not everyone is as lucky as us when it comes to friends.

CLAIRE
That’s true.

MOIRA
What are Claire’s rules for bill splitting?

CLAIRE
My thing is sub $20, don’t you dare try to send it to me. I don’t want you to send me under $20. I don’t want to send you under $20. If I have a relationship with you, there’s a high chance I see you once a month. If you bought me a coffee, I’m not sending you that money and I never will. And I hope that everybody reading this understands this. And I will buy you a coffee and I will pay for something somewhere down the line. It may not be the next time. It could be the three times after that. I just am not going to do that. Number two, I think that if we’re doing something together, like if we’re going to dinner and the movies and you booked the tickets, I’m paying for dinner. It’s not exactly equal but that’s just how it is. I think that intention, time and attention matter just as much as money, which is going back to my bread making of it all. You can make something where the ingredients cost nothing, but the intention is everything. We’re so hung up on financial value that we forget to account for everything else.

MOIRA
Yes. And thinking about everything in financial terms ends up obscuring all the other ways people show up for each other – the invisible labour, and all of these other non-economic forms of care and generosity that exist and are out there for you in the world. You know, like do a friend a favour. If a friend helps me move, I’m not paying them $35 an hour. I’ll cook them dinner, help them move next time, be a reference on their CV, fuck knows.

CLAIRE
Maybe living this way is easier for us because we’re very friend focused.

MOIRA
Extremely focused. Our friends are the most important things.

CLAIRE
The most important things in our lives – and we’re givers. There’s a component of us that will always enter situations not expecting as much as we’re willing to give. And I think it’s made our lives so good. But what does that look like for somebody who isn’t like that? What would you say to someone who hasn’t built these systems?

MOIRA
I mean we lucked out with our friends but yeah, I think they’re missing out.

CLAIRE
Stop thinking about everything like it’s a one-week chunk of time. Life is long.

MOIRA
Life is fucking long. Please don’t make it longer by making me do maths and just pay shit forward.

Moira Tirtha is Veraison's dad and a serial over-committer with fingers in far too many pies. Moira also runs Nongkrong with their brother, Darryl Tirtha.

Claire Adey either loves or hates things– there's no middle ground. She also runs Into It, a communications and content studio specialising in all things food and beverage storytelling.

No items found.

from the cellar

in good company

edges of reason

bottom of the bottle

The Splitting Headache

words

Moira Tirtha

Claire Adey

images

No items found.

Do you split the bill? Is reciprocity truly possible? Where do you draw the line?

MOIRA
I want to talk about splitting bills on dates.

CLAIRE
Yes! I want to talk about splitting group bills too.

MOIRA
Well, what prompted this was that [REDACTED] went on a date, and at the end, the guy asked her to transfer him. She dropped the most iconic line: “I just feel like [REDACTED] forgot that I’m a beautiful woman.” I cackled. Because honestly, men on first dates really are thinking that the splitting bill is the equality that feminists are fighting for.

CLAIRE
It’s not equality. Show me how a cis man has their life, money and privilege systematically taken away by childbirth and rearing children. Not to mention the pay gap, domestic labour, career penalties. Impossible in a way that knows no bounds.

MOIRA
And have we culturally forgotten about romance?

CLAIRE
[REDACTED] went on a date last night with a guy, we were talking about it and she was like, “I don’t know, it didn’t feel as sexy as I thought it would.” And my response was, did he pay? It’s not that I give a fuck whether he paid or not, but my mind automatically went there, which tells you how loaded that signifier still is. It’s a cultural conversation.

MOIRA
It is romantic to be generous, to spoil someone and take them out. It also leaves the door open for them to get the next date. Splitting the bill does,unfortunately, break the whole fantastical nature of a date – and I imagine that’s why restaurants don’t let you split the bill either. As soon as it is an object on the table, you become a customer, not a guest, doing math at the table.

CLAIRE
You remember the drinks you forgot you ordered.

MOIRA
And I personally hated splitting bills when I waited tables because I’m lazy and it kills your chances of getting a tip, but I did have to check myself on that, because the no-split rule works in favour of people who can afford not to think about it. The people most affected by an evenly split bill are the ones who can least afford it. And beyond that, someone has to front the money, someone has to chase, someone has to carry the cognitive load of splitting it afterwards. That labour falls to whoever is most financially anxious, not whoever can most afford it.

CLAIRE
I don’t think the answer is to never split evenly, but I think that the real conversation topic is, we all need to be way more okay with talking about finances and talking about money. If we understood each other’s financial situations better we’d all feel a lot more comfortable saying, “I actually can’t do this”. If you could just have more open conversations about it, it wouldn’t matter.

MOIRA
Or do the easier thing and go to a pub where you pay in rounds and don’t have to talk about it. Probably why they’re a good first date option.

CLAIRE
I also think this is why the rise of ‘Feed Me’, the $39 unlimited X, the $70 steak plus sides blah blah blah. Because people love the idea of going into a venue and going, I’m going to spend $40 and I know I’m gonna spend $40. Do you know what I mean? That’s become such an enticing value proposition.

MOIRA
I love that take. And, classic me to make everything about race, but there are racial dimensions, or cultural complexities to this. My migrant mother continues to be shook to the core when I’m to birthday dinners and we all split the bill. Because in Indonesian culture if you’re being invited somewhere, hosted by someone, the idea that you would pay is berserk.

CLAIRE
Well that is interesting.

MOIRA
I think when migrants, POC ones at least, find themselves in these situations, they’ll often do the polite, culturally ingrained thing and pick up the whole bill. But when that gesture isn’t legible to the people around them, it leaves them open to an ongoing deficit. Because paying for someone is cultural, it’s a gesture of respect. It means something different. You see those videos of Asian families racing to pay at restaurants, that’s more than a bit, it’s a deeply embedded social script. Which makes building the ‘it all comes out in the wash’ life a lot harder when the wash is running on a different cycle to everyone else at the table.

CLAIRE
And it’s not something that they feel comfortable engaging with – different cultural rulebook. If that’s you in this story, sorry, we haven’t included you.

MOIRA
There’s an impossibility to reconciling all the different cultural systems around this. Maybe that’s why some people just opt out of the accounting entirely.

CLAIRE
Sarah Huyler famously says in Anatomy of a Fall that reciprocity in relationships is not possible. There is no way to get full parity in any relationship you ever have. That’s just the nature of human beings. And I think we’ve gotten so obsessed with everything being fair that we’ve spent all this time trying to make it equal, when it just isn’t. That reciprocity does not exist is part of the buy-in of having relationships with people.

MOIRA
And it’s genuinely hard to practice. Like, we cook for our friends constantly – not because we want them to cook back, but because we want to. And yet if someone turned around and said, “Can I throw you some money for that?”

CLAIRE
I would be like, absolutely not.

MOIRA
It’s completely counter–

CLAIRE
–intuitive to what you’re doing, but it’s–

MOIRA
– also like, you know, how are you calculating this? Is this based entirely on the price of ingredients? What about my time, or my skills and experience? What about the care that I put into choosing what I’m cooking for you because I know what you like, your dietaries and not eating at the moment. Can you really put a price on that?

CLAIRE
I make you dinner, I buy steak, I buy a bunch of fancy vegetables, I make dessert, you come and you bring me a thirty-dollar bottle of wine. Great, amazing, perfect. Second concept. I make the exact same meal, you arrive and you’ve hand made a loaf of bread. In those two scenarios, one has way greater value to me and it’s a 30th of the price. How much is flour, salt and water?

MOIRA
Exactly.

CLAIRE
And that’s what I don’t like.

MOIRA
Thinking about reciprocity through the lens of money implies a tangibility or a certainty around what is and isn’t valuable, or how much value a thing has. It’s using market logic on human relationships.

CLAIRE
I want to be clear that I’m not dismissing the shame around not having money – that’s real and I take it seriously. But I do think people can also be very quick to say, “I wasn’t really part of that” or, “I didn’t get that thing” as a way of opting out of the discomfort entirely. And those are two very different things. If you’re with people you actually like and you genuinely can’t afford something, nine times out of ten you can just say so. And if you can’t – that’s worth clocking.

MOIRA
Clock your homies.

CLAIRE
There’s absolutely nothing worse in this fucking life of sin than trying to give someone something nice with absolutely nothing expected in return and they say “no” under the concept that they can’t immediately give you that exact thing back. What is the point of doing anything pleasurable and giving anything? People have absolutely lost their mind. You know when you’re like, “I’d really love to buy this for you”, and they’re like, “No. Oh my God, I absolutely could not let you pay for this”. It’s okay to say no once because I think that gives everybody an out. Any more times after that, I actually think you’re being a cunt.

MOIRA
It’s your own people pleasing issues. Do you keep count, consciously or unconsciously?

CLAIRE
No. Because to be honest, I am very lucky in the fact that lots of amazing things have happened to me. And I keep it at the forefront of my mind when I’m thinking about the way I interact in the world. I will also say this, when people aren’t like that, it becomes very apparent. And people just course correct.

MOIRA
Imma have to disagree. I think people whose entire world exists within one social class often can’t recognise generosity because they’ve never had to, nothing is ever a sacrifice. But I do think you’re different. There’s a cognisance on your part about how much you’ve benefited from other people’s generosity. Not everyone has that. We all know someone who always goes home with a full bag after a night out while everyone else’s is empty.

CLAIRE
And you know what? That will come back and bite them. Do you keep count?

MOIRA
I fear I am starting to. And I know that’s because I’m unemployed at the moment, so I’m feeling a way about not being able to be generous and I think that’s pushing me to keep count more. Not counting is a privilege.

CLAIRE
I think I have a smaller circle than you. You have a very big circle. I remember you telling me that you were having dinner with some people, and they were all like, can you send me $4.50 or something. And I was like, God, we’re going to hell in a hand basket if we’re asking everyone at the dinner to give me five bucks. Jesus Christ. So, what are Moira’s life rules for bill splitting?

MOIRA
Honestly, I think the rule for me is to just pay attention. I feel I have been so looked after by the universe that I’m still trying to repay the kindness that strangers and people have shown me. So even indirectly, I’ll keep putting generosity out into the world. But I think the ‘it all comes out in the wash’ philosophy only works if you’re lucky enough to have the right people around you. Not everyone is as lucky as us when it comes to friends.

CLAIRE
That’s true.

MOIRA
What are Claire’s rules for bill splitting?

CLAIRE
My thing is sub $20, don’t you dare try to send it to me. I don’t want you to send me under $20. I don’t want to send you under $20. If I have a relationship with you, there’s a high chance I see you once a month. If you bought me a coffee, I’m not sending you that money and I never will. And I hope that everybody reading this understands this. And I will buy you a coffee and I will pay for something somewhere down the line. It may not be the next time. It could be the three times after that. I just am not going to do that. Number two, I think that if we’re doing something together, like if we’re going to dinner and the movies and you booked the tickets, I’m paying for dinner. It’s not exactly equal but that’s just how it is. I think that intention, time and attention matter just as much as money, which is going back to my bread making of it all. You can make something where the ingredients cost nothing, but the intention is everything. We’re so hung up on financial value that we forget to account for everything else.

MOIRA
Yes. And thinking about everything in financial terms ends up obscuring all the other ways people show up for each other – the invisible labour, and all of these other non-economic forms of care and generosity that exist and are out there for you in the world. You know, like do a friend a favour. If a friend helps me move, I’m not paying them $35 an hour. I’ll cook them dinner, help them move next time, be a reference on their CV, fuck knows.

CLAIRE
Maybe living this way is easier for us because we’re very friend focused.

MOIRA
Extremely focused. Our friends are the most important things.

CLAIRE
The most important things in our lives – and we’re givers. There’s a component of us that will always enter situations not expecting as much as we’re willing to give. And I think it’s made our lives so good. But what does that look like for somebody who isn’t like that? What would you say to someone who hasn’t built these systems?

MOIRA
I mean we lucked out with our friends but yeah, I think they’re missing out.

CLAIRE
Stop thinking about everything like it’s a one-week chunk of time. Life is long.

MOIRA
Life is fucking long. Please don’t make it longer by making me do maths and just pay shit forward.

Moira Tirtha is Veraison's dad and a serial over-committer with fingers in far too many pies. Moira also runs Nongkrong with their brother, Darryl Tirtha.

Claire Adey either loves or hates things– there's no middle ground. She also runs Into It, a communications and content studio specialising in all things food and beverage storytelling.

No items found.

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Thanks for reading.

Veraison's "Internatty" guides are a tool for navigating the broader world through a local lens. Our favourite discoveries from across the globe.

We published a lot of wonderful writing from friends and colleagues back in Veraison's days as a physical publication, and we wanted to give some of it a permanent home. Our "From The Cellar" articles are a curation of our favourite pieces from Veraison's print days, brought online for you.

Veraison's "Microclimate" guides are focused on what's happening here in Naarm. These guides try to shine a light on some of the often overlooked aspects of this ridiculous city of ours.

"Edges Of Reason" is a recurring chit-chat between besties Claire and Moira; a (very) loosely structured exploration of ideas, sometimes over a bottle of wine, with much vim and vigour.

The "Bottom Of The Bottle" article series is our long-form meandering exploration of ideas, championing the kinds of conversations you might get into when you're 750ml deep with a friend or two.

"BYO Club" is Darryl's routine roundup of the best spots to bring your best botts (and friends, of course). Each BYO Club Guide is compiled with a different theme in mind.

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