I’ve said this before, but for different reasons. (Before I’d said that it was [and still is] dangerous to let your kids answer the door for strangers.)
Second reason: they’ll play fast math and screw the delivery guy out of his tip!
This has happened several times to me. Last night was the latest. I was delivering to a house I knew was good for a $3-4 tip. When I got there with their $13 pizza, an 8-year-old answered the door. In his fist he had the cash his mom must’ve given him for the pizza. When I quoted the price to him, he unrolled the $10, $5, and two $1’s, set the two $1 bills aside, and gave me the $15. I couldn’t say anything, but I could see in his eyes that he was fuckin’ pleased with himself. Little prick!
The time before, I stuck it to the little schemers. Their order was $19.93, and their parents had given them $23 (a $20 and three $1s). Their mistake was handing me the cash first. They then asked for the change. I handed them $0.07.
“No, we mean the $3.”
“Why’d you hand it to me in the first place. Isn’t that my tip?”
I used to be a pizza scheming brat, keeping the tip for myself, and we used to get pizza once a week or so.
One day we got a post card from our pizza delivery guy.
It said that we were a very valued customer and it has pleasure bringing pizza to our house. We were always so nice to him, and he very much appreciated the generous tips he’d received.
Whatever it was that he’d done wrong to earn our displeasure, he apologized and hoped we would let him know what it is so that we could correct it, and restore the good faith we’d had in him in the past.
Suffice to say Scylla got his ass-kicked and pizza guy did very well thereafter at our house.
I deliverd pizzas for over a year (about 5 years ago) and I would always keep ~ $5 in pennies in a bag in my car. For the shitheads that would give me a $20 bill on a $18.27 pie, the conversation went like this:
me: "Do you need any change? (in a “thanks, goobye” tone of voice)
asshole: “Yes”
me: “how much?”
asshole: “all of it.”
So I would go back to my car, count out 23 pennies, and crack open 3 rolls of pennies, and go hand Mr Cheapshit 173 pennies. Let it never be said that I am not a petty person. Small pleasures get me through the day.
I never really had any problems with kids skimming of the top of my tip money, though.
Just a bad tippers warning: managers are monitoring.
A couple of weeks ago, I delivered during the big snowstorm that hit the DC area. My manager asked that I let him know of any stiffs or poor tips we received.
Most everybody was an exceptional tipper that day. Two in particular weren’t: a pre-teen boy and a receptionist at a doctor’s office. (The latter gave me $13 for a $12.40 order.) I told my boss about them, and he went into their records in the order computer and made a note not to offer them any specials of any kind.
I hate the whole tipping system. I hate it! A situation that happens to me a lot because we suck at planning: just before payday, and I am home alone with the kids at dinnertime. Husband has the car at work. And I realize there is nothing to make for dinner. But I have $10. So I order a small pizza ($6), and the pizza guy gives me a dirty look for only tipping him $2 and keeping my last $2 to buy me and the kids drinks at the soda machine.
Just fucking raise the prices enough to pay your employees what they deserve so I don’t have to figure out how much your stupid delivery guy expects to get for giving me the food I paid for!
Tipping… I just don’t get it. What is so wrong with expecting the delivery guy’s employer to pay him a decent wage? Why risk making your customer feel awkward and/or screwed?
What are you gonna do if I don’t tip? Spit in the food? Spill sauce or drink on me by ‘accident’?
Looking at the tone of some posts on this topic, it seems just like a miniature extortion racket that somehow wormed it’s way into American culture. “Mr Jones at number 23, he’s failed to pay his protection money last time, make sure his pizza gets to him stone cold.”
And why don’t chefs get tipped? Seems to me that they are more deserving of any extra reward that comes from preparing my food. Do they have a better union or something?
Or supermarket check-out people… should I give them extra money every time I go to Sainsbury’s? If not, why not?
BTW, how do you know the kids’ mom didn’t tell them to get all of the change back? Maybe it’s the mom who’s cheap and you got those poor kids in trouble. Seems to me that the guy trying to screw a couple of kids is the little shit.
Since businesses are in it for the money, any chance to get the customer to help pay their employees is greatly appreciated. Just ask any waitress who makes $2.15/hr. There are plenty of employers who would strip away as much as they could from their employees in order to save a buck (which usually goes into THEIR pockets). I’ve worked at a few places where this has happened.
Keep the employee stupid about their rights and it’s easy to rip them off.
What pisses me the fuck off about this is that this is a recent development.
I used to always tip $1, because the pizza places charged a delivery fee. Now they don’t call it a delivery fee, and it doesn’t go to the delivery guy, but they sure as fuck didn’t drop their prices.
I didn’t realise this until the last thread we had on the subject. So delivery guys: unless they completely stiff you, don’t get too pissed off. And spread the word so that people know they are now expected to tip more.
Having a little trouble with the old logic module today are we? If I have a $20 bill and $3 ones and the bill is $19 and something, which bill(s) should you give me if you don’t want to give a tip at all? The mother clearly intended for the delivery person to get all the money. Plus the kids were so dumb that they handed money that wasn’t even owed to the delivery person and then asked for it back.
I’ll take this one, kids. I’ve been waitressing full time for about two and half years, working in three different resturants. If people don’t tip me, they’re generally gone by the time I figure it out. And if they have the audacity to return to my resturant (and I rarely forget a face, much less a cheap bastid face…) I simply don’t try to be a good waitress. I’ll take longer to take their order, I’m not as friendly. Sure, they’ll get their food, and they’ll get what they ordered, and it will be clean. But I’m paid to make sure the customers have a good dining experiance, and if they’re not paying me, then I can give a rat’s ass. The $3.50 an hour is really the only thing keeping me from telling them to take their cheap-ass selves over to Burger King.
No. The reason why minimum wages are lower for servers and others who get tipped is because the assumption is that the customer knows basic ettiquitte and is going to tip 15% or higher. If a customer isn’t going to do this, then it really doesn’t make sense for you to A.) attempt to give them good service, or B.) encourage them to come back and do the same thing over again.
Some of them do. I tip out the kitchen at one of the resturants I work at, because we don’t have any bussers to tip out. So 6% of my daily take goes to the kitchen staff. In most places they don’t because the Chef is on salary (and probably makes a nice living) and the Soux Chefs and other line cooks are getting a nice hourly AND what amounts to a free culinary training.
Because they’re not bringing food to your house, hot and ready to eat. They’re not relaying your every whim and food desire to the cranky Chef who will most likely swear at ANY special order. They’re just retail clerks. Now if a bagger helps you haul a cartload of groceries to your car, giving that kid a dollar is not going to bankrupt you, and it’s gonna make him/her feel a whole lot better. So what’s the problem with it?
And finally: the reason WHY we have tipping is because we (the tippies) don’t complain about it. If anyone should, you’d think we would. But the fact of the matter is that tipping allows you to make huge amounts of cash, in an enviroment that the times goes by quickly and is rarely boring. In Europe, servers are paid a living wage and you don’t tip them, and I’m not sure how I feel about that. I know that if I wasn’t working for my tip, I’d be a whole lot less pleasent to people who were asses. So in the long run, I end up with more money and they end up with better service.
And FWIW, I’ve always found that calculating 20% is not only easier on the brainpan, but can make your server’s day. NOT tipping is rude. Telling your delivery guy or server: “I’m sorry, you deserve more then this, but this is all the cash I have.” also doesn’t cut it. (and yes, I did get this from a 40 something woman as she handed me a dime and a nickle. Which a bill visible in her other hand.) Before ordering, you should look at the prices and MAKE SURE you can afford the tip on the meal you’re ordering. Or go to McDonalds. That’s what it’s there for.
I don’t see why the tip should relate much to the cost. The time and effort taken to deliver to me is almost the same whether I order $15 ot $30 worth of pizza. I usually tip $3 plus the change.
The other day someone knocked on my door. It was a man telling me he had the treadmill I had ordered from Kmart. When he went down to get it, I trashed my apartment looking for tip money. But dammit, all I could come up with was a bunch of balled-up dollars that I found wadded up in a coat pocket. In total, I had about nine dollars. I tried to fold them up so that it would look like it was a big wad of green. But I knew the delivery guy was going to be disappointed regardless.
He came in with the heavy-ass box and then gave me the
clipboard to sign. As soon as I handed it back over to him, he was on his way out of the door. I shouted to him that I had a tip for him but he just said, “Merry Christmas!” Tears welled up in my eyes. He had lugged my treadmill up a whole street block and even up a few stairs, and he didn’t even want a tip. And here you are, whining about getting two dollars instead of three.
I’m always good for a tip. I overtip sometimes just to compensate for people who are lousy tippers. But when people complain when they get a 15% tip and not a 20% tip, or complain because their clientes can afford to hand out more money than they should have to, then you start losing me.
on this issue!