“Mystery amount”? Can you truly not hazard a guess of what is expected? Growing up in the U.S. (an assumption on my part … please correct me if otherwise) should make the amount to tip more or less intuitive. If not, ask a few people.
“Whim of the restaurant”? I highly doubt that. Is there evidence that they want more per delivery than what is customary?
…
The above concerns are why I asked you specifically what was happening – were the delivery folks getting too low of tips too often, or no tip too often? If I read the OP correctly … some of your office mates stiffed the delivery person for an incorrect order at some point – so there must be some disconnect between you all and the restaurant on how to handle wrong orders.
I’d think that if you’re traveling to another country, one of the things you would research first is their tipping culture. It’s not as if most people travel to other countries that often; it’s not that hard to look up how much their waitresses or delivery people are paid.
This is just another example of people lurving the free market until the free market makes a decision they don’t like. By not tipping you are screwing not only the driver but possibly even the restaurant owner. In PA if the employee doesn’t make at least minimum wage in wage + tips the employer has to pay the difference themselves. So that’s another really good reason for the employer to deny delivery to consistently bad tippers.
Of course, I would like to do away with the tipping system completely. I wouldn’t mind paying more for my food without having to deliberate about how much I should tip and work out local customs. But this is the system we have, and it’s wrong to penalize workers just to “make a point.”
Well, it can be. When I tip I like to tell them to keep the change so there’s no ambiguity on that point, but if my total does not come out to a good amount (say the final bill is $4.50, fifty cents is too little to me but $1.50 is too much) to pay with in paper money I’ll have to go through the hassle of getting change back. Not to mention that it looks cheap when you use change as a tip even if you tip a dollar or more in change (I left a gold dollar at a place last night and it looked chintzy to me even though it’s worth as much as a bill). And that’s not even counting the complex psychoanalysis one has to do to figure out if service was really bad enough to leave less, or good enough to leave more. It really can be a hassle.
Failing to tip is not stealing because tips are not mandatory. Failing to tip is not taking money out of the pocket of the driver because until the tipper gives it to him it’s not his money.
You are certainly allowed to leave a small tip, or no tip, for bad service. But you are not if the service is good or at least perfectly fine.
What is the gap in understanding here?
Being nice to your lover isn’t mandatory, either. Guess there’s no reason why you should do that either, eh? And if they get mad because you’re not being nice to them, why, they’re extorting you!
Wow… what convuluted nonsense.
You have been arguing, this entire thread, that the resteraunt that delivers does not have a right to refuse your company service due to not receiving tips. Whether or not you, personally, tip is irrelevant. You still smack of a sense of entitlement with your whines about “extortion” because the company doesn’t want to lose money.
Then it aint extortion, is it?
Actually, you were saying it’s extortion. But beyond that little snafu in your gameplan, you’re back to your massive sense of entitlement.
A business saying that it wants to make a profit or doesn’t want to deal with your order is ‘shitty’? What, the honor of serving you should be enough?
Any other customer is paying the tip. You want not to have to pay the tip. They pay it. They are worth more to the restaurant.
You wouldn’t object to the restaurant instituting a $2/order service charge for delivering only to your location? We’ll call it the “bad tipper charge.” They say, “Oh, you’re at 123 Xyz Lane, which is a bad tipper address. We have to institute the ‘bad tipper charge’ of $2 per order.” You’re okay with that? If so, you don’t object to paying more for your food. If not, it isn’t that it’s a “mysterious” amount.
See … on this, we agree. Restaurants should keep up the pretense that tips are voluntary for anything from slightly-below-average service and up. Service professionals should never be up-front and open about expecting tips.
What would have been your response had the restaurant by your office just stopped delivering to your building, without explanation? “Um … your building is outside of our new delivery area … gas prices, you know … yeah, that’s the ticket …”
Here’s the thing, though – you’re outvoted by a large margin society. “Almost everyone accepting that something is mandatory” is the same as “something being mandatory”, for all intents and purposes. Things can be mandatory in other ways than by law.
Arguing otherwise is purely academic, and cannot affect change in the real world.
I walk into the restaurant expecting to tip 20%. If I can’t afford the tip, I can’t afford the bill. You can cross your arms, stamp your feet, and hold your breath all you want. In the US, tipping is the norm. You can attempt to affect social change - but if you do so by being a dick to the staff who expect and need the tips, expect to be called a dick. Personally, I won’t be helping your crusade, but should you succeed and cause prices to go up by 20%, then I’ll pay and stop tipping. I’m adaptable that way.
As someone who has traveled internationally a fair amount and always does the research, I will concede this point. However, it’s the expectation that bothers me. To act as if one should get a tip no matter what is ridiculous.
I believe that this whole situation falls under the definition of extortion (per m-w.com, the ingenuity part?), but I also think that if you don’t like it, then don’t order from that establishment again.
So you object to the sit-down restaurant manager setting a policy of mandatory tipping for its underpaid staff but you don’t object to the delivery restaurant manager setting a policy of mandatory tipping for its underpaid delivery staff. Why do you hate sit-down staff so much?
Sorry, I misunderstood your post. I thought you were talking about a charge for all customers. Yes, I would object to being singled out for a delivery charge in the manner you suggest.
Sure I can hazard a guess, but in this very thread there’s a discrepancy among posters as to what they tip. I round up to the dollar and add a dollar. Other people tip on percentages. Others tip a certain number of dollars based on price ranges. So what happens when the restaurant decides that I, who tips on average $1.50, isn’t tipping enough compared to the guy who’s tipping $2? Is their refusal to deliver then less reasonable? Why should I be put in the position of having to guess at what they consider an acceptable tip amount to begin with?
What’s “customary”? My change plus dollar? Someone else’s $2? Yet someone else’s $3? What if my idea of “customary” differs from the restauranteur’s idea of customary?
So then your tax code argument is pretty much prueed bullshit.
[quote=LHOD]
What, you get to make up wacky definitions for crimes, but I don’t?]
When exactly did I suggest that what the restaurant was doing constituted a criminal offense? You do understand that sometimes words that are names of crimes can also mean things that aren’t crimes, right? Or would you suggest that a baseball player complaining “we wuz robbed!” file a police report against the umpire?
sadly, neither is refraining from acting like a dick. However, happily we’re all allowed to point, laugh, insult and otherwise shun people who choose to act like dicks. see how nicely that all works out?
I’m assuming you’re looking at the definition for “extort” at m-w:
Applying that definition here makes a huge variety of situations extortion. For example:
-“Check it out! I’ve developed great poker skills!” My ingenuity means that when I beat you at a game and gain your money, it’s extortion.
-“Dude, you just ate at my restaurant. The price of that meal was $19.95. You knew that before you sat down. Pay up, or I’m calling the cops.” My compelling argument makes this extortion.
Indeed, any situation in which someone makes the compelling argument that you’ll gain something good if you give them your money, you’ve been extorted.
I don’t think you’re applying that definition reasonably.
Do restaurants in London explicitly refuse service to patrons who do not agree before being seated that they will tip 20%?
I walk into a restaurant expecting to tip 20% as well. But I also expect that if the service is not deserving of a 20% tip that I will reduce the tip accordingly. What I do not expect is that before I am seated I will be required to agree to a 20% tip regardless of the quality of the service.
Wrong yet again; you’d do better to read folks’ words than to play pin-the-tail-on-the-argument. I wouldn’t order food from a place that demanded I tip, either: the rudeness would bug me. That’s because I tip. But my solution to the situation would be to stop frequenting their place of business, not to whine about extortion.
I do. I also understand that your use of extortion maps to no other definition of the word. I figured if you were going to make up crazy new definitions like a regular old cat burglar, I could do the same thing–after all, you’ve already proven a willingness to reduce the conversation to absurdity.
If they’re going to bitch about not getting enough tips I’d call their manager and ask straight up how much the mandatory tip had to be.
“So, your not delivering to us because the tips aren’t big enough?”
“Yep.”
“Well, how much is big enough?”
“Well, that’s up to the cust…”
“No, cut out the bullshit. Give me a straight up percentage that will keep the food coming and the delivery guy from giving lip.”
“Uh, 15%?”
“Fine. Now, when I call and place my order, tack on that 15% and tell me what I owe. I don’t have time figure out 15% on 10 peoples different orders and collect a seperate pile of cash hoping it’s enough. Let’s just cut the crap and you tell me what your charging.”