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The odds are pretty high that neither you nor anyone you know has ever desired to share a meal with The Federalist’s Eddie Scarry. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if you have no goddamned idea who he even is — although he has made an appearance or two here before.
This time, though, he’s not taking pictures of AOC from behind in order to accuse her of not looking sufficiently impoverished — he’s whining about how horrible it is to go out to dinner with other human beings.
Admittedly — I kind of love when The Federalist tries to go non-political, because it really gives the writers an opportunity to show us what multifaceted assholes they truly are.
In this one, titled “Please Don’t Ask Me To Dinner And Then Want To Split An Entrée,” Scarry rails against all of the definitely imaginary people out there who are dying to split a meal with him but also want to split food with him that he doesn’t like.
He begins:
Maybe it’s just that dining out isn’t my idea of a good time, but I really need an end to the expanding assumption that agreeing to do so means agreeing to share.
When I accept an invite to eat out, I’m not cuffing myself to my dinner or lunch or brunch companion(s). I’m simply saying sure, I’ll go to the restaurant, eat with you and enjoy each other’s company. Yet, once seated, I’m routinely asked to share.
Something tells me that Scarry, author of a book titled Liberal Misery: How the Hateful Left Sucks Joy Out of Everything and Everyone, in which we can assume he blames us for what a joyless fuck he clearly is, is not the world’s most sought after dinner companion.
“Let’s get some things to share.”
“Let’s get an appetizer to share.”
“We can split the check.”
No! Let’s not! The hell we can!
So, first of all, who is eating a non-soup-or-salad appetizer by themselves, unless they order it for their actual meal? Second, for normal people, these things are usually phrased as questions rather than demands. No one is going to get mad if you don’t want to do sharesies!
To friends, family, and colleagues — past, present, and future — I don’t want to be rude. In fact, assuming that we’ll each order what we’d personally like for ourselves and that we’ll pay for those things on our own is the polite thing to do. On the other hand, putting me in the uncomfortable position of potentially having to say, “No, I don’t want to split the raw ground beef you’ve just referred to as ‘steak tartare’”— well, that may require some self-reflecting on your part.
That’s not an uncomfortable position, you can just do it normal and say “Oh, no thank you.” Never in my life have I heard of anyone having had this problem before. I’ve never had this problem before and I am a reformed picky eater. Everyone I’ve ever known just adjusts based on the company they are with, whether they like the same things, whether the stuff they do get costs about the same. It’s not hard!
I totally get people not wanting to be in a group dinner situation where everyone is ordering a lot and they’re only getting something small and one drink or something like that and are then expected to split the check — and so does everyone else at this point. It’s like a meme by now. Which is why every time I’ve seen that situation play out in the last decade and a half, at least, someone says to the person who didn’t have a lot “Hey, you didn’t have a lot why don’t you just pay part of the tip or something and the rest of us will split it?” or even “Oh, you only had _____, don’t worry about it.”
Perhaps I just hang out with nicer people than Eddie Scarry does?
There is apparently some widely held belief that agreeing to dine out with others comes with the expectation that splitting different things is part of the fun— the experience. Someone tell me where exactly that is written.
You may certainly try a piece of my food. You may have a sip of my beer. (I don’t order “cocktails,” which are a scam.) That should be enough.
Sharing creates problems. We may not like the same things. I may want more than you. I may have a bigger appetite. What I order might be exponentially more expensive than what you order.
Yeah, there are lots of people who don’t want to share food — or can’t, because of dietary restrictions. No one is going to make you share food. You can politely decline …which seems a lot easier than imagining it some kind of Kantian categorical imperative, internally seething about it and then going and writing a whiny article in The Federalist.
The whole concept of shared dining is straight out of The Communist Manifesto. From each according to his appetite, to each according to, “We’ll split the check down the middle!”
Bye. Not interested. I’m an American, thanks.
And Real Americans(TM) don’t split an order of mozzarella sticks! They eat the whole thing by themselves, and then eat a whole other meal on top of that!
While this is not, in fact, straight out of The Communist Manifesto, I will admit that (in my personal experience) socialists do seem to be more fond of potluck dinners than the general population.
Get whatever you want. I’ll get what I want. No, you won’t “just order for the table.” No, I don’t “just wanna split it.” I’m not even that hungry. Why would I volunteer to subsidize your meal? Worse, why would you assume that I should?
Maybe you like sampling different things. That’s okay. But what I want on the menu is a commitment. Don’t make your lack thereof my problem.
We’ll just take the check. Separate.
Is that a mic drop?
As I said before, I like these non-political articles on sites like The Federalist because they’re really just very illustrative of the way their minds work. It’s not just that they have bad political takes and are otherwise pleasant human beings — that shit truly seeps into your everyday life and makes you a weird, miserable person who can’t even just have a nice time going out to dinner with friends.
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