There was a story in the Chicago Tribune (I know you guys think I’m obsessed with San Francisco but I miss Chicago more than anything). I tried to find a link but as it’s more than 30 days old you have to pay a fee to download it from the archives and no other website had it for free. The article was called “$120 charge strikes diners as gratuitous” if anyone wants to give it a whirl.
Anyways, I’ll relate the story from memory the best I can:
8 people go out to a lavish Lincoln Park restaurant to celebrate a birthday. I assume this is a restaurant with a well respected wine selection and the party decides to buy some very nice wine and champagne. They wish to control the service of the wine and champagne themselves so they ask that the bottles be uncorked and placed in the center of the table. This is the absolute extent of the service provided here. The party asks that the wine and champagne be on a separate bill from the food.
The party orders what I assume to be a tremendous amount of pricy food and when its all over, are presented with their two bills, one food, one booze. Because of the size of the party, there is auto-gratuity added. However, the auto-grat was applied to both bills. They were being told to pay the waitor or waitress 120 dollars to uncork three bottles. It was never said how much the auto grat was on the food bill, but because of the kind of restaurant it must have been, I’m sure the tip was generous. The table was more than happy to pay the auto-grat on the food bill but asked for an exception on the wine bill. Essentially the manager informed them they could either pay it or have the cops called on them for what I assume would be theft.
I can’t remember if they ended up paying it. It doesn’t really matter. I’m sure a lot of you here are former waiters or current waiters. I’d just like everyone’s opinion about what you would do in this situation. I put this in the pit in the event that it spirals out of control. Also I know this is a lot of money to spend on three bottles of wine/champagne ($665 I think) but just pretend here. “I wouldn’t go to a restaurant like that” or “I wouldn’t spend that much on booze” is not really a productive answer.
I hate to be predictable but I would go fucking ballistic. I don’t know how much everyone makes but it takes a good amount of work to make 120 dollars. I know waiters work really hard and that it’s a really demanding job but jesus christ you will not convince me that it’s harder than the guys we have in the back changing cages and shoving up sheep shit and wrestling the sheep and pigs to give injections for $17/hr. And what the fuck was the waiter thinking? I didn’t go to business school or anything but something tells me you shouldn’t threaten to arrest people spending that much money in your place.
I open this up for discussion.
ETA: please don’t correct my spelling and grammar. I typed this out in a really fast rampage so I already know it’s terrible and I know I am dumb as hell and unworthy to post on this pristine board blah blah blah…
If the wine and the food was all on one bill, what would the auto gratuity have been?
I would think they would total up to the same as if they were on separate bills:
Food + Wine = $150, 22.50 tip
Food $100, $15 tip
Wine $50, $7.50 tip.
They both total the same amount of tip. I’m not sure what the screaming is all about. Sure, an auto gratuity added to three bottles of wine may seem a bit silly, but the customers are the ones who asked to be billed separately for the food and the wine.
FWIW, I hate auto gratuities. I have refused to pay the amount listed for crappy service.
The most blatantly horrible service I’ve ever gotten at restaurants has been when I’ve been part of a large-ish group. I’m convinced that it was because the waitress knew she’d be getting her tip regardless.
And I thought that booze wasn’t supposed to count towards a tip. But I don’t go to classy restaurants, so what do I know?
If the menu says there’s an auto-gratuity, or if they were informed of it, they have to pay. They chose to opt out of the waiter pouring the wine, but where does it say they get to opt out on the tip?
Now, depending on how valued these customers are, I’d probably cut them some slack on the bill. But if they were ding dicks about it, and if the restaurant doesn’t need their business, then screw 'em.
Keep in mind that the waiter has only so many tables assigned to him/her. Just because these guys made his job a little easier, doesn’t mean he was able to take on more work-- he almost certainly wasn’t able to. As far as what the waiter “should” make, well whatever the market will bear.
My understanding is that no matter what small print the menu has, unless there is a local ordinance backing them up, a restaurant cannot enforce an automatic gratuity.
Just from a practical standpoint, the manager was a fucking moron. How many people were in that party? And how many people do you think they will tell about getting fucked over at the restaurant? How much business are they set to lose over a $120 dispute? I sure as hell know that if I had that kind of money to blow on a special dinner, I would expect boot-licking service in return, not a threat to call the cops.
I believe they wanted to tip on the wine bill a little on top of the full autograt for food but not 120 dollars just for wine on top of the full food autograt
Actually, most restaurants that add an auto-gratuity will allow you to pay less if you feel that the service you received was not up to scratch. Adding the tip automatically (a practice i don’t like very much) is usually done because large parties can be idiots about tipping; everyone puts in what they “owe,” and if there’s no-one keeping an eye on the total, the poor waiter is left with a 3% tip.
Also, many waiters accept that it’s sort of unfair to expect customers to tip the same percentage for expensive bottles of wine. When i worked as a waiter, i never really expected to get a 20% tip on a $150 bottle if wine. Of course, sometimes people still do tip well on expensive bottles, but most waiters i know were happy with a sort of sliding scale.
The tip has more to do with the price of the meal than how hard the server worked. A server working in a pricey restaurant will make more in tips than one working in a greasy spoon. This part doesn’t fit with the rest of your rant, IMHO.
What bites here is the auto-gratuity itself. Without the auto-gratuity, if the party thought that a 10% tip was more reasonable (since the server did not pour) then they could have tipped that. Sounds like the auto-gratuity was closer to 20%. If I had been the manager, I may have given some leeway - like John Mace said. But then, everybody’s not perfectly reasonable, like me.
I always tip on the total bill, drinks included. If the auto tip on the two separate bills totaled the same as if everything had been on one bill, then the auto tip amount was correct, mathematically speaking.
Whether it was correct, service speaking, I can’t say.
Seems to me the dinner party didn’t pay any extra by having the automatic gratuity calculated separately on the two bills. Whether they got their money’s worth, as ivylass noted is another matter.
I have a theory that when very upscale establishments (restaurants and hotels) tack on outrageous charges for ancillary items (the $2.50 can of soda in the hotel vending machine, for instance), it’s based on the idea that anyone willing to pay outlandish prices for primary services won’t gripe about getting screwed over on the lesser items.
Just saying.
I might pay to see this. Not sure if I’d tip though. :dubious:
I tip on the total bill as well, including alcohol. Of course, since I don’t order $200 bottles of wine, I’m not sure how I’d feel in a situation where I did, because I’d obviously have a lot more disposable income. From where I stand now I think it’s crap, because it’s just as easy to open a $30 bottle as it is to open a 200 bottle. And yeah, I've heard the argument that the waiter is very knowledgeable about wines and food and yadda yadda, so that's where your extra goes to. But seriously? I already feel like I’m getting hosed on the markup for alcohol, and to have to feel like the waiter pulls an extra $40 or so just because I’m the one with good taste in wine seems a little ridiculous.
But like I said, if I thought nothing of plunking down that kind of cash for a bottle, maybe it would seem fair to me to give the extra money. I’ll check back into this thread in 40 years when my teacher’s salary has accumulated to such a point (especially because after the economy collapses, the president will realize that America can’t compete with China if none of its people can do math or write a sentence, and will increase teachers’ salaries tenfold-- hey, a guy can dream).
Me too, although i don’t buy very expensive bottles of wine when i eat out.
One thing that REALLY chaps my ass with automatic gratuities is that some restaurants make no real attempt to highlight the gratuity on the bill. Then, when it comes time to pay, an unobservant group of customers might actually not see that the gratuity has already been added, and tip AGAIN.
On more than one occasion i’ve been eating out with friends, and we’ve almost paid a second tip because no-one noticed until the last minute that it had already been included. I’m convinced that some restaurants (or some servers, at least) do their best to downplay the auto-tip so that this double tipping occurs.
If a restaurant has an auto-gratuity policy, the tip should be circled or highlighted in some other way so that it’s clear to the customer that the tip has already been added to the total.
Why not. It is a contract, just like the price of the food items. If you didn’t think the meal was worth $X you can’t pay what you think it was worth. They tell you up front the terms ie we will give you x for $Y plus Z% gratuity. If you do not agree to those terms don’t order. If you order, it means you agree to those terms. Most places probably won’t be assholes about it but if they wanted to I think they would be able to enforce the gratuity term absent any ordinance.
“It’s a hard s’pose but I’ll do it.” If I ever were in such a situation where I was ordering such exceptionally pricey booze, then yes, I’d expect to pay some standard tip percentage on the amount they charged for it, just as I paid my standard tip percentage on the beer I had at the sushi place last night.
$120 tip on a booze bill of $665 is actually less than I’d expect the standard tip percentage to be at a joint as swank as this one apparently was. That’s a modest 18%, and from what I hear, something between 20-25% is now common at “fine restaurants”.
ISTM that tips in the US aren’t really “gratuities” anymore, if they ever were. They’re not an extra bonus you hand over out of the kindness of your heart to show your appreciation to a hard-working server. They’re a standard service charge on which waitstaff depend to make their daily wages.
Yeah, so the waitstaff got a little time off because the party in question wanted to pour their own wine. So what? The waitstaff still have to put food on their own tables, and it’s not as though they can just dash out of the restaurant on a slow night to pick up a temp job. When you come in to work on a slow day and have a little less to do than usual, would you be willing to have your boss dock your salary on account of it?
If you’re going out to a fancy restaurant, the time to inquire about their commercial policies is before you stuff yourself full of their food and booze. Who the hell goes out with a party of 8 to an expensive restaurant and doesn’t even bother to ask about their fixed-gratuity policy before ordering?
(And I’ve heard of calculating the tip based on the pre-tax amount instead of the plus-tax total, although I usually can’t be bothered to look at any but the big figure at the bottom of the bill, but I’ve never heard of leaving out the cost of the booze from the tip calculations. Is that really standard?)
I don’t think they asked for two bills because they thought they could outsmart the math. I think they were hoping on good faith that they would not add the service charge of gratuity to something that was not being served.
If it were me and I asked to have the auto grat removed from the wine bill only and they did it without threatening to have me arrested, I would have probably tipped about 30-35% of the food bill to say thanks for the slack. 120 dollars tip for wine service is absurd.
ETA: I get the whole idea of table turning and whatever but a party of 8 isn’t like a party of 20 that is going to take up all your space and your whole night. An 8 top is just like having 2 tables combined and seeing as they were big spenders, I’m sure the food bill was a very good tip for the waiter when auto grated on that alone.
Some googling in research for a reply to mhendo informs me that apparently including liquor is the standard now. Not including it has been the only thing I’ve ever heard in 50 years; times change, I guess, or I’ve been hanging with the wrong crowd.
I’m not a fan of auto gratuities either. A large group of women went out this past Monday. They added 20% even though the waitress was very unprofessional.
For instance, a friend of mine ordered the broiled seafood platter. It came swimming in butter. My friend told the waitress that it was a bit misleading to order something that sounded somewhat heart healthy, with nothing about butter in the description, only to be served something that was anything but healthy. The waitress, a woman in her early 20s said, “No offense, but I don’t think they’re going to change it just for you.” Um, way to miss the point.
Later, another friend paid $40 cash for a $38.xx bill. Remember auto gratuity of 20% was included. The waitress returned and presented no change. My friend asked where her change was and the waitress said, “Sorry, we round up. It’s not really my fault because someone else does all that.”
And for this level of service, we paid 20%.
As far as food and drink, I’ve always paid on the total bill, but I definitely take issue with the manager’s attitude.