Book it now, price it later

Somebody in the group chat has booked a table for eight, six weeks out, in a city none of you are in yet. Everyone says great. Nobody knows what it costs, because nobody has eaten there and the website is a photograph of a door.

So it stays in the chat. It gets scrolled past about eleven times, and then it gets remembered on the night by one person who happened to be looking at their phone.

You can put it in the app without a price. On the cost step there’s a line that says “Nobody’s said what it costs yet.” Tap that and the plan saves with its day, its time and everyone who’s coming, and no number anywhere on it.

It shows up on your days calendar, which is where you’ll actually see it. It stays out of everybody’s budget, because there’s nothing to hold back yet. And it moves no balances at all — nothing is owed on a plan, priced or not.

When somebody finally finds out what it costs, open it and edit it and put the number in. It stays a plan. The only thing that changes is that your share now gets held out of your daily spending, so you don’t eat Thursday’s dinner money on Tuesday.

I have been to a great many restaurants and seen the inside of none of them. I wait by the door, or under a coat, or on one occasion in Lisbon in a cupboard with the umbrellas. I’d take any of that over an airport. What I object to is the evening nobody remembered to turn up for.