Elderly ? Enough said. These people are still tipping like it’s the 50’s.
Should of told her listen granny, it ain’t the 50’s anymore now scram, that’s right. Scram.
While traveling in Spain I met an Englishman who, upon learning I was American, began a tirade about his horrible trip to America caused by him having to leave tips.
He said he would never return to the US because of the expected tips. Happily I assured him the entire wait-staff population of America thanks him.
Give her a dime for the pay phone and tell her to call someone who cares.
The thing is, this behavior is pointless if you don’t inform a manager about how well the waiter is doing their job. It’s easy enough to ask for them, and they’re there to handle issues like this. Conversely, telling the management when a member of waitstaff has done an exceptionally good job is also easy to do and will ensure that good service is rewarded. The management are used to hearing folks complain, so hearing a compliment of their staff in addition to a good tip is a great way to go to foster a good relationship with the establishment.
Yes, it sucks that we have an antiquated tipping system in place for service professions, but there are definitely ways to circumvent the issue. One is to tip well (20% or higher) when the service is good and to not patronize places where bad service is the norm. Another is to lobby your representatives to make changes in the federal laws requiring service staff to be paid at a lower minimum wage than the rest of the minimum wage earners.
I’m sure some of the elderly are poor tippers. However not all the elderly tip like it is still the 50’s. My DH and I, both falling into the ‘elderly’ category, tip very well.
Our granddaughter was a waitress at a local restaurant while attending college, and she had many wild tales to tell of poor tippers, even groups, that would leave absolutely no tip.
We always tip well above the 15%, and if the service is exceptionally good we tip more.
I would be very happy if the wait-staff were paid a good wage and tipping were abolished, but we live in the world as it is today, so we tip well and know that it is appreciated. 
I’m saying that if they do show up they deserve to be paid a living wage and in the current system their living wage is made up mostly of tips. Legal requirements aside, I’d be willing to bet there aren’t many instances of employers making up the balance between lousy tips and minimum wage. The federal government has decided that it’s up to you (and every other customer served by tipped employees) to provide a certain amount of wages for waitstaff, so IMHO you are obligated to do so.
A janitor takes home the same paycheck whether he sweeps before he mops or not. He can do a shitty job and still get paid for his work…at least until he gets fired, although he may not see his wages grow. The waiter, on the other hand, earns considerably less than the janitor if you decide you didn’t get enough attention to warrant a tip even if the same amount of attention was perfectly fine for the customer who came in before you. And it doesn’t do a damn thing to improve the situation. Your tip “review” of his performance doesn’t necessarily impact whether his boss approves of his performance at all, so he could keep his job indefinitely continually providing subpar service to you that is deemed just fine by others. Finally, if the waiter believes he gave you perfectly adequate service the only thing a poor tip teaches him is that you are a cheapskate and not worth his effort next time. You are further disadvantaged by the fact that a perfectly good tip to one waiter is crap to another at another time and place, so you may think you tipped appropriately, but you are seen as a cheapskate anyway.
The whole system is bassackwards and should go the way of the dodo. But failing to comply with this shitty law by providing a living wage (in the form of a “tip”) to employees that are subject to it only hurts the employee and doesn’t do anything to change the system or improve service.
Good service is given by people who care about their jobs and the people they serve. Not by people who hate their jobs because they are treated like slaves. I say this as a long time service employee who has worked for tips on more than one occasion, but no longer does.
This is the trouble with the institution of tipping in the US, from my point of view as a lifelong tipped service worker.
Federal minimum wage is currently $7.25/hour. Federal minimum wage for tipped employees is still $2.13/hour, which is the same as it’s been through several increases in minimum base wage. Therefore, a tipped employee must make $5.12 in tips per hour to make the Federal minimum wage, and it’s automatically assumed that they do. If they can show that they did not make $5.12+ in tips per hour, their employer is required by law to compensate them up to minimum wage.
I can say that most tipped employees are not aware of that part of it - I have shocked at least one person with that news in each place I have worked. Naturally it’s not really a big point in your training.
Because the Federal Minimum Wage keeps growing, and the Minimum Hourly Wage for tipped employees has stayed the same (at least for the past decade, likely longer) servers and other workers who rely on tips need to make more in tips per hour to hit minimum than ever before. Do you think people are tipping more? No. People are still stuck on that same tired old percentage rule that has governed the institution of tipping forever. The price of your lunch has probably only risen a dollar or so in the time the difference between minimum wages has risen $5 plus - and people are still using 15% as a standard. Keep in mind that no matter what you do or how much in tips you report, you WILL BE taxed on NO LESS than $7.25 per hour, so if you don’t ensure your employer compensates for lack of tips, you’re just giving your money away.
As stated before, 15% of an $8.99 meal is a measly $1.35. Imagine it takes 45 minutes for you to be seated, drink order delivered, ordering, preparing your meal, serving your meal, refilling, running for condiments, serving special requests, totaling your bill, delivering your bill, making change, and busing your table. That is the bare minimum required of any restaurant server anywhere. At 15% tipping on one (constantly turning) table, they’re making $1.80 an hour selling $8.99 meals.
Now imagine those afternoon hours where they have NO tables. Sure, there’s still plenty of work to be done in any restaurant - but they’re making SQUAT to do it.
People will say “It’s not my fault their employer doesn’t just pay them an adequate living wage.” Well, yes it is. It’s all our fault for allowing this to become an institution in this country and the ‘norm’. Like it or not, it is the way it is and has been this way for decades.
Part of me would love to abolish tipping the way it’s done in the US. The other parts know that when you’re good - the money can be excellent. For instance, right now I make $9.25 an hour to manage a pizza place. When I deliver for a shift, my hourly rate generally jumps to between $14-17 an hour. This is nice! Then bye-bye $60 for another tank of gas.
TLDR;
Tip as you deem appropriate for the service rendered. Please forget about percentages of the bill except to get a general idea of where to start. It is to be hoped that crap servers and other service workers don’t last so long in this industry, so when you are served by someone experienced, knowledgeable, friendly, and efficient, they’re honestly worth every penny. They will remember you next time, go above and beyond to make you happy, and you might just make their day.
Why do we never have these threads about salespeople whose entire pay is based on commission? If they do a crappy job at selling, they don’t get paid. Does anyone feel obligated to buy something regardless of how well the salesperson did their job?
I passionately hate the concept of mandatory tipping. Like others, I prefer paying more for the food and tipping for great service only. I always do leave at least 15%, but I think the whole thing is nuts.
Where do you all stand on leaving an additional tip when the restaurant already adds a gratuity to your bill?
Some restaurants will add a percentage to the bill for a large party (something like 6 or 8 people at the table)-- I would definitely still leave the usual 20% on the table, because of the extra work involved in serving a larger group.
Years ago, I went to a restaurant in the Bahamas (where you also tip cab drivers, bus drivers, tour guides, etc.) that added an 18% gratuity to every bill. When we asked, the waitress explained that this money was divided up among all the servers at the end of the night. In this instance, do you leave another tip for your waitress specifically (which she might keep for herself or add to the pool), or do you trust the restaurant’s management to handle the tips fairly?
I’ve waited my share of tables, and have never looked at what percentage my tip is. I just try to make it worth the work, which is rarely just 20% since I don’t eat at expensive places. It’s the same amount of work whether the waiter brings you a 4 dollar omelet or a 40 dollar steak. Usually the cheaper places are working a LOT harder, as they’re spread thin and often don’t have any busboys or help. More ‘established’ places have all kinds of help and the work is a lot easier than slinging hash at a truck stop, lemme tell ya. (I’ve worked both types of restaurants, and I know,)
I wonder what the “lady” in the original post would have thought about my tipping 20 dollars on 30 dollars worth of service rendered?
Normally I’m a pretty quiet and nice person, but I’m afraid if someone stopped me to tell me to not tip so much that I’d be speechless for a few seconds. Then I’d be speechful until she ran away. The nerve of some people, I swear.
I’ve always been surprised when I’m in the US, and leave a 20% tip (as the SDMB tells me to), and the server says, “Wow! Thank you sir!” I’m led to believe that most servers in the US do not see that kind of tip. Is this the case, or are the servers I’ve encountered been overly solicitous?
I suspect that on threads of this sort we often get a pissing contest, speaking as someone who never fails to tip less then ninety percent, plus I also put the servers kids through college, and I mow their lawns.
That apart, another weakness of the American tipping system is the emotional makeup of the customers.
Some may have incredible expectations of what they consider to be good service and undertip, or fail to tip at all at the end of the meal.
Others may feel embarassed and self conscious at tipping time, and drastically overtip;even if they haven’t had good service and even though they can’t really afford to.
There are also the overly compassionate who on seeing others tip low or not at all, who try to make up for that by overtipping, once again when they can’t really afford it.
There is no real logic to the American tipping system, so defending it is defending the indefensible.
For gods sake just put up the cost of the meals and pay the servers a living wage.
Tips are meant to be a bonus for exempelary service, not as a means for the customer to pay their wages directly.
My recollection is that the minimum wage for tipped employees used to be 1/2 the regular minimum wage. Apparently that connection was broken when the minimum wage went from $4.25 to $5.15 during the Clinton years.
Speaking from the customer point of view, the problem isn’t restaurant tipping, which is something we all encounter periodically and have some idea of what the norms are if we’re paying any attention.
The problem is the large number of tipping situations that one tends to encounter too occasionally to get a clue about what the norms are, assuming there are any anymore. How do you decide how much to tip when you don’t know what overtipping or undertipping IS in a particular situation, and really don’t think about that situation once you’re away from it again? I’d rather grab a SmarteCarte in an airport than guess badly on what’s an appropriate tip for a baggage handler, just to give one for-instance.
My method is as follows:
Full service joints: Automatic 20% if you do your job, get my order right, keep my drink filled and don’t hover or have to be chased down. Great service can get you more, poor service will knock money off. Excellent service or extremely poor service will change the game and I will tip very well and compliment you to the manager; poor service will also get a talk with the manager as well as nothing on the table.
I tip a dollar a drink at bars when I’ve got cash. Generally I drink in small- crowd, craft beer bars, so I don’t tip very often there unless it’s been a crap night for the tenders. They all get paid a proper salary.
I do not tip at buffets, nor at those sort of half service places where you go through a line to order and your food is brought out.
Just an anecdote: I dated a guy a couple of times who would pull out a calculator and figure out 15%. And he’d tip exactly that amount. If 15% came out to $4.87, he’d tip four dollars and eighty-seven cents, to the penny. Normal people would just round up to $5, or maybe even $6 or $7, but not this guy. It was really odd.