Have you ever tried tipping well after bad service in hopes that the next time you come you will get good service???
An old joke, "A person who was not well dressed got bad service at a hotel. At the end of the day, he gave everyone a great tip.
The next day he got good service, but left no tip at all. The concierge asked, "How come you gave a good tip for poor service but no tip for good service? The answer was, "…
Today’s tip was for yesterday’s service!"
Doesn’t work like that, unless you frequent the same restaurant daily and the staff have the intelligence to detect the pattern. Tips are like Pavlov’s bell - when it rings, they salivate instantly, and they remember next time.
Seems to me that was the point of the joke.
Italics mine.
It’s rare that those who give me bad service get a second chance. There are too many other places competing for my $$$ - if I’m treated well, I return. If not, I go elsewhere, and tip accordingly.
I recently went to a restaurant with my girlfriend and got horribly slow service–even though the customers around us were getting served promptly (and it wasn’t just our perception–the couple next to us came in 10 minutes after we had and were served much faster). We’re both 20, and the only discernable difference between us and others was our age.
This led to the conundrum. Do we make it a self-fulfilling prophecy? I assume our shoddy service was because of our age. By tipping badly, I was reinforcing the waiter’s notion that young people are bad tippers. But the man just didn’t deserve a good tip. I tipped 3 bucks on a $42 meal.
If you don’t frequent a place often enough to have them remember you, there is no point in tipping for future possible good service.
My rules are as follows:
Typical service gets a 15% tip. This happens about 80% of the time.
Lousy service gets a 10% tip. This happens about 5% of the time.
Very good to excellent service gets a 20% tip. This happenss about 15% of the time.
Rude assholes get a tip of a few small coins. That way they don’t think that I just forgot to tip. I’ve only done this two or three times in my life.
Haj
I have a son that is a bartender and one that is a cook and waiter. The bartender is very sensative about tipping well when he is eating out and usually gives a 20% tip. One night he got lousy service. He paid with a credit card and in the line that is for the tip he wrote “nothing”. I’m sure that got the message across.
I’m usually a generous tipper- 20% is a small tip for me. I usually tip around 25%.
However, on exactly two occasions, I have tipped nothing. On one occasion, the waitress was extremely rude (turning away from me as she plunked my plate on the table as though she were disposing of hazardous waste). On the other, service was extremely slow, and, once I got the meal, nonexistant, even though there was only one other occupied table in the entire restaraunt (I work graveyard, sometimes stop for a meal before going in to work).
If a restaraunt is extremely busy, I will usually tip well even if the service isn’t that good. I figure the waitperson is doing the best he/she can.
One time, I went for dinner at Roberta’s Steakhouse at the El Cortez (one of Las Vegas’ hidden treasures, great restaraunt hidden inside a skanky dive of a casino). I wanted wine with my meal, but union rules create a division of labor that is just ridiculous- a cocktail waitress would have been required to bring my wine from the bar, and I would have to pay for it separately. I had no cash on me at the time, was going to pay by credit card, which made it an unworkable situation.
My waiter took pity on me and bought me a glass of wine. When I paid for my meal, I wrote him in a $13.00 tip- for a $17.00 meal.
In addition to lowering the tip you need to explain to the server and/or the manager why you are tipping low. Without knowing the reason, the server’s going to assume you’re just a lousy tipper.
Oh, you merkins are just soooo funny.
I’m an Aussie and I rarely tip.
I know it’s something you do over there otherwise you get bad service, I just don’t understand it.
Maybe if y’all stopped tipping, the habit would be broken and you would get decent service all the time.
No, we tip because that’s how waitstaff make their income. The system in the US is that most of the money they make comes from tips. Until that changes, you’d be just shafting the waitstaff by not tipping.
Does anyone else here love the old cop show Adam-12? It’s one of my favorites.
Anyway, Pete Malloy and Jim Reed (the two policemen) were in uniform, in a restaurant taking their lunch break. The waitress is a bit cranky too.
Then the waitress demands that the policemen eject a presumably homeless old man from the establishment, because he was loitering there for an hour, and had only paid for a cup of hot water, but was trying to make himself free soup by stirring ketchup into it. The old man was polite, the waitress was mean, calling him a bum and so forth; the police let him stay.
As the cops were leaving, the waitress counted the money they’d left on the table, and called out: “A lousy dime?! That ain’t no tip!”
And Jim Reed looked her straight in the eye, and ever so politely and camly replied “No ma’am, it isn’t. It’s a hint.” And they left.
I’m always nervous about tipping low, if it’s a place I visit regularly, or plan to visit again. I don’t want to get bad service, or unsavory items inserted in my food, next time.
But if I don’t feel the need to come back to that restaurant, I do indeed tip low for bad service. I often don’t get a chance to tell them why, but I wish I did.
Okay, speaking from over 5 years of waiting tables experience during college:
If you tip very well, you will get good service, the waitstaff will fight over who gets to wait on you. When they see you in the lobby, asking the hostess for a table, they will ask the hostess to seat you in their station. They will fawn over you and everything that they can get out of the kitchen for you for free (my restaurant was a mexican restaurant and I would ensure my favorite tables got coffee, extra sour cream, desert, cheese dip, anything I could get on my own without the kitchen knowing, all for free). For my very favorite tables, I would also occasionally ask management to comp their entire meals, since they were loyal regulars.
If, however, you are a frequent visitor to a restaurant who regularly tips poorly, the exact opposite will happen. The waitstaff will fight over who has to serve you, will fuss at the hostess for seating you in their section and won’t do anything “extra” for you at all. They will devote all their time and attention to the other tables in their section, since they are unknowns and might leave a nice tip, whereas you are a known bad tipper and not worth exerting a lot of extra effort on. Chances are, the waitstaff will also have a nickname for you.
Restaurant waitstaff gossips all the time, they know which tables are good tippers and which are bad tippers and the knowledge is communicated.
And I think I have the answer to this:
If it was late, and there was only one other occupied table, sounds like you came to the restaurant at or near closing. While there is no excuse for bad service and you were right to tip accordingly, your server was probably occupied doing the final sidework that is required before they can leave (rolling 100 silverware, filling the salad dressings, slicing lemons for tea, slicing and wrapping deserts for the next day, cleaning high chairs and booster seats, scrubbing the tea bins, etc.)
I never, ever tip “nothing”.
When I still lived at home, I would go out with my BF (now husband) to Red Lobster every Sunday afternoon. Since we liked it so much there, we tipped very generously. As a result, we were given free desserts, free soup, extra bread, and great service. And everytime we got something extra–the tip would go up.
However, there have been a few places where I left 2 pennies because the service was so poor and I never planned on returning. I’m sure they got the hint.
You ever see the episode of Third Rock from the Sun where Dick takes his GF out and puts a pile of money on the table. He explains to the waitress that that is her tip.Everytime she pleasese him, he’ll add a dollar. Everytime she’s slow, etc he takes a dollar away. I think that’s a great tipping process. I’d like to do that.
I was at a resturant in NYC a few years agowith my (then) girlfriend. Our waiter appeared rude and the service was slow. They had a bowl of pickles on the table and I love pickles. We finished the bowl of pickes and I asked the waiter three times to please bring more pickles. Each time he said he would but he never did. He did take care of the pickles at other tables though. At the end of the meal I gave him the exact amounf of the bill, left a note on why he was not getting a tip, and since the waitstaff there did share tips with the busboys I found the person who would be bussing my table, and gave a tip to him because I felt he should not be peinalized for something beyond his control.
I agree berdollos. I find a system which allows employees to be paid pittance-low wages on the chance it would be supplemented with tips - yet tax the wages as though those tips are a certainly, is abhorrent.
The only thing I can figure is that either American diners are so generous it isn’t a problem, or that people are so desperate to work they will accept any crap conditions, otherwise surely hospitality and catering unions would put the pressure on the lawmakers for change?
The problem that there isnt a union for waitresses and resturant workers unless its like in a motel casino ect …