Current views on tipping in restaurants

In My Humble Opinion
1

I don’t understand tipping in restaurants sometimes these days. Pre-COVID, if a youngster asked me why people tip in a restaurant, I might say…

  1. Sometimes they get you a good seat
  2. Sometimes they’re very quick getting the food to you
  3. Sometimes the food is really excellent, better than ever at that place
  4. Sometimes they’re very attentive, keeping your sodas full or seeing if you need napkins

Mrs. L and I went out to eat the other night. We walked up this sort of aisle, ordered at a counter (like McDonald’s). They totaled it up, they gave us styrofoam cups for the fountain, we picked up silverware, took a metal number that perches above the table so servers will know who gets which order.

But before I left the counter, I was asked to pay. Included in that was a tip prompt. Therein lies my question. How can you predict how much you want to tip beforehand? Anbody who has gone out to eat much has had the reverse experience.

  1. Sometimes they get you a terrible seat (or maybe you have to wait a long time for any seat)
  2. Sometimes they’re very slow getting the food to you (and if it’s buffet, they don’t bring it—that’s your job)
  3. Sometimes the food is really terrible, worse than ever at that place (cold, stale, undercooked—there are lots of ways to get it wrong. Recently we decided to try a pizza place. $20 for a pizza isn’t out of the question but it turned out to be a 9 inch and didn’t bowl us over. Despite the fact that we were carrying out, the prompt was there for a tip.)
  4. Sometimes they’re not very attentive, not keeping your sodas full or seeing if you need napkins (or you get your own at a fountain or condiment area etc. so that’s your “job,” nothing they’re doing for you.)

Ever tip in advance and at the end of a poor eatery experience think, “Damn! I already tipped big for this?!”

I’m reading this partly as a COVID thing—that if you want to help them get through the struggle, you can toss a few bucks their way. I guess if you like a place and you go back, you might feel like you know what to expect but we’re always trying new places.

Your opinions and approaches?

2

My personal approach to it all has not changed since before: tipping is just part of the cost. I don’t use it as an editorial on the quality of the food or service. If I’m let down by someplace, I just won’t go there again.

3

For pay at the counter, I never tip. The only exception is a Starbucks on a holiday. I’ve been voluntold to work some holidays and hated it.

Tipping a host for a table? Never in the Covid era. Even before Covid, I never did. But I never time dates or important meals to be in peak time. When I worked as a host, I’d get tips to skip the line.

4

Tipping etiquette is so inconsistent that I’ve just decided to do what I think is sensible, and never feel guilty about it. In normal times, I don’t tip for anything I pick up myself at a counter, and I don’t tip for take-out food. But in the age of COVID, things are a little different of course.

5

I tip when, at the outset, it is understood by both parties that a tip will be tendered.

6

I haven’t eaten in a restaurant since covid.

That being said, we tip because otherwise the waiter is underpaid. I don’t want to give a job review every time i buy a meal. I just tip 20%, and hope that expectation doesn’t go up yet again. I would be far happier to have the price of service included in the stated price, and just pay it.

In places that work that way, (for instance, restaurants in Japan) the service is fine.

7

This. I tip because food service workers are a severely underpaid sector (often deliberately so on the part of management) who deserve a full paycheck to live on. If you can’t afford to tip at least 20%, you can’t afford to eat out.

8

Generally speaking, you are not expected to tip at McDonald’s or other fast food restaurants. Check out this McDonald’s ad from the 1970s emphasizing that you don’t have to tip. Can you dig it?

9

I started tipping for counter service at some of my favorite restaurants I haven’t been able to sit down and enjoy throughout most of 2020. During the Before Times, when I sat down at restaurants, I would typically give at least 15% regardless of the service or how good the meal was. I can’t very well blame the waitstaff if the food is terrible, can I? I’m in my 40s now, and I can only think of a handful of occasions I have not left a tip and each time it was for horrendous service

10

Pay at the counter? A couple bucks in the tip jar. For one person, that is.

11

I tip as little as possible and as rarely as possible and never at bars or counter and fast-food service. It is a hateful, regressive system that deserves to die. I’ve never heard a good reason for its existence.

12

This, one thousand percent, many times over.

Restaurant workers in the U.S. officially earn a fraction of minimum wage, and are expected to make up the difference on tips. It is, indeed, a horrible, hateful practice, and it needs to end. But that doesn’t mean you get to opt out of it if you eat in a restaurant, because you are directly harming the server and other staff in the same position.

Here in Europe, servers do, in fact, earn a living wage at a minimum, and tips are, indeed, a reflection of good-or-better service. The practice, however, varies from country to country.

In German, the word for the tip is “das Trinkgeld,” literally “drinking money,” and it’s a voluntary add-on to the check. Traditionally, you just round up the bill by a couple of euros. If the total is like 47.50 €, you give the server fifty in bills and say “Stimmt so.” This colloquially means “keep the change,” but literally means “this is correct,” i.e. I know I am giving you this amount, and it’s good.

In France, and in Paris especially, it’s usually rude to try to tip. Many servers pride themselves on their service (even where it’s bad, because, y’know, Paris), and they regard a gratuity as a bribe attempt for better treatment.

And so on, and so forth. It’s different everywhere, depending on cultural expectations. In most places, it’s not acceptable to leave the extra money on the table as you depart. Where it’s done, it’s done with the server, as a personal courtesy, because your server is, indeed, a person, and deserves to be treated as such.

The upshot of all this is that restaurant bills are, in fact, noticeably more expensive than in the States. That is not a reflection of European inefficiency; it’s a reflection of the fact that the cost of the service is properly baked into the total. And any tip on top of this amount is generally inconsequential.

In the U.S., if you’re not tipping the server, the server isn’t getting paid. Full stop.

13

During these Covid times I am much more generous in tipping overall, and tip in situations where I wouldn’t have previously. Takeout gets tips now, we don’t do delivery much but I’ve increased my tipping there. I want these restaurants, hair salons, etc and their staff to survive.

14

I tip at least 20% at sit down restaurants, and maybe a dollar at a takeout place if I’m a regular customer.

One exception is a local Cuban Cafe in my town, Population 3000. Small place with 5 tables and seating for maybe 12 people. She does a good takeout business and donates a lot to the local community. So I tip generously to support her efforts.

15

With me, whenever I go out, I usually tip 15-20%, depending on the quality of both the service and the food itself. I can see why people don’t tip, but I feel it’s a nice thing to do.

16

Of course, if people stayed home based on that metric, it’d be even worse for the job security of the restaurant staff.

17

A look at any Cruise forum thread on gratuities will demonstrate what a problem it is around the world.

There seems to be two extremes: USA, where 20% seems to be the accepted norm and people tip just about everyone who does them any kind of service. Australia, where offering someone a tip is suggesting that they are stupid enough to work for a cheapskate who doesn’t pay them a decent wage.

The UK falls somewhere in between and even taxi drivers don’t expect a tip these days. Some restaurants, especially in London, add 12½% to the bill unless you delete it. In every case, the tip is an extra and not part of the employee’s wage.

18

#3? Really? Since the tip is for the seerver, it would never occur to me to increase or decrease it based on the quality of the food.

As to the question “Why people tip in a restaurant,” it depends on whether you’re talking about why people tip at all (as opposed to not tipping), or how they decide how much to tip.

19

Not at all. Most folks can afford to tip 20%.

Repeating myself: it’s pretty okay to not tip, as long as you let folks know that ahead of time. “Hi, I’d like to order a pizza,” you say. “15 inch, double pepperoni. Also, I don’t tip anything for takeout or delivery.” That way you are engaging in a free, fully-informed transaction. You ask for a service, and the person you’re asking for a service knows how much you plan to pay them for the service, and can make their decision accordingly.

If you don’t tell folks that you plan to not tip (or plan to under-tip), then you’re relying on their mistaken impression that you follow social norms, and you’re essentially lying by omission.

These days I tip 20% for takeout, or $10, whichever’s higher. Service workers are deeply fucked these days, and I’m not, so it’s a tiny way to spread some wealth.

20

Then why have a tip culture, rather than just price food accordingly and pay workers better?