I wonder how many “special” meals this lady has received over her years of patronizing the restaurant? I can pinch a penny as hard as the next person, but even I tip well when there is repeated interaction involving items I will be consuming.
Canadian is a racial slur used by some waitstaff to refer to black people.
ETA: Cat Whispere beat me to this factoid.
FWIW, as a tipped employee, my call was 60+ year old white female.
I voted for “neither”. If you were to look at this very simply, you could say that she is paying a fixed price for the food that she orders (menu price), and that she would then add a tip for the waitstaff based on the quality of service they provide. If she feels that their service is particularly poor on a regular basis, she is not obliged to pay more than the fixed price of the food.
However, if service is consistently poor, why would she continue to eat there?
From the restuarant’s side of things, it is in their interests to make sure their waitstaff are doing a good job, and that level of service should be reflected in the number of patrons who leave tips (not necessarily the size of the tip). If they feel their staff are providing good service but are not being tipped at an adequate level, they should be able to suggest that this patron’s expectations are unrealistic and she should dine elsewhere.
Convention suggests that tips should be 10-15% (we aim for 15%, or more if the service is exceptionally good) but I have been to restuarants that have added a 12% gratuity to the bill as a matter of course, although if you are paying by card it is then up to you to alter that at the point of sale.
This sums up my view of tipping in general: if you expect me to pay $X, say upfront that you expect me to pay $X.
If they apply this policy consistently–i.e., any cheapskate who establishes a record of consistently tipping terribly has to commit to a tip of X%–then for that restaurant, tipping is mandatory. (This is in response to the notion offered in this thread, “If it’s mandatory, it should be mandatory for everyone.” Well, presumably it is, and if you’re a regular who violates the rule, you get the same treatment.)
Personally, I think the restaurant can treat different customers differently however it pleases (so long as it doesn’t violate laws, such as discriminating based on race), and they can communicate and execute this policy however they’d like. It’s his restaurant, it’s up to him. If customers don’t like this, they’ll eat elsewhere. I get a chuckle out of all the “I think they should be sued” comments.
In this particular instance, I also believe it’s completely justified how they treated her. I notice she didn’t deny the notion that she was a horrible tipper. That “butter wouldn’t melt in my mouth, I just want to be treated fairly” smile on her face didn’t fool me. She wants to be let back in, where she can enjoy the service, stiff the waitstaff, and gloat to her friends about her victory. (It’s a tremendous power I have, this ability to read minds. Simply awesome, I tell ya.)
I know! Don’t they send these people to some local news guy camp where they learn the newscaster voice? How many YouTube parodies of the news have we seen where the amateur 18 yr old college student actors affect the newscaster voice? Learn the voice, sir! If he fancies himself some sort of a renegade, and won’t go along with how he’s supposed to sound, he should at least learn how to create complete sentences that aren’t scripted. I should never hear this: “Did you articulate that to Ms. Covington as to that she cannot come into your restaurant?”
Serving her is not required. Next.
I agree, but it appears that they didn’t tell her the rules until after she asked about them. They simply tacked on a gratuity. Although, I really couldn’t tell you which is the more graceful way to approach things between telling the customer that the staff no longer wishes to serve her because for the years she has been eating at this restaurant, she does not tip for their services, or to simply include the tip in her bill. Telling her might have been the better, clearer way, but I could see how that may have been an attempt to avoid the awkwardness.
That’s a good guess, but because of the age. Old people believe it should still cost a nickel to take the trolley, and that leaving $1 for the nice lady who brought out your food and refilled your coffee several is a nice and adequate gesture.
If it’s worth anything, the “black people are poor tippers” thing is something I’ve heard about far more often than I’ve seen. The percentage of white people I know who are bad tippers is the same as the percentage of black people I know who are poor tippers. The most over-the-top tipper (50% tips not being at all unusual) I know is a black guy. I don’t know if he’s doing Nzinga-style over compensating, but the guy sheds tips like there’s no tomorrow. Of course he’d be an outlier for any race, but most people I know give about 20%, with a few cheapskates of all races interspersed.
I think that if your behavior is going to deviate significantly from the norm, it’s only reasonable to expect people to treat you significantly from the norm. In this case, her tipping behavior is different enough from the normal behavior of other customers to make her infamous among the entire serving staff, so it’s neither unexpected nor unreasonable for them to treat her differently than other customers.
I also think it’s refreshing and delightful to see an employer decide that the disruption and turmoil this woman invariably causes among the staff outweighs whatever profit she brings in. That kind of stuff lowers productivity and increases turnover rate and costs the restaurant money just as surely as losing this one woman’s business, but it’s a factor service-industry management never seem to take into account.
It is silly. I don’t expect (or receive) better service at a restaurant if I order a $30 meal instead of a $20 meal. Why should the server receive a higher or lower tip for the same service just because the food is priced differently?
Again, I tip well - but don’t tell me tipping customs aren’t stupid.
Listen up, tightwads. Here in the United States, tipping 15% - 20% is standard. Any restaurant with wait service. Anywhere in the country. Yes, we all know that it isn’t “mandatory”, but it’s a convention of society. You order a $10 burger and fries? If a waitress brings it to you, it’s a $2 tip. $150 steak dinner for two with wine? $22 - $30 tip. $600 dinner for eight? They will probably automatically include your tip, but it will be $90 - $120.
Short of the waiter taking a shit in your soup, you do not tip less than 15%.
If you think 15%-20% is too much, then you cannot afford to eat in that restaurant.
If you are mean or rude to waitstaff, you are a fucking asshole and if for some reason I am forced to eat with you, I will tell you to shut your fucking meal-hole.
If you “don’t think tipping is required” then you are a social moron and are too stupid to eat in an American restuaruant. Move to Europe where they don’t tip.
As for the restaurant in the OP, really the right course of action is to just treat this idiot like any other customer. It’s not worth the headache and potential negative publicity and word of mouth they will generate just to get 15% on less than $50.
I didn’t find black people to be bad tippers. In my 5 years experience waiting tables in an Applebee’s-priced restaurant in Raleigh, NC, the worst tippers were:
- The after church crowd (so horrible, I quit working Sunday lunches).
- Two women eating together
- People from India - we had several yummy vegetarian options on the menu, so we were pretty popular. They were consistently the worst - large parties who came in right at closing, tipped 1-2 dollars, stayed forever, men who ordered the servers around and were amazingly rude and messy children who threw food and would run and scream with the parents/family completely oblivious. When I saw a large Indian party walk in, five minutes before closing, I felt like crying.
- Rednecks who thought our low price Mexican restaurant was a “classy” place to propose to their girlfriend or take their mom for her birthday.
I never heard of anyone doing anything to a regular bad tippers food (although there were plenty of jokes about it). As someone said above, regular bad tippers were well known and hated. Good tippers were fought over. I had a family of regulars I loved, I slipped them every free thing I could - their little bowl of con queso with their chips - free, after dinner coffees? free. A scoop of vanilla ice cream for their adorable toddler? free. Good for them, good for the restaurant (they kept coming back and they usually had a pretty good sized bill) and good for me! (they usually left me a 10.00 bill every time - loved them!)
QFT. Though I really wouldn’t have minded the crappy tipping nearly so much if they weren’t also total assholes as often as not. The more crosses and Bibles there were to be seen, the bigger the odds of me getting berated for things like there being a wait to be seated or their onion rings being exactly the wrong shade of taupe, and the smaller the tip. Often these tables would spend an hour bitching at me about things I had no control over, like how busy the restaurant was or why some other table’s soup and cornbread came out faster than their well-done steak, run me back and forth a dozen times for stuff they could have asked for all at once, grouse at me about the size of the bill, and then leave me a handful of change and a religious tract about the Saving Grace of Jesus. And if there was a big church lady hat involved, you could just about bet there wouldn’t be any quarters or dimes in that handful of change.
That’s the really bad thing about bad tippers–ime, there’s a very high degree of correlation between being a bad tipper and being a demanding asshole. It’s not a 100% correlation–I used to have a couple of little old ladies at a barbecue joint who walked over every Friday after their hair appointment and always left me a couple of shiny new quarters on their $7 tabs, and they were some of the absolute nicest people I have ever dealt with–but I’d say it’s at least 75%. As pure speculation, I’d guess there’s also an element of that in the case mentioned in the OP, but you can’t come out and say you’re charging a specific customer a PITA fee.
I’m with the restaurant - in fact, if this place was even remotely within my time zone I would probably go there specifically to offer support (and also get some yummy Japanese food!)
I think this may be an effort on the part of the manager/owner to get her to stop coming in. I wish when I was a server I had a manager like this - waiting tables sucks and people like this, with their misplaced sense of entitlement make it terrible.
And just so we’re clear - tipping is a social convention, as is wearing shoes, not belching/farting loudly in nice places, not swearing at waitstaff and generally being polite. If you’re not capable of doing all of these things, then you don’t belong in a restaurant. Get drive through McDonalds and save the rest of the world your boorish behaviour.
The restaurant has a right to serve whomever they want and refuse service to whomever they want. Its a private business. I don’t know if people realize it but servers, bartenders work at minimum wage and rely heavily on tips for a living.
The restaurant I worked at during tourist season would tack on 15% gratuity for large reservations because some people assume that it’s already included and wont tip. The servers where I worked had to pay a percentage of their sales 3% to a tip pool that would get distributed weekly to all dining room staff. For myslef back in the late 80’s that was an extra $200 bucks cash in my pocket combine that with my hourly wage I was making around $400 a week.
She should just start tipping these people, she doesn’t like to work for nothing I assume neither do people in the food industry. She should be carefull servers get to “handle” her food before it gets to her table.
What server earns minimum wage? 'round here they get a lot less (but earn a lot more).
So, the people working in restaurants should either wear a badge telling us what they earn, or tell us when they seat us, “Hi, my name is John, I’ll be your server this evening. I earn $3 an hour before tips, but I average $10 an hour in tips, of which $1.50 goes to the people who bus the tables. But, of course, in my tax return I only tell them that I get $6 an hour in tips. Now, can I get you anything to drink?”
The woman sounds like an asshole. The restaurant should have just refused her service. That said, I’d have no problem with the restaurant owner saying, “Lady, nobody here likes you. If you wanna eat here, there will be an xx% fee added onto your check”.
I do not own a restaurant, but I do own a small business. Over the years I’ve told a handful of people to kindly take their business elsewhere. Feels good.
Whatever enforcement is done of those is done by social pressure. And that still does not address the issue of how something can be optional, but not completely optional, which is your phrase, not mine.
Which in this case was enforced by a private business that stands to gain from the enforcement. Not the same thing as your above examples at all.
They most certainly did. Watch the video again.
No it isn’t, at least not in NC.
Obligatory Reservoir Dogs link.
I sided with the restaurant. I’ve worked as a busboy and a waiter and hated the customers who either wouldn’t tip or would give next to nothing. Seriously, two bucks on a $50 tab?
Does she do this at other restaurants or just this one? If she doesn’t like to tip then she shouldn’t go to places like that. Just go to McDonald’s or Popeye’s or, if you still want someone to bring out your food, go to Culvers. For classier food go to Old Country Buffet.
In Canada there’s minimun wage laws that everyone has to follow, no one can be paid less than minimun wage.