Exactly, and you’ll get what you pay for and maybe you’ll get someone friendly and helpful or maybe you’ll get Mr. Surly.
People love to say “he was kind of a dick, so I stiffed him.” Say buh-bye to that. Mr. Dick can be a dick to you all day 'cause you want food to shove in your face. Oh, don’t tell me you don’t.
I get that now, anyway. Slashing the tip I give Mr. Surly doesn’t get me better service, it only makes him even more surly.
Doesn’t it make you feel better you can slash his tip? I wish I could that at the DMV.
Sure, absolutely. But, it doesn’t solve the root problem, which is that Mr. Surly is a terrible waitperson. With the current tipping system, I will generally only complain to management about Mr. Surly’s terrible service if it’s particularly bad, since I can just compensate by reducing, or in the worst case, eliminating, his tip. However, if I’m paying 15% more for my meal (which I’m happy to for good service), I’m much more likely to complain if I get bad service, since I have no other avenue of recourse. I may get a discount on my meal as a result, and in any case, management is now aware of a problem with Mr. Surly and can take steps to deal with him.
Well, sometimes I get really shitty service in retail stores because the employees don’t give a shit and unemployment isn’t really high, and the employer can’t go around firing her employees willy-nilly.
You can complain all you want or, here’s my favorite: take you business elsewhere.
Ha ha! You know you want that food and they know you do too.
I used to go to a Japanese restaurant (pocket restaurant, it could sit maybe 10-15 people) where the owner (an old man who barely spoke any french) not only wouldn’t provide a fork or a knife, but would burst into a fit if you used your own (I always carry a knife), stating that his dishes were difficult to prepare and were not to be cut.
On the other hand, he would let you bring in your own beverages since he didn’t serve any apart from tea.
Oh! And also dipping your sushi in the sauce provided was not optional in his restaurant. He watched to make sure they were properly dipped.
:eek:
It’s the Sushi Nazi!
Well, he’s more of a Tojo.
Emphasis added, quote taken from budget travel guide:
ETA: To be clear, I recognize that the restaurant in question was in the British Isles. I’m just speculating that there may have been some cultural misunderstanding involved (following John Mace).
So, I really bollixed up my response in this thread.
I don’t quite know why the tipping issue is emotional for me: something I’m going to think about.
I acknowledge that I don’t know as much about tax law involving tip reporting as I could.
Be that as it may, I still think that in the US, and other places where tipping is assumed (like the UK), not tipping a waiter is a really, really shitty thing to do. Tipping is not really as"optional" as some people are asserting. Tipping is assumed. The amount is annoyingly variable, to a point, but it is assumed. People’s base wages are based on the assumption of tips, without which they can be gruesomely underpaid. It is not fair to punish a waiter financially based anything but a truly severe provocation, which the OP did not demonstrate. There’s too much open to interpretation in the OP’s account.
I still feel that the OP was not justified in paying nothing for the tip. The best, most civilized thing to do is pay a minimum tip (say, 10%), complain to the manager (if possible), and never go back.
Understood, Measure, but really–this is a restaurant in the UK. Surely it is up to the Chinese waiter accommodate the British customer? I can see the OP needing to be a bit more patient, but honestly–it’s up to the manager (who must be able to speak some English–even the waiter could speak English) to train the staff on British customs, ie the knife and fork will be asked for.
As to the mannerisms during the exchange–sure, no doubt the waiter was a bit uneasy and perhaps the OP misread the waiter’s signals. But one sentence explaining the situation would have solved the dilemma and stopped the cultural misunderstanding. The waiter did not explain, the OP had to insist, and the waiter gets no tip.
Knorf–what is a customer to do? Why am I asked to pay for the meal and then bled white for bad service? I refuse to be held at the mercy of a waiter–either by their poor service or the urban legend that they will spit in my food if they don’t like how I treat them(!). No one here is advocating dining and ditching or not tipping as a way of life. I will withhold the tip if the service is poor and did not improve after being addressed.
That must mean that the food is considerably more expensive in your part of the world, to provide for correspondingly higher wages for restaurant staff. :dubious:
Of course that would mean slightly less incentive for waiters to provide good service…
I’d be ticked off if a restaurant didn’t provide eating utensils common to the country in which it’s located. Stiffing on the tip for that reason alone is not called for.
We could always start tipping like this.
Or for purely bad service, this way.
The customer is absolutely right when taking into consideration the quality of service received when considering a tip. But when people say, "I’m already paying for the food ,why should I be expected to tip "? good point, but, If you only wanted the food get it to go and take it home.
Because when a customer sits down in the dinning room, it is to be (keyword) served for the time they are sitting there, starting with a drink and refills then of course the meal plus any extra condiments not already on the table, then if any desert is ordered the customer wants the table cleared of used dishes and such(extra condiments ) so they aren’t sitting with elbows in dirty dinner plates while eating their desert and all the while customer expects to have the attention of their server at a moments notice for whatever they want when they want it. and the customer expects a happy, smiling, friendly server no exceptions.
If a customer receives any attention after a drink and food ordered has been placed in front of him/her , then that customer has received a service he won’t pay for when settling the bill .
That was hilarious.
Absolutely.
Sure. Management should provide western utensils. But it seems that what pissed chowder off (Americanism!) was the smirk by the waiter.
Now it may have been a real smirk. But I wanted to point out that in certain other Asian lands, people smile when embarrassed. And denying a patron a fork is pretty embarrassing.
As for the sentence of explanation, I have some sympathy for those who can’t speak a second language well, especially in an ethnic restaurant.
Tipping: In the US, chowder’s actions would have been excessive in my view (though personally I’d have less problem with dinging the waiter down to 10%, but I’d be inclined to cut them some slack). I see from this travel site that, “Tipping is not expected in the UK, in the way it is in the United States or Canada, but is much appreciated.” So: no harm no foul, IMHO.
[chatting] I tend to be sympathetic to apologistic incompetence. I have been known to lower tips and I have been known to leave nothing, though the both are unusual for me.
FWIW, my mom was a waitress (say in the late 50s/early 60s). She said it was hard work, but she loved it and she prided herself on giving customers the best service that she could.
When she goes out, she tips. She leaves 15% or so for good service. But she’ll leave a penny if it was lousy service…she doesn’t want them to think she never tips or it didn’t occur to her to do it etc. She wants them to know that she thought they did a lousy job.
It sucks that you got bad service, but at least something good came from it. I’m craving chinese food now. I shall however eat it the way goddess intended…with chopsticks. 
Q.E.D., I think you missed the point here.
featherlou: “…this might be why Canadians are considered lousy tippers in the US…”
Influential Panda: “You sure the servers are talking about actual Canadians?” [with explanation of waiters using term “Canadian” as code for other group]
Q.E.D.: “Pretty sure, she being an actual Canadian and all.”
Being Canadian doesn’t mean she knows what the servers are referring to. Now, if she were an actual server, she might be sure.