Hey buddy, can you spare a dime?
No worries, a twenty will do. 
I’ve gotten in the habit of taking the untaxed portion and adding 25% (plus rounding). Seems to work out roughly the same. If I’m ever to find myself in a locality with a sales tax approaching 15%, I think I’ll just turn around and leave, and eat when I get back home to civilization.
Also, aren’t tipping threads understood to be destined for the Pit anyway?
Reminds me that I was walking downtown a week ago and a panhandler asked me if I had any change? I said a quick “no”. He then asked with a straight face “how about a twenty then?” I almost gave it to him for chutspa until I remembered I still wanted it.
Here I am! I worked in the food industry and I’m still sticking to my 16%, rounded up, come hell or high water.
I posted it in Cafe Society because I felt it was about Entertainment etc. and hadn’t intended it as a poll.
The linked report was very good. Don’t know how I missed it. :eek:
Thanks.
You have a point. Is it any more work to bring a 200 dollar a bottle than a 20 dollar bottle. They should be the same tip.
On that same note, is it any more work to bring the $30 steak versus the $8 burger and fries? I go to restaurants with both.
Honestly, the whole tips as salary thing is kind of stupid.
Oh, this line of argument makes me mad.
As has been stated in every other tipping thread, your server is tipping OUT on their SALES. Not on how “hard it was to bring it out”.
As such, if you buy a $200 bottle of wine, the server may be tipping out as much as 10% on that. So they’re giving $20 back to the bartender at the end of the night JUST FOR THAT ONE BOTTLE.
If you tip them $2-3 based on your idea that you may as well not worry about price, your server just paid the bartender $17-18 out of their own pocket for the privelege of serving you expensive wine.
Not tipping based on the amount of your bill is cheap. I understand that it seems strange to some people, I know “it would be better if servers were just paid a decent wage”, but they aren’t. The reality is that servers get paid a pittance, and then have to pay out a percentage of their sales regardless of what you tip them.
If you don’t want to tip properly for a $200 bottle of wine, don’t order it. Go for the $20 bottle. End of story.
Sometimes, but sometimes it’s based on a percentage of their tips, which was my impression.
<<Your server has to tip too. It is very common for a waiter or waitress to have to tip out their supporting staff, ie; the bartender, buss person, food runners and others. Bartenders may have to tip out their bar backs. These tips are based often on the sales of the server, so if you don’t tip them, in addition to the 8% the government gets they often have to shell out money to the support staff putting them further in the hole. Sometimes the support staff is tipped a percent of the servers tips. So not tipping the server is the same as not tipping any of the hard working support staff in the restaurant.>>
I’ve worked in the industry for many years and in many different places, and at least in Ontario, that’s rare enough that I’ve never seen it, nor even heard of it.
Possible that it happens more in other provinces or in the states, but I wouldn’t know.
I grew up with parents who tipped 15% plus. When I started going out to eat on my own with friends and working in the food industry my dad usually let me decide what a fair tip is. I’ve never had ‘bad’ service anywhere besides a crap place like Denny’s at 2 am when I don’t expect good service and don’t care. I’ve never been a server but many of my friends have and it can be a shit job. And I have no idea what your guys’ idea of bad service is. The food tasting bad (as in you don’t like it) is not your server’s fault - you picked what you wanted. If there is something wrong with it, it could likely be the cook’s fault and the server didn’t notice. Only if a server is really rude or NEVER comes back to check on us and I actually needed something will I go away from the experience and be unhappy.
Good tipping has gotten me perks. Me ex and I went to a steakhouse for Valentine’s Day one year and it was packed. Our server was awesome under all the pressure - there were a lot of older couples bitching about stuff. We took in all in stride - we decided to go out on one of the busiest restaurant nights of the year and knew what to expect. We laid out the money on the table and were finishing our drinks and having an after dinner smoke. Our awesome waitress took the bill and came back with a delicious sundae for free because we hadn’t given her shit and we tipped like 30%. She worked her ass off for us - our drinks never got below half full and our food came out hot fresh from the kitchen. And damn the sundae was good. She was really appreciative we weren’t bitching because everyone around us was.
My parents are regulars at the local Applebees (blah) and they always sit at the bar. They have their ‘own’ bartender now and he gives them free shit every time they come in because they understand he is busy and they don’t bitch and complain and leave 8% tips. He invited them to his wedding reception!
I believe in karma, at least to a point. And it makes me feel good when I give the $3 tip to the carhop at Sonic on my $4.50 bill and see her smile and say thanks. I used to get tipped sometimes at my old job - running the counter at a pizza joint - a job that does not require or ask for tips - and I always really appreciated it. Pay it forward, ya know? I think that some people are just too far removed in their life from working crap service jobs and forget what it’s like.
I’ ve worked at many places and been friends with many folks who worked in restaurants, and this is the first I have heard of tipping out based on sales. Of course, our locations are different, but to me, any restaurant which forced that scenario on its staff would be <checks forum> real jerks.
I worked at a country club where they just flat added on 16% for everyone. 13% of it went to the wait staff, 1.5% went to the bussing staff, and 1% went to the house (split by head chef and general manager, I beleive).
The idea of tipping on the cost, however, implies that there is a relationship between the cost of the food and the quality of the server. A hoity-toidy restaurant that hires crappy staff won’t keep customers for long, so they hire better quality staff. You tip based on the food price because it’s also supposed to be a judgement of the service quality. You won’t likley find $20 bottles of wine there, but you might. You might also consider tipping more for a waiter that brings and serves you a $20 bottle of wine in the midst of a rush without spilling any 
By the same token, if a waitress is busting her ass at Denny’s and you get exceptional service there, you should really consider leaving 10 bucks tip on that $20 bill (assuming you can afford it), because getting exceptional service should be rewarded.
As I said, I was in the service industry for a long time, and I tend to tip an average of 15% for adequate service at a standard restaurant (chili’s, Applebee’s, etc) and more for exceptional service, less for substandard service. If a waiter/ress has done a really good job of bringing things just right for my 3-year old daughter, who tends to be impatient, there is a bonus in it.
If you can afford a $200 bottle of wine to go along with a meal commensurate of that quality, anything less than tipping 15-20% on the total bill makes you a cheapskate.
Tip on the entire bill, tax included. Seriously. Even if it’s only a few dollars, it does make a difference… servers have to tip out to other restaurant employees a percentage of their sales including tax. Tax can increase gross sales by at least the amount of a decent bill, and if no one tips on tax, at the end of the night it’s exactly like getting stiffed on a table. It’s stupid, but that’s the way it is, and if you don’t like it, please don’t take it out on your server.
Also, for the expensive bottle of wine thing-- the fact that it’s wine doesn’t change your server’s tip-out a bit. If you ordered a steak instead of a burger, would you tip less on the steak just because it was more expensive and not any more work? The work they do isn’t any different regardless of what you spend on any single item-- but their tip-out is. If you order a $150 bottle of wine at my restaurant, you’ve just cost me $6. If you don’t tip me on it, I lose $6. Tip-out is not optional and is based on total sales, not tips. This does not change just because it’s wine and not food. If you really don’t want to tip on your bottle of wine, go to the bar and order it, take it to the table yourself. They don’t have to tip out, so they don’t lose any money, at least (but they’ll still think you’re a cheap asshole).
I think I’m afraid to travel to the US. How long can a person go without eating?
I take the bottom line, round it up to the nearest dollar and tip 15% on that. If the service was great, I’ll go up to 20%.
What about a 1000 dollar bottle of wine. 150 still sound reasonable for 2 minutes work.
CarlyJay, you really need to find a different place to work. I waitressed for a number of years, and like some (most?) others in various threads where I’ve seen that it’s been mentioned, I’ve never heard of a tip-out. Yes, in most cases I did give a portion of my tips to the bus people, but it was a percentage of the tips I got, not some insane calculation based on my sales.
With that said, I tip (generously, but not as generously as my husband) based on the total bill.
I think if you’re drinking anything resembling a thousand dollar bottle of wine, it ceases to become a question of economics and begins to become a question of class and breeding. The gracious thing to do would be to tip properly for the occasion, and that should be the end of it.
Blah. It ceases to be a question of economics.
This whole tipping thing has really gotten out of hand in my opinion. I shouldn’t be made to feel bad if I tip low or like I’m not welcome back because a restaurant doesn’t pay it’s own staff enough to live off of.
I’m living in England at the moment so tipping isn’t really that big an issue but in general I tip 10% if it’s a proper meal with starter etc. I have many friends who waited tables and they all made more on base salary then I made ringing through groceries.
I’m sorry, but any relation to “breeding” (are we show dogs now? Want to know who sired me before I dine?) or class is nonsense and really fucking snotty.