My SO and I sometimes dine with a couple who are awful tippers. We mitigated this problem by agreeing to still go out with them, but we will only go to restaurants where tipping isn’t required. We just tell them that nicer places aren’t currently in our budget (untrue) but it saves me from climbing across the table to kill the other couple.
From a server: it’s okay. I feel as bad for the clearly embarrassed members of the party including the asshole(s), as they do for me. 
And if you can find a way to leave me a good tip, I appreciate it from the bottom of my heart.
Elderly chronic undertippers are usually a different story. Most of them aren’t assholes at all. Again, extra tip left by the younger generation is much appreciated (and yeah, I notice when you sneak back to the table!).
I have ended several potential friendships over people being douchy to waitstaff. It’s been a pet peeve of mine before I ever waited tables.
I get annoyed when my own customers are rude, but I’m much less angry about the vagaries of customers than most servers I know. People are people, most are decently nice, and most of them tip the same everywhere they go (not at all, a dollar, low, 15% to the cent, or high) and you can’t change them. Just try to give good service and accept what you get without resentment, I say.
Most of this thread provides excellent evidence that tipping is a horrible, horrible way of compensating waitstaff (or, indeed, almost anybody) for their labor. Not only does it lead to waiters regularly getting shafted, it leads to all sorts of dissension, guilt and embarrassment amongst customers, often turning what is supposed to be a pleasurable experience into a miserable one. Waiters need to be payed a decent living wage (paid for either by increased menu prices or a fixed service charge), and tipping needs to go the way of trial by ordeal.
(Sadly, none of this will prevent the OP’s FIL from being an asshole, but it will at least somewhat limit the scope of his assholery.)
I concur with this post and leave a 23% tip 
Right.
And this, for some time at least, is exactly what was happening. In threads like this, i like to quote a post made by former SDMB mod manhattan, who worked in the financial sector and whose job involved tracking things like price trends. Here’s what he said about the issue in 2005:
Waitress here. Not very often.
I will say one of the biggest tips, percentage-wise, I’ve ever gotten was from a boy who couldn’t have been more than 14. He was at my restaurant taking his little girlfriend out to eat. When I gave him the bill, which was about $40, he left me something like $25 as a tip. I even asked him if he needed change back, and he said, “No, it’s okay.” I was pretty impressed.
Older women are the hardest customers to handle. I call them the old biddies. They will complain the most, try to get special treatment from the manager, send food back, etc. And they tip like shit. Actually, women in general aren’t the best customers. I wondered at one point if it was because I was a woman myself, and asked my boyfriend-at-the-time (who had been a waiter himself years ago) what his most difficult customers had been, to see if a good-looking man might’ve had an easier time. He rolled his eyes and immediately said, “Old ladies! Oh my god! They would complain if they got two dollops of ketchup on the sandwich instead of three.” I think it’s a power thing – women have historically been disenfranchised, especially the older women, and go on a power trip the moment they encounter someone a step lower on the social hierarchy than they are.
Wait staff are paid at least minimum wage in Canada, which translates into $8.75 per hour or more, plus all their tips (we tip 15% or more in Calgary). We’re not afraid to under-tip for terrible service, because we know the servers are still getting paid for their time (which may be why Canadians have a reputation of being bad tippers in the US).
I apologize for bengangmo.
(Sneaking back into the thread to leave an additional 1%.)
The largest tip I ever heard about was $1500, on a $4000 check. The friend that told me about it worked at that restaurant, but wasn’t waiting that particular table that night.
The guy that left it was a regular there. They loved him.
I’ll bet the girlfriend was, too. Which, of course, was probably his main intention.
Honey, I love you dearly, but people don’t tip only 15% any more, and they don’t calculate it on the pre-tax restaurant bill. You look cheap when you do that, and under-tipping an underpaid waiter/waitress is a lousy way to be cheap.
If you want to be cheap, do it in a way that doesn’t directly affect someone who gets lousy pay. Put one over on the supermarket or the credit card company instead. They can afford it, unlike waitstaff.
Actually, ime it’s more likely to be the women in late middle-age that are the royal bitches. I had one send her onions rings back three times because they were exactly the wrong shade of taupe. By contrast, most of the truly elderly women I waited on were really nice. Under the impression that a pair of bright shiny quarters was a dandy tip, bless their hearts, but sweet. And for some reason, it was always vitally important to them that the quarters be shiny–I’d see them rooting through their change purses to find the “nice” quarters.
One of the things my dear departed mom raised me to believe was that waiting tables was a tough job and that being a fair tipper was important. Even though we’ve never been rich, my family pretty much always tips generously (though we might not do so if a waiter went out of their way to act like a jerk, I havent seen service that bad in years).
Mom would be in her mid-60s now if she were still alive and grew up poor, so I don’t think being elderly or female or having grown up in a poor environment is an excuse to be a stingy tipper. I do think less of people who don’t tip well. It seems mean-spirited since anyone with common sense should know that wait staff rely on tips.
Pocketing the tip???
If someone did that to me, I’d make a scene about it. That’s basically stealing money from you and the wait staff.
Yeah, I would call the BIL out on the tip pocketing also, my sister be damned. Something along the lines of, “Oh, BIL, I didn’t notice you refilling my drink this whole time. What’s that? You didn’t? Then put the fucking money back down on the table.”
I try my best to not be one of “those women” when I go out!
My 17yo just went to Prom last week. Double-dated with another couple.
They went to a “nice” restaurant - Maggianos- and the bill was about a hundred bucks. When I asked what they tipped, he said he didn’t remember, but maybe less than ten bucks.:smack:
After explaining tipping for the 43rd time, I got on the phone. Still haven’t found the waitress in question, but I’ll drop by & spiff her another 30 bucks when I do.
Damn kids!
What a shock, a thread about eating out turns into a tipping discussion!
Oh man, I used to hate going to eat with my grandparents on Sundays after church because Grampa would ALWAYS complain about the bread. Either that we didn’t get any (at places that don’t give bread) or it was the wrong type (white instead of whole wheat, back when white was still the only kind 95% of the population would even consider eating). And the vegetables. Being a Sunday, this one restaurant we often ate at would always get a lot more families, and thus kids, on that day, and so for the vegetable of the day, they picked something most kids would actually eat (myself included), that being corn. Well, that wasn’t good enough for Grampa, he would complain and complain and complain about how they ought to have a real vegetable until (usually) they’d get the kitchen to open a can of that “mixed vegetable” garbage just so he didn’t have to have corn.
I’m sorry I don’t have any anecdotes about how he tips, I never really paid attention.
Very classy of you.
When I waited tables, other people who worked for tips, especially strippers, were the best. We would literally fight for the strippers who came in for lunch (there was a club down the street). They would have a bill between $10 and $20 and tip at least $20 on that.
The second best were other servers/bartenders. Just do the basics for them and you will be nicely rewarded.
I’m going to be ‘that guy’ and complain that we have to tip at all. I HATE tipping. Just add to the bill what the ‘going rate’ is and I’ll gladly pay. I hate trying to figure out how much to tip and even who to tip (valets, coat check, maids, waiters, barbers, etc, etc.).