My general rule to cover what is actually happening is that if you aren’t giving me any personal service beyond taking my order, putting it in a bag, and taking my money, you are not getting one red cent of tip. If you are a service industry person working at the local cookie counter at the mall, and you think you need tips to supplement your income, you are free to go get a job at a restaurant where our societal conventions have decreed as a tipping environment.
I should print up a bunch of “tips” to put in these stupid, inappropriate jars - “Don’t eat yellow snow.” “Never try to catch a falling knife.” “Don’t ask people for money for nothing.” There’s a good tip for you.
I agree with the first part, but I hope you only are thinking about the second part. That would be a jerkish thing to really do. They are still basically kids earning shit at a crummy job. Sometimes it is hard to get a better job for a while. I know I did not want to work at Wendy’s and Friendly’s when I was 17, but it took a year before I moved up to a Math Tutor job and Stockboy/Delivery at a pharmacy. I still didn’t like the way my life was going and joined the Navy, but that might be a less appealing option currently.
BTW: If it is not a kid at the counter, think how shitty their life is if they are middle aged and stuck working at cookie counter. I still won’t tip them, but I won’t despise them for hoping.
When you hand back the receipt, you could just say that you’d left a tip (or will leave a tip, depending on the situation) in cash on the table. That’s usually what I do.
An unearned quarter is just a quarter they’re not getting from me. It’s the principle of the thing. I don’t give money to panhandlers on the street for holding out their hands, either.
No,What Exit, I don’t put anything in their jars; I just ignore them and hope they’ll go away.
At a admin job with no handy parking I often had to stop my real work to go down 10 floors and deliver finished products to people in cars, sometimes running up a block or more, in the rain once in a while, not to mention having do to actual long on-foot deliveries when the runners were busy, and no one tipped me, and I wouldn’t expect them to either. It was annoying as hell, but it wasn’t the customer’s fault and I didn’t expect them to pay for it. I see take-out pretty similarily and so I never tip unless someone has done something really awesome for me. tip-outs sound shitty, but even if they exist I know for a fact that they’re not standard policy in every single restaurant, and i’m not about to start asking the ones where I don’t know. In any case that’s not the customer’s fault either, so I’m not giving out anything but my sympathy. Maybe it would be different if I were rich, but I’m decidedly not, so that’s moot.
The stories I hear about tip sharing and horrible wages in food service frighten me. That’s why I avoid any structured job where the wage isn’t decent by itself as best I can.
At a Waffle House here in NC there is a sign on the front door, at eye level, stating that there is a 10% tip included in the cost of each take-out.
Makes me wonder why they just don’t include the extra 10% in the price.
On a slightly different tangent, it annoys me that I’m expected to tip at “buffet style” restaurants, where I pay for my meal at the cash register going in, and I get to fill up my own plate from the food line and carry it to my table.
Naturally, as soon as I sit down there is a server who magically appears and identifies himself/herself and (if I’m lucky) clears away empty plates when I go back for seconds.
I know I’m expected to leave a tip, and I always do, but that doesn’t mean I don’t resent paying for service that I (mostly) had to perform myself.
I tip 20% + at restaurants. At Buffets I tip 15% max. They are not serving food, but if they do a good job clearing the plate, refilling our drink and getting us the bill, they deserve 15%. Just my opinion of course.
This is a new one for me. Granted, I generally don’t frequent buffet-style restaurants (the only ones around here are asian and I’m a picky eater) but I was under the impression that most of them include a general gratuity fee on the bill to pay for the service of plate-clearers, bartenders, drink-bearers, etc.
I’m not sure how that stuff is rung in, nor whether the servers are expected to tip out, so I’m quite ignorant as to why a 15% tip would be required.
Anyone work in one of these places? Is the tip included in the general per-plate fee, and if not, what is a reasonable tip and why?
At buffet places, I nearly always tip. The amount depends on the service. At high end Sunday brunches, where they serve champagne the the waitperson brings coffee and orange juice, and the plates are cleaned quickly, I’ll go up to 15%. At places where you get your own drinks, and you wind up putting dirtly plates on an empty table, not so much.
I’m confused also. Not about how a waiter’s life sucks - that’s why I tip high when eating in. But about the other stuff.
When I do take out, I call in and get the host/cashier, not a waiter. When I get there before the food is ready (usually the case) the food comes out of the kitchen packaged to go. Does the cook plate the food, and then you put it in containers? When I order to go at our company cafeteria, the food line server dumps my food into a container, not on a plate. I don’t see why it would be different inside a kitchen. The utensils (plastic, not metal) are in the bag, or in one place I go the cashier puts the chopsticks in.
The exception is for doggie bags - but we of course tip normally on that food.
Take out customers don’t take up table space like eat-in customers, and don’t require silverware and plates that need to be washed. They don’t go to the toilet and use water and supplies. Yet we get charged the same amount (no complaint there). I suspect the owner’s profit margin is higher for takeout than for eat-in. If they didn’t make money. they don’t have to offer the service - except maybe for Chinese restaurants and the like where it is customary.
Unless this is some strange Canadian law about tipping out on takeout, you’re getting ripped off and the processes in your restaurant are screwed up.
But, those are the basic requirements of any commercial transaction. It’s not like I go into a retail store, walk up to the register, scan my items, swipe the card, try to sell myself a warranty… If I don’t tip for those transactions, why should I tip when I happen to be purchasing food?
There is a pastrami place near where I work that charges extra for takeout. They have so little table space, though, that we’ll often go elsewhere, rather than pay extra to not sit at their tables and get free drink refills.
The hot wing place I used to work at actually charged LESS for takeout, but then again, the alternative was that we’d bring the food to YOU (and the drivers got 70 cents, on top of our tips and wages, for each delivery, presumably to help defray the gas costs involved in hauling ass accross two cities to deliver food in our personal vehicles, this apparantly came out of the $1 delivery fee on the $10 minimum orders).
True enough. However, your local Radio Shack guy isn’t giving a percentage of every sale he makes back to the owner of the franchise, either. The comparison is moot in a tipping conversation, as there is no such beast as “tipping” in your average retail store.
, that is exactly what I do. Sorry for the unneeded Soapbox bit.
