Here in Montana, where waiters must be paid minimum wage, yes, that’s true.
I’m not whining about that, but I really didn’t know how to respond when my kids brought it up. I still don’t. This isn’t a chain store where they just stand behind a cash register and take money–my employees get out there on the floor and help people. They make recommendations, help find books on the shelves, handle special orders, do free gift-wrapping, help select gifts, and so forth.
So when my son spends a half hour helping a customer and the kid at the coffee shop spends fifteen seconds slopping some coffee in a cup, he naturally wanted to know why the coffee shop kid got tips and he didn’t. It’s a great question. I have no answer, but I did not let him put a tip jar out in the bookstore because it’s not customary and I think it would look bad.
Well, here’s an interesting article (albeit old, but the material is still relevant) discussing tipping that may give you some ideas.
I would simply tell him that coffee shop jar tipping is optional and not everyone participates (nobody is required to). Further, in coffee shop jar scenario, one isn’t tipping the server that hands them their coffee, they are tipping all the servers, including the one sitting outside on a smoke break. The point is, there is no good explanation for it (other than its socially acceptable) and it should be abolished.
The interesting bit of information I took from that article is that in spite of the fact that tipping was a European custom brought to the States, Europe has moved steadily away from the practice while we tenaciously grip it. It was reported that in the 1940s Britain established minimum wage laws that decreased servers’ reliance on tips, while the US took the exact opposite tack and established minimum wage laws reinforcing and further exacerbating workers’ dependency on tips. All the while, tipping in every form is considered ‘optional.’
I don’t know if we’ve moved past the group dinner or not but I would disagree with you here. I don’t think a server’s job is just to bring the food from the kitchen to the table but to bring it in a timely manner so that the food isn’t cold. If the food, and we’re talking about 20 dinners here, is let sit at the pass long enough to get cold then the server isn’t doing their job.
I stand by my comment. As long as the server is on the clock and performing duties that are related to his job, he is doing his job. He may very well not be managing his time well, which *is * definitely part of his job, but because he is failing does not mean his pay can/should be docked. Rather, he should be evaluated like just about every other hourly employee is on a regular basis where he is given an opportunity to review his strengths and weaknesses and/or let go if he is performing insufficiently.
Since we don’t know the specifics of why that waiter didn’t perform his job well, it’s impossible to judge whether there were other factors that resulted in his poor service. I’m not trying to make excuses for a server I don’t even know and wasn’t there to experience the service, but he was clearly in over his head. Was he filling in for more experienced waitstaff? Was he juggling other duties the patrons were unaware of? Was he expediting for both servers, freeing the other server to serve? Who knows? Regardless, unless he was out back smoking, he was doing his job. Not well, this we know.
Still, poor service doesn’t preclude other service providers from getting paid and neither should it preclude food service employees from collecting renumeration for work performed.
I don’t give a crap about when your phone bill is due. Here’s an idea- if you have a big night, save some of it. My paycheck this coming Friday doesn’t help cover my due-Monday car payment; that’s why I don’t spend all of the last one.
The OP is ridiculous. I usually tip 20% and up because I worked in a few service jobs- but if you seriously think people who tip 15% are cheap, consider your job a reality check.
Most fields have different levels of skill and pay. I would assume that the servers at the expensive restaurants are more ‘advanced’ than the waitress at Denny’s and so deserve much more. In my field I am paid much more than when I started because I am more experienced and better at it.
IN addition, more expensive restaurants usually have more than 1 server…like a wine steward, a separate water boy etc…and I assume they get part of the tips and so the actual % tip should be higher.
Exactly. I hate to play blame the victim in any case, but my thoughts are that if the only thing that makes you friendly and nice to your customers is the hope that you can make the carrot on the stick a little bigger, you probably should look for a job where you aren’t doing so much customer service.
I’m sure bank tellers are told to be friendly to customers, because the bank management knows that unfriendly tellers will cause them to lose business. Sure, they don’t get a bonus for smiling at me and asking how my day is going and I probably wouldn’t complain unless their service included racial slurs and spitting on my money, but they still act courteous and friendly, because their boss has made it clear that it is expected of them. Why can’t this theory of customer service translate into dining?
Why can one basic hourly employee deposit a paycheck, dole out some cash and cut me a cashier’s check, while it takes a mercenary master server to fetch me some iced tea and a cheeseburger?
That’s interesting. I’d wager it’s precisely because they’ve heard it’s rude to tip or something.
There’s a guy named Michael Lynn who studies tipping and he considers Americans to be a bit neurotic about it. I guess we feel a bit uncomfortable being served, so we tip more.
When I’m in Europe I always round up. If the meal is 9.50, I make it 10. If for some reason it’s 9.99, I just add one, making it 10.99 or so.
I’ve noticed in Germany the service tends to be friendlier around American military bases, because all the local servers know Americans tip extra for friendly.
I don’t know. It’s kinda like illegal immigration. Are these people stealing jobs, or performing jobs someone else won’t? When I first started waitering this guy said “hey pretty boy, bring me a cup of coffee.” At that moment I had to decide, “do I punch this guy, or serve him?” I served him. Got my money.
This is exactly my point. In traditional jobs you KNOW when your paycheck is coming and roughly how much it’s going to be. Tipped employees don’t. So while one might say “I heard a story that he he made $200, he doesn’t deserve any more money” that doesn’t take into account the fact that it’s possible one could easily tend towards the $30 night side for extended periods of time.
Well, stop telling people when you have a $200 night then.
I wasn’t referring to you but to the OP with the 15% thing. I’ve got no beef with you; things are probably bad where you are. However, having lived in Florida for 13 years, worked service jobs in four different cities, I have no sympathy for the OP. I knew dozens of servers while I was in college, and every single one of them made more money than I did, working less hours.
Everything in the US basically costs 35-40% more than it does in Australia because of this. And then being asked to add 20% on top of that for tips? Sorry, no.
Bear in mind when you’re on holiday overseas you can’t cook your own food for the most part- you pretty much have to eat out in restaurants. And adding 15-20% of that suddenly makes your meals really, really expensive. Sure, you can say “Then don’t come to America!” but really, that’s not particularly helpful or realistic.
I’ve worked in bars and restaurants. There isn’t that much work involved in pouring a beer or carrying a couple of plates. Yes, it’s worth more than $5 an hour, but it’s not worth a fixed percentage of the total bill. Personally, I’d rather the system we have here, where there’s no tipping, but the meal costs a bit more and the staff get paid properly.
In my experience the service in the US is no different to the service I’ve received here in Australia or in NZ or the UK, where tipping is not expected from locals.
Ok a typical scenario: Person A works in a book/shoe/clothing store, Person B is a waiter in a pub/restaurant.
Person A receives $9/hr + no or very, very occasional tips
Person B receives $9/hr + regular tips
It of course depends on the specific individual and business to a certain extent but Person B can expect more $ per hour than Person A even if Person A works just as hard. Granted the nature of restaurant work is taxing as others have said but so can other types of service job be but there is no expectation that these other workers will be rewarded for excellent service except by a wage increase.
Many people in non-food services work their arses off but can expect nothing more than the flat rate because culturally it’s not seen as a service in the same way as providing food/drink is.
I’m more likely to be generous with my rounding, but as a general rule I don’t tip beyond rounding the bill, unless the server has really gone out of their way because I’ve asked them to. Otherwise, pestering me to see if “Everything is OK” is annoying me. If there’s a problem, I’ll let you know. Otherwise, please leave me alone to dine in peace.
I usually (90% of the time) tip $5 no matter the bill amount. Then, when $5 doesn’t cover 15-20% of the bill I add more to the tip. IOW, if the bill for me (or the two of us) is $13.80 or $20.50 (or some similar amount) I’ll still throw a fiver on the table.
Leaving a $1.80 for a $12 dollar meal (even though that’s 15%) seems like an insult to the wait person.
Well, then it’s people like you who give tourists a bad name. I’ll grant that a tip is to be hoped for rather than expected outside the US, but here it’s an essential part of a waiter/bartender’s earnings. When in Rome…
I do this too. By percentage of the bill, I wind up tipping the people at Waffle House three times as much as the guy at TGI Friday’s.
As a foreigner (Welsh) in the US, I really don’t care about the tipping system. Everybody here knows the score, it’s 20% of the bill, whatever.
But I have to say that I think service in the US is - in general - terrible, and I think it’s because of the tips. The faux-friendliness, the almost-flirtation, the constant trips back to check ‘how everything is’? You are not my friend. Just leave us alone to eat!
I think good waiting staff shouldn’t intrude on the meal experience unnecessarily, and here they do that an awful lot. It seems to be an unfortunate fact of life that many people will tip a waitress who flirts a bit more than one who doesn’t.
Curious. I find the level of service here to be much better. I’d rather shoo away an overly obsequious waiter than roam a restaurant looking for a missing one.
The level of service in Britain is, to my mind, apalling. I still visit semi-regularly and find that good service is the rare… even in places where my brother and his wife are regulars (and they tip very well by UK standards.)
The exceptions seem to be foreign staff; they live in Richmond, where it seems like half the waiters are Eastern European or Italian, and they are unfailingly cheerful and efficient.
On the other hand, service in country pubs is always quite good.
