Don’t look at me. I don’t write the health laws. We are talking about regulations that could get a restaurant shut down here. not “a poor excuse for lazy service”. I’m sure the restaurants would prefer fewer health laws as well.
Anyway, no matter what I say you can twist it such that it doesn’t make sense and I suspect that you will. It still stands that restaurants are wary about taking food of the customer’s sight for a second time after the meal is done. If a customer makes a false accusation of food poisoning after a regular meal, the timing most likely will not be right and they can easily be proven wrong. This can and does happen on a regular basis. I’ve seen this process with my very own eyes.
But if they make a false accusation (let’s say, after they don’t like the service or don’t get something free that they would like to have) that their meal was tainted while it was being boxed up, or they somehow manage to accidently taint that meal themselves and get sick and try to pin it on the restaurant, there is no easy way for the restaurant to defend itself.
Let’s make this plain. If the customer boxes it themselves, anything they try to blame the restaurant on has to have occured at that initial meal. This limits the restraunt’s liablity. If the restraunt takes it out of the customer’s sight a second time to box it up, the restraunt opens itself to be blamed for anything at all from there on out that happens involveing that meal. This opens cans of worms.
Just today a woman who claimed she found a rat in her soup was found to be extorting the restraurant. A LOT of people see resaurants as easy targets for extortion and this sort of thing is very common. After the e. coli hubub, restaurants must take every case of food poisening as a very serious and potentially fatal threat to their business. Restaurants are very, very careful about these things.
You can choose not to believe me that this happens and continue thinking that it’s just the restaurant being lazy and malevolent, but that doesn’t change anything.
And THAT is my point. The fact that only some places employ this practice screams bullshit to me. And the fact that any restaurants practice doggy-bagging for the customer suggests the threat of someone making an accusation based on “second-handling” of food (one that would stick, anyway) is just silly.
I’m in the Chicago area, and the restaurant’s choice to bag or not bag appears to be arbitrary to me. If it was a big issue, ALL the chains would refrain from bagging (they don’t) and ALL the little guys would do it just to stay afloat (they don’t). I would think an area as populated as Chicagoland would certainly be on the defense universally if it was more than an isolated threat. What “could” or “might” happen legally and what could actually bring a restaurant to their knees are two different things.
I don’t doubt that your area has these laws. I just think someone pressed the Panic Button a bit prematurely.
You’ve got to be the biggest tipper I’ve ever met. I stopped at the bar the other night and had two beers and a burger. The bill was $9.95 ($5.95 for the burger, $2.00 each for the beers). You would have tipped five bucks? That’s a 50% tip!
I echo what I just said to Cluricaun. You expect a 50% tip? I don’t think so.
Just as a for instance, I found some findings from a 2005 Zagat Survey regarding restaurants.
It’s what I’ve suspected for awhile now. For at least twenty five years now, and I’d think probably even longer, the cost of your meal hasn’t kept up with inflation. The cost of living for your server has.
If you get a burger, fries & a beer and it costs you $9.95 and you tip the server $1.49, you’re kind of an asshole. You really do kinda owe the server some kind of minimum tip just for coming over and taking your order, even if your bill isn’t large. Yeah, sometimes a 30, or 40, or 50 or a 100% tip is entirely appropriate.
With bartenders, it’s a little different. If you’re an alcy and plan on ordering ten drinks, maybe you don’t want to tip $1/drink. Start a tab, and tip 15-20% of your $50 tab. But if you’re just ordering one or two drinks, $1/drink really isn’t unreasonable. If your drink cost $4.50, are you really gonna give your bartender $0.67? If you’re drinking someplace and paying $2 for a happy hour beer, and you tip $0.30/beer that really makes you an asshole. Even though a bartender would tell you he doesn’t expect more than a 15-20% tip. Let’s keep things rational.
It’s relative dude. I said there should be some sort of minimum tip. You go into a cafe, order a coffee for $1, you’re going to tip 15 cents? You’re an asshole. Nobody should be expected to serve your gnarly ass for 15 cents. Give the waitress a buck. Yeah, it’s a 100% tip. Deal with it, lazy ass.
I can see that, but I think the point is that calculating the tip out to precisely 15% is a little bit weird. I don’t know I’d say it’s assholery, but it’s certainly a little hinky.
I’d definitely feel weird tipping less than two bucks for a meal where I sat down, no matter the cost. My Waffle House Waitress has won the jackpot when she gets me as a customer–woohoo, two bucks for a six-buck meal!
And it’s this type of ambiguity that’s the basis of my objection to tipping. I’m glad LHOD added a post acknowledging the fact this exists, since throughout the thread he argued with the assumption that tipping is compiled of simple rules that can be learned immediately and employed without much thought or controversy. 20% of bill in restaurant = easy. 20% of bill, unless that seems too low, and in cases of tip jars, a dollar, the change, or ignore; oh, and you may want to tip for to go orders too, despite the fact that it’s not sit-down service. how much? dunno = PITA.
It didn’t take much thought at all to come up with the idea that I should tip my Waffle House waitress two bucks; and I’ve never said that tipping wasn’t controversial, since to say so would be to ignore all this bizarre evidence to the contrary.
And for those of you who don’t believe tip inflation exists, I present levdrakon, who expects you to tip 50% and insults you if you don’t. You’re a fine example for service people everywhere, lev.
I can’t imagine a server around here that would actually expect a five-dollar tip from someone who sits at the bar and orders ten bucks worth of beer and food. Is that how it really is in Monterey nowadays?
No. To get a five dollar tip we usually get on our knees and suck you off. If Oprah’s camera crew isn’t looking, that is. Then we just do it for free and complain about our childhoods.
Uh… unless I’m the only person in the cafe and she’s not getting paid any hourly wage at all, she’s not serving my gnarly ass for 15 cents. She’s serving several people for the combined total of all of their tips and her wage.
Look, I’ve poured coffee before, and it’s not that hard. You put the spout over the cup, tilt the carafe by lifting the handle, and gravity does the rest. Nothing wrong with tipping 15% for that. (BTW, around here, coffee in a sit-down restaurant is more like $1.50, which means I’d tip 25-50 cents by default.)
Sure. I’m not going to whip out a calculator to decide how much to tip… sales tax here is around 8%, so I just double that and then round the total up to a nicer figure; when the receipt doesn’t list sales tax, it’s easy enough to divide the total by 10, divide that by 2, and add the two numbers, rounding up again.
But I’m also not going to tip a ridiculously large proportion just because I didn’t order much. I mean, by that logic, I should tip less than 15% if I order a lot, right?
I live in Atlanta and for a $10 tab, I would feel cheap as hell to leave less than $5 if the service was decent. Do people really leave $1.50 for a $10 tab and think they’re “blessing” the server?
When I was dating, one cheap tip by the guy to the server was a deal breaker. To me it has to do with character and generosity. I’ve stopped seeing nice (in other ways) guys because of their stinginess in dealing with service folks.