With how pricey eating out has recently gotten, choosing to go out for dinner can be a financial decision. Even if you’re dining by yourself at a mid-tier place, after tax and tip, you could be looking at a $50 bill.
If there’s any worse time to be abandoned by a group of friends and have to foot the restaurant bill on your own, it’s probably right now. That’s exactly what one woman on TikTok says happened to her.
A new group of gal pals abandoned her
In the clip, which got over 2.1 million views, creator Julie (@juliannasheridan7) sits outside near the restaurant while waiting for someone to pick her up. She says the friends she arrived with had just left her there.
“I came with my friends to come eat, and they all said that they had to go to the bathroom,” she says. “And [they] went to the bathroom without me and left me.”
Julie says she realized they weren’t coming back and needed to find another way home.
“So now I’m on the curb waiting for my ride to get here because all my friends left me,” she says. A few moments later, she spots a vehicle approaching.
“That’s my ride. They finally got here,” she says. “Thank you for coming to save me.”
Her sister’s boyfriend jokes, “If you get in, we have free candy.”
She says they blocked her and left her with the bill
After viewers asked what happened, Julie posted a follow-up explaining how the dinner started.
She says she had only recently met the group.
“I had just, like, started talking to these girls,” she says. “This was the first time we all were hanging out. They all knew each other.”
The group planned dinner at a restaurant around 30 minutes from Julie’s home. Since the other women picked her up, Julie didn’t have her own car with her.
After finishing their meal, Julie says one woman announced that she needed to use the bathroom. This time, the other two women immediately joined her.
“All the other girls, the rest of the two girls, they were like, ‘Oh, me too,’” Julie says.
Julie waited at the table for about seven minutes before going to check on them.
“They’re not in the bathroom,” she says. “So I’m like, what? What the heck?”
She returned to the table, but they weren’t there either. Then she checked the group chat.
“Nobody responds,” she says. “So I click on one of the other girls’ little profile. She has me blocked.”
That’s when Julie says she understood what had happened.
“I didn’t want to have to spend even more money on an Uber because our food bill ended up being, like, $150,” she says. “I had to already pay the bill, tip the server, and now I’m gonna have to pay for an Uber 30 minutes home. No.”
Instead, she called her sister and her sister’s boyfriend, who came to pick her up.
Julie says the situation hadn’t fully sunk in yet when she filmed the first video.
“I wasn’t really, like, mad or angry in the moment or, like, sad, because I don’t think it really processed in my head,” she says. “Like, I just got abandoned.”
Viewers were furious for her
Commenters couldn’t believe the group allegedly left Julie at the restaurant without a ride and with the bill.
“Oh I’d call the cops,” one commenter wrote.
According to legal advice online, though, the responsibility could still potentially fall on the last person at the table. One attorney responding to a similar situation on Justia recommends ordering separately from the start and asking for separate checks. That way, if your companion leaves, they’d be considered a dine-and-dasher, and you wouldn’t be liable.
“I woulda gave them every single one of their names and still only paid for my tab,” another said.
Others were impressed by how supportive her sister and her sister’s boyfriend were.
“These are not your friends… the guy driving is your ride or die….” one viewer wrote.
@juliannasheridan7
Subplot News has reached out to Julie via email for comment.
