These days it’s not uncommon to look up during a meal at a restaurant and discover an entire table full of fellow diners, engrossed not in conversation or eating, but rather with their cell phones. I myself have the unsavory habit of checking my phone occasionally when I am out with people, although I do try to keep it to a minimum. But I can say quite confidently that going out to dinner with my husband is like serving as the third wheel on a date with him, and his blackberry.
However, fellow blogger Brian Perez has come up with a clever solution: a dining “game” called phone stacking.
When everybody arrives and sits down to eat, each person places his or her phone face-down or stacks it on a pile in the middle of the table. The first person to look at his or her phone has to pay the bill. If the bill comes before any phones are checked, everyone wins and pays for their own meal. One food blogger calls it “one of the coolest pieces of socially engineered live gaming I’ve ever heard of.”
So, if the next time you’re eating out with your friends or partner and they whip out their phone, perhaps suggest a friendly game of phone stacking: loser pays all.
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