Big spenders go to lunch

No one ordered a 99 cent special the evening six London bankers celebrated closing a business deal and earned a place in the Guinness Book of Records for running up the most expensive restaurant meal tab ever: $62,679. By the way, they were not charged for several hundred dollars worth of food they consumed – only the drinks, cigarettes and tax. The Associated Press story about the world record did not name the cheap bottle of dessert wine priced at $13,100 but it did name the more expensive 1947 bottle of Petrus which cost $17,500.
When I read the headline to co-workers from the other end of the economic scale they said, “that is criminal. Don’t they know there are children starving in the world?” Evidently not. Dayanonda Kumar shrugged off the $12,800 he paid on the tab saying, “To be honest, I’m not that bothered about it.”
I would have been bothered if I had been him. He didn’t even drink any wine that evening. If he had just insisted on separate tickets, he would have spent a few hundred dollars that night instead of several thousand. You would think a banker would consider the savings.
The $13,000 bottle of wine alone cost more than the annual salary of a minimum wage earner. Personally I wouldn’t mind having just having the tip on their three hour dinner party. Let’s see at 10 percent that would be $6,270, or for a generous tip of 15 percent the diners would have left $9,400.
Mostly I am astounded at the lack of concern of the bankers. Considering that these are the people entrusted with the watchcare of depositors’ funds, I am not impressed. But then my idea of watching my money began in the months before I married. We stocked up on the holiday bargains in frozen turkeys and borrowed space in Aunt Katy’s freezer until we could use them.
My mom gave me a meat thermometer and a cookbook filled with a hundred ways to fix poultry. Our first three months of marriage we visited Aunt Katy every time we needed another turkey and I tried another couple dozen ways to use Thanksgiving left-overs. We feasted royally – we just couldn’t quite afford even one bottle of the $16,500 Chateau Petrus Bordeaux the bankers tossed back that evening.
Ahhh, to live a life where I don’t have to clip cents-off coupons, and have such a budget that I can spend thousands of dollars on wine I do not even drink. What irresponsible luxury!
But after their evening of decadent luxury comes the rest of the story. Five off the six bankers who tallied up the record tab are no longer employed by the bank. They were fired and not because of the meal: each reportedly paid for the meal out of their own pockets. No, it was just that the days of the big spenders ended. The belt tightening began. In the past few months British banks have had to cut back and lay off several employees.
Employees whose wives now sit at home at the dining room table trying to balance the suddenly deflated checkbook and mutter, “one bottle of the cheapest wine served at that meal, that’s all I ask, just one bottle of that wine.”
Ahh, but it was a really grand party. Grand enough to make the Guinness Book of Records – and even bankers don’t get to do that every day of the week.