I'm Judging You

Let’s be clear about one thing: no one’s perfect. While the author is quick to point out when someone’s behaving terribly, she also knows her own faults can sometimes make her part of the problem.

For example, Ajayi is chronically late to just about anything you might invite her to – something that’s certainly brought her a fair amount of shame in the past, like the time she fell flat on her face while sprinting to catch a plane.

Now, while Ajayi might show up late to a scheduled dinner, there are other folks who should also feel ashamed of their behavior, and they’re called dinner scrooges.

Dinner scrooges come in three varieties: The first being the kind of person to devour massive amounts of food and then proposes splitting the check evenly. Or, if they don’t eat it all, they’ll order more so that they can take it home. It’s like they want others to subsidize their next couple of meals!

The second dinner scrooge is the annoying person who busts out the calculator to figure out exactly how much they owe. They’ll often stress how much less they ate than everyone else and be a cheapskate when it comes to tipping.

Then there’s the one who’ll come up with a reason to vanish early and “forget” to leave any money for the bill. If this happens once, you can give them the benefit of the doubt. But if it happens twice, you definitely have a dinner scrooge in your midst.

Dinner scrooges can make dining out with friends a very frustrating experience, and Ajayi would prefer it if future dinners were prix fixe menus and everyone paid cash. After all, there are shows in her Netflix queue waiting to be watched, and she doesn’t have time to spend an hour figuring out the bill for yet another overpriced, bland dinner.