Tipping 15%?

Great Debates
21

Responding to billehunt’s comments:
Nonsense. Restaurant owners choose the rate to pay waiters the same way all other job rates are figured in a free-market: supply and demand, what the market will bear. I.e. waiters are paid almost exactly what they are worth.

I was referring to the fact that when I worked in a restaurant, the waiters were paid below federal minimum wage.

It’s used in plenty of places. Bonuses, perks, stock options, raises, and tipping are all examples of pay tied to performance. Which is a good thing.

Disregarding the statement “this is a good thing”, the difference is that bonuses, perks, etc… are decided upon by your employer and/or co-workers, not by a member of the general public that has little or no knowledge of the internal situation at your company.

The world needs better integration of pay to performance. They tried that “from each man according to his abilities; to each man according to his needs” thing a while back. News flash! It was a disastrous failure.

That’s a naive view. One could easily well say that capitalism failed! Witness social programs and unions in all western european nations (including the USA). Unbalanced capitalism leads to the excesses that brought about communism/socialism. And we still can see portions of those ideals remaining in our social structure: welfare, unions, social security, etc…

22

ok everyone is bringing up very good points on the percentage of tipping… but going back the original thread… does anyone think it should really be based on a percentage? or on the number of people?

i mean, i know the system will never change, and it will always remain as a percentage, but i’d like to know what others think about it.

23

To answer the OP, and somewhere there’s another thread where I said this same exact thing, tipping on the percentage of the biill is really fair.

What you don’t see if you have not worked in restaurants is the separation of the "classes of restaurants, and how much goes into working at higher class establishments.

Let’s say you wish to apply to Mel’s Diner. They give you a uniform. Your training consists of remembering a few menu items, if that. Most of the responsibilities, aside from minor cleaning and sidework, is simply taking orders and plopping plates of $3 breakfast specials and $4 burgers on the table. Heck, these places even have cash registers so the server doesn’t have to mess with that!

Now, let’s have dinner in the local steakhouse with the $25+ entrees. First of all, a server there has to have vast experience at other establishments to get there, usually several years. This person has to pay a lot of attention to their appearance. They supply their own uniform, it’s usually somewhat expensive, and they must maintain it. They have to memorize every facet of intense, ever-changiing menus. They have to know about large wine lists and know what goes well with what entrees. They only have a couple of tables at a time, since they have to be at the beck and call of the diners. They have to do major sidework, which involves things such as cleaning silver, washing table covers, and other intricate duties, all of which is done when they are NOT making tips. And they only reach this point after as much as a couple of months as a servers assistant of some sort.

Now, who do you think woorks harder now?

As far as the tip complainers, all I can say is wouldn’t it be nice if every person who you had to deal with in some way while they were working for my benefit - from the rude cashier at the grocery store to the customer service rep at the phone company who puts you on hold for an hour, to the people we elect to govern us - got a vote that affected their paycheck which told them how good or bad a job they did?

Yer pal,
Satan

24

Topper:

My wife and I went to a restaurant which we had previously enjoyed to have supper. Just the two of us. We had a nice meal, with appetizers, wine, and dessert. The staff was friendly, helpful, and not intrusive (a crucial balance). We certainly would have tipped well (~20%?), until we noticed that the charge slip had a notice that 15% had been added “as a gratuity,” with a line below it for the tip. We paid the 115% to the penny, and have never gone back.

A committee is a lifeform with six or more legs and no brain.

25

I don’t know about other places but in all the hotels I’ve worked at waitstaff ARE REQUIRED to learn how to upsell. They are there to suggest and to sell you MORE. If you order item b the upsell to item a or suggest a complimentary side.

The goal is to produce more revenue. This was it IS fair to tip based on the bill.

On the flip, I have audited in hotels for years and virtually all waiters only declare the minimum in tips as I see them counting 50-100 in change I’ve given them for their “undeclared” tips. I think it for the most part evens itself out.

I also know waiters in upscale Gold Coast resturaunts can pull $40-$50K a year and work 4 days a week 6-7 hours a day. I must add all the waiters in this bracket are well seasoned, polished and smooze their butts off for the money.

26

JOSH: I hope you let the owner/mgr know, in a polite letter…

27

Re: Automatic tips put on large tables

Nobody can force you to tip, period, and simply posting a sign or putting a statement on the bottom of your menu does not take away this right from the customer.

Let me relate a true story, however, as to why places do this:

A waitress was working a large party with a bunch of kids at it at a place which stuck 15% on parties of eight or more. She was a very good waitress - always attentive, polite and everything you wanted your server to be. In fact, in order for her to give this table of (I think) 10 people better service, she asked me to pick up a couple of two-tops in her section.

The bill came out to something like $100. The server added the 15% gratuity in the computer. The matriarch of the table got the check, saw the gratuity, and complained.

The manager went over to the table. The woman complained that $15 was way more than she would ever tip for anything! The manager asked her what she would tip usually, and she said, “A couple of dollars.” The manager - being pro-employee and anti-asshole customer as best as one can be in a service industry - explained that the policy was there and that it was an APPROPRIATE tip, if in fact a little low.

The manager knew that legally, she could not MAKE the trashy woman pay the tip, but never imparted that upon the customer, and finally, she reluctantly paid the bill and the gratuity. The waitress - who the customer could not say a bad thing about - was very pleased.

I myself had customers ignorant of how to tip. I remember the guy who asked me what was appropriate, in fact. I replied 15% is standard for good service, 20% for excellent service. He looked at me very puzzled. Then he smiled, said something about how the service was good, and proceeded to leave me $2 on a $45 check. Not only was HOW to tip something he didn’t know, but simple math eluded him as well. :rolleyes:

As for you, the non-trash who knows how to tip, if you go into an establishment and you see this policy, BEFORE you do anything, ask to speak with the manager. Tell the manager that you disagree with the automatic gratuity on principal and that you did not want it to be automatically included on your bill. Tell the manager that if the service is excellent, you are likely to leave MORE than that anyway, but that’s not the point.

If you come off as a carbon-based life form, the manager will agree right there and inform the server not to include it. Even if the manager is somewhat dense or gets the wrong idea (as I said, some are very pro-staff and get overprotective of them), explain as nicely as you can that they cannot by law MAKE you leave a tip. That should make it very clear how you feel about things.

Then, when you get good service, tip more than that.

As for the establishment which added a gratuity to a party of two, I would have asked the manager what that was all about. I would be curious how they would justify such bullshit…

Yer pal,
Satan

28

*As far as the tip complainers, all I can say is wouldn’t it be nice if every person who you had to deal with in some way while they were working for my benefit - from the rude cashier at the grocery store to the customer service rep at the phone company who puts you on hold for an hour, to the people we elect to govern us - got a vote that affected their paycheck which told them how good or bad a job they did?*I don’t think it would be nice. It should be up to my manager/supervisor to determine my compensation, not up to some member of the general public. If you’re upset about the performance of an employee, you should let that person’s supervisor know. Otherwise we have the situation that you’ve mentioned in your example, where someone wants to give a $2.00 tip on a $100 bill.

Another thing I don’t understand, why is it OK to automatically add the tip to a large bill and not a small bill? If people are going to undertip, they are just as capable of doing it when there are only two people on the bill as when there are 6.

29

Re: Automatic gratuity

I pulled a tour at Cracker Barrel in my undergrad days. They do not have an automatic gratuity added to the bill, regardless of the size of the party.

Every Cracker Barrel server can tell you the story of the party of twelve that took up the entirety of your energy and attention for an hour and a half, ran you to death the whole time, had no problem at all with the service, and left no tip whatsoever. My thought was that in a party that large, it is just easy to get sidetracked and forget to leave a tip. I think other people just assumed that a tip would be included on a party that large, and thought it had already been added in. Then again, some people are just assholes. Quite frankly, there are a lot of people who eat at Cracker Barrel who never eat out anywhere else, and don’t understand the tip concept.

The justification from Cracker Barrel was that people might want to leave more than 15%, so adding 15% discourages them from doing so. I tried to explain to the managers that 1.)this is not Ruth’s Chris, this is freakin’ Cracker Barrel–I could count the number of parties that ever left me over 15% on my testicles, let alone big parties, and 2.) even if it were so, you only have to get stiffed once to make up for every three or four big tippin’ parties.

The management basically told me I had no idea what I was talking about, and I had no right to question their corporate dogma–er, policy. (I’m not kidding–they quite often told me that I was not to question anything they told me to do. It’s a great place to eat if you want home cookin’, but their management has that eerie cult thing going on.)

I can see where the auto tip wouldn’t be a good idea at a nice place, where people know how to tip, appreciate good service, and won’t forget about it. At the low-roller joint, though, just accept it on behalf of the servers.

Dr. J

“Seriously, baby, I can prescribe anything I want!” -Dr. Nick Riviera

30

I have earned a living off of these gratuities for many years. I have travelled all over the world and worked in many different kinds of establishments,slowly moving from beerhalls to cuisine. I have always made a lucrative living this way because I am very good at what I do.

I never complain about people who don’t tip because I don’t see very many of them. If they are boors or just don’t know how to tip so what. They are still the minority.

Tipping for good service works, that’s why it’s been around for so long. People who do such jobs, dealing on the front lines with the ever harsh John Q Public, often need the encouragement of being rewarded directly for holding the customers desires to be more important than the chef’s or the restauranteurs, that’s what people really want in a restaurant experience.

The server makes sure the customers wants are not bulldozeed by the powerful and distorted perspectives of owner and cooks etc.

Wisdom is the boobie prize,they give you when you’ve been --unwise!

31

I would like to see tipping vanish, if we then compensated wait-staff properly.

If not vanish, then I think that we should do one of two things:

  1. Have some kind of standard that is not % based, but based on such things as work involved, helpfulness, knowledge, timeliness, etc. (BTW, unless I am a regular, I don’t ask for friendliness, and sometimes dislike haveing the ovelry chatty person when I just want to talk to my friend or read my book. So, Carl, don’t tell me your name and about your day).

  2. The old practice, I believe, was to leave tip money on the table throughout and to add or subtract from it as the dinner/evening progressed.

Related thought–virtually every person who I know who has waited will voluntarily complain about being stiffed on tips. With a bit of prodding though, I’ll also hear about $100-300 shifts of a few hours, of which they’ll report far less to the IRS. Bad tippers are annoying, but people who stay with the jobs (and especially those who are good at it) know that they can be cancelled out by other factors.

P.S. Why should the % increase? It was 10% when my dad was about my age. The food prices have gone up, why should the tip % go up?

Bucky

32

Bucky
Would you like to be paid what your Dad was getting at your current age? Grow up.

Wisdom is the boobie prize,they give you when you’ve been --unwise!

33

SingleDad:

Thereby removing the incentive for good service. But then, you don’t believe in the ‘reward for effort’ concept, anyway.

I usually tip in the 20% - 25% range, even for adequate service, and am careful to be pleasant and polite with my waitperson. Very seldom, however, for real crappy service, I’ll not tip at all.

::

34

**

Right… And everyone who sucks at their jobs are always docked in pay, and those who go above and beyond the calls of their job duties always get a little something extra in their pay checks… :rolleyes:

**

All of you who favor abolishing gratuities are missing the obvious point here. If restaurants had to pay servers a normal wage, their payroll expenses - in most restaurants already exponentially higher than other fields - our meals would literally DOUBLE in price, a ton of independent restaurants would simply go out of business, unable to afford things even with increased food costs, and service would get worse.

I mean, if you want to cut off your nose to cut your face, feel free. I’m not so keen on the price of my $7 burger becoming the price of a $14 steak.

Do the math! A table of six or more is going to have a higher price. A large table also takes extra effort from the server, and time away from being able to take more tables. A couple of jerks at a table of two will make a server get a bit miffed. A table of 12 leaving nothing could very well mean not paying the rent.

And as I said, this is not mandatory! it is against the law for a restaurant to do this! If you don’t want to, because of lousy service, raise a stink! But as I suggested before, bringing this up before-hand will help avoid making you look like a dick, even if you’re not one.

Yer pal,
Satan

35

**

Care to comment on exactly what I said in the post above about what this would do to costs, independent restaurants and the quality of service?

**

Why don’t you look at the post I did earlier this morning, which showed in very simple English how tipping on percentage ESSENTIALLY DOES EXACTLY THIS!

Ever work in a restaurant? Do you have a clue how things work in that industry?

**

A good serer knows what a table wants very quickly into the meal - usually as you are sitting down. And I happen to be friendly without eating your meal for you.

**

You’re high. I need a cite for this. And even if that was the case, it was done away with because it’s boorish and condescending beyond words.

“Oh! It took you thirty seconds too long to get our drinks… Watch me take away a dollar!”

Yeah, THAT’S an incentive too give good service. It would be an incentive for me to spill your hot coffee on your lap. Accidentally, of course…

**

Yeah… Otherwise, why would they do it? I mean, putting up with self-confessing “unfriendly” people who hate tipping… I mean, there CAN’T be a lot of satisfaction out of THAT.

All I know is that I have no problem being the good tipper who offsets the trash.

**

Are you aware what the salary is for servers? Two fucking dollars and thirteen fucking cents. So this is why tipping has gone up. Deal with it.

Yer pal,
Satan

36

satan: if we agree that getting 15% steadily make the pay fair, how would just paying the servers 1 the equivilant of 15% more double the cost of the food. Wages are about 10-20% of the overall overhead, which includes cooks, mgrs, bookeepers, etc. So, if you assume wages of servers go up to say, double, which is in line w/ IRS figures of 8% of total sales in tips, food prices would go up a whopping 8-10%. In order for the prices to double, current server wages would have to = 50% of overhead.

Re your current wages of 2 & change + tips? Do you have figures to back that up? I tip 10% rounded to the nearest for OK service in a coffeshop/burger joint. Up to 20% plus a buck or 2 for the other staff for superb service in top rest.

37

Okay, here is the simplest way I can illustrate what doing away with tips and paying servers a fair wage in their checks would do.

In restaurants, payroll is a major expense. On top of that, a restaurant has more servers than all other positions combined, because a kitchen can have a couple guys on the line handle the orders of, say, ten tables at once, but a server could not reasonably handle more than 3-4 at a time (unless you want service to suck).

Now then, in a sample work week at our fictitious restaurant Chez Cecil, staff hours (not including the management team of Cecil, Ed Zotti and some lackey they hired) for payroll budgeting are as follows:

KITCHEN - 500 Hours a week
DISHWASHER / BUSBOYS - 100 Hours a week
HOSTS - 100 Hours a week
WAIT STAFF - 750 Hours a week

I used to manage restaurants and make schedules, and the above is not too out of the realm for a moderately busy establishment open for lunch and dinner, open from 11AM-1AM (with openers and closers needed a couple hours before and after) which has defined rush periods at lunch and dinner.

Let’s assume that the average kitchen pay is $10 an hour. We’ll put the dishwashers and hosts/hostesses at $7.50 an hour. (Both numbers are not unreasonable for anything above fast food). The servers make $2.13 an hour under the current system. (I am not putting bartenders in here because my head is exploding already. It’s in a dry town, okay?)

As such, the total payroll budget, and this is assuming there is no overtime (not the easiest thing to assume in this business), the above would mean the store pays out in a week for payroll would be: $8097.50.

Now, say we bump the servers wage up to $10 an hour, which is what the cooks make. Thiswould almost guarantee that the service would get worse. The store’s weekly payroll (again, under ideal situations) jumps to $14,000.00!

The net result - again, without overtime at all, is an increase of nearly 60% on their payroll costs!

So, where do you think this money is going to come from? Right out of your pocket, that’s where.

And I think it’s obvious from this demonstration that many independent restaurants would go under, the folks who work at those places will be out of work, the folks who manage to keep restaurants open will employ less people (which hurts service even more and also leaves people unemployed) and overall, with fewer people eating out due to prices twice as much as they were before (and way higher than groceries), the whole economy goes down the tubes!

Don’t look at a gratuity as a pain in the ass! Look at it as you doing your civic duty to keep this great country from another depression!

Yer pal,
Satan

38

[QUOTE]
Originally posted by microshroom:
**As it stands now, your waiter gives you your bill, you leave him 15% of the subtotal as tip, and end of story.
But does the amount of energy and effort exerted to bring you the dinner require a greater tip than that of the breakfast? I mean, you’re still only being brought one plate of food and a drink. Why does it matter how much the food on the plate costs? Sure, maybe the steak dinner might weigh a little more, but we’re talking ounces, barely noticeable when carried.

So shouldn’t the amount of tip be based on the number of people?

I must take an unpopular position that only waitstaff or individuals who have been at the mercy of the consuming public for their livelyhood could take----tip as kindly as you feel towards them, regardless of the price of the meal(s). A good server endevours to make an impression on the customer, even if only by a hand on the shoulder or a quick smile. Believe you me. waitstaff that look at you funny and seem to always deliver the wrong orders to the wrong patrons have it in for ya!!! Have antidote handy

39

Satan says “Right… And everyone who sucks at their jobs are always docked in pay, and those who go above and beyond the calls of their job duties always get a little something extra in their pay checks…” followed by the rolling eyes of sarcasm.

I’m not sure what that is supposed to mean. Are you saying that managers are incapable of rewarding good employees, and that tippers are more adept at adequately compensating the hardest workers? If that’s what you’re saying, I can tell you from experience that the generalization is incorrect.

*All of you who favor abolishing gratuities are missing the obvious point here. If restaurants had to pay servers a normal wage, their payroll expenses - in most restaurants already exponentially higher than other fields - our meals would literally DOUBLE in price, a ton of independent restaurants would simply go out of business, unable to afford things even with increased food costs, and service would get worse.

I mean, if you want to cut off your nose to cut your face, feel free. I’m not so keen on the price of my $7 burger becoming the price of a $14 steak.*

First of all, I don’t see how that’s relevant. From your argument, my food would be even cheaper if the waiters were not paid at all, and the tips went up to 25%? Great! Maybe we should have the waiters pay for the privilege of working in the restaurant, and raise tips to 30%? :rolleyes:

Secondly, I don’t see how your calculations are justified. Let’s assume that a waiter gets a base salary of $x per hour, and with tips the salary becomes $y per hour. The difference between y and x is the tips paid by me, the customer. Increase the salary of the waiter to $y per hour. To generate the revenue needed for the increased wages of the serving staff, add the amount of the tip in to the full price of the meal as listed on the menu. The consumer should notice no difference in the total outlay of money for the dining experience.

In your example above, the total payroll has not increased by 100%. And the payroll is not the whole cost incurred by a restaurant owner, there is food, rent, equipment, etc… I don’t think your example justifies your conclusion that meal prices would double.

Your conclusion

has not been borne out by my experience. In Switzerland, twenty years ago, tipping was expected. Since then (can’t say the exact year, since I was out of the country) the general restaurant policy changed to increase server salary and omit tips. There has been no economic chaos or widespread failure of restaurants as you predict, in fact I get the impression of a higher percentage of restaurants per population every time I visit.

My question about “why add in the gratuity for large parties” was satisfactorily answered (in my view) by DoctorJ who said “My thought was that in a party that large, it is just easy to get sidetracked and forget to leave a tip.” It’s true that I’ve commonly seen in large parties people underpaying or forgetting what they ordered, so if the tip is included in the price, it’s a good reminder of the total owed.

40

SATAN: We get these handy dandy charts from Price-waterhouse, which show industry average expenses for a lot of industies. In food service, payroll is only about 20% of the total overhead. COGS & rent are the highest.
So, if we increase overall payroll by 60%, overall overhead, and thus prices, go up by a big 12%. Hey, bucko, never challenge an enrolled agent on $ numbers crap. I concede you know more about waitering, but…

Also remember an eatery has to pay advertising, utilities, car, insurance, draws, and etc, etc,