$14 salad.

The scenario

Five friends at dinner. You got the caesar salad ($14). They got steaks, wine, appetizers. The bill comes to $225. Split five ways? You're paying $45 for a $14 salad. That's a $31 involuntary donation to your friends' dinner. Here's what makes it worse: a landmark 2004 study found that people order **37% more** when they know the bill will be split evenly. Your friends aren't being malicious—they're responding to incentives. Economists call it 'The Unscrupulous Diner's Dilemma.' When your ribeye only costs you 1/5th its price, why not order it? The psychology is brutal. You noticed the disparity when the food arrived—your modest salad next to their platters. You knew what was coming. When someone said "let's just split it evenly," you didn't object. Nobody does. 80% of people say they'd *prefer* to pay for what they ordered—but speaking up feels petty. It feels cheap. So you paid the $45, smiled, and silently calculated how many dinners like this you could afford. This happens constantly. The person who orders light always knows. The person who orders heavy rarely thinks about it. Over a year of monthly group dinners, the salad-orderer loses $372 to this pattern. That's real money, transferred from modest spenders to big spenders through social pressure alone.