For the first time ever, I didn't leave a tip

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
21

I nearly left without paying once. It was here at a local Frisch’s (Big Boy) and you had to pay at the cashier stand. I walked up with my check. A person was standing behind the counter, not three feet away from me, and he looked up at me. Then he turned away. I cleared my throat. Nothing. I said, “Excuse me, I’d like to pay for my bill.”

He shrugged. “It ain’t my job.”

And I waited and waited and waited. I looked around the restaurant. Nobody was around, not even the waitress.

Finally I shouted, “I have been waiting for five minutes to pay my bill. If someone doesn’t wait on me in ten seconds, I am walking out without paying.”

Amazingly, someone magically appeared.

22

They were having to take phone calls from their spouses at home.

23

Five Minutes?! Good Lord! It’s a good thing you had just eaten, you might have starved to death before you could obtain another meal. Five minutes down the drain. That’s like waiting at 2 red lights!

Sure the guy was a jerk and you should have been taken care of right away, but come on.

24

5 minutes to acknowledge a customer standing right in front of you is about 4 minutes and 58 seconds too long. I was feeling extra patient that day.

25

She was standing by the cashier stand. Next time someone tries to get your attention, ignore them for five minutes and see how that works out.

26

Except, in some restaurants they charge the server the check amount for the food. An AWOL server, that happens sometimes. Go find the GM, they’re usually there to make sure that the customer is happy. I think you’ll find after doing that the server pays a little more attention to you, and if not, don’t ever go back, tell all your friends, and let the manager know that, you might even get comped some drinks or something. Yeah, you shouldn’t have to, but use it to your advantage, don’t be an entitled asshole.

27

He was not the cashier. He did not have access to the cash drawer. Could the busboy valet your car?

Are you saying that the person that was supposed to take care of you ignored you for five whole minutes? I think you’re saying that the person who should have taken care of you neglected their station for five minutes.

Either way, five minutes is a trivial amount of time. You need to have more patience.

If you waited 5 minutes for a cashier, and left in a restaurant I managed, you could bet that the local police would have a report filed in regards to your theft.

It seems you were pissed off, it also seems that you felt vindicated in stealing food. You couldn’t talk to a manager, because that would take another precious minute off of your life.

You ate the food. You have every right to complain to/negotiate the price with the manager in regards to your service. You do not have the right to leave without paying because you think it took too long.

Teens that leave on purpose before paying a bill are usually treated to misdemeanor charges of petty theft. You should be excepted because you were mad? You had to wait five whole minutes?

Your reply to me addressed a customer sevice issue, not your intended theft.

What makes you feel that poor service means that you get free food? That’s not your decision. If anyone’s it’s the manager’s. I’m fairly certain that he/she was in the building at the time. That would have sucked if you had to seek him or her out to legitimate your “free” meal.

Your “I’m leaving right now, because I’ve been waiting five minutes to pay” rationale is completely unjustified, is illegal, and shows poor self-control and impatience. The day that people think a five minute lapse in transaction time could void an implied contract, is a sad one. Was due dilligence exercised in the payment portion of this contract? I think not.

Five minutes?

28

Are you freaking kidding? I think one his points was that the lazy ass dude standing three feet in front of him could’ve and SHOULD have said, “I’m not the cashier, but I’ll go tell him/her that someone is up here”

I wouldn’t have left without paying, but I would have also made an issue out of waiting that long. Five minutes is a long time to wait, especially if someone is actually standing there IGNORING you.

29

Not to mention that typically the cashier stand is also where an entering customer gets acknowledged - if a customer walked into a restaurant and stood around for 5 minutes, being told by the sole visible passing employee that it wasn’t their job to get a host to greet and seat them (and making no visible effort to do so), they would probably lose that customer. Not to mention that it’s a security risk; leaving the cash register alone for that long risks someone trying to mess with it, or maybe snagging credit card slips/carbons out of the trash, etc.

dnooman also seems to be ignoring the fact that the bill was paid.

30

I think dnooman may have had a bad day. I’ve never worked in a restaurant, but have heard it can be pretty hard to take. Anyway, I agree that the worker at the register should have found someone to take payment. It is just silly that the customer to be the one to find someone to take their money when an employee is standing right there.

31

Dnooman, suffice it to say that you’re wrong. And a vast majority of posters have, and will, back me up on this.

And had I walked out without paying, I would have gotten away with a free dinner. Calling the police undoubtedly wasn’t that guy’s job either.

32

Five minutes is a long time to wait, especially when one is being dismissed by a surly employee.

It Ain’t My Job Boy should have found someone who could have taken the money.

We have left McDonald’s after being ignored by the cashier. She was rooting around in her drawer, and didn’t even look up to say “Just a sec.” Another employee came up, dropped a phone in front of her, said “You have a call” and walked away. She picked up the phone and wandered over to the fryer. I yelled out “Hello?” and a manager popped his head out of his office and popped back in.

I then yelled “Goodbye!” and we went to Wendy’s.

Rudeness can make one VERY impatient.

33

This story takes place MANY years ago, My then-boyfriend has taken me out to dinner for my birthday. We have gone to a place called Old Port Harbor on Cayuga Lake in Ithaca, New York. We accidentally wander in the door marked in French “the kitchen” (very similar to “the food”) and a guy says “you want the entrance to the dining room, it’s around THERE” pointing it out.

So get seated and the VERY same guy shows up as our waiter, But now he has acquired a truly bad Fransh OCC-sont. After he presents us with our menus, we learn the fascinating truth–at Old Port Harbor, you get to grill your own steak on a large centrally located grill. So, realizing that for my birthday I get to cook dinner again, I order the filet mignon (I really like filet mignon.) The way this deal works is the waiter shows up and hands you–the designated stand-in for the chef–a tray with the uncooked steak. ((By the way, the economic benefits to the restaurant of merely needing someone who can supply sides, salads, and desserts, as opposed to someone who can actually cook, are extremely high.)

Remember the joke that goes–

Waiter: How did you find your steak, madam?

Customer: No problem. I just picked up my lettuce leaf and there it was.

That defines the size of my pathetically tiny filet. (Yes I know we’re not looking for something in the 20-oz T-bone range here…)

So after I return to the table, somewhat sweaty–and of course, having missed any sparkling conversation with my date while I flipped steaks, our baked potatoes have been delivered. But not any butter for them.

(You can tell this is before I had to worry about cholesterol…)

After fifteen minutes of trying, we flag down our Fransh waiter as he passes and ask for butter. His accent is mysteriously missing as he snaps, “Yeah, yeah, in a minute!” Which turns out to be another five, by which time the potato is pretty close to stone cold.

We have similar problems with ordering dessert. Getting dessert. Getting the check. My boyfriend finally takes the check to the register to pay it after deciding that the waiter must have DIED.

By mutual agreement, we leave absolutely nothing as a tip.

We are in the parking lot, getting into our car, when suddenly our waiter appears.

“Do you realize you forgot to leave me a tip?!?”

It was with great pleasure that we informed him that a tip is given for good service, a small tip is given for adequate service, and no tip is given for bad service–especially bad service with a bad accent.

34

There are two times when you, as an individual customer, do not matter a fart in a thunderstorm to restaurant staff:

a) when the place is almost full;
b) when the place is almost empty.

Learn to accept this. It will make things easier for everybody.

But no, it is not right. It is just the way it is.

35

IIRC, managers are NOT supposed to do this-I believe it’s even against the law, though I could be wrong.

dnooman, if he wasn’t the cashier, couldn’t he have said, “I’m sorry, I’m not trained to use the register-I’ll get someone for you?”

36

I used to work in a restaurant–not as a waiter per se, but as the guy actually making your food. I have found myself on the rare occasion waiting on people when the waiters/waitresses were neck-deep in customers. (Friendly’s Ice Cream Co. if anyone cares)

Regardless, I have heard stories of how weird customers can be: the same pleasant waitress on the same shift can either get a $20 tip on a $60 tab, but can be shafted one table over on a $200 tab with a Chick tract as a tip. [sub]That was my first experience with Chick, but not with “a” chick[/sub]

Either way: it’s like public speaking–you gotta know who you’re dealing with, and adjust you service accordingly. I grew to understand that sometimes, just sometimes you get a bad customer that no matter what you do, ya ain’t gonna make 'em happy. Just blow 'em off and move on. It’s the same thing on the customer side. Sometimes, you just get crappy service at your favorite restaurant. You just gotta blow them off and come back next weekend.

But then again, you’re talking to a guy that eats MREs on a regular basis.

Tripler
It’s been said, “You can’t always get what you want, but sometimes you get what you need.” A wise man, that Jagger.

37

Sounds like you had the misfortune to walk into a sting operation disguised as a restaurant.

-Kris

38

The difference is, if I can’t get service at a retail station, I can leave without my purchase. I can’t do that at a restaurant. (Well, technically I could, but that’s disgusting.) If I ate at a restaurant, and they refused to take my money, I’d be justified in leaving, right? I just see the situation described by Dangerosa to be a tacit refusal on the part of the restaurant to accept her money. And I’m talking in the specific context of the service she had received up to that point. If I were her, I think I’d have demanded to see the manager just so I could inform him that I had no intention of paying for my meal, considering how totally they fucked it up in every aspect. But I wouldn’t walk out on a check if the food and service met the bare minimum for adequacy.

In the case of the restaurant Dangerosa is talking about? Good.

39

I had an instance of server-abandonment at the beginning of a meal once. The hostess sat us down and then…nothing. After several unsuccessful attempts to gain the attention of the staff and perhaps 15 minutes of being ignored,I picked up the tip from the previous party and walked out. I guess that could be considered a “negative tip”. (wasn’t that a topic on a recent thread?)

40

Hey, for your interested perusal, I’ve started a thread about the legalities of such situations in GQ: http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=7582955#post7582955

-FrL-