In this column about tipping the question of alchohol rears its head again. I don’t care about tax, but I have always included the booze in my tips. Why not? If I were to sit at the bar, I would tip whoever served me my drinks. Doesn’t the waiter/waitress tip out to the bartender at the end of the night, as a rule? I’ve never understood the alchoholic beverage exception. Does anyone care to explain it to me?
Re the reply given;
In parts of Europe, service is charged on the bill, usually at 10% or 12.5%. This is often illegal, depending on the country; the price for food is meant to be an all-in price. I suggest that anyone faced with a compulsory service charge should a) check that the waiting staff receive this and/or b) pay the wait person directly.
Incidentally, its always good manners to leave something while travelling in Europe, if the service is not included- US citizens have a reputation as lousy tippers, possibly because they assume that the service is included and that the wait staff get this charge!
(The phrase in French menus is “Service compris”, can’t speak for other languages)
Hope that this is of some help to someone 
GS
I just found it amusing that Dex decided to “eschew” the word “waitperson” and used it three times, anyway.
I think there are two good reasons to make every attempt to tip in cash rather than add it to you credit card bill. One is the tiny percentage that it is sometimes reduced because of the charges of the credit card company, and the second is that the IRS uses the charge slips to determine the waiter’s income.
Hah! You guys have it easy! In Israel SOME restaurants include the tip in the bill (normally 12% now)… and some don’t!
You gotta read the fine print at the bottom every time.
Rate depends on the restaurant and time of day:
Fast food/Diner/“servez-vous”/service included: no tip or small change
Business lunch/relatively inexpensive place: 10-15% if you tip at all (business lunch from work at a place with arrangement with employer - up to you, often little or no tip)
Evening meal at a medium/high class place: 12-20%. (but anything under 15% is CHEAP, even if still barely acceptable)
There tends to be a correlation between class of restaurant (low…) and including the service in the price.
And yes, you are expected to tip based on the total amount of money coming out of your pocket. Including booze. Including taxes.
Wondering how it goes other places in the world?
(Dex - you get NIS0.02 additional to my sig as a tip )
And encouraging tax evasion is fun! :rolleyes:
Honestly, I’d like to see the practice of mandatory tipping simply done away with. Just pay the plate jockeys at least minimum wage and treat their position like every other job on Earth.
And I’m seriously annoyed at being called a “cheapskate” because I tip a MERE 15% instead of 20%. Did waiters suddenly start doing 33% more work over the past couple years to deserve this raise?
Of course, I’ve had waiters give me the hairy eyeball for ordering water with my meal. Yes, Pierre, that means your tip will be slightly smaller but I really don’t feel like spending $2 on a splash of Coke and a bunch of ice, now move along - I’ve got pennies to pinch.
Generally in Ireland we tip anyway…even if service charge is included…it’s just polite if you got good service.
If you got lousy service they get a service charge anyway and you just don’t tip, it makes more of an impact than a small tip without leaving anyone down on their income.
I’ve always tipped based on the total bill, drinks and all. I’ve always been pretty generous with my tips, as well, as long as service wasn’t lousy. That said, I’ve often wondered about the fairness of the whole tipping thing.
Example 1: I go into a family restaurant. A host seats me. The waitress takes my drink order, announces the specials, and banters a bit. She delivers my drink and takes my meal order, assuming I’m ready (if not, she answers any questions helpfully and comes back.) She delivers the meal promptly when it’s ready. She checks back at decent intervals to make sure I’m satisfied, refill my drink, etc. When I finish, she hands me the bill and thanks me for my patronage. Total bill: $20.00, her tip is $3.00 (using the 15% rule.)
Example 2: I go into an upscale restaurant, proud of their linen tableclothes. A host seats me. The waitress takes my drink order, announces the specials, and banters a bit. She delivers my drink and takes my meal order, assuming I’m ready (if not, she answers any questions helpfully and comes back.) She delivers the meal after an eternity - but what do you expect from such an elegant place? She checks back at decent intervals to make sure I’m satisfied, refill my drink, etc. When I finish, she hands me the bill and thanks me for my patronage. Total bill: $60.00, her tip is $9.00 (using the 15% rule.)
Now my question: what did Waitress B do to deserve a larger tip than Waitress A? She handed me a pricier steak? There was a lemon slice in my water? How does the quality of the food or the size of the bill make any difference to the service of the wait staff?
I suppose you could look at it as “if you can afford the meal, you can afford the tip,” but that seems well beside the point. This is a capitalist society. You get what you deserve.
JRR hit the nail on the head. Tipping used to be a gratuity - that is, it was done to show that the customer was pleased with the service. Nowadays, too many (both customers and waitstaff) treat it as an obligation, regardless of the quality of service. Call me old fashioned, but if the service is poor, then I will not tip.
Having said that, a good rule of thumb in many US communities is to use the tax to compute the tip; it is often near 8%. If the service is average, just round up to the nearest dollar and you’ve got pretty close to 10% in many cases. If the service is poor, tip half the tax for 4%. If the service is exceptional, give the staff twice the tax for 16%.
Wow, I never realized this was such a controversial question. For a waiter to get all upset and offended over someone tipping a percentage of their pre-tax bill sounds pretty chip-on-shoulderish, while for someone to tip the absolute minimum they can get away with seems cheapskatey. Any rules on what to tip are rough guidelines anyway, since the amount and quality of the service isn’t exactly proportional to the cost of the meal.
My question is this: I know that capt_tiny_brain is incredibly cheap, as the “tipping rate” hasn’t been 10% for many years. It went up to 15% quite a while ago, and as the column mentions, 20% is pretty much the “accepted norm” now. Why? Inflation can’t be the answer; the menu prices certainly haven’t stayed the same, so inflation was already covered in a percentage calculation. Why is it “expected” that I leave twice the tip I left years ago? And further more, have I exceeded the “allowable” number of quotation marks for a post?
When I worked as a diswasher, we called all waiters and waitresses “servers”. Maybe Dex will find that term more palatable than “waitperson”.
See the problem with your argument is that because the buisness themselves have not raised the payrate with the times, you ARE required to pay more for the service.
Speaking from the experience of my girlfriend, very often your Waiter will make $2.50 or less minus tip, and YES they are taxed on that 2.50. and even with including their tip (which they must by law, but usually dont because of my next point) they make UNDER minimum wage. My girlfriend works for Romano’s Macaronni Grill, and when all is set and done, after 40 hours of work she makes only about 150 - 200 dollars including tips minus her insurance which is 50 bucks. And shes been there for 5 years while going through college and gotten a pay raise new people tend to make even LESS!!!
And shes isnt just a waiter, she also hosts which is around 7 - 9 dollars a hour, but they purposely restrict hosts to only working 8 or 9 hours a week so as to not pay them too much. There are days she comes in and works a hour and then they send her home cause they dont want to pay her.
Why so little, well your one tip goes to 6 different people in the resurant. The bussboys get 10% of the tip, then the bartender (you didnt think the waiter mixed that drink did you) the cooks, the food runner (people who brought you your food) and THEN the waiter. In some states the bussboys arnt allowed to get tips out of the waiters money, but most states have no such rule. Also if you dont buy alcohol then the bartender doesnt get a tip.
You think its wrong, well its our capitalist need to make money society that allows the big corperations like Brinker (who also owns Chillies and a ton of other resturaunts) and those other companies owned by Kraft and such to get away with it. Honestly my girlfriend wouldnt be working there if she didnt need the flexable hours while going to classes, which is the case with a lot of people who work for them, if your a lifer, your a manager cause you realize the bull they put you through and want to make real money (managers can make up to 60 -70,000 dollars)
So tip nothing, and watch what happenes, cause I KNOW what happens when I hear stories about what the staff does to known bad tippers, and trust me you WONT like what I could tell you:o javascript:smilie(’:o’)
See the problem with your argument is that because the buisness themselves have not raised the payrate with the times, you ARE required to pay more for the service.
Speaking from the experience of my girlfriend, very often your Waiter will make $2.50 or less minus tip, and YES they are taxed on that 2.50. and even with including their tip (which they must by law, but usually dont because of my next point) they make UNDER minimum wage. My girlfriend works for Romano’s Macaronni Grill, and when all is set and done, after 40 hours of work she makes only about 150 - 200 dollars including tips minus her insurance which is 50 bucks. And shes been there for 5 years while going through college and gotten a pay raise new people tend to make even LESS!!!
And shes isnt just a waiter, she also hosts which is around 7 - 9 dollars a hour, but they purposely restrict hosts to only working 8 or 9 hours a week so as to not pay them too much. There are days she comes in and works a hour and then they send her home cause they dont want to pay her.
Why so little, well your one tip goes to 6 different people in the resurant. The bussboys get 10% of the tip, then the bartender (you didnt think the waiter mixed that drink did you) the cooks, the food runner (people who brought you your food) and THEN the waiter. In some states the bussboys arnt allowed to get tips out of the waiters money, but most states have no such rule. Also if you dont buy alcohol then the bartender doesnt get a tip.
You think its wrong, well its our capitalist need to make money society that allows the big corperations like Brinker (who also owns Chillies and a ton of other resturaunts) and those other companies owned by Kraft and such to get away with it. Honestly my girlfriend wouldnt be working there if she didnt need the flexable hours while going to classes, which is the case with a lot of people who work for them, if your a lifer, your a manager cause you realize the bull they put you through and want to make real money (managers can make up to 60 -70,000 dollars)
So tip nothing, and watch what happenes, cause I KNOW what happens when I hear stories about what the staff does to known bad tippers, and trust me you WONT like what I could tell you:o
I had never considered tipping on amount-minus-tax. Tell me, now; at the end of the year, do you send tips on the tax to the state government? Surely, you think those goops are doing a fine job. You voted for them,right? 
(Note: “busboy”, not “bussboy”, unless it’s his job to go around giving people kisses.)
I’m a pretty good tipper, but the whole system bothers me, and I’m kind of surprised that labor laws still allow it. You can pay somebody far below minimum wage because their job is “tipped”, but there’s nothing guaranteeing the tips will happen. No matter how well a waiter or waitress (in Atlanta I hear the unisex term “waitron”) does the job, a cheapskate can just decide not to tip. Being a good waitron is a real skill, and should be decently paid.
I guess it’s a real deal for the restaurant; what business wouldn’t like to be able to just shift some of their labor cost directly to the customer? That bit about the restaurant taking away some of the tip on a credit card payment, to pay their fee to the credit card company, really ticks me off; if I write down a five dollar tip, I want the waitron to get five dollars. From now on I’ll leave a cash tip even if I pay the bill by charge card.
From the Staff Report:
I’m often too full after a meal to go for a run around the Gobi or the Sahara. 
In New York City, restaraunt tax is roughly 8%; the rule of thumb is double tax and round up, unless you just got a cup of coffee or something, in which case just leave a buck. The rule of thumb for bar drinks is $1 per drink per round, unless the place is really ritzy.
I’ve gotten in trouble in Europe (specifically, Italy), where tipping isn’t expected at all. The service (cupertino, or “cover” in Italian) is included in the bill.
Mooster wrote: My question is this: I know that capt_tiny_brain is incredibly cheap, as the “tipping rate” hasn’t been 10% for many years. It went up to 15% quite a while ago, and as the column mentions, 20% is pretty much the “accepted norm” now. Why? Inflation can’t be the answer; the menu prices certainly haven’t stayed the same, so inflation was already covered in a percentage calculation. Why is it “expected” that I leave twice the tip I left years ago? And further more, have I exceeded the “allowable” number of quotation marks for a post?
My reply -
It isn’t that I am cheap; I have been known to leave a $20 tip on a $10 bill (had a really bad day and the waitress went out of her way to cheer me up). It is that the standard has inflated for no valid reason. Tipping-wise, this puts me in the same situation as a grammarian who points out the incorrect use of the apostrophe for plural nouns. I may be right, but there are few who appreciate it…
As to the question of “why has the tipping rate increased faster than inflation?”, it seems to me that the main cause is the “business group factor”. When a businessperson takes a group out to lunch, a larger-than-strictly-required tip is often left as a means of showing that the concern is doing so well that they don’t need to count the pennies. This then raises expectations of the waitstaff, so that all tips are expected to be equally generous. The restaurant owner, being no fool, then lowers wages to offset the increase in tips so that wages remain constant. In short, a neat little feedback loop that leaves us with ever-higher tips.
The real question is “when will the loop breakdown?” When expected tip rates reach 25%? When tipping adds 50% to the cost of the meal? When it hits 100%?