More and more restaurants have been imposing a ‘one table, one bill’ rule, especially in tourist hotspots such as Mallorca and Malaga, but consumers aren't happy.

However, with the rise of Revolut and their ‘split the bill’ option, some have argued that it has never been easier for customers to sort themselves out and let wait staff get on with their job.

Comedian Jim Elliot told The Hard Shoulder that he can understand where restaurants are coming from.

“You ever see some poor, poor waiter standing there and it’s a group of 16 people and they’re splitting the bill and they’ve got the one big long thing and they’re all trying to remember what they ordered?” he said.

“Then they get to the part – and this is the part that I can’t stand, where a group of friends, people who like each other, have gone to dinner together and now all of a sudden they’re breaking out the abacus to figure out who drank more wine.

“They go, ‘Oh, I’ve only really had a glass, so I guess I won’t chip in for the entire thing’.

“Aren’t you people a group? Aren’t you unified? Cough up the dough and let this poor person get on with their work.”

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Irish Independent columnist Mary McCarthy said it’s all well and good to split the bill evenly if you have the money to do so, but some people are so strapped for cash that those few euro may be a big deal.

“We’re not students, right? My niece here is about on holidays with me and she’s in her early 20s and she’s a student – they would share everything,” she said.

“She was showing me a bill on her Revolut and it had like, Darren paid €9, Sarah paid three euro - it sounds kind of insane when you look through the billing, there’s a four euro difference between each person.

“But when you’re a student, I feel like those little things add up.”

Alexandra Ryan from Goss.ie suggested that perhaps the rule should only apply to groups over a certain number of people.

Main image: Splitting the bill six ways. Image: Yuri Arcurs / Alamy.