My first thought: that woman was incredibly rude!
I always leave 20 percent rounded up, unless the server has been particularly inept or surly.
/former bartender
Technically, we can’t choose $0; Federal law dictates a minimum wage for tipped employees of (brace yourself) $2.13/hour paid by the employer.
So: technically, waitstaff are supposed to get at least the $7.25/hour minimum wage when tips are figured in. But the employer only pays $2.13/hour of that, or just under 30%. Theoretically, if tips didn’t bring the waiter’s recompense up to $7.25/hour (over what time period? I’m not sure - didn’t hunt that far), the employer has to make up the difference. I suspect you’d have to hunt far and wide to find a waiter who asked the employer to make up that difference on a slow night or week.
Yeah, pretty Victorian, alright. Makes me real proud to be an American. :rolleyes:
Did she have some way of knowing someone hadn’t given you some really generous service?
Leaving the change from 10 doesn’t sound excpetional to me, and I live in <i>England</i> where 10% is traditional, and some places are starting to suggest 12.5%. I don’t know America, but I had the impression tipping <=15% was the equivalent of punching someone in the face and making questionable comments on the morality of their mother…
First of all, it’s not anyone else’s business how one tips. I’ll tip the way I want, you tip the way you want, and if we’re repeat customers at a restaurant, we’ll both get the service we pay for. You can get away with shitty tipping that first time, but.
And I agree with others that the condescending attitude reeks. Can’t have the little people actually thinking they deserve a decent recompense for their work. Bet she also gripes that you can’t find a decent cleaning woman anymore for what she paid her cleaning lady back in 1967.
Away from the zero bound, 20% is the floor on what I’ll pay for adequate, competent service. Good, attentive service gets 25-30%, and often more if I’m a regular. Only if the service is bad enough to distinctly add to the level of aggravation in my life do I tip less than 20%.
Near the zero bound - that is, where 20% of the check would be a ludicrously small amount to leave as a tip - I’m with the OP: $3 is about as small a tip as I’d want to leave at a restaurant with table service. Even if I just order a $2 glass of iced tea, the waiter still has to take my order, bring it to me, check back to make sure I don’t want anything else (and pay attention to my table in case I try to signal her), and bring the check.
Actually, you said exactly that in your previous post, but evidently that’s not what you meant.
One shouldn’t eat out at a tipping establishment if one is not prepared to lave a fair tip. That said, one shouldn’t provide shitty service as a server if one is not prepared to receive a fair tip.
As a rule, I try to tip well when the service isn’t bad. And it’s pretty rare for me to get actively bad service at a restaurant or from a delivery service.
How refreshingly supercilious.
What bothers me is this highly subjective nature of determining the pay of tipped employees. Everyone else has to please exactly one person (their boss or whoever reviews their performance) who has a more complete picture of their performance and can more accurately judge whether they are doing their job satisfactorily or not. Many employees are subject to performance reviews that occur periodically and while those reviews may affect their pay, they represent the opportunity to receive specific feedback with the goal of helping them improve their performance.
On the contrary, a waiter has to meet the often wildly varying standards of what constitutes good service to every single customer they serve, receives a pay incentive or decentive immediately and without specific feedback as to what actual performance successes or failures factored into the tip. What is adequate service to me may very well be piss poor service to the guy behind me or excellent service to the couple preceding me. Further, waitstaff often get blamed for factors not within their control, most frequently kitchen issues. If you get your food cold do you know if its because the kitchen improperly heated it, screwed up the timing, or because the waiter was dealing with another demanding customer or s/he was simply lazy, slow, clueless, or inexperienced.
Further, everyone has ‘off’ days, but they still take home the same paycheck. Waitstaff do not.
The problem with that is now I have invested time and am hungery and at another restraunt and wait to get seated. And I have seen restraunts where the manager could care less. All I want is the wait person to do their job if they expect me to tip them. If I have to get up and ask for my glass to be refilled after asking 3 times I am leaving a small tip and if I can find a manager I will tell them that I was dissatisfied with the place. But because I will make known the fact that I am unhappy then I am required to do the same with good service. More than once I have looked up the manager, and some times they are not easy to find, and told them about great service.
As ab American I have no pride in the wage paid to people in the service industry.
I hope that what you meant was that waitstaff shouldn’t expect that they’ll get a tip no matter what.
But they do and should expect a tip if they provide decent service, just as the customer should expect them to provide decent service. That’s the way the system works.
Geez, I can’t believe some people have the nerve to do this.
Were I’m from a minimun of 15% is expected if service is acceptable. I’d tell her to mind her own cheap ass business.
Yesterday, I took my mom and sister out for pizza. The bill came to 33$. The food and service was great. I tipped 7$.
The thing about leaving a penny or whatever to show you got bad service is that it’s pretty much useless in terms of helping the server improve their abilities because what’s going to make me want to leave a penny tip and you leave a penny tip are probably nowhere near the same things. So the poor server doesn’t know if they should have refilled water glasses more often or less often, waited longer or shorter to take the orders, or any of a host of other things. Me, I tip 20 percent regardless of service, more if it was super and if it wasn’t I find a manager or whatever to share my opinion. (I’m pretty easy to please, though.)
To be honest, I’d rather them have a system like in other countries. Where the food is more and you don’t have to tip. It seems better for all invovled.
I think what you consider bad service and what you consider bad service is far off. I don’t really exspect to be waited on hand and foot, but if the server has a nasty attitude and has no idea how to take an order I’m not going to give them a tip. Like I was in a local resturant once with some friends. We split the bill. I didn’t tip, because the waitress was on the phone. Talking LOUDLY and it was a personal call. We had to wait a half hour (after everyone has finished eating) for the bill. Some of my party wanted dessert. I didn’t, but I think that’s not doing your job. It was a small place, she it was only her there.
It’s not about doing a great job, it’s about doing your job. If I was using my phone for a half hour on a personal call when I was supposed to be working, I’d be replaced. As I said before, you know what you have to do to make ends meet. Be polite and try the best you can, I’ll tip you. Id someone doesn’t always tip, that’s another issue.
Just because you show up, doesn’t mean people owe you a tip. Some people posted here, if they don’t cash out in tips they have to be recomped by their boss.
This is what I mean.
Wait, so the OP liked the service and gave a nice tip for it, and somebody was actually offended by it? Even if the service had been lousy, that’d still be out of line: It’s your money and you can do with it what you like, and if that includes overtipping, that’s your business.
Yay, a tipping thread!
They haven’t shown up in force in this thread, but my response to the anti tippers is similar to what other people here have said. The tip is part of the price of eating out. See the price on the menu, add 8-10% for tax, add 15-20%+ for tip. That’s how much the meal costs you. If you leave off the tip part, you’re just being cheap. Of course then comes all the corner cases of horrible service, extra mayonnaise, etc. If every time I went out to eat the service was so bad I couldn’t in good conscience leave a tip, I’d start going to different restaurants.
During the boom years of the Clinton administration, the restaurant service in Boulder was generally terrible. The rich offspring of east coast orthodontists attending CU didn’t need their crappy waitstaff job, so they’d slack off, and every restaurant had a help wanted sign in the window. Under these conditions the worst staff possible kept their jobs, because the management didn’t have much choice. It taught me, as cheap as I was being a poor grad student, that I’d much rather eat at a place with acceptable service and pay a few extra dollars in tip, than go some place with terrible service and feel justified in skimping on the tip.
Fortunately the situation improved greatly with the new century, and I almost never feel I get service so bad as to skimp on the tip.
Yes, that’s a problem. But whether or not you tip, you can get horrid service. I mean, if you go into a retail store, sometimes the staff are friendly and helpful, and other times they glare at you if you dare to interrupt them while they’re texting. The only real solution is to find a manager, in any case. And sometimes the managers give attitude, as well. The long term solution is to find great servers and cultivate them, and the way to cultivate them is to be polite to them, and to tip well. You don’t have to tip over 20%, but if the servers know that you will leave a decent tip (which I define as 15%) every time, they will compete to get you seated at their tables. I don’t advise going to a place with a rapid turnover of staff.
If you get bad service, by all means, leave a tiny tip. I’ve left two pennies on the table and a word in the manager’s ear on more than one occasion. In most places, the manager WILL take you seriously, if you have a legitimate complaint. If you’re this guy, though, the manager is likely to be less sympathetic.
Look, I feel for you. I’m an insulin dependent diabetic, and when I need to eat, I need to eat. I don’t have the ability to wait an extra quarter or half hour to eat if I’ve taken my insulin. I’ve gotten into the habit of not injecting until my food is in front of me, and I’ve taken a bite to see that it’s edible. And I’ve gotten up to get a refill on my water, and usually the server is very redfaced about it. Most servers will at least try to give good service, and a few others will just be trying to skate by. But this is the case in EVERY field of work, it’s not just servers. There are workers and there are slackers.
Thanks everyone. For some reason, elderly strangers often feel the need to tell me how to run my life.
I’m glad I’m not alone in thinking that that lady was a rude tightwad. I’m one of those people who thinks up snappy comebacks an hour or a day later or I might have said something to her about it. It was my money, afterall.
Eating out is an indulgance. I’m not a big fan of how waitstaff are paid, but its the system we have and I will work with it. If I don’t have money to tip, I’ll stay home and scramble my own eggs.
Evil thought here. If I ever see that lady there again, I’ll pull my emergancy 20 out of my toolkit and tip 200% to see if her head explodes!
Vincent ‘Vinnie’ Antonelli: It’s not tipping I believe in. It’s overtipping.
–Steve Martin My Blue Heaven
I agree. It’s a thankless job, and good service deserves to be rewarded. As a result of this policy, my wife and I are greeted by name at the local Thai and Chinese places, and doted on by the staff. Ditto my local pub.
If I’m someplace new and the service is shitty, I make a point of telling the manager in addition to skimping on the tip. That way the server gets the knowledge of his shortcomings from his boss, not just some random schlub off the street.
flatlined - The $20 idea is a good one. Try it next time you see the bitch and post pictures of her splatter. 
I Always tip 20%, unless its specifically bad, and for me its almost Never specifically bad. I know I’m pretty nice to the wait staff too but not being wait staff I can’t say if there’s a real correlation. Yes, I’ve had bad service, maybe twice in my life. I don’t know what happened, but it did.
One time our entire order was forgotten & people who had been seated after our orders were taken were on dessert before we complained & the truth came out. I remember that I did complain to the manager (it was like our wait person went home for an hour). I didn’t get comped food, a %, get an apology or even get a new wait person. I paid for drinks delivered & consumed, no tip, and I told the manager I was leaving, food on the way or no.
But I’ve also gotten pretty OK service while in the company of entitled asshat business associates (I had no choice, for business reasons) who practically demanded free pedicures with a kiss & pout finish from wait staff. I’ve seen those bastards use every excuse from
“she didn’t look like she needed the money enough” to “She didn’t laugh hard enough at my joke” to “she wouldn’t let me pinch her ass” to short change staff… and all with the perfectly pantomimed nose in the air during the walk-away of the Offended Customer. :mad:
I usually made the restroom excuse & went back to drop extra money on the table. I’d also make a mental note to never come back to that place (because my face might be associated with the Sh-theaderatti) and I did everything possible after that to Never do a restaurant lunch with those Dead Beats again.
Well, you would be leaving a bigger mess.