This.
Force paying a living wage on management & forget the charity aspect of tipping.
So what is the usual standard for tipping on wine? I’ll tip 20% on the meal and dessert, but not on wine, especially when it’s over $50 or more per bottle. I’ll maybe add 5-10% of the cost of the wine, maybe more if the recommendation was good. Am I wrong?
Agreed. That would be best.
I just found that Wiki actually has an article on Gratuity that covers some of what we’re discussing:
➜ Gratuity - Wikipedia ■ .
Here are two relevant sections:
History of tipping in the US
➜ Gratuity - Wikipedia ■
And here:
Tipping By Region, United States
➜ Gratuity - Wikipedia ■
Interestingly, at least six states outlawed tipping in the very early 1900s. These were soon repealed. Quoting from the wiki article,
Enforcement of anti-tipping laws was problematic. The earliest of these laws was passed in 1909 (Washington), and the last of these laws was repealed in 1926 (Mississippi).
An interesting tidbit is this:
However, studies of the practice in America suggest that tipping is often discriminatory or arbitrary: workers receive different levels of gratuity based on factors such as age, sex, race, hair color and even breast size, and the size of the gratuity is found to be only tenuously related to the quality of service.
In my opinion the tipping culture in the US has hurt the dining experience.
The wait staff incentives are to turn over the tables are fast as possible. My interest is a have calm meal, but i often feel rushed out.
In Europe the incentives are much more aligned.
It seems to me that, tipping or no tipping, it’s in the restaurant’s best interest to turn over the tables as fast as possible. And so the US tipping culture more closely aligns the server’s interests with the restaurant’s.
Whereas, a system under which the server gets paid the same no matter how busy they are or how much work they do might incentivize doing as little as possible.
And, my interest is very often to have quick, efficient service, and not have to wait around any longer than I have to. Neither your attitude nor mine is exclusively right or wrong, but a server catering to one type of customer is going to annoy the other. (And, perhaps, an establishment that serves primarily your sort of customer who likes to linger over their meal would have to charge higher prices to make up for serving fewer customers.)
Depends on where you go.
I am a fan of leisurely dining, whichever meal it might be. Tell the server up front that this will be a slow process, and that they’ll be rewarded for their time. Pretty quickly they get the idea; management’s interests be damned.
It’s less work for them to serve you alone slowly than you and 1 or 2 more turns of your table in the same time. Just make sure you’re paying them an appropriate hourly wage and they’ll be happy. Less if their other tables aren’t full, and full rate if you are no kidding reducing their total sales for their shift by clogging up an otherwise fully occupied table.
I eat 2-hour breakfasts and 4-hour dinners routinely. I have no sensation of anyone trying to rush me.
The standard I heard was you don’t tip on alcohol. I heard that decades ago, and it might not be valid today. However, I have always tipped based on the total bill, including wine, even when expensive. It sometimes leads to a very large tip, but I don’t care.
What seems to be routinely overlooked by promoters of a no-tipping system is that waitstaff generally seem to dislike the idea.
I’d be content with doing away with tipping and paying an appropriate extra amount for meals to fairly compensate restaurant staff, but I don’t get to decide these things.
This. If I’m buying high end wine, I’m also getting a high end experience for everything else.
In England, most restaurants are happy to turn over tables twice in an evening and some of the most expensive expect only one.
I researched this and saw on several sites the suggestion that 45 minutes was about the optimum time. I can’t ever remember a time when we took less than twice that when dining out.
We have regularly started a meal at 8pm and left at midnight. The tip, would likely be 10%.
Well, there’s dining out and there’s eating out.
If you just want to sit down, consume food, and go, in lieu of cooking dinner yourself that’s a rather different mission from going out as a social event in itself, with a special meal as part of the activities.
In a country where an ever-shrinking fraction of people even know how to cook or keep any food at home, one heck of a lot of people are eating out and one heck of a lot of restaurants, mostly chains, are dedicated to filling that role.
I’m with you, that dining out is the way to do it and 2 hours just barely cuts it, with 3 or 4 being more typical.
That sounds like my own personal hell.
It all depends on who your dining companions are. An evening in pleasant surroundings with witty conversation, good food and wine, and someone else doing all the hard work is my idea of heaven.
Of course YMMV
But isn’t it odd, a reward is required.
This is the norm in most of Europe, no grand tip is expected.
And I appreciate that, a lesson we would do well to take to heart.
Many years ago, I drove a taxi, part-time, in London. We were based in the Northern suburbs and often took people from their homes to a hotel reception for some grand event.
On a Friday evening, it was not an easy drive, but what annoyed me was that when I pulled up outside The Ritz or The Grosvenor House, a uniformed flunkey (aka commissionaire) would open the door for them, and paper money would change hands while all I got was the fare on account.
I was told those doorman jobs were so lucrative that they weren’t paid a wage.
Ahh, yes, but you overlooked something fundamental.
Europeans live is a society.
Americans live in an economy.
There is a difference.
I’d rather live in a society. But I’m stuck here, so I do what I can with the environment I’m surrounded by.
In an imperfect way it would be better.
It fits better into our silly American tipping culture.
One place can’t change tipping culture, so at least the 18% fee allows the restaurant to show competitive prices on its menu (competing with other restaurants who use standard tipping) while making it very clear (hopefully in large print) that they pay their wait staff via an 18% gratuity.
If they simply raised the prices, then that restaurant’s prices would appear inflated when compared to its neighbors, and many people would feel compelled to tip on top of that.
A proper living wage approach would require commitment across the nation to abolish tipping culture, and that won’t happen: the employers benefit and servers like the ability to positively influence their wages.
Bob, your story reminded me of when I drove for Uber and Lyft in San Francisco. With the tourist crowd, I liked to consider myself somewhat of an ‘ambassador to the city’. When someone was obviously a visiting tourist, I’d suggest something like “hey, on your way to X, Uber’s GPS is routing me via Y and I’m supposed to follow that, but if you have just a little extra time, if we go via Z then I can show you A, B, and C which are of interest.”
They would always say yes let’s do that, and it made their ride a little more fun.
I remember a couple from Indianapolis who was so happy they tipped me a $20 on a $25 fare. They then needed an early ride the next morning to the airport for their flight home, so I arranged to pick them up. Early the next morning I picked them up from their hotel. It was very early, like 0445hrs (and I live an hour away). When I dropped them off at SFO they gave me another $20 tip. Very nice!
And for another time, for a young lady who was a college student, I did that too. And when we got to her destination I told her I was done for the day and if she had some extra time I could show her some nearby sights. We ended up spending an hour together, sightseeing. When I finally dropped her off I didn’t receive much of a tip but I wasn’t expecting any from a broke college kid on her vacation. We had a fun time, and she wanted to take a selfie with me as a memento. It was a fun day and I still have that selfie.
Sometimes a ‘good tip’ can simply be the good memories from a chance encounter.
Funny, but I found that selfie she took with me. This was from 8 years ago, Oct 2017, on Telegraph Hill near Coit Tower.
Like I said, sometimes a ‘good tip’ can simply be the nice memories from a nice moment. This was a very good tip!
I don’t remember her name, and I’ll likely never ever see her again, but I have the nice memories of an afternoon in San Francisco that we spent together.
