It makes sense to me. Why not tip them all the same? The servers at Denny’s probably need the money more.
It’s more complicated than that. If you go to a Very Nice place, your server has one or two tables at a time. At Dennys, they likely have six. This is why at a Very Nice place, you never wait for anything, but at Denny’s you may well wait 10 minutes to place your order, or for a drink refill, or to get your check when you are ready. If you tipped the same at both places, the Denny’s serverwould be making much more money than the Nice Place server. And Denny’s person is not working harder–they are just working different. They are both busting their ass just distributing their labor differently. And the Nice Place server also probably has a lot more training and education in the menu, cooking, wines . . .
That said, while I usually tip 20%ish, I do have a flat minimum: on a split check, I never tip less than $3 and on a table I never tip less than $5. And I do adjust my tip for the norms of the establishment: if I order the cheapest possible meal, I will probably be more likely to tip a higher percentage than if I order the most expensive entree.
I agree with everyone above who says you should just follow the custom here.
THAT said, I wish we could change the custom to tipping a flat amount per person. I don’t like how the tip is tied to the price of the meal, because it’s the same work for the server to bring me an $8 sandwich or a $40 steak. Tipping 20% on a $12 meal (easy to do at breakfast or lunch) is a measly $2.75. I once had a waiter throw a bitch fit when I left a $5 tip – yeah, on a $20 meal, so that’s a 25% tip. I was not stiffing him! I still get bugged when I think about this years later. I tip well!
Flat tips – say $5-10 per person, depending in the venue and quality of service – seem like a much better idea.
I have a mixture of flat and percentage tipping: my minimum is $1 plus 10%. I don’t see why expensive stuff should be paid that much more than cheap stuff for the same work but there is still the expectation. Of course, that is just for mediocre service and I usually add onto this, and round up to the nearest quarter or half dollar (I round down at buffets, because all they do at buffets is refill my water.)
It’s explained above. The waiter serving your $40 steak is serving far fewer tables than the one serving your $8 sandwich.
Yet the ones serving the sandwich always look less prosperous. Why is that?
In defense of tipping, it does encourage someone to do a good job. I always tip very well, and tend to frequent the same places. When I see a server going out of there way to snag me as a customer, I can pretend it’s because they like my personality.
I think that poster is talking about the same restaurant.
If on one day I go to a nice restaurant and order their $8.00 sandwich - the waiter is doing the same amount of work as if I order the $40.00 steak. More or less - assuming you aren’t asking for modifications.
I, like others, have a minimum I tip (usually $5.00) - and will tip 20% otherwise most of the time.
It’s been over 20 years ago, but when I worked the service industry, there was a spot on my time card where I was supposed to write down my daily tips. THAT"S what I was taxed on. It never mattered how much food I sold. Except for when I worked room service, which had a 15% gratuity added on every bill.
Right – same restaurant. Same number of trips to the table, same quality of service, but the tip amount changes because the price of the meal changes. This seems silly.
I like the idea of a minimum tip; I don’t know why it didn’t occur to me before, but I’ll do that from now on.
They’re not as good at their job?
Look, you run a top shelf fine dining establishment, the wait staff is an important part of the operation. They are the front line in ensuring your customers are happy and come back for repeat business. They provide a high level of service to a small number of diners per night. You want them to be highly skilled, highly trained, and provide a top shelf fine dining experience. You don’t get those people if they don’t get paid accordingly. They DO get paid accordingly, using the American Tipping Method, because customers leave tips based on the high price of the food, and not a fixed dollar amount per head.
You run a diner, the wait staff is different. They take the order, drop it off, put out the food and refill your coffee. They manage to get paid decently because they run a bunch of tables even though their tips are based on the lower cost of food. They do not get paid as well as the fine dining wait staff, different skills, different pay.
A fixed dollar amount per head would turn this dynamic around and the Diner staff would be much higher paid than the Fine Dining staff. It’s not an insurmountable problem, the Fine Dining restaurant would have to pay a higher base salary, but that isn’t how the the system works.
It feels like I’m not tipping anything when I don’t leave something extra even when there’s a mandatory gratuity so I usually leave a dollar extra for room service. Also at small gatherings at restaurants.
At large gatherings at restuarants where there’s a prix fixe menu with mandatory gratuity I sometimes even add additional tip but that’s only if there is decidedly good service.
And you were my favorite kind of customer! 
AND they get stiffed a lot.
From what I’ve been told, its fairly rare to get stiffed at a really nice restaurant (although why Dave knows that those waiters look more prosperous when he doesn’t eat at those places is beyond me - I eat out a lot in the U.S. - I however don’t eat at Perkins - but I can’t tell the relative net worth of the waiter at the $70 a plate French restaurant from that at the $15 a plate pub - in the french restaurant, her uniform is nicer, but its a uniform - not her clothes. In the $15 a plate restaurant, we were in last night, it was black chinos, and colored polo shirt with the pub logo on it, a nice set of earrings, a very nice $100+ dye and cut on her hair - after all, she makes a lot of tips off guys). A lot of expensed dinners come through nice restaurants.
But its common to get stiffed when you wait tables at Dennys or Perkins. They cater to an older generation that still thinks a 10% tip is appropriate and a lot of people who don’t tip at all.
The practice of allowing restaurants to underpay their employees may be immoral, but the practice of tipping is not. It would be immoral to tip less than 15% for basic service when you know that is how the server is getting paid, even if the burden of paying the employee has been immorally shifted to you.
Flat rate tips are uncommon, and telling the server about it before hand even more so. Don’t do it anymore than you would drive down the middle of the road as compromise between driving on the left or the right side.
I know right?!
The Denny’s parking lot is full of rusty old shitboxes like Cavaliers and Escorts while my favourite high end restaurant’s parking lot is all MB, BMW, etc… and not the base models either. Those high end restaurant waiters are raking in the bucks to be driving such nice cars. Oh, wait…
You should perhaps be having doubts about the accuracy of the article. I have no idea whether 20% of Americans really tip a flat amount or not, but if no one here knows anyone who does this then maybe the Slate piece is wrong about how common the practice is. I just followed up on their source for that claim, and the figure comes from a 2001 survey. That’s kind of a long time ago, so even if this was accurate then it may not be now. If flat tipping was most common among elderly people (something Slate says but the original source does not) then this practice may literally have died off.
If you are determined to base your tips off a single survey from 12 years ago, the original article says that the average tip for flat tippers was $4.67. It doesn’t say if that’s per person or per table, though. I checked the CPI Inflation Calculator, and $4.67 in 2001 dollars would be $6.14 today.
God these tipping threads are so retarded!!! Just do what’s customary for our country. It’s not that difficult. Your “plan” sounds stupid.
I’ve worked in restaurants quite a bit, and here’s my take on it:
Attitude counts for more than money.
The cool tourist dad with the cool kids doesn’t have to tip as much as others.
If you’ll be eating in the same restaurant over and over, then yes, try for 15% for average-to-good service.
But other wise, feel free to be creative. A happy face drawn on a dollar is a plausible tip.
My uncle is a flat tipper. He tells the server at the beginning of the meal what she can expect her tip to be, if he has no qualms with the service. Every time he has to ask for his drink to be refilled, send her back for something that should have been included (asked for soup spoon, needs a steak knife) etc., he takes a portion of the tip away. He tells the server all of this in advance.
He’s a generous tipper if the server caters to his every whim. He’s also the guy that attempts to “grease” just about everyone he comes in contact with in a restaurant. The maitre d, the sommelier. But my uncle is also a wealthy, self-important jerk and everyone in my family absolutely abhors going out to eat with him.