Hey Luckie-
Don’t fuck with the people who handle your food.
Just a little friendly “tip”
How about for buffets, or pizza delivery? 15% seems kinda high when you are getting the food yourself, or they just bring it to the door. I still tip, but not nearly as much.
I tend to vary tips greatly depending on the server’s effort and attitude rather than results. If the server is getting hammered because the restaurant is short-handed, but is still making a good effort, I will give a good tip even if things don’t go perfect. I also tip well if I feel welcome and appreciated. If they seem like they would rather I wasn’t there, bothering them with my requests for food and drink, then they get very little.
I think that excerpt has all of the Mr.s(how the hell do you pluralize Mr.?) screwed up. Mr. Pink(Busceimi) didn’t want to tip, and Mr. white(Keitel) was bitching at him about it. Sorry, had to nitpick since its GQ.
So when I dine out with the Mrs. and we have a two-for-one dinner certificate, we’re only expected to tip based on the one meal we’re actually paying for, right?
As for the first part, the usual answer: it depends. If I eat in a bar or such place, then I don’t tip. Not for food or drinks. Maybe I’m just a stingy northerner;)
In restaurants, I definitely make less effort to calculate 15 or 20% or whatever, just throw in £2 or £3 per head which usually comes out to about that. However you, as a soon to be extorted tourist at wimbledon, will be paying much more than that. I’m sure no-one will ever complain if they’re tipped at 20%, less if you so desire and think the service merits less.
The second part. Did you try and tip in dollars?
You can, of course, tip up to 8000%, particularly if you see a short haired poor northerner carrying yer food.
No. Whenever you use a coupon of some sort, you should tip on the meal before the discount.
Some establishments will even add this gratuity in automaticly and mention this on the coupon itself.***
[sub]*** Please note that a restaurant cannot make you tip legally - in this case or even in those “Tables of 8 or more add a 15% gratuity” stuff. if anyone wishes for me to expand on this, ask![/sub]
Yer pal,
Satan - Commissioner, The Teeming Minions
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Thanks android. And if by some wild chance we meet I’d be glad to buy you dinner (you can leave the tip).
Do europeans like to get american currency? I usually try to use local. Is that my problem? I try to learn a bit of the language where I need to and figured that using local currency was a part of that. I admit to being very loud. People HERE think I’m loud. I’ll try to reduce my volume and I will certainly not talk at Wimbledon during the games.
Anything else I should know?
Wow, if people there think you’re loud, then definitely lower the volume significantly. Unless you’re in greece, then bawl yer head off.
What would a European do with American money? I imagine (I’m english, not european:)) the same as you would when given foreign money in the US. Stare blankly and ask for some real money.
Use local. In high inflation or dollar whipped countries (Turkey, Indonesia) you can give dollars sometimes, but local is the way to go, especially in the UK. You try and give a waiter a dollar tip there and they might get insulted. “OOOHHH! A WHOLE US DOLLAR? WOW! I’m Sooo glad you came into my life. You Americans really are #1, aren’t you?”
However, I do pick up $2 bills everytime I go back to the States (Almost every single time I’ve gone into a large bank and asked for $2 bills they’ve had a stack). I give them to individuals that I meet or have had a few beers with. Tell them they are out of print and are good luck tokens. You can also use it to start a conversation about US history (the signing of the Declaration of Independence is on the back of $2) and you can then learn a little about their history from their currency (Who’s this? Why is this building on your bill?). A few pubs I’ve given the bartenders one have pinned them up on a wall- good conversation starter with other Americans. It’s an easy token to carry to give as a gift- but make sure they know its for good luck or something, not that you are giving them some cash to go buy a candy bar. I also do some magic, so turning salt into a $2 bill is a neat trick (get a thumb tip and instructions from a magic store) that they never forget.
Also, learn a few words, and don’t be afraid to use them. Saying “Thank you” in their language will produce a smile 99% of the time.
Take care-
-T
So I’m asking.
I was out with a crowd of waiters once. (If you’re unfamiliar, waiters can almost always find a reason to tip reasonably well. They’re too busy, they’re too slow [you get dragged off to do other jobs & don’t make it back as often as you normally would], they’re having a bad day, etc. etc. etc. The waiters I’ve known could excuse damn near anything but outright rudeness or flat refusal to do the job. Familiarity breeds understanding.)
Anyway. The waitress & busboy (who, in that restaurant, had a fair amount of the responsibility for taking care of the table) were SO BAD that the table full of waiters refused to tip. At all. (The wine-stewardess, on the other hand, made out nicely. I know - we carried her tip to her personally. Weren’t about to leave it on the table.) Not only was the waitress horrid, but the manager’s attitude when we complained was “So?”.
When we refused to tip, he insisted that we had to because it said so on the menu. I think we ended up winning that battle (it’s been a long, long time ago), but primarily because there were a lot of us, and we were willing to be as loud as it took for as long as it took.
But some facts woulda been really handy.
I tip a basic 10% (here in England).
Easy to calculate, no complaints so far.
As others may well have said:
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depressingly, many staff are not paid well, but it doesn’t follow that the management lets them keep the tips.
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posher places often put ‘service included’ on the bill. They tend not to draw attention to it, especially if you then mistakenly tip.
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if I eat somewhere regularly, I proffer 15%. Then the manager usually holds the door for me (ah, the simple pleasures of the moderately well-off!).
Ok… the real question for us Americans travelling overseas…
It seems that I somehow get stuck in some restaurants where the tip is automatically included (at a tune of about 18%) but the service is absolutely terrible. Do I really have to pay this 18% or can I adjust it to what I see fit? I’ve had this happen in Austria and in England.
Brian
I think (in England) that you can refuse to pay not only the service, but even some of the bill. You are claiming that the food was disgusting, or something similar.
N.B. I’m not a lawyer.
redtail23
It is very simple: A gratuity is not something you can be forced to leave for someone. It is not legally enforcable. I imagine the simplest reason is that there are no laws making it enforcable, and I doubt they would be able to be passed since the nature of a gratuity means it has to be a choice to some degree.
If you get lousy service (it takes a LOT for me to stiff someone of leave her less than 15%), call the manager over and explain this. I am assuming, of course, you realize that the server is not responsible for your steak being burned, but she is responsible for not checking with your table to find this out until the rest of the table is finished eating, you know? I’ll assume you do.
I would tell him that you DO know how to tip - Even tell him or her what you’d normally leave on the bill for above average service.
I say this because we are used to dealing with trash (see the moron above) who don’t know what they’re doing. One table of 10 in a place I worked at rang up a $80 bill. The server was not me, but someone who I knew was good, and it was her only table. They complained about the gratuity. Not because of the lack of service, but because “I would never tip more than a dollar or two.” :mad:
In that case, the manager stuck by the server and never let on that legally we couldn’t enforce that policy. Fortunately, the customer was as ignorant of this as they were tipping customs and the salary scale for servers, so she paid it.
In your case, the manager would be more sympathetic.
Worst case scenerio (server sucks, manager is a dick about it, refuses to budge) tell him you are NOT paying a cent for a gratuity and he should call the police if he wants to. Wait for the cops to get there. When they do, they can’t do a thing to you and they will tell the manager this.
Fortunately, none of this happened to me when I was a customer or a server. In fact, when I waited on tables, i was often tipped on top of automatic gratuities… I rocked! 
Yer pal,
Satan - Commissioner, The Teeming Minions
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Rereading this thread, I realized I totally missed TinCanMan’s post about the comp’ed check. I must input that on a check reduced from $200 to $50 I would drop at least a $100 tip if the service was good. I still get off cheap, the server is happy, and the manager sees that I appreciated the gesture. Subsequent visits may result in the waiter specifically asking the manager about comp’ing and certainly in additional effort by the server.
Perhaps some will think this a nit pick, but methinks Vile Orb is exaggerating just a weeee bit.
$7 USD was six months income in Costa Rica in 1985? An annual income of $14? I very, very seriously doubt that. I’ll give you that it’s a poor country, but Nepal is among the 10 poorest in the world and the average income there is $300 USD per year. Ethiopia comes in around $590. The most recent stat I can find for Costa Rica is 1999, (and I realize their economy has grown considerably between 85 and 99), but in 1999 it was $7,100. I doubt the average salary increased by 50,000% from '85-'99.
Ok. I’m finished being anal retentive.
In 1985, I got 89 Costa Rican pesos to 1 US dollar, I don’t feel like looking up the current number but I think it’s about 25. Stay at a hotel with hot water considered very luxurious by locals (but not a resort) was $1 a night. I believe the waiter was making about 6 pesos a night 4 nights a week at the restaurant. I don’t think he got many tips at all. These are figures I got from the friends I stayed with there. You work out the math. Maybe my friends were exaggerating to make me feel good. However I contend that this was a VERY substantial sum to this waiter. He wrote something to that affect in his letter.
I do think this was not his sole form of income. I think he had a peeled orange stand (they have a hand cracked machine that will peel an orange down to the white, you then poke a hole in it and squeeze for the juice, it won’t crack open like it does with the orange part intact) he worked during the day. So, I’m exaggerating in that I failed to report he had additional income but not in that it was equivalent to 6 months of income from that job and enough to fund a Christmas his family will remember forever.
Lucky your stats are persuasive and I am almost doubting my memories. However, consider that there was a strong improvement in the value Costa Rican currency during the late 80’s/early 90’s and the fact that this guy’s income was probably significantly below the average. Hmmm… I might be off on what year I was there. Maybe it was 84. Oh well, that shouldn’t make much difference.
It’s not like I’m trying to claim I’m some kind of huge philanthropist for dropping a $7 tip. My point is that the individual who received this tip, which he thought was very large, was not insulted and instead was very grateful. My point is just as well served if it was merely one day’s income or even less. I waited tables for a long time. If someone tipped me 50%+ on a large check, I would have been very happy and not insulted at all. I am asking why someone would throw a ~20% tip in my face and I haven’t heard anyone answer that except the possibility the waiter was the owner. It is possible that the waiter in question was related to the owner so maybe this is a factor. Maybe I didn’t catch an earlier comment he made to that effect because I don’t speak French. I understood and responded (with nods) to a few comments he made in French so maybe he thought I understood all of it. I’ll never know, but I’d like to do what I can to prevent a repeat performance. Reactions like this are gratifying if I’m trying to insult, but very humiliating when I’m trying to be nice. Remember that waiters, if you think the insult is intentional and knowing, angered antics will just gratify the a**hole.
These old waiter stories are fun to tell, I keep resisting it but I’ll let loose on this one. One time I got a big family from Italy at a Tex-Mex restaurant. I was the bartender but it was an odd hour and most of the waiters had been sent home so I waited on them. They stayed for hours and ordered a lot. I spent a lot of time on them telling them about the local sights and about the Tex-Mex cuisine, which was new to them. The check was around $300 for ten people (we didn’t have the automatic gratuity policy even for big tables). They left me $10. When I picked up the tip they were still milling about near the restrooms. I went over to the apparent head of family (I didn’t see who had paid the check) and said something like this, “I don’t want you to think I’m angry or insulting you or ripping you off. I am going to give you back your $10 tip to prove that it doesn’t matter much to me. I just want you to know that it’s considered polite to tip at least 15% of the check and that good service deserves more.” He seemed embarrassed and confused. I told him he should ask at the tourist kiosk which was not far away and said that if he wanted to make it up to me he should just tip waiters in the vicinity extra and tell them it was from me. I figure this would further tell him that I wasn’t out to swindle him. Within a week I had a significant increased bar business of waiters from the area. Waiters were bringing all their coworkers and toasting me. I don’t know how much this guy was tipping them but I know I made a lot of money because of it. I recently visited that bar and they STILL have a nice crowd of restaurant workers in the bar. --I love it when your deeds come back to you like that.
Vile Orb
I wasn’t trying to cast any dispersions on you. It is realy cool when you can help someone out, and I think it’s especially cool in a very poor country becasue the same dollar amount gift makes a much greater difference than it would in America or Europe. Granted, it’s not exactly the height of altruism to feel all magnanamous about it, but in the end a good deed is a good deed and I don’t begrudeg anyone giving themselves a pat on the back for such actions. Beats the hell out of not doing anything for people.
I probably should have just let the whole thing go re the percentage of annual salary represented by $7 in 1985 Costa Rica but there are so many misconceptions and just plain lack of understanding about the Third World and poor countries in general. I think that when conditions are not represented accurately, it diminishes the true problems. Rather like that Monty Python skit where the men are sitting around in the club saying things like, “You were lucky. When I was young we lived in a cradboard box and ate gravel”.
Regardless of the value of the money, it was a really nice thing you did.
Lucky and Orb…
I have spent a good while trying to find the info on Costa Rica. I do Economic research and have access to a few huge databases of info. Boy, this has not been fun. I got the stats from the IMF, but I think that their numbers are off by a few decimal places. Here is what the IMF numbers say:
GNP, Population Colones/US$
80 39.0 2.3 8.6
81 51.0 2.3 21.8
82 81.0 2.4 37.4
83 116.0 2.5 41.1
84 149.0 2.6 44.5
85 184.0 2.6 50.5
86 231.0 2.7 56.0
87 266.0 2.8 62.8
88 324.0 2.9 75.8
89 395.0 2.9 81.5
90 501.0 3.0 91.6
91 845.0 3.1 122.4
92 1,113.0 3.1 134.5
93 1,320.0 3.2 142.2
94 1,620.0 3.3 157.1
95 2,041.0 3.3 179.7
96 2,393.0 3.4 207.7
97 2,900.0 3.5 232.6
98 3,457.0 3.5 257.2
99 3,863.0 3.6 285.7
GNP and Pop in MILLIONS. That would make the GDP per capita in 1985 = $1.38, which I HIGHLY doubt. So I think the GNP is actually in BILLIONS, which would make it $1,380. 1999 would be $3,766.
IT JUST SO HAPPENS that my boss was in South America in 1987, and on his bookcase I found his travel book from back then and have been trying to get an idea about what it was like. I couldn’t find many prices mentioned at all, especially ones that would be what a local would pay. There were a few prices to museums at $0.10 to $0.40, and under tipping, I found a quote for porters at hotels (and the hotels listed in this guide were all around $20 to $30 a night). Hinted was 10 Colones per bag (1987 = 0.15). I'm assuming that these are fancier hotels, and that in a third world country hotel jobs are some of the better paying ones. So lets say that the job would compare to this guys job at a fancy restaurant. So his tip would still be nice.
Now, in 1984 Costa Rica had just come out of a major recession with inflation as high as 80%. At that same time, the US was at one of its strongest points in history (it almost hit parity, 1 = 1, with the British pound, which is now $1.5/BP). So lets say that this guy was just coming out of a recession, had just got this job and was supporting his family, but not much else. $7 could be quite a lot for him, quite easily food for his family of 4 for a full month ($13 for twelve at a fancy restaurant, c. $1 per person; fancy restaurant for me in cheap old Prague is 10 times what a normal lunch would be in a restaurant, 20 times more than what I could make at home, so $1/20= $0.05, or $0.20 for four per meal, $7 = 35 meals). This could be more- Cheap food bought by locals could be much cheaper- beans, rice, a little meat…you could stretch it a lot further. Which, considering he tracked you down to say thanks, is not an unbelievable concept. Now what if he was single? Then six months is not TOTALLY out of the question.
Now, just to waste more time at the office while typing to you guys, lets put it into an American perspective. What would a meal for 12 cost at a semi fancy restaurant in the States? $40 a person? $480 makes a 55% tip (this guys $7 was 55%) $250. Pretty damn good I’d say. Now, I’ve had $75 plates, plus drinks and appetizers for $25, at The Welshire Inn in Colorado, which is fancy, but not THE fanciest - so that makes this analogy $1200, or $650 tip. Go to New York and we could double that easily.
So yeah Orb, you did make his life pretty damned exciting!
Take care-
-T
> The restaurant should foot the bill, not us.
You’re joking, right? Either most customers tip, or the restaurant pay the waiters higher wages & raise the prices to compensate. But the customer is paying either way.
I’m surprised to read that any waiter would be offended at being tipped, even if a tip were built into the bill. The customer might not have known that, or liked the service so much that he wanted to pay more.
Something I think is dumb: we have a local supermarket chain which has the baggers take your groceries to your car. They’re not allowed to accept tips.