Extortionist restaurants: "Tip or we won't deliver."

The BBQ Pit
361

Thanks Martini Enfield - you are correct, no tipping cultures doesn’t mean bad or poorer service. We expect good service as part of the price, and part of the job - if we don’t get it, we avoid that restaurant or we complain.
I am disturbed knowing what I do about extrinsic versus intrinsic motivation too. There is quite possibly a dangerous precedence for tipping cultures - people who have to be paid extra for friendlyness/good customer service may set themselves up for a life time of dissappointment as they become accustomed to extrinsic motivation only. Quite a big leap, but I think there is a connection.

Also, employers are encouraged to abuse the system and tax can be screwed with - long term effects aren’t good.

362

I’m surprised no one has trotted out the notion that a great many servers earn much more than it would seem to me reasonable to expect many restaurateurs to pay out as salary.

A very high-end restaurant server in a large city might make, what, 80K/year after tipping out? Possibly more? At a restaurant whose front of house staff might include, what, a half-dozen servers, a small army of runners, bussers, hostess, et al.? Even a server at a middle-of-the-road restaurant is bound to make substantially more than a state’s minimum wage, even given the occasional deadbeat customer. It seems to me, judging on the basis of anecdotal evidence, that most servers are perfectly content with the system as it is.

363

Contrary to what some people around here might think, I’m actually pretty easy to please. I don’t punish a waitress who is so busy that she can’t offer the attention I might get at a less crowded restaurant. I don’t send food back unless it’s something I didn’t order. I don’t take a sip of a drink and then change my mind and expect them to replace it for me (and yes, I’ve seen people do that). But I certainly don’t want to fumble with a plate and a plastic box springing around on the table, plus the glasses and whatever personal belongings I might have, because someone wants me to package my own leftovers. I don’t have that cumbersome atmosphere when I do it at home! And when I ask if an expected part of my meal is a mistake or a new rule, I expect to be offered a suitable option because it’s obvious I’m missing whatever that item was.

364

OK, that makes a lot more sense. Apparently I did read it wrong. I was hoping you weren’t showing some ugly side I hadn’t really seen before. Sorry for the misunderstanding. :slight_smile:

365

From your second cite:

I happened to have my first experience with this strategy just last night. At the Route 66 Diner in West Lafayette, not only did the check include a line saying that tipping was appreciated, but the exact amounts for “suggested” gratuities ($2.22 for 15%, $2.67 for 18%) were noted. The restaurant is adjacent to Purdue Research Park, which employs many people from India, China, and other lands where tipping may not be customary. Still, it was amusingly jarring for this lifelong Midwesterner to be “educated” on the norms of the USA’s restaurant industry.

366

There was actually a Cornell study done somewhat recently that showed that many in the African American community are unaware of tipping norms, and advised that measures be taken exactly like those seen on your check as to suggested gratiuities.

367

I used to be a delivery driver, but I have to come down against them in the OP’s scenario.

Now, maybe it’s easier for me to say this because my base pay was actually minimum wage (not some phony sub-minimum wage adjusted for tips) and I also received a delivery charge. Still, I expected to be tipped, in the sense that most customers did it and I was disappointed when they didn’t, because without tips it wasn’t exactly a living wage.

If someone habitually didn’t tip, though, I’d still deliver to them. I’d deliver to tippers first when possible, but the bottom line was, my job was to get all the orders to all the customers. When an order was wrong and had to be replaced, I’d do it, even though it wasn’t my fault and I knew I wouldn’t get a tip (or delivery charge) for the extra trip. Tipping or the lack thereof could change my priorities, but it didn’t stop me from doing my job.

Delivering food isn’t “optional” like tipping; it’s a service that the restaurant has chosen to offer to the public. If they’re unwilling to offer that service at all without a tip, IMO they’re obligated to let customers know that up front, because they’re treating the tip as part of the price in a way that most places simply don’t.

368

Food poisening has a pretty specific timing to it. At my restaurant it was pretty common for people to call us claiming food poisening and to tell us they were going to call the news, the cops, etc. on us if we didn’t give them money. But they always got the timing wrong and claimed they got sick from meals they couldn’t possibly have. As soon as we told them that, we’d mysteriously never hear from them again.

But once you take that food out of their sight for a second time, you open yourself to all kind of accusations about what could have been put in it that would have made them sick at whatever time. All it takes is one person saying “The waitress didn’t like my race, and she gave me bad service, and then when she packaged up the leftovers she must have put something in it because now I’ve got food poisening.” to get a place plastered all over the news and most likely shut down. Don’t underestimate how many people think it’s easy money to scam an honest business.

Martini Enfield. restaurants themselves are not a very great bang-for-your-buck proposition. Your fifteen dollar dish probably has a couple bucks worth of actual raw ingredients in it. Three drinks at a bar probably costs enough to buy three bottles of booze. You are paying for that experience, and part of that includes the waitstaff who, in a tipping country, you must also pay. If you don’t like that, stay out of tipping countries or plan on counter service when you visit. I know I personally won’t go to Italian restaurants because I’m vegetarian and I refuse to spend twelve bucks on barilla pasta that I can buy a buck a box at safeway and fifty cents worth of vegetables. We all make choices about what we consider worth spending money on in our life.

Do you know anyone who doesn’t work for extrinsic motivation? If your job stopped promoting people for doing a good job, would you keep busting your ass? These are customer service people who want to pay their rent, not saints in it for the joy of helping people.

And, of course, in the end somebody will pay. There is a chance it will be you with the management acting as a middleman. There is a better chance it will be the waitstaff, who will lose one of the last legions of well-paid service work. We lament and lament the loss of our reasonably well paid blue collar jobs. But then we sit there and propose making the modern equivelent of those jobs in to another minimum wage ghetto.

369

Also, Martini Enfield, waitstaff does a lot more than shuffle dishes. They also prepare salads, drinks, some appetizers and entrees, and desserts. They also pay a portion of their tips with the hosts, bussers, dishwashers, etc. Anyone that says it’s an easy job hasn’t tried it.

370

As outlined by Banquet Bear in the other thread, all the waitstaff in this part of the world do is take your order and bring you your food and drinks. That’s it- The preparation of salads, appetisers, entress, etc is the kitchen staff’s problem, and drinks are usually taken care of either by the bar staff, or the oh-so-difficult task of dispensing drinks from the postmix machine or opening a bottle of beer.

I had no idea Waiters in the US were expected to do any more than that- does it vary by restaurant, or how does it work?

And what does a “Busser” do? We don’t have them here, but from what I’ve gathered, their job is to simply collect the empty dishes and clean the tables. Again, sounds like highly skilled and difficult work to me, unless I’ve been horribly misinformed, which is quite probable…

371

Oh ofcourse most of us wouldn’t do our jobs if we had to do it for free - extrinsic motivation isn’t that simple. Tipping is giving too much weight to how good a service you will receive. This isn’t exclusive of other types of payment systems.
People who receive bonuses come to expect them and often don’t do a good job without them. Interestingly enough, there is an inverse relationship between top companies CEO salaries and the amount of money the companies make annually.

372

[QUOTE=Martini Enfield]
I had no idea Waiters in the US were expected to do any more than that- does it vary by restaurant, or how does it work?[q/quote]

It’s pretty standard across restaurants, though the details vary. Most anything that needs to be “assembled” as opposed to “cooked” is the waitstaff’s duty. Even in cheap restraunts stuff like milkshakes can make this difficult and time consuming. In expensive restaurants making fancy coffee drinks, elaborately presented desserts, etc. can kick your ass. Waitstaff also has to maintain the prep areas for this stuff (refilling soda machines, stocking, making sure frozen desserts get thawed, etc.)

A busser clears empty tables and cleans them. Often they do some dishwasher duties and help keep the prep areas well stocked. It’s not difficult, but it is fast paced and pretty gross. They are essential to the smooth workings of a restaurant here- you can’t seat someone at a dirty table. If waiters did this job the health-regulated handwashing required after cleaning a table alone would seriously mess up their ability to serve people.

Most bussers around here are immigrants who are working their way up to cooking positions (the vast majority kitchen staff in California are Mexican immigrants.) I believe they get minimum wage and small tips from the waitstaff (a few bucks a waiter is common). The host, who seats people, maintains tables, sometimes acts as cashier and sometimes gets drinks is the same deal.

373

I’m going to start this by saying that I’m lucky. I have a part-time job with pay better than many of my fellow students have been offered as starting pay upon graduation. Two nights a week, I’m a delivery driver for a local pizzeria. I get paid more than I should, which is the only reason that it’s profitable to spend my Fridays and Saturdays delivering instead of teaching more students. My experience is probably not comparable to other drivers, because rather than an hourly wage, I get 15% commission off the top of every order I deliver, plus a $1 service charge per order, plus most of my tips (I share tips on exceptionally large orders with the cook). This works out to rougly $15-$18 per hour for me (after subtracting gas, and only on weekends, more like $12 for other nights). I’m not going to claim that I deserve this much compensation, but I won’t work for much less than this at any job as otherwise it’s more profitable and less work to take on more students.

Anyway, I think any place that won’t deliver without a tip should be upfront about what they expect. For me, there are currently three reasons that I will refuse to service an address. I won’t service anyone who acts agressively or threatens myself or the vehicle which I depend upon for my livelihood. This means that there are a couple of customers that will meet me at the front of their driveways if they expect service. I also won’t service anyone who habitually takes a long time to complete a simple transaction that they should have been prepared for. If you order pizza, please, be home, with your gate open, in a place where you can hear the doorbell, with the money in a reasonable place. Finally, for reasons involving both safety and time, I will not deliver to anywhere I haven’t been before without a phone number I can call. I also won’t deliver to any non-home without a land line. If I’m going to be beaten up and robbed, I’ll at least have a phone number to tell to the police.

Of course, the restaurant has its own rules, and won’t deliver to anyone who has perpetrated some sort of credit card or check fraud against them, naturally.

See, I don’t have time to obsess over tips. The next order’s always just a few minutes away, and maybe they’ll tip. I’d never go out of my way to inconvenience someone just for not tipping. It’s not worth the time to worry about when the next order could be a $50 pizza party. Frankly, I think anyone who does is in the wrong line of work. I’d certainly never complain to my boss about an address never tipping.

I’ll just say again, to head off the complaint department: I know that I’m getting paid at a graduate level for work any high school drop-out could do. On top of that, our place has the coolest owner and the most understanding boss I’ve ever worked for. I understand that the fact that I get about $8 per hour before tips skews my perspective a bit, but I don’t know of any delivery place around here that doesn’t pay at least minimum wage + tips.

By the way, in my wife’s etiquette book, the section on tipping doesn’t say anything about 15% for delivery. What I’ve heard from several people, and what I read in her book as well, was that the proper figure is around $1 per item. Just throwing that out there.

374

Okay…but this still doesn’t make any sense. You’ve prepared their food for them. It started out “behind the scenes”, if you will. People talk about spitting in customer’s food before they serve it, the cole slaw could have been over the hill, etc. Anything could have happened to that meal before it was ever served.

What difference does it make who put it in the container? Which person puts it in the plastic container has no bearing on what happens once the food leaves the building. It’s a lame excuse for lazy service, whether it’s a restaurant policy or the server’s personal policy.

The only logical way to prevent X Restaurant’s food from being left in the car too long would be to forbid people to remove it from the restaurant in a doggy bag.

375

…such is the case here in NZ, I’ve never worked in an establishment that allowed food to go offsite in a doggy bag: the thought of either bagging left overs for a customer, or allowing them to do it for themselves just makes me go :eek: :eek: :eek:

376

It is interesting, isn’t it, that a custom so normal in the United States would seem so unnecessary and foolish to folks overseas? :wink:

My brother-in-law’s girlfriend, from England, nearly gagged at the idea of boxing up extra pizza from the pizzeria and taking it home. When she found out we might eat it cold, for breakfast…

Daniel

377

Well, I don’t know if you guys over in NZ suffer from Way Too Much Food For One Person To Eat syndrome, but we certainly do over here. There are some restaurants (Maggiano’s comes to mind) that give me enough food for 3 meals! No exaggeration! It’s insane how big the portions are here. No wonder we’re a nation of fat-asses. (longing for a fat-ass smiley)

378

Portion sizes in NZ and Australia are generally a lot smaller than in the US, IMO- so Way Too Much Food For One Person To Eat Syndrome isn’t usually an issue, although your results can and probably do vary…

379

You can do take home doggy bag in the cafe type restaurants no problem and ethnic food restaurants such as Chinese or Indian it is common - certainly not in the formal, sit-down, waiter service ones.

380

I don’t know if it’s particularly prominent in Chicago or if other US cities have the same problem, but everything is MAN FOOD.