After a very expensive dinner with my friends, I got a gentle reminder to remain diligent and true to yourself when spending someone else’s money.
“Hey, I heard you and the other student board members had a great dinner in the city center. How was it?”
The Executive Director of the faculty board I was part of had caught me in the hallway. I smiled, still riding the high from the night before.
“It was great! Six courses and matching wines, what more can a man ask for?”
“That sounds delicious. What was the total damage, if I may ask?”
“Right around €2,000.”
“I’m really happy that you and your friends had such a great evening,” she said, her tone shifting slightly. Still warm, but with an edge I usually only heard in board meetings. “But can I ask you a more critical question? Can you tell me who eventually paid for that dinner?”
“Of course! The dinner was paid from the general expenses budget of the University Board, since student members from all faculties were involved.”
I still didn’t understand where she was going.
“Then let me ask you a follow-up question: Do you know where the University Board actually gets that money from?”
And there it was. The question landed, and my proud smile faded into something more awkward. I knew exactly what she was asking and implying.
“It’s tax money coming from the government’s lump sum, so ultimately the Dutch taxpayer has paid for our fancy dinner…”
The Flip Flop Reservation
I was 22 years old and it was the final week of my two-year term as the student member on the board of one of my university’s faculties. This period also meant that it was time for a yearly tradition: a dinner with all the outgoing and incoming student board members.
Our small group was its own administrative body within the university. We were tasked and mandated with managing a diverse range of topics across the entire student affairs portfolio, and since I was its Chair, it had been my responsibility to arrange the yearly dinner.
I’d contacted the secretary of the University’s executive board about the payment. He discussed it with the Financial Director of the University Board and then gave me a cost center number. When I asked for specific budget guidelines, he clearly stated that there weren’t any and that the board trusted my judgment. So one week before the dinner, on a hot summer day, I walked into one of the most upscale restaurants in the city to make a reservation.
I hadn’t really planned on making the reservation that day in person, which became immediately obvious to everyone in the restaurant when I walked through the door. I’d just come from hanging out with friends at a nearby lake and the restaurant was on my way home, so I arrived there in my swimming shorts and flip flops. Not exactly the restaurant’s usual clientele, as you might imagine.
The waitress behind the counter was already preparing for a busy evening. She was a couple of years older than I was, and looked at me with what I can only describe as polite suspicion. I gave her the guest list, the dietary requirements, the allergies, and the cost center.
What I didn’t know until after the dinner, was that she’d been the chair of the most elite student association in the city the year prior. She knew exactly how the university worked internally, and when I handed her the cost center she smiled knowingly. “Is the University Council having another dinner again?”
Her eyes went wide with a mix of both complete surprise and confusion when I honestly replied “Nope, not today. This one is actually the general expenses budget of the Executive Board”. Guess it’s not every day that someone who looks like he just came from a tiki party casually makes a reservation using a number that required the highest possible level of approval you could get within the university
Her surprise and confusion quickly and understandably started turning into extreme curiosity, so I wished her a great evening and went home to continue doing not much after a long day of already having done exactly that.
The Dress Shoe Dinner
The dinner that followed one week later still remains one of the most memorable I’ve ever had.
When I went to restaurants with my parents growing up it was always good food, but nothing you couldn’t recreate at home with a little bit of effort. This, however, was food on a completely different level. The kind of food that transcends the concept of just eating and enjoying it, and instead elevates the experience with slightly ridiculous things like playing with the concept of time.The wine pairings were perfect and the service was impeccable, from the same waitress as it turned out. This time, however, I was wearing a blue suit and proper dress shoes instead of the surf attire I’d arrived in the week before.
But in the end, the food wasn’t what made the evening memorable. It was the people.
When you’re sitting together with a group you’ve worked intensively with for an entire year, people who’ve become your friends and that you’ve shared your highs and lows with, it elevates everything. The stories came pouring out: Events we’d organized together for all students of the University, the time we offered a former prime minister of Finland some stroopwafels during a work trip, the weekend trip to the Belgian Ardennes. We tried to make sure the incoming members felt welcome, hoping to give them the same start we’d been lucky enough to have had the years before.
It was, by any measure, a wonderful evening.
The Question That Stayed
Still, the conversation in the hallway with the Executive Director didn’t stop with her critical questions, they clearly got me thinking and I asked if there was some more time to talk about it properly.
I told her more about the dinner and how I’d made the reservation, that I understood what she said about where the money came from, and that I absolutely felt guilty about the expense if it was viewed from that perspective. So also I asked her honestly: what would she have done?
Her answer was one that has resonated with me through the years.
“Of course it’s not a problem to celebrate your achievements and have a great time with the people you achieved them with,” she said. “But it’s also about opportunity costs. About whether something is truly necessary for you to have a good time. There’s a balance to be found there.”
She paused.
“My guess is that this dinner would’ve been just as memorable if the ten of you had gone to a perfectly good restaurant and spent half of what you did now. That would’ve freed up a thousand euros for something else, and that could literally be anything: extra financial support for a student who really needs it, psychological services for students with mental health issues, you name it. Money can only be spent once, so it matters how you spend it. Of course you’re an individual case now, but imagine the possibilities if we would make such decisions more often.”
She was right, and I absolutely felt a sense of guilt about the way I had approached things, and then she said the sentence that has stayed with me ever since.
“Next time, just ask yourself whether at heart you’re the guy in the flip flops or the guy in the dress shoes when you’re making a personal expense with someone else’s money. Although I think we both already know the answer to that one.”
Someone Else’s Money
That ten-minute conversation fundamentally changed how I think about spending money that isn’t mine.
I realized my actions didn’t exist in a vacuum. And once I started paying attention, I noticed how often people’s behavior shifts when someone else is footing the bill. Work parties where people drink more, and more expensively, than they ever would on their own dime. Dinners where the prices on the menu suddenly stop mattering because the company is paying. The quiet assumption that when it’s not your money on the line, the normal rules don’t apply.
I won’t pretend to be a saint, because I’d absolutely been one of those people. The fancy dinner was arguably the most extreme example, but it also wasn’t the only one. It made me wonder whether any of it was truly necessary, and whether I was presenting a version of myself in those moments that wasn’t really me at heart.
The lesson I took out of it wasn’t a complicated one: When someone else is paying, consume with a little more awareness and moderation. Not because you’ll get in trouble, but because that money could go somewhere that matters more than your third or fourth glass of wine. Because the version of yourself that emerges when money feels free might not be the version you actually are or even want to be.
I knew which version I wanted to be. I’d known it the moment I walked into that restaurant in flip flops, before the suit, six courses and matching wines complicated everything.
At heart, I’m still the flip flop guy. And I plan to stay that way.
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