dnooman:
Sorry about the cheap bastard remark, I never thought to look at your location, and even if I had, I had no idea it was like that in Australia. Some people really hate tipping, in fact there are a few anti-tipping websites. Whenever I hear about people either not tipping, or grossly under tipping, I tend to, as you can clearly see, overreact.
Back to your regularly scheduled programming…
As we say here in Australia…no worries, mate.
dnooman:
Jervoise ,
Maybe I should have qualified my statement with “in America, where servers get $2.13/hr” where the costs of paying them are not factored into the cost of your product. They pay taxes on tips that they never even recieve.
I’ll save the lecture since I know nothing about your country, please do me the same favor.
Where did I lecture? “No it doesn’t” refered to your assertion that TIPS is an acronym.
FWIW, I also tip according to the American custom when I’m in the US (in fact, I think I started a thread asking Americans how to tip when in the country).
Another interesting thing is the assumption (made by some people) that waiters who are not working for tips will give poor service, and that waiters in countries like the US are more professional. Well, i’ve worked as a waiter in Australia (good wages, no tips), Canada (poor wages, good tips), and England (crap wages, no tips), and my concern for giving good service was never any different in any of those places.
Furthermore, i’ve eaten at restaurants in all those places, as well as the United States, south-east Asia, and western Europe, and i’ve found that there is good service and bad service to be had everywhere. I don’t find American or Canadian waiters noticeably more or less attentive or professional than their counterparts in other parts of the world.
My experiences are a little different. I found American service to be slightly more attentive than what you get in Australia and in the UK (I’ll leave Asian service out of it)–small things like asking about drink refills and desserts.