Is a 20% tip the minimum for good service?

In My Humble Opinion
21

In the US, waiters and waitresses are paid below minimum wage, because tips are expected. Thus, they are taxed on what they SHOULD have been tipped. When they don’t get tipped, they still have to pay taxes anyway, so they’re screwed.

It’s one thing if you’re in another country, but in the US, please, tip at least 15%, unless the service was horrid. You know, “when in Rome” and all that?

If you don’t like the custom-don’t eat out, or write your reps to change the labor laws. Do NOT take it out on those serving you, who have no control over the way things work.

22

I did not know this. I found this on the USA Dept of Labor site:

$2.13 an hour?
Am I the only one who thinks this is seriously wrong?

23

I don’t see why. They still get paid a more reasonible salary when you include tips.

24

I think it’s seriously wrong because the restaurant owner gets to pay them a pittance and advertise a misleading price on their menu. It seems so random to me that they are allowed to advertise false prices and expect the customer to directly fill in the shortfall in their employee expenses!

I like the Australian model. No exceptions to minimum wage laws, and tipping not expected.

Having said that, I’m never actually not going to tip, since I would be punishing the wrong people. I typically adjust to what is the socially expected behaviour in the location I am in. Here in the United States I tip 15 - 20%. Back in South Africa I would tip 10% - 15%.

25

If $2.13 + tips < Minimum Wage, then they get paid minimum wage. If it’s more than that, then they get the $2.13 / hr wage.

Personally, I think this is needlessly convoluted and they should get rid of the “tip exemption” for the minimum wage laws.

26

That’s a dramatic oversimplification.

The standard tipping percentage has indeed risen over the past five to ten years, and now seems to hover somewhere around 18%. Now, at first glance, it might seem that restaurant workers are getting an outrageously good deal. After all, restaurant prices are going up, and so is the percentage, so they not only get tipped on a higher bill amount, but they’re getting a higher percentage of that amount. All seems like a pretty good scam at first glance, doesn’t it?

I made the observation, in a recent thread on tipping, that the rising price of restaurant food combined with the rising tip percentage seemed to be a super good deal for waiters. But former doper manhattan, who makes a living tracking these sort of statistics, made the following point in response:

If manhattan’s claims are correct—and i see no reason to assume that they’re not—then the creeping tip percentage has simply allowed waiters to keep their incomes in line with their general cost-of-living increases. This, in my opinion, is not an unreasonable expectation for any worker.

27

Says the individual who has obviously never been a waiter at an upscale restaurant.

I work at a 4-star Indian restaurant. I am required to not only know exactly what is in each dish and how it is prepared, but also other indian dishes that we don’t have on the menu. Some of my customers have never had Indian food before and I have to help them select something that will be suited to their tastes. So I often need to guess at their ethnicity and the type of food they are used to in order to direct them to a dish they will enjoy. Furthermore, I often get customers that have had Indian food at one or two other places and don’t know the names of what they had. They will try and describe it to me and I have to figure out which dish they want to order. “It was this bread… like hummas…”

I also need to know my alcohol - if they ask for a martini I need to find out if it is vodka/gin/twist/olives/etc. I need to know what the dishes and the alcohol taste/look/feel like so I can give proper suggestions. We have a very nice wine list and I need to know which ones pair best with each dish. If the customer desires a crisp chardonnay to go with their seafood selection, I need to know which one to bring to the table because no one wants to spend $200 on a chardonnay that isn’t good. I don’t have a copy of the wine list so I can not say for sure how many wines we have, but I know it is over 100 and changes fairly often.

In addition to the menu, I had to be trained in the proper way to serve a customer. There are tons of little rules that even most of the customers don’t know to fine dining - the placement of silverware, what to do with your napkin, how to order fine wine, etc.

There’s also learning how to handle big parties and multiple tables. I’d like to see you try to serve a 50-top a 3 course meal plus alcohol all on your own. When a party of 20 is spending $1000 (a situation I had two weeks ago. 15 adults, 5 children), they don’t want average service - they want really, really good service.

But all of this knowledge and training is meaningless if you don’t have the right personality. You always have to be outgoing, friendly and respectful. After I found out about the death of my aunt from cancer, I had to go into work that evening with a smile on my face.

I’d love to get a nice, easy office job, but I attend school during the day and the restaurant is very close to my house.

I’m not saying that all waitress/waiters work as hard as I do, I’ve seen many bad ones. But it is an insult to imply that my work doesn’t take a good deal of effort or knowledge.

And as for losing money if I am tipped less than 15%, in addition to taxes, I also have to tip out the other workers, even if I do everything myself. At my resturant 5% of sales is given out to other workers. If everyone tipped on average 15%, that leaves 10% for me to take home. If everyone tipped only 10%, then I have only 5% to take home. Luckily, it is extremely rare for me to get only 15%. I average 18-20% (tonight was slow - total sales just $700 and I was tipped $140) and I haven’t been waitressing that long nor do I have the proper personality. I do work my ass off though.

28

Headline News did a story on tipping standards these days and they said the standard for good service is 20%. (Don’t have a link so consider it anecdotal if you like, for those who want to scream “Cite!” :D)

I myself tip around 20-30% for good service. Mediocre service gets around 15%.

In bars, b/c I go to the same ones and get great pours, excellent service and free drinks, the percentage can climb to 50% to 150% of my tab.

I should also mention that I’ve been in the industry for ten years, so I tend to tip pretty well; this is true of most service industry employees. We take care of each other because we know people like Future Days can really make it hard to get through a shift sometimes. (Although I’m always faintly amazed by the attitude of some UK posters about tipping in America; it’s not as if they’re required to do it in the UK, and yet they still seem morally outraged at the very idea.)

There’s good money in the service industry but you do earn it, and anybody who thinks it looks easy should give it a whirl and find out for themselves.

I bet their tipping percentages would improve. :smiley:

29

The only way my employees are getting a year end bonus out of me is if they all give me blowjobs. And if I’m not satisfied with their blowjobs, I’m not paying them their regular salary, either.

30

One thing that’s been mentioned here is that tipping is different in different countries. While I generally tip at least 20%, I’m in the US where this is expected.

I also think that the minimum wage rule exceptions should be revoked. The restaurants could then raise their prices to meet the wage requirement and the menus would reflect the actually cost of the meal instead of the price before tip.

31

Never mind…I didn’t quite tell the truth earlier. I realized what I normally do is double the tax, which since the tax is 8 % here works out to be about 16 %. :smack:

:: slinks out of thread ::

32

I just want to point out that tip-sharing varies from restaurant to restaurant. I’ve worked in several, and not once did anyone working in the back ever get a portion of tips. Of course, I did get a higher hourly pay than waiters, and I was eligible for OT.

33

It’s not misleading because everyone in the US knows that you have to include tip with the meal. And what does it matter if the money comes right from the customer or goes through the restuarant first? You do realize that the money that the restaurant owner is paying the waiters comes from the customers anyway, right? All it does is shift the cost structure so that a greater portion of the waiters salary is tied to their performance. Personally I think that’s better for the waiters since, in general, their wages will be determined by their customers, not the arbitrary whim of their boss.

34

I just can’t understand why anyone in America tolerates working in a tipping enviroment.

It matters where the money comes from because the waiter is an employee. An employee works for a company/person in exchange for a wage.

A TIP is a tip, an extra for superior service. A tip should not be part of a wage nor should an employer be allowed to underpay an employee because the public will make up for their tightness. If a waiter shows up for work and it is a verrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrry slow day they are still at work. If there is a lack of customers that is down to the owner/mananger/chef NOT the waiter. The waiter showed up to work, ready to work and on duty for the entirity of their shift.

Though I know it would be very unpopular, if I was a waitress in the US I would be screaming for strike action and a livable minimun wage (not dependent on tips) can you imagine how bank manangers, advertising execs, real estate agents, doctors, IT whizzes, dentists, plumbers, builders etc would feel if they knew their income relied on tips?

35

I’ve got to say I’ve never heard of this. I waited tables for two summers back in school (not at anyplace as fancy as kimera’s) and got paid $2.01 an hour plus tips up to minimum wage.

So how much the norm is this?

36

I’ve never waited tables, but have had several friends who have (some still do) and I always thought it was the norm, from what they said. From what I could tell, their tips worked one of three ways, listed for you in order of what, to me, seemed to most common:

  1. Each server took a small portion of their tip (2-5%) and gave it to the bus boys/hostess/other people who do come in contact with sutomers but not that much/directly (pretty much veryone but kitchen staff.)

  2. Each server jsut took what was left for them and that was that.

  3. All servers combined ALL tips into one communal “pot,” which would be split up equally among them (and sometimes the bus boys/hostesses/etc… would also get a small percetange of that.)
    It seems to me that it sometimes nakes sense for non-servers to get a portion of the tip, b ecause while they usually DO get paid at least the real min. wage, they often still have to deal with the after/pre effects of bad/rude customers.

Oh, and msmith537, you do not HAVE to tip, you are merely expected to tip. I could easily, and quite legally, go out to eat and pay exactly the cost of my meal plus tax. No one is forcing me to tip. I have a friend who, like Mr. Pink, barely tips at all. The odd thing is, she works in the industry. She works part time at an Uno’s, and still barely tips (she works in the kitchen, so she’s never directly dealt with bad tips, but she still hears the servers complain and knows the ins and outs.) I don’t like going out to eat with her, because while sometimes I can guilt her into throwing some extra money in, her usual tip is whatever amount it is to round her share of the bill up to the next dollar.

If we eliminate “mandatory” tipping, then people like her aren’t a problem. You pay exactly what your meal was, and if the service was above average, you give a little extra. Plus, I can’t imagine I’m the only one who, when I go out with a group of friends, runs into the problem where people “forget” they have to tip. It seems that if you have more than four people on one bill, at least one person will not put in any money for tax and tip, and they get away with it, because it’s easy to lose track of who put in how much amd they know everyone else will cover for them.

I remember a particularly nasty time when many of us (we had close to thirty) went to a steak house. We called WELL ahead (as in, the night before AND an hour before we left (they didn’t take reservations)), so they knew we were coming, just to be nice to the staff. I paid for myself and my GF. My bill came to about $30 (after tax, before tip.) I put in $35, covering my share of the bill quite nicely. because so many others didn’t put in enough for tax and tip, I ended up putting in another $10 just so we could get the Hell out of there. If there was no tipping, all the prices on the menu would be slgihtly higher to reflect that, and that would not have happened.

37

Eh. I think it really depends on where you work. I have a lot of friends who are waiters/waitresses, and they’re often taking home 200 and more on a busy weekend evening, and over 100 on weeknights. Not a bad gig if you can get it.

38

Eh, no, I suggest the restuarants pay their staff more. I’d be quite willing to pay a bit more for the food.

20% tip is a lot, they must make a small fortune if it’s busy.

39

I generally tip about 20%, since the places I go are places with good service. To me, a good wait staff is more important than the quality of the food; my wife can out-cook any restaurant I’ve ever been to, so when I go out, I’m going for a good time.

If I happen to blunder into a restaurant where the service is iffy, I’ll usually tip 15%, and then don’t go back.

If the service is flat-out lousy, I don’t tip. I’m not about to pay anyone for making me unhappy.

40

Exactly. Rediculous amount for a servant to earn. You american and your tips. :rolleyes: