I’ve heard some pretty strong arguments against separate checks. Some groups ask for separate checks to get around the minimum gratuity for large parties. There are usually a few people that “forget” to pay before they walk out, and others that don’t “believe in” tipping. End result? A waitress spends her entire night on one large table (to the exclusion of all others), and ends up having to pay the kitchen $20-40 for the pleasure.
I’m on the side of the waitrons, not the cheap-ass customers who suck at math and can’t be arsed to pay for the service they receive.
I don’t know if this is true for the whole chain, but the Ram’s Horn near us always gives seperate checks for each person (even the kids). That way, you can take however many you are going to pay for and they will total it up for you at the register.
Being very good at math, I’ve never had a problem figuring out who owed what on a bill (with the exception of restaurants where I can’t read the waitperson’s handwriting) however there was one time…
We had 4 people at Chi Chi’s. We each put in what we owed plus tax and tip and came up $10 dollars short. After a bit of arguing, I took the bill and added it all up. The total was a good $20 over what it should have been.
Turned out the computer wasn’t working properly. They ran it through again and this time it came up $10 under what it should be. The manager told us we could pay that and it would be ok.
We actually kept the original amount and told the waitress she could keep the extra.
So, basically you jump to conclusions. It’s possibe that the 20% gratuity was included, so underpaying the bill just means leaving a lesser tip. Though only the poster in question could clarify.
Forgot to add that whilst in Jamaica we had a party of 17 people at a restaurant. The food and service were great and we got one bill in the end. In Jamaican monetary units. I seemed to be the only guy in the room that could do the conversions from US to Jamaican at (I think) 18 - 1 at the time. That bill was sooooo messed up at the end. No-one knew who paid what or how much they owed, even thought I tried to walk everyone through their portion of the bill.
It was ugly, specially when others started doing their own converting. I figured we overpaid by about 50%, but didn’t say anything to the rest of the party for fear they would all try to get some of the ‘tip’ back.
I remember when I waited tables back at Blue Frog. It was a horrible place to work and I ended up quitting about two weeks later after calling the management staff a bunch of power hungry nazi’s (never did care much for working in corporate resturants) but they did have one redeeming quality.
Their computer systems rocked. Within each table their was a seat number. You had to put in each item under a certain seat number (yes, even appetizers). At the end of the meal you could then run one check or a check by any pairing of seat numbers or all seat numbers seperately. It would split the tax and for larger parties the gratuity automatically. A servers dream I tell ya.
Too bad the management there were a buncha assholes. And don’t get me started on the “lead servers”. Oy. Talk about forgetting where you came from…
??? What are you talking about? With the short banking hours these days, ATMs are often the only way for working folks to get cash. Most of them dispense only $20 bills. What, precisely, does this have to do with yuppies?
(My bad experiences with yuppies and cash have been when they want to pay their share of the tab with a $100 bill)
And your restaurant would (rightfully, IMHO) go belly-up pretty quickly. When my family and another family go out to dinner together, we like to sit at the same table. We always ask for separate checks at the beginning (one for each family), or we hand the server two credit cards after the meal and ask to have the bill split evenly between them. If the restaurant manager/owner refused, we’d never come back.
Maybe, maybe not. Did you tell managment that you weren’t going to pay the bill and why? I got the impression that cadabra just paid less than he/she was supposed to and left before it could be figured out. If that’s not the case, then I appologize.
No, the poster is right, we stole and I don’t feel one iota of guilt for it. Sometimes the immoral thing is the only thing you can do to show your discontent, that and whithhold future business, which we have also done.
The thing is, my friends and I are easy customers. We are friendly, if a mistake happens we are polite about it and don’t get angry, we understand that our wait person may have far too many tables to look after. There is one friend who is a little picky about getting a lime in his club soda, but that’s it. We tip very well and sometimes even compliment the server to the manager on duty. Really all we want in return is to have our meal done in time for the movie to start.
But the service at this place was just unbelievable. Nothing was right, the server threw the dishes onto the table then disappeared for about an hour, even the hostess couldn’t find her. It was the absolute worst service one could possibly imagine, so we under paid. Yes, I know it was wrong but again, I feel no guilt.
I don’t know, maybe I have a birth defect or something.
It is just the way that slang goes. Yuppies are more likely to have a fresh 20 each day it seems, while those who can’t afford that budget have some singles or fives most days of the week. I know that the cashier at the cafe hates twenties in the mornings and so I avoid giving her a twenty then, and apologize if I must. There seems to be an increasing aversion to paying with exact or nearly exact change and so cashiers run out of singles frequently. A cashier at a dollar store called me a beautiful woman the other day because I paid with 8 singles and had exact change for the tax. Where do all the singles go? To the vending machines to buy soda and water?
Apparently, they all come my way. At the end of an average week, I’ll have between twenty and thirty singles. I sell them to the store my friend owns. She hardly ever goes to the bank for singles, thanks to me.
Does an explination make it not theft? I once left a chineese food buffet without paying because the food wasn’t edible. I filled up my plate, but both my friend and I couldn’t eat it. We tried to complain but no one seemed to speak english. So, we ran. (Hey, we were 18.)
If I had it to do over again, I would have walked.
I worked in a yuppie coffee shop, and they would often order two $3.50 drinks, give me a $20, and ask for a $10 in change. The rest was tip. I almost never got singles to pay for drinks, and if I gave them out, they just went right back in my tip jar. I never complained too loudly.
Something that hasn’t been said here enough is the importance of communicating what the plan is for the checks ahead of time. When you show up with a party that is together, the default assumption is that you are all sharing one big check. This is fine for most people. However, if you want to do seperate checks then you need to say so before hand.
As long as the server is told ahead of time what to do, then they should honor that request. If it’s 17 seperate checks, then so be it. They do end up getting tipped more this way. Refusing to seperate checks is quite odd. I eat out a lot and have never seen this. If I did, I would have words with the server/manager about it.
Oh, and chaulk me up as another one who hates people who don’t get a seperate check and then insist on itemizing the bill. These people are cheap without exception, IME. They never leave enough to cover and somebody like me always ends up tossing in another $20 because the server doesn’t deserve to get screwed.
And, of course, the only way to show your discontent is to steal.
Not in my experience.
Firstly, a table of 17 people would, in many restaurants nowdays, have a gratuity automatically added by the establishment. Hell, some places add the tip for any group larger than 6.
Secondly, speaking as someone who’s been both a waiter and a customer, in my experience the sort of people who insist in separate checks are also often cheap bastards who think 10 percent is the height of generosity.
I think that if a large group wants to split the check, then if the restaurant has a policy of automatically adding gratuities for large tables, the tip should also be added automatically to each individual check.
I don’t have a problem with mhendo’s suggestion, but if if is mandatory, could we stop calling it a gratuity? Also, could someone tell waitrons that acting like a small tip over and above the added 18% gratuity is not to be sneered at? I want to bring it up to my normal 20% (on the amount including tax) if the service is reasonable, but I am damned if I am going to tip another 18% of the bill that includes an 18% gratuity that apparently is already calculated post tax at some places.
