Hard to describe my point in a descriptive enough subject line, so here goes…
About 10 years ago, I wandered into a sports-bar at about 4:00 in the afternoon, drank/ate for a few hours, and was not even considering leaving, since “the night was young”.
I probably had about a $30 tab rung up by the time 6:59 rolled around, and the bartender-gal hinted/asked me if I wanted to pay my tab. Of course my response was, “no thanks, I’m good - I’m gonna hang out and watch the next game”.
She basically had to pound me over the head to make me realize “uh, no dumbass, I’ve been waiting on you for three hours… you either tab out with me now, and start a new tab with the next girl, or I put your nuts in a vice”.
Ever since then - if I walk into a bar, and order a burger and a beer (and it looks like there might be a shift-change coming on), I always quietly ask if I should “tab out with you”. So consider it “lesson learned” on my part.
My question is - and I’m not sure how many Dopers are in the bartending/serving industry… do you ever have issues with customers that ring up a huge bill with you, and then prefer to just sit around and tab out with “the next person, later on”?
How do you handle this sort of thing? (I guess if yours is a place where everyone “pools tips”, then maybe it’s not an issue?)
Honor system. Ticket gets given to the incoming waitperson, who completes the night. Customer leaves tip, and it’s up to the two waitpeople to figure out who gets what percentage of the tip. So many people use debit or credit cards now that most of the tips show up there, anyway.
Now, if the place uses a smart-computer system <been a few years, forgot what it’s called…POS?> then it may be that the waitperson MUST close out the ticket. In which case, manager-approval to close it out without payment, or maybe there’s an option there, and the ticket gets held until later, perhaps simply voided and added to the later ticket.
A lot of places split tips but I never assume that. When I see my bartender actively trading out her drawer and emptying her bucket I say “oh let me settle up.” When Brandon comes on to replace her I mention “Yes I would like another, but you need to start a new tab because I closed out with Antoinette.”
The fact that your server was being that aggressive though is something that drives me up the wall; right up there with “Do you need change?” This is assuming I’m going to tip you which should never happen.
At my local sports bar, tips are pooled, so there is never a question. The server simply asks, “Do you want to settle up with me, or shall I transfer you to [name]?”
I don’t like “Do you need change?”, but I do frequent a couple of places where the server has to turn in money which equals the tickets that s/he’s written for the shift…that is, if s/he’s written $100 worth of tickets, she needs to turn in $100 to cover those tickets, and what’s left over is the tips. I can understand a server getting somewhat aggressive in order to get the tickets paid up before the shift change, rather than covering a customer’s ticket out of his/her own pocket.
Where I am waiters don’t rely so heavily on tips to make a living so I don’t know how they would handle that, but as each one is responsible for turning in the correct amount of money for the drinks they have served to the cashier, it’s quite common for one to say " sorry but I’m coming off work now and I have to settle up, would you mind paying me?". I have never seen anybody say that they would prefer to pay it all at the end of their visit, so I don’t know how a waiter would handle that.
When I was serving not that long ago, I would do one of to things. I would stay on past the time for me to get off, and wait for the customers to get through. I wouldn’t take any more tables after my shift was supposed to end though.
If the customer was a regular, I would just let them know it was time for me to get off, and would they please cash out so I could leave. None of them ever had a problem with it, judging by how often I was requested as a server.
Speaking of tips… in another thread it was stated that you don’t include the cost of drinks in calculating your restaurant tip. What? I’d never heard of that before.
The computers can accommodate transferring the tab to the next server, quite easily, as a rule. But their is room to manipulate the system so sometimes managers are required to do so, or sometimes it’s flat out forbidden.
They should never be aggressive about it, but are certainly entitled to inquire/explain, I should think. “Can I get you anything more, before I end my shift?”, usually does the trick. And of course, regulars somewhat pride themselves on knowing when to tab out, to accommodate the shift change.
I had a server at a restaurant who brought me the bill before my food had arrived. He was wearing street clothes and he literally dropped it off without saying anything on his way out the door. After our meal I saw he had added a 20% automatic gratuity to our party of four. The manager said it was shift change and they could add any kind of gratuity to anything they wanted to and not just the 18% for parties of eight or more that it said in the menu. I put it on my card with a negative number on the tip line and a total of what the meal itself cost and signed it “I’m not paying automatic gratuity.” They ran it through for the full amount anyway and I successfully disputed the charge. They had a few items on the menu I really liked and their margaritas were awesome, but that was four or five years ago and I’ve never gone back.
Standard practice at a lot of restaurants is that servers and bartenders get tipped independently. You also don’t want to have a $500 bottle of wine skewing your percentage to the waiter when you’ve already tipped the wine dude.
OTOH, if the waitron got your cocktails from the bar, you ordered them with dinner, and she got you new drinks mid-meal, then they **most certainly should be **part of the tippable amount. The server and bartender will then each get their cut later.
A related question is when you have multiple servers (like they do at Applebees-sometimes you have a crew of servers it seems) how are the tips actually distributed? I usually tip a higher percentage when I encounter that situation.
At my favorite bar, the tenders will tell you “it all works out”. They are not supposed to hassle the customers. However, when the new bartender starts her shift it is obvious and I always tip at that time, even though I do not close out my tab.
Actually, you’re assuming. When I served, the POS computer wouldn’t let me clock out until all my tickets were closed. If management had a system in place to “pass” the ticket, they never told me about it – it was up to me to take care of it and get out without clocking an extra hour (which I’d get in trouble for).
I was pretty up front about it, if it happened: “My shift is ending, can I get you closed out? If you need anything else, your new server will take care of you.” I can’t recall anyone getting pissy at me about it.
That sounds like a bad hostess, or a bad manager, to me. If you were seated that close to the end of his shift that the food wouldn’t even be out, you should have been given to the new server, not him.
This. And allowing the server to add whatever gratuity percentage they want is just BEGGING to have meals written off on a continual basis. I can’t believe it’s legal, really. “The food is how much? Ok. Then what’s this SURPRISE LABOR fee at the end?”
I have been bartending for about a decade, and in most bars, either you close out with the bartender who is leaving or they don’t get any part of whatever tip you leave later on. Open tabs are transferred to the new bartender and that bartender gets the tip on that tab, regardless of whether they waited on that person or not, or who did the lion’s share of work for that tab.
I’ve only worked at one bar out of a dozen that actually had envelopes behind the bar for each bartender, so that if I waited on you all day and you closed out after I left, I would get whatever the tip is, or a portion of the tip based on how much I served them vs. how much the new bartender served them after I left. I think this is a very logical system and prevents that whole graceless “CLOSE OUT WITH ME PLEASE!” that a lot of bars do, which is annoying for the customer who probably doesn’t want to close out, and for the bartender who feels a bit like they are panhandling at shift change just to make their money.
Some customers do see what’s happening, and will tip the bartender who is leaving, but for the most part people are oblivious unless they are asked. Which is not really their fault; it’s a crappy system. I don’t work day bar anymore, so this isn’t a problem for me, but when I do have a customer who leaves a tab open overnight, and they come in and close it out the next day with whoever is working day bar, somehow the tip money never finds its way back to me. No, it doesn’t “all even out.”
If you want to be courteous, either tip the day bartender in cash and leave your tab open, or close it out so you can tip them on your credit card.
What you should have done was get the manager to fix the problem before you gave them your credit card. Once they ran it through, I can’t see how they could subtract money from your ticket. I may be wrong but it seems like you spoke to no one about this, left the ticket on the table after your negative gesture and left. I wouldn’t blame the restaurant for not handling what you never requested be handled.
