rfgdxm–
Maybe Jane doesn’t “deserve” 8% more, but all things being equal, she needs it. After all, she lives in that state, so she has to pay that 8% sales tax on all her purchases, effectively increasing her own cost of living by nearly that much.
All of these posts refer to tipping a waiter/waitress. How about non-food service? Most restaurant meals (at my pay grade, anyway) are about $20/person, with a tip of about three bucks. How about haircuts? Taxi rides? Hotel bellhops and cleaning ladies?
I embarrassed myself recently by having an airport redcap change my seating assignment from the curb, but I had no idea I was supposed to tip him and had absolutely no cash on me at the time. And once an old lady was telling me about the time she was on a cruise ship, tipped Gopher five bucks, and he was expecting over a hundred (a percentage of the total cruise bill).
Who all gets tipped? Is it always 15%? What are the guidelines when a tip isn’t clearly $2-5?
Serving is simple. You take an order. You give it to the kitchen. They cook it while you fill drinks. The food comes up. You take it to the table. You check back in two minutes and fix the problems. You make up a bill. You make change. And here’s the hard part: you have to actually be nice to a stranger.
Yeah, you have to hustle a bit, but you work short hours compared to the rest of the world. It’s indoors and there’s no heavy lifting. Let the customers decide what the tip should be. They don’t tip enough? Have the good grace to keep it to yourself.
Relevant tangent: we worry about the servers’ rate of pay but not the cooks’. We argue back and forth about the money this clean cut white (in my experience) server makes, but that Latino in the kitchen is no concern of ours. Why?
You have to be nice to a stranger that wants to sit outside, when you have to wear long pants in July, after lugging racks full of glasses across the restaraunt, or stacks of hot plated across the sloppery kitchen floor. Oh, yeah. I almost forgot about how it’s the servers’ fault if the store’s sales aren’t high enough, or if the bathrooms aren’t clean enough, or if the little old lady at your other table is too cold and you can’t find your manager to turn the air down while you’re still sweating from taking care of your table outside.
Let the customer decide if I’ll be able to make my rent at the end of the week? I’d much rather have an idea of what to expect, so I’ll know if I’ll have enough money for my bills if I buy that new pair of slip resistant shoes so I don’t fall while I’m hauling plates to the cooks.
Because, the Hispanic, black, white, and Asian people in the kitchen are usually starting at $7.00 an hour. That’s before they get their certification raises, before they become trainers, before they get their six month or yearly raise. They get an actual paycheck.
SharonBrown–
The problem is that if Kim lives in a state without a sales tax, that likely means that the state has other taxes that are higher. Thus, her cost of living is the same as Jane. Yet Jane gets 8% more if the tip is based on the total check.
I fully agree here. This column is just a statement of opinion on something off topic.
Additionally, I’ve had plenty of friends to work in both the kitchen and the dining room. Many of my server friends have moved to the kitchen to make more regular money. They can put gas in their vehicles on a regular basis and afford to eat out regularly. When I’ve teased my friends who’ve never served about training them in the dining room, most of them get this look of absolute terror and explain to me why they could NEVER handle my job.
So basically what you’re saying is the system sucks, it’s designed to screw the waitstaff and the customers, and there’s nothing we (the customers) can do about it?
I don’t like restaurants adding a set gratuity, though I understand it more given the practices for waiter salaries.
Welcome to Manhattan, which would be inhabited entirely by millionaires and the homeless if it wasn’t for rent-control. (Same with many parts of California.)
Market economy, my ass.
<< I have been reading The Straight Dope for over a decade. This column USED to be about the stuff that the encyclopedia left out. History, science, popular culture, folklore, and the like were the subjects of the columns. Now, it has degenerated to discussions about before or after tax tipping and job interview strategy. Cecil, please reclaim your column and put an end to this nonsense of “staff contributions”. >>
Hey, even Cecil every once in a while has a column that’s purely his opinion on something.
And I thought the report on job interview process did a fairly good job of providing info on which techniques are statistically more successful and what they mean, so it wasn’t just a matter of opinion. Actually, someone else in another thread criticized that one for being too factual and not stating enough opinions, so I guess we’re coming out even.
Okay. It seems that people got side-tracked by my use of a “fancy” restaurant in my example, so let me try and streamline it and get my point back on track.
a.) I go into a family restaurant and order a chicken dinner and a soda. The final cost is $10.00.
b.) I go into the same family restuarant and order a steak dinner and a soda. The final cost is $20.00.
Both meals offer the same sides, and the service is exactly the same. I got to choose how long I wanted my steak cooked, which happened to coinicide with how long it took the chicken to cook.
All said and done, I still payed twice the tip for one meal over the other, when the only thing that changed was the price of the meal, not the service provided. Why should that be, if I’m tipping based on the service?
An easy way to eliminate that problem is to do what I do when I go out alone. If a meal is less than $20.00, I tip a minimum of 20%, but what I really tip on is the service. If the server is plesant, gives me “Person dining alone” attention–or leaves me alone when I’m obviously in the middle of something–and stays on top of drink refils, suggestive sales, and prebussing, I leave as much as a 75% tip. I do this because I understand that a $7.00 order of cheese fries is not going to help pay anyone’s electricity bill, if all I leave them is $1.40. When I become a “regular” at a restaraunt, they know my tipping habits, and I get the best service possible.
Of course, it helps that I don’t come in acting like I’m above all of them because they’re employed there and I’m there by choice. That’s the impression that a lot of people give when they go out to eat. It’s that condescending, “I guess you’re stupid if this is the only job you could get” mentality that gets them “poor” service. No matter how many times it’s happened, it’s still a crushing blow to your server’s pride to be flagged down like they’re waiting on royalty, or to be looked at like they really shouldn’t even speak to their customers.
One last tipping tirade - tip jars at cafeteria-style restaurants.
My favorite example is “Chipolte,” a chain of burrito restaurants. You walk down a line, saying what you want on your burrito. They hand it over, you seat yourself and bus your own table.
But right next to the cash register is a tip jar, which is always stuffed with dollars and change.
WHAT THE HELL ARE PEOPLE TIPPING HERE FOR? The employees do exactly the same work that their counterparts at Taco Bell do and they both get paid the same fast-food wage.
Ridiculous.
The real solution is to get rid of tipping all together and pay everyone a regular wage. Nobody has pointed this out. WHY SHOULD I HAVE TO PAY SOMEONE ELSE’S EMPLOYEE??? It’s not my fault they took a job that pays $2.50 an hour!
Somebody threw money at people and the IRS had to get involved, leading to the horrendous situation in America, as most things touched by the IRS do. As tips became customary, the IRS has to change servers’ legal staus to one of serfs (perhaps some confusion there). Now it’s MY fault your job sucks, not the restaurant’s, not the IRS’s. But, of course, the truth is that tipped employees come out with more money most of the time than their straight wage counterparts.
If you’re working Chilli’s or Bob Evans, you should get a straight wage. You should be paid for TIME, just like the Dishwasher. Where do Chilli’s or Bob Evens get the extra money to pay this? You tack an automatic %15 Service charge onto the bill, just like in F*CKING EUROPE!!!
The Italians have it right. Why have all the employees and the government fighting over a few measly bucks? Straight cost of service, straight wage.
The IRS has turned us all into a Nation of Accountants. Anyone who gets out a calculator to figure a tip should be shot. Anyone who would quibble over a nickel or quarter needs to reexamine their priorities.
Americans aren’t noted as stingy tippers abroad, they’re stingy about everything. Whenever I hear an American abroad it’s usually them bitching about getting ripped off. I went into a store in Italy. The total was € Something.95. The cashier kept the 5 cent! I could imagine most Americans going into apoplexy over that.
The only reason we have pennies and nickles now is sales tax. Poor Italy had done so well rounding to the nearest 1000 lire for so long (or 100 lire for small things). Then the Euro was fixed an 1985 lire, just shy of 2000. Realising they might lose .75% of their revenues, everything in Italy now costs €1.01.
Gee SunSawed, you gave a suggestion on how to fix it, but no explanation about how we get that suggestion implemented.
JRR, I agree. I saw a tip cup at Quizno’s, right next to the cash register. WTF? First I thought it was a leave-a-penny/take-a-penny cups, but it had other coins in it. Now it’s labeled so folks don’t take-a-quarter.
A quick reply to this already too long thread.
I generally tip 20% to 25%. I have family members who tip too little, and it angers and embarrasses me. I have friends who are servers. Having said that, any server who does something like spit in someone’s food, or approves of it, is, IMO, MUCH worse than the small tipper.
Finally a chance to ask the question I’ve been dying to ask:
Do you tip when you pay for a take-out order on a credit card?
The reason why I ask is this. I’ve always ben told that restaurant staff don’t expect a tip on a take-out order because by definition there’s little-to-no service involved other than preparing and packaging the food.
On the other hand, when I pay on a credit card, there’s that big TIP line (and the blank TOTAL line) shining its light of shame on me.
And, of course, there is the issue that the staff has prepared and packaged my meal for me…
So, what to do? Any advice?
I wanna know why the people who serve food to the public think it’s not only okay but actually funny to spit or sneeze into peoples’ food because they don’t tip enough. If they’re providing less than spectacular service, they’re not gonna get a tip out of me because it’s their job to be nice to me and serve me my food. If they feel they’re not getting paid enough to be nice to me and serve me my food, they should either find another job or start a union or file complaints about their employers with the proper authorities. In any event, it’s not my problem they feel underpaid or underappreciated or whatever their problem is.
As for keeping my cheap butt out of public, my cheap butt being in public is why they have a job to begin with. If I get better than middling service, I leave a tip. Keep in mind that the word tip is an acronym for the phrase To Insure Promptness. If I’m not getting reasonably prompt, reasonably competant service, why should I pay extra? I break my back for every dime I earn, damn right I expect the people I pay to do the same. It’s not my fault the IRS takes taxes on tips the server isn’t getting. Perhaps the server should concentrate more on doing his or her job better so they get better tips.
And no matter what, it’s no excuse for contaminating food and spreading disease. I don’t find that amusing, I find it inexcusable, and in the case of SARS and Hepititis C and AIDS, the latter of which one can have for years without realizing it,(especially if you have a crappy job that doesn’t even pay minimum wage, let alone health benefits) it’s absolutely criminal. There’s no excuse for that kind of behavior, and I think any food service employee caught doing it should not only be fired but turned into the authorities for reckless endangerment and disregard of the public welfare.
If I’m having a few drinks, and a server or bartender is running back and forth to serve me, then yes, definitely tip on the alcohol. But if you go into a nice restaurant and order a $300 bottle of wine, no one expects you to tip on (all of) it. In most upscale restaurants, you have the option of bringing your own bottle, if it is something they have on the wine list. In this case, you are usually charged a “corkage” fee of a few dollars. What I find most odd is that if you bring in a better wine than they serve, you are expected to invite the sommelier to taste your wine! After all, that’s how they get their experience.
As a server, I’ve never known a server who spits in food, or does any of the other horrible things a lot of people on this board seem convinced that all servers do.
As far as forced raises for servers that cut out the mandatory tip, I’d love to see it. Sign me up for an actual paycheck. However, as someone posted earlier, I don’t know how to do it, except to get everyone to flood comment boxes and corporate web sites (Go to http://www.rubytuesday.com if you’d like to kick MY employer in the head about that).
In the end, the service you get is going to be based largely on the impression your server gets upon greeting you. If you treat him or her like a person doing a job rather than the faceless robot so many people seem to think we are, you’ll get service worth your 20% tip, possibly higher.