How would a USian waitron feel if someone came in and said nicely “I’m really, really sorry - I totally love the food here, but I only have enough to cover the cost of the food, so I might not be able to tip you.”?
Hmmm… I also notice a certain US/European schism in this argument.
If I was broke, I would think about the price of the food, and if I could afford it.
And I’m guessing you’re saying that USians should think about the price of the food +20%, and if they could afford it.
This might just be another of them unresolvable cultural differences.
Also I didn’t realise that US wait-staff are taxed on non-existent tips.
It’s not a copy of the actual IRS rule, because my first Google search didn’t find that right away, and I have to get to work, but it’ll do. Basically, it amounts to a report on how the IRS is bitching about employers not reporting all tip income so that the IRS can tax the waitresses.
They wouldn’t say it, but I think they’d feel, “Well gosh, I really think you’re nice, but since I have bills to pay, I really can’t afford to SERVE you.”
I mean, there’s a lot of things I love, but I can’t afford them, so I don’t buy them. There’s an A.B.S. dress I saw at Kaufman’s that I would kill for, but it was eighty dollars. I have the eighty dollars in my wallet, say, but I wouldn’t be able to afford other things that I NEED. So-GASP I don’t buy it!
And yes, they are indeed taxed on non-existant tips. Because the IRS assumes they’re being tipped.
Yeah, it’s a really sucky system, but NOT tipping is not going to change it, it’s just going to screw someone over.
I get what you mean, Guin - what I’m saying is that, culturally, you assume a meal to be its price + 20% (or whatever) whereas I would assume the meal to be its price.
You’ve never heard of a waitpersons’ strike because it doesn’t happen very often. http://www.hereunion.org/ is the webpage for the hotel and restaurant workers union. Not many waitpersons (such as myself) are actually in a union. If I strike, argue with my employer about my wage, or walk out because of it, there are going to be five more college students waiting to take my place. Doesn’t matter how well I do it, there’s plenty of bodies to fill the space, and they’ll run through any number of people to find the one who will stay and work a bit and do a decent job. I stay and work for $2.13 per hour because it isn’t a horrible job. My employer works with my school schedule. I am damn sure not getting rich, but I make more than I would if I worked in a department store or grocery store.
Also, here is the page for the Department of Labor concerning minimum wages for tipped employees by state. My employer doesn’t pay me more because they don’t HAVE to. I can get pissed off and “strike” all day, and nothing is going to happen except that I’ll lose my job. If every person I worked with walked out on the same day? Went on strike, as it were? Well, they’d call other stores from my franchise in the area, and get other waitresses to come work while they hired more. On a college campus with 50,000 other people, they’re not going to have that difficult a time finding new waitstaff.
jjimm, we’re taxed on the tips we report. If I report $20 in tips per night, that’s what I’m taxed on. The more I make, the more I declare, the more tax gets taken out. Of course, waitstaff is required by law to report all tips. The other thing is, as a waitperson, you have to make federal minimum wage. Which means that if I make $2.13/hour from my employer, I have to make $3.02/hour from my customers. No, that doesn’t always happen. Some nights are extremely slow. If I don’t make enough tips to bring my wage up to minimum wage, my employer is supposed to pay me the difference - doesn’t mean it always happens that way, but it is supposed to. My boss once told me that it didn’t matter if I didn’t make enough on Monday night, because I made more than enough on Friday night. So, no, we are not taxed on tips we didn’t make, but we are expected to claim 8-10% of our sales in tips, whether we actually make that money or not.
So, yeah, I don’t just WANT a tip, I EXPECT a tip. Whether or not that is right or wrong of me, I don’t really care. It is what pays my rent, buys my school books, and gets me food to eat. And most people don’t say: “I’m really, really sorry - I totally love the food here, but I only have enough to cover the cost of the food, so I might not be able to tip you.”? They usually just be nice and walk out without tipping, leaving me wondering what I did that caused them not to tip me. On the other hand, I’ve had customers come back hours later or even a day later and give me money, saying they forgot to tip me or they didn’t have enough cash on hand that day to tip me.
Once my wife was having a dental opperation, where she had to get knocked out for it. While under I went to a coffee shoppe and ordered a omlet. I was so concerned about the opperation that I just forgot to tip. I realized it the next day but havn’t been back there since (not in my area). I feel really bad about that.
This is the only time I forgot to tip, I have unintentionally not tipped maybe 4 to 5 times due to bad service and teenage stupidity (yea, I thought I’d save a few bucks).
I normally tip on service not on price. I usually am in places that the same order and usually the same sercvice cost $8 at one area and $16 in another (regonal difference). I see no reason that the the equal service should get unequal tips. Also since I rarely order soda (usually water) I take that into account as I know it takes the same work to serve water then soda but they would get a bigger tip usually with soda because of a higher bill. Also the tip declines sharply if I run out of water.
I am considering modifying my tipping plan in a way though. Perhaps I should consider 10% giving away to the underpaid, sort of a non-taxdeductable charatable donation then tip on service above it.
I’ve gotta ask, how do you not get fired? I don’t mean any offence but I’ve had a great many bar jobs and if I’d shown that kind of favouritism like that that at any of them I’d have been soooo fired. Do you own your bar? If so, can I come and work for you?
A service person should NEVER complain to a customer about a tip (which happened to us once). You’re only obliged to tip when the service is good. One night, we were a buck short on our tip. We went back there a few weeks later and reimbursed our waitress. She was kind of shocked.
I agree the system sucks, but whaddayagonnado? My kid waits tables. He gets stiffed fairly often. I got stiffed by a huge group of Europeans once. Boy, was I pissed!
When I’m out with a bad tipper, I make up the difference myself. It’s just wrong not to tip properly in this society.
I guess to hijack my own thread, what do people who live in countries where there is no tipping because waiters are paid a living wage do when they get bad service?
If people in the States stiff the waiter and complain to the management, do you folks complain to the management and ask for a portion of the waiters paycheck back?
I would guess it would just be like all the other professions where you often tip but are not required to. I tip my hairdresser but I also know she makes a good wage without the tip. She gives me a good haircut, I give her a tip. It is still an incentive for her, but she is not dependant on me giving her a tip to earn a living. I think it’s a better system and I don’t understand why waitstaff is the only profession that cannot earn a living without tips.
That said, I always tip, unless the service is terrible. Normal service gets 15%, good or excellent 20% or more. I have a hard time leaving if I know the waitress has been shorted a normal tip, even if it’s by others in my group.
On a number of occasions I have complained to the management. On a few occasions, when I have felt particularly aggrieved, I have refused to pay. In such cases I always leave my details so that they can contact me if they want to pursue a claim.
They have a whole list of “what ifs” addressed, but the main advice is complain at the time of your problem, not at the end of the meal. It’s always worked well for me.
What pisses me off are the people that pay exactly 15%. Exactly. If they have a check for $152.47, they’ll leave a tip for exactly $22.8705. Except that they will round fractions of a cent down. Would it kill them to just leave $25?
These are not poor college students I’m talking about. These are filthy bloody rich people.
My rule for food – 20%, plus maybe a buck or 2, rounded up.
My rule for cabs – $3. Most fares are $10-14.
Actuala, Gary, the American tipping system is an example of equity and efficiency in action - or it would be but for cheap fucks like Blacknight. If everyone acts properly, both the cost of meals and the waitperson’s income would be the same in your country as in the US (setting aside differing costs of living, etc.) And it has the following advantages:
Because the tip is legally gratuitous, the diner avoids being taxed on the amount of the tip. The diner therefore saves money.
The waitperson gets the tip money immediately, rather than having to wait for payday. This avoids opportunity costs for the waitperson.
The owner of the restaurant avoids certain social taxes.
If the service is poor, the diner can express his/her displeasure by withholding or lessening the tip. Under your system, if the service sucks, all you can do is not give the waitperson a bonus. This ain’t much of a disincentive against bad service because the waitperson gets his/her normal pay for doing a bad job.
Another (illegal) advantage is that the waitperson can more easily avoid income taxes, thus ending up with a higher income than under the “service charge is part of the cost of the meal system.”
Of course, these efficiencies only work if people like Blacknight actually tip. If tipping dropped, restaurants would have to start including service charges, and all those nice efficiencies would disappear.
Blacknight is an example of a ‘freeloader’ - because most Americans obey the system, Blacknight can pay a lot less than the rest of us for a meal. And under prevailing sociological theory, the appropriate response to freeloaders is ostracism.
So bravo Lola! As for Blacknight, you are not only screwing the waitperson, you are also screwing the people who actually tip. Grow up, fuckwit!
I’ve tipped a counter service person before, but it’s rare. When we worked at Pizza Hut in college, my husband used to get a tip almost every time he cashed out this one woman or her husband when they picked up a pizza. They were such nice people overall. One time we ate out and forgot to tip our server, so the next time we went to that restaurant, we brought money for both our current server and the previous one. He was really shocked.
I won’t tip for bad service, unless the restaurant is just swamped and the servers are overloaded. I’m not even a picky diner, so if you’re bad enough to not get a tip from me, you’re pretty damn bad.
Your hairdresser had to go to school to learn her skills. Waiting tables is one of the few professions that can earn someone a decent wage without even a high school degree, but it shouldn’t earn as much as someone who had to go on to school for their job. Unless you work at one of those snooty restaurants where servers can easily make $50,000 a year.
I’m a Lovely Shade of Brown[sup]TM[/sup]. Not only do I overtip but I even tip 15% for subpar service. I’d hate for someone to think I’m tipping poorly because of my skin color and not because they performed their job poorly.
I’ll be glad when I grow up and stop caring about such things.
