So I should pay a waitress the same tip whether I order a $10 steak or a $5 grilled cheese sandwich? And should someone who lives a mile from the pizza place pay less of a tip than someone who lives five miles away?
Geez, I’ve done that (not had enough cash for a decent tip) but when that happens, I charge the meal and (depending on how much cash I have and how much I want to tip) either leave the tip from the cash I have or add the tip onto the charge slip. I’ve never left a short tip, but I have left no tip when the service was atrocious–if the server deserves to be tipped, he/she deserves the whole tip (or more).
As for tipping a pizza, I usually round up to the next dollar and add $2.00 or $3.00 (depending on how much the rounding is) and then add mroe if the weather’s awful or the delivery is quick or if I’m feeling generous–my roommate, who is perpetually broke, tips much less. I’ve always wondered if the delivery drivers base their service on the most recent tip or if they ask “was it the girl or the guy who ordered this time?” (For example, I’ve had times where, instead of buzzing up and having me come down to the main entrance, the delivery guy gets someone to let him in and delivers it right to my door.)
I don’t mean to come off snotty but I sure am glad I live in a country where minimum wage is higher and tipping isn’t expected. And GST is incorporated into the price of whatever instead of having to be worked out by the customer.
Transactions of any sort sound a lot easier here.
I’ve never understood people who eat at a restaurant or order delivery that supposedly don’t have money for a tip. If you can’t afford to throw the delivery guy a couple or three bucks, fucking pick up the pie yourself. I mean, shit, I live only three blocks from a pizza joint, and when I’m too lazy or whatever to go get it my damn self, I always give at least two bucks plus the change, usually three.
If an extra 15% is gonna break your bank, you have no business eating out in the first place.
Thank god I’ve never been a driver. If some sly little shit ever tried to stiff me, I’d stand there hollering until mom or dad showed up. And if mom or dad tried to stiff me, they’d get “Fuck you. Don’t order from us any more.”
I doubt I’d last very long…
I think the difference is that just getting a $2 tip would be fine, but not getting the $3 intended for you pretty much sucks.
There is a difference between tipping a delivery person who you see for 10 seconds and a server who you (should) see many times and has man=y opportunities to influcence the enjoyment of your meal. Despite that, the answer to your questions is: no, but the factors do contribute.
I do tend to leave higher percentage tips when the meal is cheap because the server has had to work harder for the 15% This is quite common - people will leave $2 - $3 after having a $7 breakfast. There is also a correlation between meal price and service. In a high-priced restaurant, servers attend to fewer customers, so the % calculation helps.
And, yes, I would tip more if they came further to deliver. The amount I tip delivery people seems to be above average, based on the comments on this board, but I calculated the amount based on knowing that I live about 10 minutes from the places I order from. That’s a 20 minute round trip, so I’m tipping at about $10/hr.
I beg your pardon? People who have to save up to order pizza as a treat (and believe me, I have) shouldn’t have it if they can’t afford the tip as well? Fuck you.
I always tip about 20% to my waiter they do a good job (which basically means just be courteous and don’t do anything to piss me off).
Average delivery - I tip about $1-2 per person.
As for some stupid fucking delivery guy who is 30 minutes late, rings the shit out of my door buzzer, forgets my drink and rides down the god damn sidewalk on his bike…well fuck you. There are plenty of take out Chineese restaurants in the neighborhood.
black455
Thank god I’ve never been a driver. If some sly little shit ever tried to stiff me, I’d stand there hollering until mom or dad showed up. And if mom or dad tried to stiff me, they’d get “Fuck you. Don’t order from us any more.”
Yeah…sure you would. You would take you no tip and like it. Then you could go back and fume and bitch to your peers. Maybe you might spit in their order next time and snicker to your friends. Hee hee hee! The Johnsons ate spit! Tee hee hee! 
It should be noted, when I was in that position I did smile and apologise to the delivery guy. It wasn’t fun, it was humiliating. And he was very nice about it.
In theory, yes. A tip is to reward the server for the personal attention he or she has given to you to make your dining experience special. It’s for the amount of work your server put into actually serving you.
The server spends the same amount of time and expends the same amount of energy getting the $10 steak or the $5 sandwich. Likewise, the server does the exact same work whether he or she refills my water or my coke. One’s free and the other’s $1.50. Most people don’t tip on water.
If I order a $100 bottle of wine, I’m not going to pay someone $15-$20 just to bring me the bottle.
As others pointed out, the pizza driver worked almost as hard to bring me one large pizza as he did two large pizzas.
These are some of the many flaws of trying to calculate out a tip based on the final bill and not on the service provided. 20% is easy to calculate and I have no problems with tips being percentaged based for this reason. But they are not an accurate representation of your appreciation for the work provided.
“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’m VERY sure with how I feel about that. I LOVE it. I agree with Silentgoldfish. But, then again, having been to Europe(Greece) and loving it, I’m almost always biased in favor of Europe.
“I know that if I wasn’t working for my tip, I’d be a whole lot less pleasent to people who were asses.”
But why should you be pleasant to asses? I’m not saying to be overtly rude or sink to their level, but there’s no reason to bust your ass to people who are dicks. Besides, if they’re asses, chances are, you wouldn’t get much of a tip anyway.
“So in the long run, I end up with more money and they end up with better service.”
That’s assuming you get a good tip from them. Unless you’re talking about the living wage w/o tip.
If you know you don’t have enough to tip the delivery guy, GO TO THE STORE AND PICK THE PIZZA UP YOURSELF!
Oh, and one more thing. In Greece, at least, people do leave tips.
I like the idea of tipping. When I go out to eat, the service is more important for the food. If I get poor service, I dont want to have to pay for it. If the resurant just paid the servers more, then added that cost to the food instead of tipping, then I would have to pay for poor service. this way, if the waiter screws me over, I get to withold th tip. I always tip well for good service, tip less for poor service, and not at all for really bad service
While that was a great story of the Christmas spirit*, a lot of people don’t have the option of turning down potential income. AQ lot of these folks depend specifically for tips as the bulk of their pay. We can sit here and bitch about the system all we want, but them’s the facts at hand. It’s great that your delivery guy made that sacrifice and probably made your day, but it just can’t be expected often, or at all, really, under the minimum wage/tipping system.
*- not sarcastic, it may have come out that way
I don’t drive and the store is too far away to walk in the dark. And the point is, it was a treat for me to order the pizza, a treat I saved up for.
Just out of curiosity, has anyone had worse experiences with tippers in rural areas than in suburban or urban areas? I’ve never worked as a server, but I feel almost obligated to leave a few extra dollars as a tip when I’m dining with friends from rural areas than from suburban or urban areas, because it’s been much more common that rural people will leave a tip under 15% (merited if the service is truly awful, but I’ve only seen service awful enough to leave something under 15% a time or two in my life). To be fair, it’s most assuredly not always like that, and that might just be one of my unfair stereotypes, but I’m pretty curious about this – I wonder if waitstaff and delivery persons in rural areas get and/or expect lower tips on average?
And waste precious gas that you might not be able to afford to use? What if they don’t own a car?
I don’t know why a service charge can’t be factored into the price to cover the tip. I agree with those who say that tipping has become a ridiculous practice, and yes, I have on many occasions in the past worked for tips.
It’s really ludicrous. If I’m going to have to pay to get good service, then include it in the price of the meal, for chrissake! If I’ve only got $20, do I really have to choose between a good meal and crappy service (no tip) or half the food I really wanted and great service (spend the rest on the tip)? I’ve had to do just that, many times. I don’t frequent really upscale places, mostly late night diners and such, but if I’ve only got $5, I can either afford a cup of coffee and a slice of pie (what I really want) or just a cup of coffee and a tip for a waitress that doesn’t have to do anything but bring me my food. I think a lot of it also comes from the expectation that the waiter/waitress does a lot to ‘enhance’ the experience. I may be in the minority, but as long as I get my food, and get it in a reasonable amount of time, I’m happy. I can’t honestly say that I can remember even a single instance where a waiter/waitress has made any difference in my ‘dining experience’ at all – with one exception (The Melting Pot, but that’s a different level of dining). Basically, I think if the service is what is expected, then you shouldn’t have to tip. Now, OTOH, if the service is exceptional, then a tip is indeed called for. To think of a tip as a requirement for what is considered the basic fulfillment of your job requirements seems to me a bit ludicrous.But that’s just me.
You got it. Tipping is part of the cost of the luxury of having somebody make and deliver your food to you in a prompt and courteous manner.
In a perfect world, delivery and waitstaff would be paid a decent hourly wage and tipping would just be gravy for good service. In that case, though, your pizza would cost more due to the higher overhead for the restaurant. Do you still think you’d have been entitled to get that pizza for a couple of bucks off?
I know what it’s like to scrape by, and I know what it’s like to save up to treat myself to something. But I try not to screw over the guy bringing it to my door in the process.
Do pizza delivery people get paid less now than in the '80’s? I never got a single tip the entire time I worked as a pizza delivery guy. So consider yourself lucky that I always give you a $1 tip.