48 Oysters – Who Pays?

48 Oysters – Who Pays? by Liam Sweeny.

Dating is complicated. Not the two people getting to know each other part; that’s been complicated too, but we’ve had millennia to practice it. I’m talking about who pays. In the past, the men paid, always. But in the past, women weren’t as much a part of the workforce, and sadly even to this day, women don’t get paid as much, even in cases of doing the same work. But that’s its own problem, beyond the scope of this keyboard jockey. Just to say that historically, men pay.

But that doesn’t matter anymore. It’s not that men pay, or women pay; it’s more like whomever asks pays, or they go Dutch. And if it is the former, and you pay, what should you be on the hook for?

A TikToker named EquanaB went on a date with a guy that had been trying for weeks to get said date. They went to Fontaine’s Oyster Bar in Atlanta, and she proceeded to slurp up forty-eight oysters. Four dozen. Oysters are expensive. And after that, she was like ‘what’s next?’”

So the guy does something I think more guys would do in that case if they were being honest with themselves: he dashed. Texted her later, offered to pay for the drinks separately, which was what he asked her out for.

I mean, this woman shouldn’t have eaten forty-eight oysters on his dime, not to mention other stuff after. But he did ask her out on a date and offered to pay.

So did she have the right to down all of that shit? Technically, yes. He asked her out; the custom is that whoever asks another person out pays. But a lot of us are broke, and we have to budget everything, including dates. And it is wildly inappropriate to tell your date how much money y’all can spend on a date. So maybe this is why fewer people date than back in the day.

Comments online about it are mixed, but she got piled on more than anything else. And yes, there is a sense of decency that you don’t load up when someone else is paying. But EquanaB just loved the oysters.

More from Liam Sweeny.