I don’t like going to dinner in big groups, especially when it’s a group of strangers. 

At this point in my stay, I have a good group of friends at the hostel. Obviously, not everyone at the hostel enjoys hanging out with us. Despite that, everyone wants to go to dinner together, and we roll up to dinner 11 people strong. There are 3 things I don’t like about going to large group dinners: 1. Picking a restaurant - everyone has an opinion 2. Conversation challenges - having an engaging conversation is hard when you’re eating with so many people 3. Splitting the bill sucks - especially when it’s a country where everyone is paying by cash.

The original place we decide on is closed by the time everyone is ready to leave. Instead, we walk 15 minutes to a spot that I ate at for lunch, supposedly open late. When we arrive, this place has already run out of food. We now have to walk and find a spot that everyone is okay eating at with 6 different people chiming in on where we should go. A few of us are on the same page and agree to go to the first place that can seat the big group. 15 minutes later, we’re sitting down, ready to eat. 

My buddy Adam is on the other side of the table, but it’s not a problem. I got Krish next to me and am definitely comfortable gesturing jokes across the table when the conversation goes stale. Everyone contributes to the conversation and joins Adam and me to put Krish on the spot and laugh with Ritu. The conversation is lively but definitely inappropriate for a public setting. We’re a bit unhinged and talking about crazy adventures as loud as we can. Despite all the challenges, we are having a fun time. Maybe this dinner won’t be so bad. 

When we start ordering, the waiter starts combining the orders into one. I think about mentioning that we want separate bills but anxiety about being pegged as a controlling person gets the better of me. It doesn’t help that people changed their orders a few times and the waiter looks like he is going to have a panic attack. I wish we chose a place that put descriptions on their menu items, but that’s also not realistic. The mess of an order comes to bite us when we get to the bill.

The waiter shows up and starts doing some calculator gymnastics. Two lads that are also staying at our hostel also come over from another table they’re sitting at. Apparently, they arrived later and just happened to choose the same restaurant as us. I think it’s fine until we’re arguing over numbers and it turns out they moved over to our table before they paid their bill. Now a new waiter brings over a bill that combines 13 people's worth of food items. If that isn’t bad enough, 2 people already left, handing cash to someone else, and 1 person paid at the counter. This is becoming one of those incredibly long math problems where Adam bought 145 apples and I need to find who planted the seeds. 

After 30 minutes of trying to figure out the bill, 3 people overpaid, 2 people paying by card are told to pay later, and the waiter is demanding that we are 1000 rupees short of our total. I was saying to just put it on my tab and get me out of my misery. Maybe it’s cultural or maybe it’s my high level of anxiety in these situations, but I don’t want to complicate things for service industry folks. Regardless, thank goodness for Adam. He takes charge and 15 minutes later, he shows the waiter the corrected math, hands over the collected money, and explains all the things the waiter did wrong. The waiter goes to get change and that should be the end of it.

Our luck is not that good. The restaurant managers who have been watching this fiasco show up and start redoing the math. In their slow, lethargic pace, the managers start going through the bills again. Looking back, I’m not upset that the managers checked the math, but I am upset that they waited until now to get involved. We are so fed up, we split the overpayment and try to get out of there. On the way out, the manager hands us the change and a group of us goes to get beers to decompress. 

Never again, I say, am I going to a large group dinner with hostel folks. That lasted less than 24 hours when we did it again.