Rude or not?

ellesan

ellesan

Cathlete
Aahhh...family vacations...

I recently went on vacation with my husband's family. The first night for dinner our niece (resident of vacation town) said she had a surprise for us for dinner at a nice restaurant. We had not talked about plans for dinner, but I found out that others in the group were in on it. I had told my husband to inform his family that we were on a budget for the vacation and needed to watch it.

I did not like the place, and wanted to leave as soon as we got there, but trying to be respectful, I stayed. I looked at the menu, $40 per person. For me, if someone invites me to that kind of a restaurant without discussing $ or budget, etc. then they should pay.

Afterwards, the niece and SIL paid for only their own and we were left to pay the $150 bill for the three of us. I was livid. I would NEVER do that to someone. Our budget was about $80 a DAY for food. My husband doesn't think it quaifies as "rude." I think it was extremely rude and insensitive...am I overreacting? What would you do?
 
uh, I vote for rude.

I don't understand the "surprise". . . was it a "surprise you get to spend $150 for dinner!"

Under those circumstances I would also have expected them to pay for it and when they didn't would have been a tad miffed. I'm sorry to hear that was the start of your vacation. . . I hope the rest was much better!

Hugs,
 
I would never expect someone else to pay for my family's meal, no matter what the circumstance.

However, it does sound like you were railroaded into eating somewhere not of your choice. In the future, maybe insist that you know the particulars ($$) of the restaurant before you ever agree to go. Even if they insist it is a "surprise", it would seem best to state that you are not going along with the plan unless you can afford it. Once you find out the name of the place, do your research and tactfully decline to participate if it's too expensive.

I'm sorry this happened to you and your family. I don't know that I would call it rude ... maybe just ignorant of others feelings and very self involved.
 
Sounds like it could be classified as a misunderstanding on both sides. You said you told your husband to tell his family about the budget for meals (which was a smart thing to communicate to them from the get-go), but did he actually do it? I am wondering because my DH forgets to do these types of things! So, if they didn't have this information, they might not think that an expensive and fancy restaurant meal is a bad thing. I personally don't like to spend more than $15 a plate at a restaurant, but we have friends who *love* to blow the bank on fancy food and wine. Everybody's personal preference and budget is different. What we do is announce our budget, and then either propose an alternative less expensive restaurant or politely decline the invite to the expensive place.

Sorry that you had to deal with this on your vacation! Hopefully you were able to enjoy the other parts of your trip.
 
I think it's rude: to decide that you are going to go to an expensive restaurant, and leave you to pay the bill.

I guess the 'surprise' was the price tag, huh?:confused:
 
kathryn said:
I think it's rude: to decide that you are going to go to an expensive restaurant, and leave you to pay the bill.

I guess the 'surprise' was the price tag, huh?:confused:
Click to expand...

Maybe I misunderstood. I thought ellesan only paid for her family (3 of them).

If I read wrong, I agree that it was rude (strange and rude) of them to stick you with the bill. But if I understand what I think is correct, I still don't think it was out of line to expect you to pay for your own meal.

Who should pay is separate from the initial "surprise" of where you went to dine in the first place. Sounds like there was a definite break down in communication over that part of the issue.
 
I think it's rude as well. Even if the other people picked up their own tab, they still stuck you with a $150 bill for the 3 of you. That's crazy-nuts for dinner, in my book. If you invite me to dinner as a surprise then I expect you to pay, especially if its an over priced $50/plate place. On the flip side, if I invite you to dinner, then I pay. I don't know the income and budget of all my family and friends, so there is no way I would invite them somewhere that's going to cost them that much money. Very inconsiderate. I'd be ticked, too!

Nan
 
What is it you're wanting to do at this point? Are you trying to decide whether to say something to them? If so, I'd vote for just letting it go and not saying anything unless the situation arises again. The money's already gone.
 
I'm sorry this happened to you. I do think it was insensitive to pick such an expensive restaurant, but I wouldn't expect someone else to pick up our tab.

In that situation, I would have chosen the absolute cheapest items to eat (soup OR small salad, water, nothing extra) to meet our budget. That would get the point across. Furthermore, I'd never let her pick another restaurant again.

Situations like this are why I really don't care for family vacations--maybe it's just my family though! :p
 
I definetly do not expect anyone to pay our bill unless they said they would before ordering. I do think it was a bit rude to choose an expensive resteraunt when you said you were on a budget. Sounds like it was already a plan for some reason though and they went with it. I also want to know what was the surprize???
That is when we end up splitting meals or like Jonahnah said to pick the cheapeast items on the menu. Most resteraunts we may split a meal anyway cause the portions are so huge.
We would eat again later if we had to somewhere cheap.
 
Thanks for the feedback, it's good to get other points of view. My husband's family are very nice people, I just think they didn't think about it. It was planned and they were going to do it no matter what.

The surprise was that after two airplane rides, a greyhound bus ride, the metro and walking 15 blocks to the apartment with our luggage....it would have been nice to sit down and relax to a nice, affordable meal. We were exhausted and hungry.

Instead, we got right back on the metro (no one asked what we would like to do) to eat at O.Noir. Dinner in the dark. The complete and total dark. The waiters are blind. I was NOT in the mood for this particular experience. I was exhausted and would have liked a choice about this. When you can't see anything, your other senses are hightened and it was mentally and physcially draining. There were no cheaper menu options, one price. My husband would have flipped if I told him I wanted to go somewhere else.

Maybe if I had a choice about it, maybe if it was on a day that I wasn't totally and completely spent, it would have been different.

DH and I rehashed the whole vacation last night, lots of miscommunication. It's a multi-cultural, multi-language family and it makes it challenging when you have different languages floating around. The entire vacation was stuff like this, don't think I'll be going anymore...
 
YOU HAVE GOT TO BE KIDDING!!! :mad::mad: After a full day of travel, to spring something like that on people?? Especially if there were no less expensive menu options. I would have claimed severe fear of the dark (AKA: pi$$ed--off-a-phobia) and walked out! Just unreal...
 
As someone who lives in a vacation town...

I'm wondering a lot of things:

Did you husband actually pass the info on to his family?

Why didn't you speak up and say no before if you really didn't want to eat there?

Are you staying with the niece or somewhere else in town?

A lot of times when people come to visit me, they want to eat out somewhere nice at least once during their vacation, even if they are on a budget. When my parents come, we eat out somewhere special once and more economically the rest of the time. Usually we alternate between my parents paying and us paying but that's just how my family does it. If there were neices and nephews involved, I imagine it would be different.

I don't think it was rude so much as it didn't work for you but you didn't communicate your needs effectively before the situation got to that point. If you walk in and realize that it isn't going to work for you (which you did), just say "I'm sorry, this just isn't going to work with our budget/tastes, lets go ___ instead".

You say other members of the group were in on it. Unless I'm misunderstanding, there were 5 people in the group so some of the "other people" had to be the other two people in your party? If they concurred with your niece, how was she to know you weren't in on it too?

Lisa
 
Hi Lisa, no, there were 8 people in the group.

Three of the 8 knew about it, one in which I specifially told we had a budget the night before (my SIL).

We were in Montreal, my niece that lives there made the plans and told her mother and aunt only.

I had NO idea it was going to be a place like this. We walked into the restaurant and then were told what kind of place it was. Believe me, I wanted to walk out and say no. My husband would have died. Just out of respect for him I did not make a scene.

lrayburn said:
I'm wondering a lot of things:

Did you husband actually pass the info on to his family?

Why didn't you speak up and say no before if you really didn't want to eat there?

Are you staying with the niece or somewhere else in town?

A lot of times when people come to visit me, they want to eat out somewhere nice at least once during their vacation, even if they are on a budget. When my parents come, we eat out somewhere special once and more economically the rest of the time. Usually we alternate between my parents paying and us paying but that's just how my family does it. If there were neices and nephews involved, I imagine it would be different.

I don't think it was rude so much as it didn't work for you but you didn't communicate your needs effectively before the situation got to that point. If you walk in and realize that it isn't going to work for you (which you did), just say "I'm sorry, this just isn't going to work with our budget/tastes, lets go ___ instead".

You say other members of the group were in on it. Unless I'm misunderstanding, there were 5 people in the group so some of the "other people" had to be the other two people in your party? If they concurred with your niece, how was she to know you weren't in on it too?

Lisa
Click to expand...
 
jonahnah said:
YOU HAVE GOT TO BE KIDDING!!! :mad::mad: After a full day of travel, to spring something like that on people?? Especially if there were no less expensive menu options. I would have claimed severe fear of the dark (AKA: pi$$ed--off-a-phobia) and walked out! Just unreal...
Click to expand...

EXACTLY!!!
 
Ellesan,
I think we were posting at the same time this morning. Sounds exhausting. I don't do family vacations for a reason. They are welcome to come see me (which they do! its amazing how many people come when you live at the beach) but that's it.
Lisa
 
DH and I vacation w/some of his family every summer for several years now. Although it can be a lot of fun, it can also be a giant frustrating PITA. We have gotten into many a fight over these vacations. Fun but not without a price! :confused:
 
I don't know, if someone told me they were surprising me with dinner at a nice restaurant, I think it would be logical to assume they were treating. Me being the tightwad I am though, would assume the worst and ask how much this place is going to set me back before we got there. If they said, "oh don't worry about it, we have it covered", then I would know they were really treating. If they said "$40 a head", I'd tell them I'd see them after dinner. Luckily, all of my family/extended family are cheap. ;)
 
It seems like this is just the one final thing that annoyed you after a long day of travelling and lugging your bags around.

I understand that you were tired, on a budget and not in the mood for the experience but most likely your husband's family really didn't mean to be rude. They probably thought it would be a cool thing for you to do on your vacation since that restaurant is a trendy thing right now.

As for making you pay your own way, I find that kind of weird since my family would have paid if they were taking me out and probably would have arranged transportation to their place so i wouldn't have to lug my bags around town too.:p Having said that, i have come to understand that people behave different from what i may expect them to in certain situations. They probably have no idea that you were upset either since you didn't speak up in an effort to be respectful.

At the end of the day, it's your family even if it's through marriage. If you don't feel you can speak up and your husband won't then you need to let it go and accept that that is the way they are.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Our Newsletter

Get awesome content delivered straight to your inbox.

Top