Lemon with hot tea is common even in low end places, in my experi nice here in the US. But I can’t remember ever being given milk.
Hot tea isn’t served with milk/cream in the US? I highly doubt this.
Sent from my XT1635-02 using Tapatalk
Doubt it all you like - it is unusual enough to be noticeable when it is. Out of the last 100 times I’ve ordered a hot tea in California I can probably count the number of times it automatically came with dairy on my fingers. Maybe on one hand. I’ve been asked if I wanted some a few more times, but it really isn’t standard here, at least in non-upper end restaurants. We just don’t do dairy with tea much - I always drink mine black( + or - sweetener )and so does every other person I know( and I’m considered the resident “tea snob” at work ).
But I should amend that by adding that at least some places that specialize in breakfast DO often have some sort of dairy just sitting on the table as par for the course. Of course it is meant for coffee ;).
The only reason I know some people take tea with milk is because of the internet.
Jackson? As in Jackson Wyoming? The state with maximum tip credit against the lowest minimum wage in the country? Great place to screw your waitstaff over.
Technically, the “tip credit” is supposed to be provisional: the employer must guarantee full minimum wage for slow hours but may offset what they pay waitstaff based on the assumption of tipping. The Federal minimum wage for tipped employees is $2.13/hr – Wyoming is one of 18 states that uses that minimum, with a tip credit of $3.02, to reach a minimum wage of $5.15. To stiff your server in a place like that is the apex of suckfulness.
Yes, the situation with minimum wage and tip credit is already teh suck, and we cannot expect foreigners to understand it. Hell, a large fraction of Americans are not aware of it. We should try to unfuck these people, but I fear the result might end up worse for everyone.
Doubt all you want. Sometimes I have to ask for something to lighten my coffee. Not frequently, but sometimes.
I was born here, but developed a taste and a preference for tea, living in London a very long time back. In the fifty years since, ordering tea in all kinds of eateries in the US, I have ALWAYS ALWAYS had to ask for milk or cream separately. EVERY TIME. Again, unless, as someone else said, I chanced to be able to take advantage of the servings of cream that were specifically left for the much more common COFFEE drinkers.
And as for people who think it’s ever an act of cleverness to leave an “insult tip,” just don’t even think about doing it, until AFTER you have had a job for at least a year AS A SERVER yourself. You just don’t know what you are talking about, if you decide to “communicate” your concerns about a restaurant by exacerbating the already idiotically horrible system of payment for the wait staff.
One last note: though I have myself NOT been a waiter, I have had all sorts of other jobs in the US, and there is one thing that all of them have in common:
self-centered, self-righteous people ALWAYS think they know exactly how much a given worker makes, and they ALWAYS think they know how easy the workers job is, and they are INVARIABLY dead wrong.
I assumed Mississippi. But turns out there are Jacksons in half the states in the union, so who knows.
I’ll be asked if I’d like milk on occasion, especially when I lived in New England, but the vast majority of the time it is not automaticallly be served with milk.
Honestly Quartz, what you did would be considered pretty low behavior for most Americans eating out.
For future reference, here’s the ruler:
If it’s not cooked right, that’s on the chef. If you can see it’s not correct, and the server brings it anyway, then it’s on the server.
My mother once worked as a waitress in a restaurant, and she told me that many waiters and waitresses are constantly doing the mental math and calculating in their head how much of a tip they should be getting from patrons’ meals while the service is in progress. They know very well if they are getting the over/under.
Why would you highly doubt this?
The restaurant was far from busy. And I learned of the insult tip a long while ago. From the Dope. And I did press the staff on the delay. This was supposed to be the high end restaurant but I had far better service in the low end one the night before - and that was far busier.
How is any of this relevant? You showed incredibly poor form.
Stop trying to justify your ridiculous 5-cent tip. You messed up, you’re in the U.S. for the first time apparently, learn from this, move on. But stop trying to make it sound like you’re just doing what all Americans do when they get sub-par service. We don’t. Assholes do this. It matters not-a-whit that you “learned of” this here, or there, or whatever. Again, assholes do this, not normal people.
Not true, and we’ve been over this a million times on this MB. ALL employees, including tipped employees, are required, by law, to be paid the higher of the federal or state minimum wage, so at least $7.25.
How long was the wait for the eggs, anyway?
This is what happens when foreign visitors to the United States take their cues on social edicate from Archer. And for future reference, the o.p. or anyone else finds the food or service to be inadequate, the appropriate thing to do is to address it to the waitstaff and if the manager if necessary rather than applying the doctine of the ‘insult tip’, which appears to be a thing made up by people who have never worked in food service. Speaking to the waitperson or manager takes only a modicum of personal fortitude and decency lacking any evidence in the o.p., and is often appreciated by the management which will generally ‘comp’ (remove) the cost of the offending meal with apology, and will take steps with the culpable parties to correct errors in service and preparation.
The waitstaff in most American restaurants are only cursorily familiar with food preparation and despite the perception that the establishment was not busy are frequently moving as quickly as they can to get meals served, especially at breakfast which is typically understaffed. Larger kitchens will have an expediter whose job is specifically to finish plates and perform quality checks. Again, if the quality of the food is not to the patron’s liking every restaurant I have ever worked in or had cause to make complaint offers to comp the meal, even if the food was prepared to the particular standard of the kitchen. At any rate, there is no way that the waitperson could have known that an egg was overcooked or that the Hollindaise was inadequate. (I am also of the opinion that if you order Hollindaise in a restaurant of unproven mettle, you’re begging trouble to begin with.)
As for milk in tea, not only is this not a common and accepted thing in the United States or elsewhere in North America, but that would be easily remediated by, again, making the request of the server for the appropriate grade of milk which is almost certainly in stock in the kitchen. Going to another country and expecting that their culinary customs will be exactly what one expects at home is the height of the entitled former imperialist that people so love to mock the British for being, and the o.p. lives up to the stereotype like a drunken sailor on a Sunday morning.
Stranger
Were the eggs served on a chrome plate?
'Cause there’s no plate like chrome for the hollandaise.