Waitaminute. They were at a bar, right? Since when do you tip at a bar based on the value of the drink? I tip on a per-drink basis, regardless of the value of what’s in the bottle. It takes just as long to pour a glass of cheap-ass Wild Turkey as it does to pour a glass of expensive single-malt.
I generally tip $1 per drink unless I’m showing off. On an entourage of 25, if everyone drank and they tipped properly (i.e., as I would), that means that everyone had a little less than two drinks each. Given the Bush twins’ history, I’m assuming they drank more than that. So yes, assuming that there were no non-drinkers in the entourage (does the Secret Service count as an entourage member?), they undertipped. But not outrageously so.
This isn’t a restaurant, and even if it was, it’s common practice to tip based on the price of the meal with something extra for the wine if you’ve ordered an extraordinarily expensive bottle. Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential relates an anecdote about deflating a new waiter’s expectations on his anticipated tip when a customer ordered a several-thousand-dollar bottle of wine. The tip was the typical (in NY) 20% of the meal ticket plus several dollars in connection with the wine.
Typical costs are around $12 a drink at a nice place using the typical Absolut vodka martini as a benchmark, but if you’re drinking extremely high-end stuff you can easily break $90 per drink. I’ve seen on various menus (but tragically never tasted) cognacs that are a couple of hundred bucks for a glass. I’ve been to champagne bars that have very expensive items among their selections. I’ve been to bars with very expensive tequilas and single-malts on their menus.
Like I said, the more likely answer is that they drank a fair bit and undertipped, but not so dramatically as the final tab might have you believe. I’d wager they were drinking pricier-than-average stuff, though probably not pricey enough to make the tip amount “correct.”
If a Diet Coke can cost you $17.00 (not a typo) then I’ll believe anything. That’s second-hand info, but I believe it to be reliable. I would not be surprised to learn, as a corollary, that there exist (for example) $35.00 martinis. Over the course of a six-hour party, you’re going to need about ten drinks to get any kind of serious buzz, which puts your per-person tab in the $300-$500 range depending on how many, how strong, how top-shelf, etc.
That said, from that kind of expensive alcohol, I’d better
get some sort of sexual favor from someone very attractive after my fifth drink,
develop X-Ray vision or a similar superpower, and
not get anything even remotely approximating nausea or hangover.
Tip? You want a tip? If you want to spend $5,000 on getting disoriented in an evening, give it to me. I’ll buy you the best alcohol money can buy, fill you full of it, and spend the other $4,500 on campaign contributions to Kerry/Edwards. There’s your tip.
Hmm… with 25 people and a $4500 total tab, $48 would be a good tip for one person and average to poor tip for two.
Maybe one guest, possibly even a Bush, threw down the $48 as they were leaving (after hearing that the bill was comped), figuring on paying his/her share. Not that this is a complete excuse, but maybe everyone else considered themselves Bush guests, and J&B weren’t thinking that way, and only tipped on their own behalf. In ofter words, naive and clueless, rather than deliberately cheap or offensive.
They probably figured the “real” value of the tip was $0.00 (“Hey, what’s 15% of free?” Giggle!), and decided that grabbing a few bills for a tip was the “compassionate conservative” thing to do.
They were heedless, ignorant, and rude. The thing is that I’ve waited on more than my share of prom couples and college groups nights out and thats sort of about par for the course. I really am glad that some of my more embarassing moments right out of college were not in the papers.
The other problem is that there is no way these young women can take the jobs waiting tables or selling perfume or standing on a table running follow spot that the rest of us did to get by early on, and it doesn’t seem like they have much guidance to show them the value of a buck. The real problem is that I have never gotten the sense that their father is anymore aware than they are, but for the most part he seems to have been taught better manners.
Define “worth”:
Are we talking $4500 of wholesale alcohol? Hell no.
Are we talking $4500 of retail alcohol? Not Likely.
Are we talking $450 of alcohol marked-up 1000%? Very Probable.
I personally see bottles of wine marked-up 500-1000% at restaurants, bars, night clubs, etc., are all of you saying that you should base your tip on something subjectively that high?
Even if 15-20% tip was paid, that tip would have covered the wholesale price of the alcohol consumed and then some…do you actually think that $675-$900 in tips was expected? I’m also pretty sure that their presence at the establishment help them to sell other patrons more drinks…the establishment knew what they were doing when they comped…eh, what the hell do I know? I’m just a business owner.
Folks, does anyone know the line between “reasonable” and “absurd”, or are many of you tip lemmings? Is a bartender who serves a $20 or $30 drink more deserving of a bigger tip than a waitress who serves the house special and spends more time attending to you on a $10 meal?
Answer: The waitress deserves more than the bartender, regardless of price.
Again, it comes down to worth of service…not inflated prices of product.
<extreme>
Hey, I got a million dollar saltine cracker you can have for free, just remember to give me a good tip, ok? :rolleyes:
</extreme>
And this year’s Marie Antoinette Memoriable “Just Not Getting It” statuette goes to . . . Yeticus Rex!
I have been a regular enough patron at a handful of restaurants that I sometimes get comped a whole meal. I have eaten with enough VIPs that I have seen THEM get comped. The general etiquette on comped hospitality bills is FULL TIP AMOUNT TIMES TWO; I usually tip up to 50% of the comped bill. And figuring the wholesale cost of the comped food or drink is SO BESIDE THE POINT I just don’t know where to begin. If you’re drinking it in the alley behind the wholesaler’s warehouse, fine, tip based on wholesale. Otherwise, being comped requires an especially generous tip.
You do know alot of servers get taxed on a percentage of what they ring at the register, don’t you? What the hell do wholesale prices have to do with anything?
If I’m getting taxed on 15% of 4500 bucks, because the register shows I distributed 4500$ worth of alcohol, I’d sure hope someone would at least tip what they’d owe in tip if they had paid the bill, since that’s what I’d get taxed on.
No. We’ve previously established they’re drunken little spoiled brats who turn their father’s family values platform into a joke at every turn. This establishes that they’re just as much thoughtless spendthrifts as their father as well.
In fact, now that I think about it, free drinks is pretty much the exact polar opposite of shit service.
And if you choose to go to a place that serves $30 drinks, or liquor marked up 1000%, be prepared to factor in a nice 1000% inflated tip. Don’t want to do that? Go to a cheaper bar.