Yes, once, but very politely, and to be fair we had completely forgotten to tip.
Had a fantastic dinner in a German restaurant in Milwaukee – somewhere in downtown; had a bit of a museum attached with suits of armour and antique steins and the like.
Absolutely excellent waiter – a college student who was helpful, pleasant, and all around added to the dining experience.
My friend (another Kiwi) was paying, he signed the bill and sent it off. The waiter approached us quietly and asked if there had been a problem with the meal – which given the way we’d been chatting with him seemed kinda odd… and then my friend went a bit red and err… corrected the bill. It was all good in the end, we had a great time and the waiter got a really good tip.
(I can understand the lapse; I try hard to follow US tipping customs when I’ve been in the US but it just isn’t natural / ingrained and I have to consciously work through it a bit).
I’ve been going to this diner for 5 years now, 3 1/2 of them been a regular. 2 1/2 of them have been with my dearest.
Anyways, about a year ago - 18 months into the two of us being regulars and 3 1/2 years into me being a regular - we up and walked out without paying the bill. With all of our joking with the waitstaff we had apparently forgotten we were in public and not at home or a friend’s house. Someone caught us as we were walking to the parking lot. I was horrified but the moment we opened the doors to head back insdie we hear people laughing uproariously. We leave our usual 30% tip and leave again to many colorful comments ;).
Servers must claim tips based on the amount they sold. Whether it’s 2 buffets for 20.00 or 2 regular meals for 20.00. So, when you only leave a couple of bucks on a 20.00 buffet tab (just as example), it’s kind of a kick in the teeth, tax-wise. I generally claimed 10% of my sales in tips, some servers claimed 8%. We got a nice, auditable print out of our sales every day when we closed out with the manager.
Our sales total was also used to calculate tip out (if applicable). Even when we had a buffet, we still had bus boys, we had to tip out the bus boys based on our sales (3%, IIRC). On nights when we had a bartender, we also tipped out the bartender (2% IIRC). When we had a food runner on busy nights, we tipped out the food runner (2% IIRC). Of course, bus boys, bartenders and food runners help the job go more smoothly - smoothness = faster table turnover and better tips, in general. So, I’m not arguing about tipping out, just trying to explain a little. Tipping out was not based on how much money we made, but on **our sales **(to be fairer to the people being tipped out). If you had a shitty night, you still have to tip out, no matter what people gave you.
So, if I sold 600.00, and I average 15% tips, I might have 90.00 in cash in my pocket. Sounds great. Then I tip out and I walk with 60.00. I claim my 10% of my sales for taxes, and there you go.
I would always leave at least 15% on a buffet check. Of course, I have a soft spot for servers.
Ah, I believe you’re talking about something like a restaurant that has a buffet as well as a menu. I’m talking about the places that are nothing BUT buffets…and their servers are not paid the $2.17 per hour, but significantly more than minimum hourly wage. My daughter’s friends, and my friends’ kids, worked in both types of places, and I know which one is which around here. I don’t stiff the servers who are working for subminimum wage.
Do all restaurants with servers do this? It just seems like a pretty douchey thing for restaurants to force their workers to claim a certain percentage of sales for tax-withholding (instead of their actual tips), especially in a buffet type situation where customers may not know any better.
I have a sister who worked as a waitress in college, and she said a lot of her fellow servers would actually underreport their tips for tax purposes. I don’t know if the restaurant was required by law follow a system like you described above, but if they did, I assume they found a way to get around it that was favorable to the waitstaff.
Sounds like Mader’s (or possibly Karl Ratzsch’s, but the collection of antiques means it’s almost certainly the former).
How is that “fair”? Sounds more like the restaurant owners just cheaping the fuck out on paying the people who get tipped out slightly more by making the waitstaff foot part of their paycheck instead.
It prevents servers from being cheap as fuck. Seriously - I’ve worked (oh so many moons ago) in both types of establishments as a hostess. If servers can tip out whatever the hell they want lots of times they’ll give you little or nothing.
I had servers make me bust my ass running around getting them shit all day and at the end of it they would hand over a dollar and say ‘Ooo - it was a bad tip day’ as you watch them pocket a crap load of $$.
If they have to tip 3% (which I think is standard) they can’t cheap out.
And before anyone says it - I’ve been a server too - you make a metric ass-load more money as a server than as a hostess even if you get paid less than minimum wage (well, assuming you’re a half-way decent server). I also get that servers can have crappy tip days, and have bad tables, etc. it still doesn’t justify screwing over the hostess/busboy/bartender. They’re not the one that had a hangover and PMS which made them give crap service - you are - you need to suck it up. And again - I’ve worked as a server a lot longer than I worked as a hostess.
This reminds me of a day trip to Hoover Dam when I was in Las Vegas a few years ago. I booked a bus tour to the dam. The driver picked us up and drove us to the dam, along with about 25 other people. All along the way, the driver would interject his conversations over the bus PA system with, “please remember to tip when the tour is over”, and once we arrived at the dam, he announced, “I got you here safely, please remember this and tip at the end of the tour”. Then, during the trip back, he announced, “I hope everyone had a good time, please remember that tipping is a way of life in Las Vegas, so a 10-15 dollar, per person tip is suggested”. He made sure to repeat this “ten dollars per person is suggested” mantra at least three times while driving back to Vegas… so that meant that the driver was fully expecting 250 (min) in tips from the people on the bus. He really annoyed me and I got off the bus and didn’t tip anything, simply because I don’t like to be hounded for a tip. If he had kept his mouth shut, I’d probably have tipped him ten bucks.
I have a problem with tipping in general. My beef is that restaurants, etc are allowed (in the USA anyway) to pay their employees virtually nothing and have the customers make up the difference. However, I do eat out a lot and I almost always tip 25-30%, even if the service is mediocre.
I get that. What I’m saying is, they should just be getting paid by the owner of the business instead of getting part of their income out of the server’s tips. Because I guarantee you that nobody is tipping their server based on anything but how the server themself performed, if they factor anything in at all.
Ahh - well true enough. Although, in theory, in either system (server driven, or mandatory 3%) the more $$ the server makes the more the other people make which inspires them to provide better assistance to the server - a bit like patrons tipping servers in the first place.
While one would hope that the fear of being fired would prevent some lazy hostess from slinking off in the corner and reading her blackberry, $$ probably works better.
I’ve been chased out of a restaurant once (another French restaurant, actually). We were staying in a hotel in Quebec, and our dinner was included in the price of the room. We also ordered drinks (not included). Our waiter was really, really good. We tipped on the value of the meal, even though we only paid for the drinks, so the tip was just a bit more than the bill. He came running out into the lobby as we were about to get on the elevator back to our room because apparently, if the number on the tip line is larger than the number on the bill line, they assume that the tip is supposed to be the difference, rather than the amount you wrote on the tip line (there was no total line on the bill). So I drew in a total line and wrote in that amount to make it clear on the bill what I intended.
We sort of felt that getting chased out of the restaurant by the server to argue about the tip completed the whole Parisian experience of the meal.
Just curious, were the beers listed at $4 on the menu, or on the tab you got at the end? Because the sales tax rate in NYC is almost 10%. If they were $4 on the menu, then a significant part of your extra $4 went to pay the tax, not her tip. My memory is that menu prices usually include the tax in the UK, but they don’t in the States (which could even explain the “typical Brit” crack).
For some reason it seems that when I sit at the bar at some places, the price includes tax already - but when I get table service in places, they then put tax on the top.
