I hope you realize that in Martini’s culture, dining out at MacDonalds is huge . Presumably he dines out exclusively at MacDonald’s while in the US as well? So, don’t you think you should appologize ? 
I’m with rostfrei on this one. I eat out a lot, and while my tips are mostly average, I very seldom would even give the waitstaff a chance to notice the tip amount until I was half way down the street. Who are you people who get praise from your waiters and waitresses for tipping 20%+? Or conversely, who tip very little but then wait around for the waiter to notice and get pissed off about it. At the point I pay for the food and write the tip amount in, I am getting up and leaving within a minute of doing so, and the waiter has generally not come to retrieve the paperwork yet.
I will say that earlier this year when the management from my company took some of us West Coast people out to dinner in the late summer that I was surprised the dinner lasted three hours, only one hour of which was eating. After the bill was paid, I expected we would get up and leave, but the management were from the East Coast, and I get the impression this is what they do. Personally, my ass was falling asleep, and I felt bad we didn’t leave so the waiters could seat another party there. Is this paying and holding the table hostage long afterward thing a regional phenomena?
If you were a heavy tipper, I bet you would notice that you do have the same server more than once. They would battle for your table.
I don’t know - our favorite restaurant is small, fairly expensive ($40 steaks), and we tip well there. We eat there once or twice a month.
But its also busy. We are well known by the waitstaff - and know anyone who isn’t brand new, but they aren’t fighting over our table. They are assigned a section, our reservation is in a section. Maybe they fight over it when they see our name on the reservation list and that’s how we end up in one section or another. But we wouldn’t know that. And we get the same server more than once because the restaurant only HAS six and they seldom turn over.
As a regular, honestly, I think they are just more thrilled that we frequented their expensive small new restaurant through the recession than were overly concerned about how well we tipped. Getting customers who will pay $40 for a steak on a Wednesday night during the recession in an off the beaten path restaurant in St. Paul, Minnesota is something.
Well, maybe saying ‘battling’ for a table is a strong word. But I could tell stories of wait staff going so far as to try to signal me which section they are waiting when I come in. I have this problem where I overcompensate for the ‘blacks don’t tip’ thing. I started it years ago. I have since realized that it’s silly to overcomensate for that. But I still tip heavy because I have learned that it comes with awesome perks! Once you get known at a bar or restaurant for heavy tipping, it becomes worth the money. Now, over-tipping is one of my indulgences. I relish it like some may relish an expensive bottle of wine. Makes me feel good.
And those firefighters should have just put out Cranick’s fire, right Shot From Gunzomax? The people involved have set up a system they like, so there’s no “should” about it.
As for the OP, I haven’t experiencesd this, probably because I’m a good tipper due to much waiting experience.
Where the hell are you eating? I tip right around 20% (divide by ten, multiply by two, and then usually round up so the total comes to an even dollar amount), and I rarely have this happen.
People are shockingly intolerant of those who try to cheat others out of money they’ve earned. I bet they get mad when you share anecdotes about eating your coworkers lunches from the fridge, too.
Congratulations: you’re effectively engaging in legal theft.
What? How is that *remotely *comparable?
1.) Cranick: He and his neighbors chose to subscribe to the fire services of a neighboring city instead of paying taxes for their own. He personally chose not to pay the subscription fee, even after gaining the benefit from it once before.
2.) Tipping out: You have absolutely zero say in the policies of your employer. Your only choice if you don’t like it is to quit your job.
Also, if you’d actually read my posts instead of just getting all excited over the opportunity to stalk me, you’d note that nowhere do I advocate that they should stop paying the people they tip out to. I’m just saying it’s a stupid, senseless system. Like tipping in general, really–I’d much rather they just eliminate tips and raise prices to compensate. But as long as this is how it works, this is what you have to do.
Sadly, in Pittsburgh. Everything from a $8-12 American food joint (think burgers, steak salads, the like) to ethnic restaurants (thai, indian, etc) to diners to high end places of $20-35/plate. The past 6 months I routinely eat at high end place at least twice/month (my parents are house hunting and take us out).
If I’ve eaten there before, I’m recognized and treated sweetly. If I haven’t been, afterwards I’m thanked profusely. Some places the manager will come over to talk to us! I wouldn’t say it’s true of 100% of places, but of the majority. Seems like people are still going out but stiffing on tips :(.
I think people here are just horrible tippers. Truly horrible. The only people I know who make decent money are my friends who work at the sports bars right next to the stadiums during Steelers games. Tight shirts, big smiles, end up with $600/game. This was pre-recession though, I have no idea how it’s been for them the last two years.
Your point in (2) above is completelý weird. Choosing not to work there is how an employee has their say in their employer’s policies. So, it’s exactly the same as the Cranick situation–all these people (ie, restaurant owners/managers, waiters, and bussers/hosts/etc. Have developed a system they like, then you come walking in gonzo-style and declare that it’s stupid and you know better than them how it should work.
Not me, but it happened to some friends of mine. They went to calculate the tip and saw that they didn’t have enough small bills, so they put the small bills they had on the table while they went to the bar to get change. While they were getting change, the waitress confronted them, asking “Is there a problem with the service tonight?” and referencing the tip in a rather angry tone. They paid and left.
Why exactly does tipping need to be a percentage of the bill? If I order a bowl of soup for $2.00 and my friend orders a steak for 20, should the waiter get .40 from me and $4 from my friend? Similarly if our table is drinking $3 beers rather than water, should we be tipping on each drink? The waiter works just as hard refilling water as bringing beer bottles.
Jeeze. Apparently I need to move to Pittsburgh. The boy and I both love good food, so any weekend we’re together we tend to drop a lot of dough on restaurants, but we seldom get that kind of treatment in Milwaukee, Baltimore, D.C., etc.
No, it’s not remotely comparable. Consider:
1.) Scenario A. You have a say in forming the policies of a location. The policy that is enacted is the one you agreed with. If you change your mind, you can move to another location or work to change the policies in the location.
2.) Scenario B. You have no say in forming the policies of a location. The policy that is enacted is one that you do not agree with. If you change your mind, you can work somewhere else.
See how these are not remotely comparable? Also, let’s look at my recommendations for the various scenarios…
1.) I thought that the firefighters were right to let Cranick’s house burn, because he chose to live in an area with no fire fighting services, didn’t work to get fire fighting services in that area, and declined to subscribe to the firefighting services from a neighboring area.
2.) I think that requiring waitstaff to pay a portion of their income to other employees of the company is a form of costshifting on behalf of the management of the restaurant and therefore unfair. Instead of paying their bar staff and busers higher base wages, they’re making up the difference by taking earned income away from another position. The tips earned by servers are at least theorically based on the quality of the service they provide, something that bar staff and busers would have minimal influence over. And basing it on a percentage of the bill rather than the tip almost completely divorces it from any possible justification.
Really, you should just start an “I hate SFG” thread in the Pit instead of derailing a thread with completely incomprehensible attacks that aren’t even logically consistent. Seriously, does anybody else in this thread remotely understand what **Rand **is trying to say, other than “I want to say SFG is wrong”?
SFG, the employees initially have their say through the fact that the managers know the employees will leave if they don’t like the policy. But that “initial say” stage isn’t really rthe point–in the Cranick situation, people that move to the county don’t have an initial say. They agree to the policy by living there, just like the employees agree to the policy by working there.
The situations are completely comparable in the fact that everyone involved has chosen a system they are happy with, so your sideline snide comments are just so much gonzo-style blustering. Also, please get over yourself–I’m just pointing out your obcious inconsistency and have no interest in stalking you in general or anything like that.
Well it is a bit of both IMHO. Generally speaking a percentage is easy and the size of the bill reflects the level of effort involved. Also given the person is being taxed on a percentage of the bill…
However there are obvious exceptions. As someone mentioned above, if you are comped, tip at least as if you paid for the item. And I’ll often go to my local bar to watch a game - they have the MLB package. If I don’t feel like drinking, I’ll sit there and drink OJ & club soda - they tend not to charge me at all, or charge me for one and just refill for free. If I sit there for three hours and get a check for $1.00 or $1.50, I’m not basing it on a percentage - I’ll drop a $10, as rental on the bar stool as much as anything. Same principle if you sit in a diner and drink $1 coffee with free refills for 4 hours in the afternoon.
Oh YaY, this perfectly decent thread about people’s experiences has turned into another tipping vs non tipping/undertipping.
Rand: Honestly, I don’t know why I’m bothering, but…
The laws governing where you live and the way pay is calculated at your workplace are only comparable if you live in a totalitarian state like North Korea. Unless Tennessee has moved about 7,000 miles west, to compare these two things is and continues to be ridiculous. You’re talking in circles, so unless you have anything new to say, I’m not going to bother responding to you anymore on this topic in this thread.
Jokes aside, when I’m in the US I generally buy my food at the supermarket and cook it where we’re staying, eat at fast-food or buffet places, and when we’re eating in a sit-down restaurant my wife gets the tips. No-one’s out of pocket or being “stolen” from.
It’s also worth bearing in mind that the last time I was in the US was a couple of years ago when the economic situation wasn’t nearly as bad as it is now, so even I accept that the “If you don’t like it, get a job somewhere else” thing doesn’t really apply anymore. But I’m still allowed to think it’s bullshit that the customers should be paying the staff, instead of the staff getting paid by the business owners.
And this discussion has still proved the assertion that almost no-one on the boards will admit to being a poor/non-existent tipper because they’ll get piled on. It’s certainly interesting to note how many people suddenly start mentioning how much they tip, how their waitstaff treat them like family, etc.
Well, to be fair, I’d hope the tips are better in Baltimore and DC. You’d think Mulwaukee was more comparable, though.
I did a little canvassing for a political candidate this past cycle (really small time independent guy). He treated anyone who helped to dinner a week after the election. He’s a nice guy, kind of a hick, who obviously doesn’t go out much. I snuck a peak at the bill and winced; the tip wasn’t even 10%. She’d been getting us ketchup, condiments, water refills all night. So we all depart and I go to the bathroom and wait and wait a few minutes. I emerge and find the waitress and hand her enough to make it 20%. I apologize, saying he doesn’t go out much. You would have thought I’d handed her solid gold coins. She was blubbering about how nice that was, how people never tip well…here I thought I was just getting it up to par.
Fine with me. You can act like gonzomax on this topic if you please. It’s plain to everyone else that it’s not simply the case that an employer makes the rules and the employees must simply keep showing up for work whether they like the rules or not. If they don’t like the rules, they won’t show up anymore. It’s that simple. The fact that lots of different restaurants use the tip-out model shows that the people who work at that restaurants like it.
that is of course, assuming that they have another option, one that will still allow them to feed their families.
And of course, we all know, that the same instant you want a new job you get one