OK, so here is the situation. Two friends are going to a game, they'd planned loosely for a while. It's also close to one of their birthdays. The birthday guy buys two tickets for the game. The other person invites him to dinner as a birthday gift after that. The birthday guy thanks his friend, buys him a beer, all goes well. The next day, he hits him up for the price of one ticket. The friend who bought dinner gets offended thinking, hey, I spent money on a nice dinner, how come you're hitting me up at all?

Poll question: Who was in the wrong?

Poll result (15 votes) Person 1 (birthday) (5 votes) Vote Person 2 (gift giver) (3 votes) Vote Y'all triflin'! (both) (7 votes) Vote

They discussed going to the game, so the friend should have expected to pay their way.

Unless there was some reason to expect birthday guy to foot the bill, there's no justification to assume they didn't have to pay their way.

as someone who's bought plenty of gifts and dinners, i never expected anything back, in some ways a favor in return kind of cheapens it. but i get that not everyone has that mentality and i'm not sure if either of these people do.

Broke Boy Shit...

"Get ready....for your blessing....."
"Bury me by my Grand-Grand and when you can come follow me"

one is comfortable, the other is very wealthy. which makes this even more absurd to me.

Meanwhile the people who could really use that $30 they spent on you are either too afraid or too nice (or both) to ask. Real mindfuck.

minus the "beef" over money. She lives in San Fran and she's a big hoop head. She LOVES Luka. She hit me up earlier this year like...lil bro, the Mavericks play the Grizzlies on a Saturday in March...how bout I fly out, you drive down the highway and we catch the game. Tix on me. I'm like, say less...I got us for food and drinks at the game and on Beale Street. Done. Complete understanding. I didn't even hesitate to pick up ALL the food and drinks as I know my sis and how she spends. She makes WAAAAY more money than me, evident by the fact that she lives in San Francisco...very comfortably. I think the sich in the OP just comes down to shitty communication. A 45 second text exchange before the event could have prevented all this, IMO. TLDR, though...birthday boy is buggin. LOL.

That's my thing like damn this is a very minor thing to have any sort of funk over. Two minute convo clears it up. But it has been a few months now and they're just now approaching it.

I've seen this argument a few times amongst friends. Someone invites them out to something. They have a good time. Next day (or sometime later) the person sends them a bill for their share.

I know its a common practice (especially among younger people) but I am old school enough that if you want me to split costs of something, you need to let that be known upfront and let me know what the costs are.

The reason this is such a big issue because most of my friends operating under, "you treat this time, I treat next time, it will all be a wash in the end". If that's not how we are operating, just say, "these tickets are X, I'll buy them and you can pay me back later?"

This recently became a big thing within one of my friend groups because one of the dudes invited everyone to an expensive dinner for his birthday. People went and then after the fact he started sending people venmo requests. Dude is baller enough he should have been able to treat. If he wasn't going to treat, he should have told people in advance (or allow people to get separate checks).

But sending a venmo request with no prior discussion is tacky AF.


**********
"Everyone has a plan until you punch them in the face. Then they don't have a plan anymore." (c) Mike Tyson

"what's a leader if he isn't reluctant"

Dude went up and bought, smallest bill I had was a 20, 'don't worry about it, next time', 4hrs later...venmo request for 5. Huh? Petty petty

Like the plans for the game, in a general sense, was each person pays their own way. But then it got lumped in with the b-day dinner. Either way seems like minor difference of opinion that could be resolved in seconds, not months.

I had a slightly similar thing happen with a concert. A friend hit me up said he wanted to go but not solo. I said ok sure. Rode an hour, paid my 50 to park, caught the show with him. Next day he says can you shoot me 94 bucks or whatever. I said ok and sent it to him. I went to the show, I enjoyed it, we were never super specific about it so I was like yeah, sure, and sent it over.

yeah, we announce that shot beforehand

“how we paying for this?”

Why didn't he ask for the money up-front or when he bought the tickets?

If I tell my mans, yo lets hit up a game....I'm either going to: cop the tix and enjoy OR talk to him about seats/prices and get his input...then say something like...I'll cop and you can cashapp me your part. Either way, he won't find out after the game that he owes me money.

but i could be wrong.

<they'd planned loosely for a while

to me this could go either way in terms of how the bill was split. either person gets both or pay your own way. i get both arguments and that's why i was curious to see what people thought.

that said, the guy who's birthday it wasn't got mad about the situation, whereas the other dude was like "if you'd just said i don't think that's fair, i'd have been cool with that." the counterargument i imagine is that why should i even be in a position to say that? but that seems a little odd, i mean it's not a huge amount of money or a fierce argument, the whole thing could have been solved in a minute or two.

...offered to pay for his.

I gotta take back some wrong from the birthday boy and put it on the other friend. Seems like poor communication on both sides.

Then whomever got defensive as a result instead of working to find a resolution

Then returned with the reason why, and that's what started the pseudo beef

avoids this whole shit.

Though, it is also nice when a person says "Hey how much do I owe you?"

I really try to be both of those people in these kinds of situations.

>I really try to be both of those people in these kinds of
>situations.

Because if a buddy says to me, "Hey, wanna come to the game with me?", unless he says, "btw tickets at $80" or whatever," then I'm assuming it's on him.

Now, I think the friend should've said to Birthday Guy, "Cool, would love to come! How much are the tickets?" Would've cleared things up from the jump. So definite communication issues between the boys here...

... but if I get invited to a thing and they don't tell me "tickets cost X" beforehand? I assume I'm along for the ride and I'll just get my guy dinner or drinks later. So if we *had* to assign someone with making the first mistake, I'd say it's Birthday Guy for not establishing ahead of time that this was a ticket he was looking for someone to buy off him.

But I think it's subpar communication all around-- and unless the tickets were insanely expensive, if you're in a friendship where you're going to games and you're buying dinners/drinks for each other, I don't think it's worth getting angry about tbh.

They were planning to go to a game for a couple months. Not explicitly but in the way that any two grown people doing something together likely would, they were each going to pay their own way. Once they settled on the game the friend said "cool, you can look for the tickets, right?" or something like that. But no discussion of either person ultimately paying for both tickets.

Then it got linked to the bday. Friend wanted to go big for the bday, did, and then figured bday guy would reciprocate by getting the tix (not stated either). He got upset about that, and when he later told the other dude (bday), the dude was hurt that he didn't just say something because there was kind of a weird distance/pause in a longstanding friendship.

Too much drama for me.