181 - When you're assigned the role of treasurer when you go out to eat

Here's the typical scenario: it's one of your friend's birthdays. The friend chooses a restaurant for everybody to eat in, and then everyone gorges on seventy-five percent of the menu. After desserts, coffees and teas are consumed by the end of the meal, the check comes, and gets passed around, until it lands on the table in front of you, because everyone else is apparently too busy chatting or laughing or picking their teeth to do the adding up. It's up to you to calculate how much each person (except the birthday person, of course) owes to the collective sum of money being charged on the bill.

When dividing by any number greater than four or five, you get difficult amounts of money owed, because the total at the bottom of the check is never a nice number that is easily divisible, or a number that, when divided, can be easily rounded up or down to a pecuniarily manageable figure. There will always be one or two people that do not contribute their part, due to the fact that they ate less than everyone else, or because they simply don't have enough money, and so you must go and seek out people that are generous enough to cover for them, or you just collect whatever money those cheapskates have, then divide the rest of the bill by the number of people left.

Then the birthday person makes a halfhearted attempt to pay, and everybody spends twenty minutes trying to convince him that it's alright, because for one, his birthday is everyone's treat, and second, he/she isn't even allowed to know how much the birthday celebration he/she is responsible for costs. You count the money seventeen times just to make sure it all adds up, only to have a nominated acquaintance count the money once more because she's known to be extremely responsible with her own pocket money. This is then followed by her boyfriend adding it up for a nineteenth time, because apparently, he took up an accounting class at school.

It never adds up, people have underpaid and overpaid and people want some change back. You have to listen to stories about how people have lost their wallets, how people have just signed up for a new debit card, their thoughts on the new design of the $10 bill, and countless other stories. You also have to deal with the asshole who wants to pay for one twenty-third of the bill using his credit card. After the check is settled after what feels like forever, you tiredly rub your forehead and temples with your palms, which to your mistake, leads to your overlooking the event in which two girls in the corner order an apple martini to share, which is then followed by the birthday person's best friend ordering a round of apple-flavored shooters...

Your job as treasurer isn't over yet, but at least there's alcohol on its way.