Men Are From Mars, Women ... Carry Calculators

Have you read the joke about how different men and women are when they get together for meals? Basically, it says that when men get together, when the bill arrives, everyone just throws in how much they think is appropriate. So, if they’re at, say, a mamak restaurant then maybe they might each just pull out RM20 and not worry about change. If they’re somewhere more expensive then maybe each person will put RM50 on the table to contribute towards the bill.

The joke then says if women were to go out together, when the bill arrives, everyone whips out a little pocket calculator to determine the exact amount each person should pay.

Well, it’s true! I’ve been out with my husband for dinner with friends, and when the bill arrives, inevitably all the guys would whip out some cash true to the "lebih kurang" method. Nobody even looked at the bill. (Except us wives, of course, to see in case our husbands overpaid! Ha ha!)

Then a few months ago, I had lunch with 3 other girlfriends. Essentially 3 of us were buying the 4th one a birthday lunch. To make the situation challenging (who wants a boring lunch), we ate at Marche at The Curve. It uses the ‘passport’ system. Basically each person gets a ‘passport’ and whenever you order food you get your ‘passport’ stamped and that tells the cashier what you’ve had and can bill you accordingly. It’s a great place to go if you plan to go dutch (or 1 person pays for all).

It gets slightly more complicated when 1 person is being treated by all the others. And the challenge became even greater when we realised they had a 10% discount for HSBC cardholders. So 1 girlfriend paid for the birthday girl’s and her passport in one bill.

We all sat back down at our table and – voila – out came the little pocket calculators! Let’s see … How much was the birthday girl’s lunch and what do the rest of us owe for it … tap-tap-tap, yup, got it, down to the sen. (To give you some background, 1 friend is a real estate agent and another is an insurance agent. So, I guess pocket calculators are normal things which they carry with them all the time.)

For the rest of us did not have an HSBC credit card but was kiasu enough to still want the discount (oh wait, that was just me), we – sorry, I – then passed my passport on to be paid with the HSBC credit cardholder and she then got paid for it in cash.

Maybe next time I should try this “lebih kurang” method too. Sounds a lot less complicated.