In tipping countries, you get a bill after your meal that says, in effect “Here’s an amount that is less than what you owe - now take a guess at what we expect you to pay.”
In non-tipping countries, you get a bill that says “Here’s what you owe.”
If the first system tended to produce better service, I could see benefit in its inherent complexity. But IME it simply doesn’t.
Perhaps, but ordering a bottle of wine that comes with the expectation, and tacit agreement to, a forty dollar tip is not mandatory. If you can’t afford the tip, don’t order it. You can’t complain about the rules after the fact. You know how the system works, if you don’t like, eat at home. Hell, if money was that tight, bring your own wine. You’d probably come out ahead even with the corkage fee.
I would be willing to bet the wait staff thought $120 for uncorking 3 bottles of wine was just as ridiculous as the customers did.
LOL. I like this one.
Nope. Not a drink. Read it again.
It’s not a matter of affordability. Personally, I don’t drink wine. But if I went to a store and the clerk told me my bottle of Coke was going to cost me a forty dollar handling fee, I wouldn’t pay it. It’s not that I couldn’t afford forty dollars - it’s that I think forty dollars is an unreasonable surcharge.
I agree. BUT, back to the original discussion, having $1000 bottles of champagne be factored into the tip just makes the variance even higher. The further departure there is from “more work which takes up more of the server’s time equals higher tip”, the more ridiculous the whole system becomes.
I suppose, but I’ll never have to deal with that. We’re just a casual place, so very few tables order whole bottles of wine, and even then our most expensive one is still sub-$50. But the same logic applies. One night server A will have a table with $1000 worth of wine on top of the food, and the other night server B will have that.
What it comes down to is that no, the system isn’t perfect, and I think most people would agree to go to a more European system where the servers are paid a flat rate (which would probably be minimum wage at a local diner and $20-$25 an hour at a five star restaurant) with tips being truly optional and an actual reflection of the diner’s happiness with the service, but it would take a lot of effort to make that change (and it would, of course, cause food prices on the menu to go up, and then ignorant people not realizing there are essentially still paying the same amount, would bitch and moan.)
Except that the more exceptional and rare and expensive the item is, the higher the variance, and the longer it takes to even out. If your menu serves two items: soup for $20 and steak for $40, and half of customers order each, then things will average out for two servers pretty quickly. If it servers soup for $20, steak for $40, and super-crazy-caviar-indulgence-steak for $400, and only 0.5% of customers buy the 3rd, then the variance between servers’ take home pay for the same amount of work will be much higher.
I’m sure someone has beaten me to it, but that’s crappity-doo. I once waited tables at a place where a server got fired for pulling that *exact same crap * – and she only rounded up by a nickel! If not too much time has passed, I recommend that someone in your party speak to a manager about that.
I don’t think it’s particularly fair to take the establishment’s policy–enforced by the manager–out on the bartender, by stiffing him on each and every annoying credit card transaction. The tab rule isn’t his fault. (FTR, I agree it’s a stupid policy and I’ve never heard of it before.)
While you’ve said it’s normal not to tip barmen in your country, you seemed inclined to “tip the delta” anyway.
Just an observation. I’ve worked at plenty of jobs with annoying policies I had nothing to do with; I don’t think it’s fair to penalize the employees who are doing nothing but their job.
It also makes me grateful I don’t work at a tourist bar anymore, because so many people from overseas just don’t freakin’ tip. Not their fault, perhaps–they don’t know any better–but damn it got annoying.
There are many,many things I admire about the American way of life but making service staff beg for money from customers because their employers refuse to pay them a living wage isn’t one of them.
In the U.K(.and for that matter many if not most places in the world outside of America )tipping is the reward for service over and above the norm,not for just doing your job competently and not to subsidise tight fisted employers wage bills.
If you’re going to get a tip anyway just for working then there is no incentive for the employee to put themselves out to make the experience even more of a pleasure to the customer then it already would have been.
That was why tipping came into existence in the first place.
While i tend to agree with your general position, i’m not sure that the UK is the best example to use in this case.
I worked as a bartender and a waiter in the UK for almost two years, and the one thing that struck was that it seemed to have the worst of both worlds—no tips and shitty wages. In North America you get shitty wages, but decent tips; in Australia you get very few tips, but decent wages. England was just crap all round. Not only were wages lower, but everyday purchases also seemed consioderably more expensive.
This was in the early 1990s. I’m not sure if it’s changed since then.
I just can’t get on board with the OP.
I am totally, 100% in favor of added gratuities for large parties, because I did a tour at Cracker Barrel one summer in college. They refused to do added gratuities, and whenever we asked why they said, “What if someone wants to tip more than 18%?” Never mind that it was fucking Cracker Barrel, where most of the clientele thinks the waiter should take his shiny new nickel and be happy about it.
It wasn’t uncommon at all for a party of ten to keep a server busy for two hours and then leave absolutely nothing. That probably happened to somebody every night. If your section had one of the big round tables in the corners, you were almost guaranteed a bad night.
So I’m totally on board with the added gratuity, and I don’t see why it should exclude anything. You should just factor it into the cost of what you’re ordering–that $50 bottle of wine is actually $59. If you’re going to complain about something, complain about the fact that the $50 bottle of wine probably cost less than $20 retail.
What the customer in the OP should have done was to get the manager over and say, “Listen, I’m thinking about treating everybody and ordering a few really nice bottles of wine. If I got three $100+ bottles, you think you could knock 20% off?” The markup on wine in restaurants is so high that they’d still be making plenty off of them, the server would still get his cut, and everybody would be happy.
Family went into a well know pizza franchise. Ordered half pepperoni and half cheese. We were charged for an entire pepperoni. When I mentioned this to the manager he said, “It’s our policy to charge for the most expensive half.”
I replied, “It’s my policy to only pay half and half.”
He adjusted the bill. I’ve been back many times, but never again ordered a half and half.
Evidently the $120 tip restaurant has so many people waiting in line that the manager doesn’t’ care if he has repeat business. And the customers should of been able to afford a bail bondsman if the manager made good on his threat, which is doubtful.
Really? If you dispute a bill, the cops will arrest for what is now a civil action? “Walking out” or “dine and dash” is one thing, but saying “the food/service was not worth this, I will not pay, I dispute the bill” is another. Can you really be legally arrested for a *in good faith *dispute of a bill?
I agree with Marin when he sez: " I’m not really sure the police will get involved in a dispute over an auto-gratuity. Maybe they will, I’m totally uninformed about the whole scenario. Considering many police officers I’ve spoken to in my life say they never get around to answering their “lowest priority” calls in many given nights, I have my doubts. It sounds like a matter to be settled in a civil court, not a criminal one. I think there is a difference between theft and a disagreement over an ancillary charge. For example, I know from the perspective of renting out places to others, a lot of land lords charge something like a $5 a day late fee on unpaid rent. It says in the lease that at the end of the lease term, this will be applied to the deposit and if it is greater than the deposit it will be owed by the tenant."
While I appreciate** 5-4-Fighting** cites, you know you just could have posted:“The charges … have been dropped.” Multiple links to another MB, without a clue where to find the end? :rolleyes:
And you left out the fact that the parton shorted the restaruant, and didn’t announce his dispute to the Manager before being confronted by the police.
Try it like this:
*“In a blow to restaurant owners and servers in particular, prosecutors upstate ruled that a diner could not be forced to pay a tip - even if the restaurant says it’s mandatory. Long Islandar Humberto Taveras was in Lake George, NY, dining with his family and another couple (total of nine diners), was charged $77.43; the restaurant, Soprano’s Italian and American Grill, owned by Joe and Tina Soprano, argued that Taveras should have paid the 18% gratiuty, $13.73 tip for parties larger than 6, which was included in their bill. Taveras claimed he left 10%, but after some argument about the quality of the food and whether the mandatory gratiuty was noted on the menus, Taveras was taken away by the police, when the Sopranos claimed “theft of services.” As its pointed out a number of times, Taveras has spent a couple hundred dollars fighting this charge, to heard the words he wanted from the Warren Country prosecutor said, “A tip or gratuity is discretionary, and that’s what the courts have found.””
*
See? a link,** then **a paragraph or two giving the gist of the cite. Thanks.
fessie "You DO realize that tips are shared among all the waitstaff, right? " That all depends. Often not.
You’re, uhm, welcome? Other than the fact my original link to the MB was at the top when I copied the URL but wasn’t when opened, I don’t know what you’re on about. I’ve dealt with all of this already.
In fact, neither the second link, the report of the prosecutors dismissal nor your synopsis mention Taveras’ shorting them on the bill. I have a feeling the restaurant shouted “theft of services” just to get Taveras arrested.
Bottom line is, I posted in response to a question asking whether someone had actually been arrested for not paying the required gratuity and that prosecutors determined, in that case, a required gratuity was not legal. What your point?
I’d say I’m sorry my posting or gist-writiing style doesn’t meet your high standard, but I’m not.