Do you know how long it takes to run 16 different credit cards through the machine? That doesn’t include making sure you are giving the right person the right ticket, making sure that you are running the credit card on the right ticket, that you put the credit card slip in the right book, that you have enough pens, that you give the books to the right people, etc, etc, etc. It shouldn’t take more than 5 minutes to close out a table on the server’s part. We try to be quick about closing out to make your exit easier and so that we don’t spend too much time on one party. A part of 16 demanding 16 different checks on a busy night is just rude, even if you said it ahead of time. If you do demand things to be done that way, then prepare to wait for some time.
I’m glad that we are allowed to add gratuity to parties of 6 or more at my place!
Is it rude if they all order different things, so you have to remember who gets what?
Is it rude if 16 separate individuals come into the restaurant at the same time and offer to all sit at the same table so you don’t have to use up 16 separate tables, but they still all want their own checks?
I think a restaurant ought to be able to handle it if each diner wants their own check, whether or not they happen to be sitting at the same table. Yes, a restaurant should be able to set whatever policies they think reasonable, but if I find those policies a serious inconvenience, I’ll take my business elsewhere.
Whenever I go out with friends I make sure, up front, that the server knows that my wife and I are on a seperate bill from the others. As a “Thank you” for doing this I make sure the tip I leave is quite good, somewhat beyond the 15% that is considered the norm.
Then, just to be extra considerate, I make sure to order the bill during a time that my wife and I would be enjoying a desert or a few cups of coffee, that way the wait is less noticable and the server has plenty of time to run the final bill through so if she is deluged with several different bills at once, we can wait, no problem.
I have noticed, over the years, that in doing seperate bills, a server is more likely to get a higher tip than if a single bill is used for a large group. Bigger tip means the time was worth it.
If a resteraunt will not offer seperate bills, we will not eat there. Period. We have on one occasion been told we could get seperate bills, then the waitress refused at the end of the meal, telling us “it’s not my job, you work it the hell out yourselves.” This was followed by a meeting with the manager who promised to fix the problem. He did not and we all left after under-paying our bill.
The fact is, my friends and I ask little out of our time in resteraunt. A nice meal, a reasonable price, a nice server and seperate bills. Give us this and we will reward you nicely not only with a large tip but with our continued patronage.
Which is pretty much why we keep going back to the same Italian resteraunt, they are good people there.
I had a wonderful experience with this at the Cheesecake Factory a few weeks back. We were at the State Debate Championships and after rounds that night we headed to dinner- 12 of us total. It was about 830 at night when the first four of us arrived and checked in at the front (they wouldn’t take reservations ahead of time, even for larger parties). We were then told they wouldn’t even ready our table until half of the group was here- wonderful.
Eventually we got a table and we proceeded to wait for the waiter to come with water and take drink orders. We waited. And waited. And waited. About 20 minutes later the waiter came and I calmly explained we needed four checks (not because we were trying to be a pain, but because some people had to leave early, etc.). The waiter stared at me blankly and said, “We can’t do that. I can do two checks.” He took our orders and returned 20 minutes later with the water. Ten minutes later he brought the sodas. Forty minutes later we got our meals…and the appetizer I ordered. He didn’t refill any drinks throughout the entire meal.
By the time we were done, it was 12:45. He brought the two bills- which he had massively screwed up: there were things on there that no one ordered, etc. At this point I was really, really angry and planned to not leave a tip for our party (which normally we leave HUGE tips because they deal with us ) and that is when I noticed there was a mandatory 20% tip on the bottom.
As far as I am concerned, splitting the bill is a necessary evil a restaurant should learn to deal with. I can’t speak for everyone, but when the waiter accomodates us, we always tip at least 30%. It just seems like basic customer service to me.
At first, until the sarcasm alert kicked in, I was about to choke in surprise. :eek:
That sounds like a pretty typical Cheesecake Factory experience to me. I’ve never understood the appeal of that place. The one in Pasadena always has a line to get in, even while other restaurants on Colorado Ave. are half-full. It must have some wierd kind of vibe or something. The food is standard franchise/chain fare, and the one piece of cheesecake I had there was good but nothing worth waiting in line for an hour.
If it is any consolation to you, your server was probably having just as rotten an evening as you were; all the waitstaff I know who’ve worked there (and it seems that about half of everyone has at one time or another) hates the place with a passion. They do the whole corporate restaurant thing in spades, and consistantly overload servers (10-12 tables per server during a busy night is way too much) and underschedule busboys and barbacks (often just one for the entire restaurant.) It doesn’t excuse the lousy service, of course, but then that’s why I avoid the place.
Me either and I think that is dumb that they do. I have no problem dividing up checks and I will ask for seperated checks myself, but there is a point at which it becomes rude. 16 is WAY too much!!!
Nope, because that isn’t time consuming. Taking each person’s individuals orders add maybe an extra 5-10 seconds onto a bill, while seperating the check takes much longer, especially if they aren’t doing it equally. The two aren’t comparable at all.
Yeah, like that happens often. :rolleyes: And it isn’t compareable either because you aren’t strangers, you put in the reservation as a group. For 16 people, I will happily do seperate checks for up to 8, maybe 10 people, but you do have to realize it is going to take some extra time to run the credit cards and organize everything. And, if 16 seperate people came in, we wouldn’t put them all the same table. One server would be in charge of handling it all and would have to do the work of a large party without a large party tip.
And what happens when the party of 40 each wants their own check? 50? 60? We have to draw the line somewhere. Above 10 is not being unreasonable, I don’t think.
With as many of these threads as we’ve had around here, you’d think this argument would stop coming up. It’s just so weak.
Are all those seperate 16 tables going to want to eat at the same time? Are they going to want their drinks and appetizers at the same time? Are they going to want their checks at the same time? Are they going to want to check out at the same time?
Not to mention, if a server has 16 seperate tables (almost unheard of on a busy night) they’re not going to have any additional tables to be tending to, unlike when they have one table of 16.
Stranger - I didn’t expect a high level of service (after all, it was the Cheesecake Factory), but the service was just horrible. I would have felt some pity for the guy, but we told him when we got there that the kids needed to get back to the hotel and sleep ASAP. He said he would make sure that everything came about rather quickly…I worry about what would have been the case if we had the service at regular speed! :eek:
The food was subpar also. I got a cheeseburger- a freakin’ cheeseburger! And it wasn’t prepared how I asked (I asked for med. rare and that thing was well done like a hockey puck).
Bah! A pox upon the Cheesecake Factory in Woodland Hills!
The best place I ever worked refused to do any group checks, period. Every individual got a ticket, even if it was just zero charge for water, and tickets were given to the cooks in batches designated by table numbers, so they knew which orders went together.
If one of a party wants to grab all the checks, no problem.
Everyone’s charged for precisely what they ordered, if two folks are sharing an item the one who ordered it is charged and it’s up to them to even up with each other.
I could answer all the complicated “We’re together, plus paying for him, but those three are separate and I dunno who’s paying…” with a sweet smile and re-stating of the policy.
Some of us customers have the intestinal fortitude to insist that everybody pay their fair share. I once called out a theatrical type who was slyly dropping a five in the pot for a $4.99 soup and salad by saying calmly “That’s not enough, the tax here is 6% and a fair tip is 15%—you need to add at least a dollar to that.” She turned bright red and ponied up.
Found out that my Mom has done the reverse–saying firmly to those “Let’s just split the check” parties–“I think we’d actually come out better if we each calculated what we ordered. If we want to split something, let’s agree on the amount of the tip, and split that evenly. After all, you had the lobster slad, and I didn’t.” Mom can deliver this with a smile so inoffensive that she can pull it off.
But it really is unforgivable to make the waitress–AFTER ringing up one check–go back and split it up into 4 separate checks. Grounds for extreme emotional distress defense in the subsequent assault trial.
I spent one summer working the kitchen of a restaurant, and believe that all misbehaving diners should know that waitresses have been known to walk into the kitchen and burst into tears after being stiffed by a party of sixteen because one cranky grandma thinks that her medium steak was too well-done. Imagine your waitress leaning on the refrigerator sobbing, while other waitresses say “Forget it Irene, they’re A**holes! I’ll cover Table 8 for you till you pull yourself together.”
I never burst into tears but did find it helpful to sometimes walk into the (mostly soundproof) cooler for a wee bit of primal scream therapy after particularly difficult tables.
I had to stop that after one poor non-english speaking busboy came flying into the cooler with a butcher knife to ‘rescue’ me, bless his heart.
My favorite split-check scenario was always the group of people, usually around a dozen, who work at some office and go out to lunch together; these are the people who only have one hour total for lunch, which really means they have about 40 minutes if you factor drive-time back and forth…
And they want split checks, they all pay with $20 bills, and…the best part…THEY’RE IN A REAL BIG HURRY.
:rolleyes:
It is a truism in this industry that more high-maintenance a customer is, the less likely it is that you’ll be rewarded by them for your efforts. The Office People in my scenario are a classic case; I have noticed that the bigger the group, the more likely it is that everyone thinks “somebody else” tipped.
Which means you go back to your table once they’re gone, after pestering everyone in the building to break all those twenties down in a timely manner and figure out all that change ASAP because “they’re in a hurry!”…and you find that only half of 'em have even thrown in a dollar.
I don’t ever ask for a split check. Period.
But then again, I also don’t eat out with anal-rentative people who can’t add or subtract to the point that they’re incapable of saying, “Put $20 on this card, and $30 on this card, and the cash is yours,” (which seems pretty simple to me) so it’s not much of a problem. I also don’t care if I pay for one-fourth of somebody else’s appetizer. Life’s too short to freak out about two bucks.
I have no opinion on the whole seperate check issue but you guys need to get better friends. Sheesh, I’ve never had issues before with large groups. Everyone tosses the cost of their meal rounded up to the nearest dollar (no tipping here) into the middle of the table and it gets paid. Whatever extra is the tip. No complaints, everyones happy. Why would you ruin a perfectly good evening over a few bucks?
Ugh! I hate going all in on one check with a group of people.
Not because dividing up the tab is such a hassle, but because I pride myself on being a good tipper. Some of my cheap ass friends don’t quite share that sentiment. :rolleyes:
The ‘cheap bastard’ syndrome is my biggest pet peeve. We have this problem with a large group of friends that we go out with - they want to split the check to the penny with what everyone had, especially when it’s pretty even anyway.
So of course, there’s never enough money to pay the tip. For some reason, I always end up paying more than anyone else - and I’ve stopped doing it. Now I continue to ask for more money until we have enough for a decent tip - I’m not overpaying my share any more. It’s caused a few problems, but I don’t care - I’ve picked up the slack for several years, and I’m sick of it.
We have a few friends where we have a good system - we pick up the entire check one time, they get it the next time. It works out in the end, and no one feels annoyed. It’s made going out to dinner much less stressful.
Actually, in my opinion, waiter is a perfectly good gender-neutral term, exactly the same way actor is.
Words like waitress and actress are needless variants that serve no purpose other than to make silly and unnecessary gender distinctions. The nature of the task of bringing food to a table, or acting in a play or a movie, is not fundamentally changed by the sex of the worker, so i see no point in gendering the terms used to describe them. The woman who serves me my dinner is a waiter, Susan Sarandon is an actor.
We don’t talk about doctors and doctresses, or professors and professoresses, or systems administrators and systems adminstratresses, or reporters and reportresses, or… Anyway, you get the drift.
This is a strange conclusion. You’re not usually like that. The original post -
makes it clear that the staff was unhelpful + rude, followed by the manager failing to do what he promised.
I once refused to pay the full bill after a waiter practically threw a dish on to the table and it all finished in my lap.
The manager actually laughed when I asked them to pay for cleaning my clothes.
Would you call that theft?!
I was very sad last weekend when I got together with a group of friends, and we ordered pizza and beer (with enough pizza ot have some to take home). This one guy refused to kick in his share of the check, because he wasn’t drinking any beer, so he put in far less than the rest of us.
When I got ready to leave, I went over to pick up my take-home pizza, and discovered this guy had eaten it all. No tasty leftovers for me.
I was sad. I’m not ordering food with him again. Of course, on a previous occasion he was at a pizzeria with us, and after mocking the pizza we ordered, helped himself to a couple slices without asking or chipping in. Grrr.