At least take your friend to lunch before screwing them over….
https://www.trycake.com/blog/unscrupulous-diners-dilemma-split-not-split-check/
Game Theory, in its properties, can be found everywhere, even at a lunch outing with friends. This article is from CAKE by Sysco® and is a resource for how restaurants can increase their revenue by implementing different “check-sharing” policies. It demonstrates that people are subtly controlled by game theory, even in the most casual situations of just grabbing lunch with friends.
When two people get lunch together and split the bill, there are two ways of doing so: paying just for what you ordered or splitting it equally. Game Theory applies specifically when the bill is split equally among diners. While keeping in mind that each person is conscious of how much they spend, it makes sense that the friends should order cheaper options so that both have to pay less in total. However, if this is the understanding among the two, one friend would yield a greater reward if he strategically ordered a more expensive meal while his friend ordered a cheaper option. If Friend A endorsed this method, he would essentially be getting 2x the payoff for 0.5x the original price of his meal (Friend A’s $20 meal would only cost Friend A $10)! However, the dilemma comes if both friends were aware of this situation and tried to strategically get a more expensive meal for a cheaper price. In this situation, the friends would cancel each other out, requiring each to pay the full price of the costly dishes and yielding little payoffs because they would have to “dish” out so much money from their pockets. Even so, the best option to save money would have been to order cheaper menu items as opposed to try and take advantage of one another.
| Friend B | |||
|
Friend A |
$10 meal | $20 meal | |
| $10 meal | 5,5 | 3,10 | |
| $20 meal | 10,3 | 4,4 | |
(The larger the number, the larger the payoff)
This situation is a clear example of Prisoner’s Dilemma: there is no dominant solution for anyone. The benefits each friend reaps depend completely on how the other reacts. It may be smarter to order cheaper items, but if greed gets in the way for Friend A, it puts Friend B at a clear disadvantage and may even ruin a friendship.