I’ve been wondering about this for a while. You go into a restaurant with a large group. On the menu is “Mandatory gratuity of 15% for parties of 8 or more.”
Is it legal to force some customers to tip, and others not to? Isn’t this just a sneaky little service charge for dealing with a large group? Not that I’d have a problem with a service charge, since large groups are somewhat more difficult to deal with on the whole. But if it’s a gratuity, then what incentive does a server have for prompt and courteous service? I’d much prefer to tip a server based on service. I think I’m rambling now.
If prior to being served, can you legally refuse the mandatory part of the gratuity?
You are right and wrong. The charge could just as easily be a seating charge for a large group as opposed to a gratuity, then you might well end up paying two gharges if the service was good.
The reasoning is as you noted that it is a pain to serve a large group, having done this work I can tell you that just getting a large group to STFU and tell me a drink order in a volume i can hear is nigh impossible. Then there is the fact that I spend so much time with you I have to pass off my tables to other servers. Now I never worked someplace with this rule, but I wouldn’t object to it if I had.
As for legally refusing? Sure, you can also be refused service. As I understand it cruise ships automatically calculate a gratuity as well. Eat elsewhere if you dislike it. Hey, did you know that if you use a credit or debit card to pay your tab then your server is more often than not charged a processing fee, not the house or you. Your server. Now a bad server should be reprimanded, but don’t be lazy about it ask to speak to the employer that way you don’t look like a cheap ass and if you get crap service I guarantee the mandatory fee will be waived or the equivalent.
Sure you can legally refuse the mandatory gratuity prior to service. The restaurant, being a private enterprise, can then legally refuse to serve you, since you won’t follow their policies.
As for the server’s incentive to give prompt service, the sooner you get your food and get the hell out, the sooner more customers take your place. More customers, unless you get a whole pile of assholes in one night, translates to more money.
Tipping is a supposedly optional tradition, but it’s sufficiently well-established that it’s part of the labor laws. Because of the government’s expectation that people will tip, the IRS requires the declaration of a certain amount of tip income, regardless of the documented amount. The minimum wage for restaurant servers is lower than that for other workers, because a large part of their income is supposed to come from tips.
Because this is so, and because large groups are usually irresponsible about tipping, the management guarantees that this money comes in.
IIRC the contract for the exchange of food for money is formed at the time of ordering. There are few legal limits on what form this contract could take. If the resteraunt decides to offer a higher price to parties over fifteen, it is up to you to accept or decline. If they do not mention the 15% gratuity, then presumably the price is the price listed in the menu (at least I owuld guess you’d have grounds to dispute the price). Once they have made the offer (high price or low price), and you accept by ordering*, you are bound contractually to pay it.
*This may be backwards, you may be making the offer and the restaruant accepting. I can’t recall, but it has no bearing here that I can see (consideration is not an issue).
A restaurant I used to take my family to had the manditory 18% gratuity kick in at five in the party. It was printed on the back of the menu, not at the bottom of the ordering pages, where I usually see it.
Are there limits on how the notification is to take place? Do I have to carefully check over every little bit of the menu, plus all the walls in the restaurant? If I haven’t read the notice, how can there be a legal agreement to pay the manditory gratuity? If it came to court, would the restaurant be required to demonstrate that the customer was aware of the requirement?
At the restaurant where it began at five, we’d been there probably a dozen times without any mention of a manditory gratuity. If the restaurant is inconsistent in its application of the manditory gratuity, does that have any effect on whether they can legally enforce it?
Dammit ZenBeam. How dare you ask my questions in a clarified manner.
I do believe that any policy such as this must be posted in an obvious place for it to be valid and enforceable. I’m more curious as to why it’s legal to require some customers to tip, and others not to. Hell, I may have to rethink this and run off to GD.
Oh, and thanks to everyone who’s answered. The input is appreciated.
Perhaps you should have a policy prohibiting this printed in your profile.
(not that I looked…)
Maybe something along the lines of:
“By responding in threads I start, other users agree not to contradict anything I say, either directly, or by implication through the asking of clarifying questions. By letting me print this in my profile, the Chicago Reader agrees that this is in fact the policy henceforth. Users in violation of this policy will be required to contribute 15 percent of their post count towards my post count.”
Most restaurants around here just say “A 15% gratuity will be added for parties of eight or more” They don’t say mandatory, but they do mention the all-important will be bit
Is it easier to serve 2 tables of 4 or 1 table of 8? If a person spends twice as much time on the table of 8 they’re still breaking even, right? Of course, bigger tables are (often) more rambunctious, but would a party of 8 be more likely to spend more (and therefore tip more) than 2 groups of 4? Plus, it would only be one table to check on.
Basically, is it the hassle of 2 tables packed into 1, but higher paying?
Why wouldn’t it be? As a seller, you can charge whatever you want whenever you want (as long as you don’t discriminate on the basis of race or certian other limited categories). In this instance, there’s actually a good reason for it, but there doesn’t have to be.
I once had a 15% gratuity added to a check without any warning. And it was only a party of 4, but a decent restaurant. The waiter said, “We always do that.”
I told him that unless he rewrote the (computerized) check WITHOUT the 15% charge, I was paying nothing but the base amount. He complained but complied, and I left a 20% tip.
The next week, I went back to the same restaurant and the check did not have any surcharges (diff waiter, so I doubt they treated me specially). Perhaps I wasn’t the only the one who made a fuss.
There is an element of diminishing returns here. It goes like this:
The small group is likely to tip at least $5, and get out of there quickly thus making the table available to turn around. The large table may not order proportionately more food as they may all share one appetizer which the smaller group would have gotten full on. The larger group is also more likely to contain children or seniors neither of which eat much or large ticket items and children are very messy, especially in large groups where the parents just hand them things to toss on the floor so as to avoid disruption of the conversation. Mid-week large groups are usually people who had some kind of church thing they are coming from, and for whatever reason none of them order liquor or even beer, which are always pricey items. When you tally it all yp their tab can be lower than that of two people who are drinking mixed drinks, having dessert, and getting an appetizer. Two people with a $30 tab will leave $5-$7, the large table may have an $80 but will see $7 as being a lot of money and not think about all the extra time it took just to provide basic service.
Also large groups are there to converse and will stay in the house much after they have finished eating.
Other money drains are the diet coke/house salad secretaries. They have a one hour lunch and a magazine and only order a diet coke and a house salad ($3 tab) and since they have an hour lunch they will stay the entire time since there is nowhere else to go. Nothing is quite as charming as a tip that has to be scooped off the table. While they are not much work at all, that table could got to a burger or a margarita just as easily.
zen has not reported the main reason large groups tip poorly. Most groups of 2-3 discuss how to split up the tab, including the tip, or someone just pays the whole thing. Large groups, however, usually have one person collect money, and the others chip in their share as they remember it. They might not remember to add the tax, much less a tip, so the guy holding the tab has to make it up the tax out of his pocket, and he’s damned if he’s going to pay the entire tip on top of it.
If the tip shows up on the bill, he can quickly calculate that he’s short before the other clowns get out of range.
I used to know an art professor who’d take 10-15 students from her classes out to gallery openings (“first thursdays”), and to dinner afterward. When the bill came, she’d bellow “ADD 25% to your meal, and $X per glass of wine!” She never came out short (this was in San Francisco, where 25% would cover the tax and a 17% tip).
My wife and daughter have worked in the food service industry. In addition to the base hourly wage, each waitress had an 8% tip wage added thier paychecks. The 8% was determined by taking the restaurants gross reciepts for each hour and dividing that number by the number of waitresses on duty that hour. Rarely did the days tips equal the amount added to each paycheck. This was caused by a greedy owner and even greedier management.
All tips must be placed in a common jar behind the counter. Each hour the tip jar is emptied, usually by the head waitress. Per the owners rules, 10% of the tips are skimmed for her. Her reasoning is that she is providing a place for them to work and collect tips for doing nothing. The remaining is then divided equally between the wait staff, the head waitresses, and the bartender. What was screwy is the head waitresses and bartenders did not have the 8% added to their paycheck even though they shared the tips. And when each hours receipts were divided, it was only by the number of waitresses working the floor, the head waitresses and bartender were not included. There were times my wifes hourly wages went down because of the owners math. I attempted to show the owner how unfair that was to the waitresses but she would not listen. Shortly after my wife quit the restaurant closed and the owner had some tax problems with the state and the IRS. I would like to say I had something to do with it but I can’t.
Mandatory gratuities are legal enough that many states deal with them explicitly in sales tax laws (I believe they are generally exempt, but don’t recall for certain).
