I just read this thread and had a couple questions for the dopers.
How many of you really figure out what 15% or 18% or 20% of the bill is and pay exactly that much tip?
Also, it’s mentioned in the article that some restaurants take the charge for the credit card transaction off the tip. I usually tip cash even if I pay with a credit card, does this nullify this practice or do they somehow get around it?
I was a waiter for ten years, up until 2002. I was always paid out the exact amount the customer had written on the charge slip. The restaurant took nothing off the top that I was aware of.
However, I don’t know if that was just because my experience was limited to California, or what.
I can tell you that the wages sucked, and the tips were everything to us. So I thought Dex’s report captured the feel of the whole enterprise quite nicely: A patron can figure the bill using whatever standard he or she wants, but the person being tipped uses only one standard–the total bill after tax. If we got 15% of that, we felt we had done well by that person, and were respectfully compensated. If we got more, we were happy that our efforts were appreciated, and we thought that person to be a thoughtful soul. If we got less, we wondered what possibly could have gone wrong; if unable to come up with any incident which might have caused the customer displeasure, we assumed that person is what is known as a “dick.”
Hope that helps.
-Shawn
And yes, I think the Continental method of actually paying your employees a respectable living wage is far better than this unspoken, fraught with misunderstanding, “tipping” business. I’d be happy to see all that go. Try telling that to Corporate Headquarters at Friday’s, though. Less profits for the major corporate chains who bankroll the legislators who vote on setting “minimum” wage standards. Ain’t NEVER gonna happen, friend. And that’s a tip you can live by.
I usually do figure the exact tip in my head, because that’s just the sort of nerd I am. I also used to amuse myself at the grocery store by figuring the sales tax (I now live in a state without sales tax, so I can’t do that any more). But then I always round the tip up, anyway.
A couple general points, before the specific issue:
This is not the way anybody I knows figures how much they’re going to tip. I don’t know anybody who actually alters their tip too much based on quality of service. The fact is, if waiters and waitresses are like everybody else, they’ll assume they can do no wrong and conclude any bad tip was a result of the customer “being a dick”, rather than the fact that we sat with empty beers for 15 minutes while you played the trivia game and chatted with the fella behind the bar and gabbed with your friends who stopped in to see you at work.
So our basic rule, my pals and I, is as follows. If we’re regular customers at a place, and plan to be back often, we’ll tip our regular waitresses very well, around 20%. If I never plan to go there ever again, I see no reason to tip any higher than in the 12-18% range (whatever nearest whole dollar amount seems appropriate, so it varies.) If we get lousy service, we just don’t go back. It’s not worth it to try and make a statement about bad service with the tip, because the waiter/tress is just going to assume he/she is perfect, did nothing wrong, so of course it’s just because we are jerks or those horrible societal lepers known derisively as “cheapskates.”
I’m convinced that if you give a crappy tip, even when the service was terrible and the server didn’t deserve squat, that he/she will make a point out of spitting in your food the next time. If they’re doing that because I gasp tipped 14% instead of 15%, or used a different calculation method that cost them a dime, well then they’re really screwed up people.
Anyways, I don’t share the sympathy for those poor, downtrodden restaurant servers. I’m a poor college student too, but perhaps I chose to find work that paid a nice good hourly wage, rather than the crummy $3/hr that servers agree to as their wage upon their hiring. If you take the risk of a variable wage, hoping to make more than you could at some regular minimum wage gig, you also take the risk of having somebody who — OH HEAVENS NO – has the contemptible gall to tip based on the price BEFORE TAX!!
If the tax is 6%, then we’re talking about an overall 1% difference, which is merely coins until we’re talking about at least $100 tabs. Big frickin’ deal. If the patrons are being petty to squabble over that, so are the waiters. On a standard $20 dinner-for-two tab, that’s 20 cents. Now, I’ve spent some time being quite broke, and scrounged for change in my cushions to buy a pack of Kools once or twice, but I’m just terrible at handling my money until I’m down to like $10 (although I’m a whiz at making that $10 bucks last.) Point is, 20 cents was never gonna make much difference to me, and it doesn’t to the waiters either. If they’re actually taking offense at that, these people need to grow up and not take pocket change like it was a personal offense. And I see no reason why a 20 cent variance in a tip should be enough to label anybody a “cheapskate” or a “dick”.
And remember that some people calculate their tip by using some multiple of the tax, which would amount to a pre-tax tip calculation, but are you going to fault them for being bad at math and needing a little trick to help?
FTR, I’ve never once thought, “Oh my God, he tipped me on the pre-tax total!”
Decent: If you tip me $3 on $20, that’s cool. I’ll take that all day long.
Good: If you tip me $4 on $20, you’re very cool, and I appreciate it.
Great: If you tip me $5-$8 on $20, I’m damn good and you’re damn cool.
People have been known to tip more than that, percentage-wise, but they’re anomalies and not really worth mentioning in the grand scheme of things.
I don’t get into the specifics of it; it’s a decent/good/great tip scenario in my head, and that’s where it starts and ends for me.
That’s also how I tip when I myself go out; I rarely tip 15% b/c it’s usually just a dollar/two dollar difference, and since I know on some days that that extra dollar is worth a million in morale alone, I’m not going to worry about it.
And also FTR, I’ve always made every singe penny I’ve been tipped on credit cards. I’m not doubting Dex at all, but I’ve never encountered that.