I have a step daughter who used to wait tables. Her stories have convinced me that waiters’ wages are hard-earned. I also rarely eat out, and I certainly could afford to daily if I wished to. Therefore, I tip a bit heavily if the service is decent. If it’s lousy, I just don’t return, but I’ll still go with 20%. Maybe it wasn’t the server’s fault.
20% for food, 10% for non-tipping required positions like barbers, attendants, and the like. Pizza guy gets 20% or $3, whichever is highest.
Not afraid of not tipping though because I’ve had some truely horrendous service that I knew was the servers direct fault due to negligence, such as a woman cutting my hair who stopped for 5 minutes in the middle of it to take a personal call from a friend or a waitress who spilled a drink into my food when she was putting it on my table and instead of being apologetic about it told me to “Just deal with it”.
I might have dealt with it had nothing been said, but if I got that statement, I’d have called the management, and if they weren’t responsive, I’d have left.
My apologies. I should have mentioned “good” restaurants where the bill isn’t only ten bucks. Don’t get me wrong; I’ll do a Coney Island for lunch, where I feel bad leaving less than $5 on a $10 tab, but in general, my bill is in the $60 to $80 dollar range at restaurants, and they’re usually the kinds of restaurants where only foreigners stiff the waitstaff.
Actually, I wonder if this is correct? Do mid-range to nice places have the same stiffing problems as Denny’s/Red Robin/Applebees and other low-end places?
I forgot housekeeping. I go $5 a day.
max(⌈0.15·total⌉, ⌊0.2·total⌋, 2.0)
We frequent the same bars and restaurants on a pretty regular basis. I never leave less than 20%, but I kind of look at it as an investment. Around xmas our favorite bartenders get $50 and a Happy Holiday card.
My barber gets a 50-80% tip, but it’s partially to make me feel ok. I drive a long way to get my hair cut, so I wait way too long. He makes me look great, really taking his time.
Our marina is a small affair on the Allegheny River. When I fill up my pontoon’s gas tank, I always offer the guy a beer and he always accepts. One time he was hot and sweaty, so he chugged the beer down in no time. I offered a second beer and he took it with a thanks.
Ever since that time, he always chugs down beer #1, even if it means setting aside #2 for later. I really should just hand him two straight up, but it’s become a routine.
Going through locks on the river in the old days it was routine to pass a few beers to the lock keeper. Nowadays that is frowned on.
It’s similar for Spain; I may tell a cabbie or a waiter to keep the change but that’s it.
One difficulty I have with tipping in restaurants nowadays is that it is usually not one person serving, but a team instead. Once seated, one person takes drink orders, another brings drinks, the primary waitperson describes the specials and takes orders, someone else brings the plates, then later the waitperson comes back around to see if everything is OK. If something was amiss when it was brought out, we may have told the plate bringer, or have to wait the few minutes until the waitperson shows up. Not a good system. (I hope some restaurant people are reading this).
This makes it harder for me to conclude that my waitperson did a good job vs. a poor job. I get that in this case the tips may be divided up, but who did well and who didn’t? How do I control who gets recognized vs. scolded?
The first “real” job my daughter had was waitressing at a little breakfast/lunch place in a small town. I stopped in and ordered coffee so I could say hi. She was my waitress and did very well!
When I finished my coffee I paid at the register. I went back to my table and left her a $20 tip. She texted me later, admonishing me for leaving “too much”. I texted her back that I really should have left more. She then explained that tips were shared, so my generosity was meaningless.
Leaving a penny as a tip and walking out is bullshit. If you are really that unhappy the only right thing to do is talk to a manager and tell the manager exactly what the problem was. I have done this only a handful of times in my life. Service is rarely that terrible. Otherwise the server will not have any idea why you were unhappy and just think you’re a cheap moron.
My going-in position for a restaurant is 20%. It goes down if a server does not meet or barely meets basic expectations (arrives at table to take a drink order within 5 minutes of my being seated; takes order when drinks arrive, or within a few minutes; order comes out as ordered, hot from the kitchen, and no problems that are evident visually; comes back to check on order a couple of minutes after we’re served to make sure everything’s OK; checks on the table at least one more time in case we need anything else). Expectations rise in more upscale places (e.g., pacing of the meal is more important). It can go up if the server goes above and beyond the call of duty, and being pleasant is a big plus. How to handle things if a problem comes up is also important (problem with the food, long wait for an order). I don’t think I have ever gone higher than 25% in a restaurant.
I tip my barber $5 on a $15 haircut, on the high side because I am treated very well there and I feel like it’s a great value. (Years ago I used to go to styling salons to get my hair cut and quit going when the price hit $35 plus tip.)
I tip cabbies around 20%.
At hotels I tip bellman $1-2 per bag depending on the level of service I get. I will tip a concierge if they do something special, like make dinner reservations for me. I tip the housekeeper anywhere from $2-6 per day depending on the type of room and how many of us are staying in it (lower end of a solo business trip in a Courtyard, higher end for a room for 4 in a Fairmont).
I tip tour guides and other folks who provide a personal service for whom tipping is traditional, although a percentage is not always the best way to figure it. We went on a tour to Chechen Itza for about $75 each but we were in a bus full of people and if everybody tipped 20% that guy would have been making about $100 per hour, which doesn’t make sense.
I don’t get this view. I owe the restaurant nothing. If I had such a horrid experience that I am going to leave 0% as a tip, the last thing I want is to discuss my experience with the manager. Maybe I’ll slam the place on Yelp. I definitely will not be back. Why do I owe the manager an explanation?
20% if it was 100% to my satisfaction. A little higher if they go above and beyond the call of duty (this is rare). 10-19% if they were sub-par.
I have never stiffed a waiter out of any tip, even under my worst experiences.
I pay roughly 1/6th, give or take, generally adjusted to make the final price on the ticket an even dollar or half dollar. I usually adjust up unless the service was disappointing, but even when I adjust down I generally don’t chop further than the nearest even dollar.
At least from what I seen bad management begets bad service. The time I left no tip for the waitress who spilled soda on my food I called the manager so I could actually get an item on my plate replaced and the manager started arguing with me and told me it “Wasn’t a big deal” and refused to replace anything or even give me a discount for the ruined portion.
I’ve never in my life regretted being *too *generous. I know some people are generous to a fault but I certainly am not.
Therefore, I challenge myself to tip a bit more than the minimum. That tends to work out to 25-30% for meals, $5+ for delivery, etc.
I don’t tend to eat out enough that this would negatively affect me in any way and it’s a good way to pay it forward.
10% is the standard here, that’s what I tip. it’s also the amount most places add automatically if you have a party of 6+ or 8+ at a table. Don’t recall that ever not being 10%, even at high-end places.
Nothing. Because Japan.
I tend to tip generously, to counter the notion that women are poor tippers.
But actually I came into this thread to ask the OP, or anyone else who knows, where I can get those Chinese buns with sweet BBQ pork in them here in the Austin area. When I lived in California a friend used to bring them to me every so often and they were incredible. I think the ones I got were baked not steamed and I used to know their name (something Bao?) but forgot. But I sure would love to have a couple right now.