So not from Papa John’s, Pizza Hut or Dominos, then?
Sorry, I was responding more to MTCicero, to be honest, who was talking about delivery drivers. I didn’t notice that you’d moved to talking about wait staff again.
That being said, all of what I mentioned applies to wait staff as well, aside from the car usage. If general-you don’t want to tip, take it to go. Otherwise, understand that you are hiring table service from your waiter.
20% is my standard tip, as well. But I’ve actually been excoriated, by more than one person, on other message boards (cough www.disboards.com cough) for making something so extravagant as a 20% tip my starting position.
Assholes.
Heh. Way to make an end run around the question. :rolleyes:
As you no doubt knew to begin with, it was a hypothetical question, as in: Were you, in fact, given to frequenting Seattle’s Best, Burger King, and Long John Silver’s (as but three examples), then I would assume that you’d have no compunction against leaving the people handling your order a tip. Correct?
While I understand your point, I think you need to be careful here.
If they have hired a driver, there is a minimum amount of time (on average) that the driver will take to actually DELIVER the pizza. They arent hiring drivers to just sit around. They are hiring drivers to deliver. People who pick up their own pizza’s obviously do NOT use a driver services. People who want delivery obviously do. The company collects money for that service AND they actually pay the drivers a base salary for DOING that service.
So, ISTM that the “delivery” charge actually DOES go to the drivers in a roundabout way.
And, I have gotten the impression that some pizza places also give the drivers some money for mileage or number of deliveries, so, again, the “delivery” charge actually does go to the drivers.
Nope. Pizza Hut and Domino’s have incredibly subpar food, IMHO, so that’s not really an issue. I do love a good Papa John’s pizza, but only if I can pick it up on the way home.
Oh, I understand this, and I certainly don’t penalize drivers for succumbing to the laws of physics and taking a reasonable amount of time to deliver.
And some companies factor this into the cost of the meal as a reasonable cost of doing business. They market their services as “pizza delivery restaurants” and accept delivery costs into the base cost of the product. Even the chains that charge the fees now used to, until recently, manage to provide the service without an ancillary fee.
If I’m paying $2.50 for my order, and that driver is doing 4 other orders in an hour, I would agree that the cost is reasonable if his base salary is $12.50/hour.
Perhaps this is true, or it may be regional, but I did ask both a Papa John’s driver and a Domino’s driver about this when both local joints around here started charging this kind of fee (about 2 years ago, if memory serves). At that time, they pretty clearly indicated that they got absolutely none of that fee.
Were the drivers paid anything at all by the pizza joints, or were they simply relying on tips for the totality of their income? If the store was paying them (whatever amount), then at least SOME of the delivery charge was effectively routed to the drivers, (ie, here is your nightly pay of $28.00, which is 4 hours at $7.00/hour) even if it was not done in a direct fashion (ie "you did 11 deliveries tonight Fred, so here is your $27.50 in delivery payments)
Unless the people you’ve talked to work ONLY for tips, they don’t understand economics 101.
If I knew they were getting less than minimium wage because their asshole employers’ had convinced the government they should legally be allowed to pay them less because expected tips would raise their wages to the minimium, I would feel obligated to tip. As is I avoid fast food like McDonalds and Taco Bell for health reasons not because of the peasants at the local fast food joint. I always contribute to the tip jar at Subway.
I understand that. I’m sure they understand that. The point is that the drivers were making the same before and after the institution of these fees. The Papa John’s driver even noted that his tips had decreased after the fee was added, probably due to people believing that the delivery fee was paid to the driver.
Perhaps this person is the type that when told to calm down would only get worse – it’s best just to let her rant, sadly. Some people would only flip out even more.
Yeah, my inlaws are like that. Fortunately my husband has decided to seriously minimize how often we go out with them, which has made the both of us very happy.
Honestly there are a couple of reasons not to say anything to a member of your party raging at the waitstaff. The first is if you are being taken out by that person and they are picking up the check. In that situation I will generally take the waitperson aside and apologize and tip them seperately whenever possible. The second reason is if saying something to them will make it worse instead of better. As someone who works customer service I know how hard it is to have someone ream you for no reason but I also know my future MIL well enough to know that if I said anything to her about the way she responds to waitstaff she would take it as a personal offense. She is wonderful in every other way but she has never worked in a service position in her life and adheres to the “customer is always right” policy and feels a need to be vocal about it.* My not saying anything to her is to prevent her from getting even worse than she already is at that time. I will try to take the waiter aside and apologize in this situation as well but only if it will not escalate the issue even further from her perspective.
*She went with me to find a wedding dress. We found a beautiful one that was $650 and a less beautiful but perfectly acceptable dress on the $99 rack. When we found out that the cheaper dress had been put on the wrong rack she came out, guns blazing, and accused the dress shop of bait and switch and trying to call the BBB on her cell phone. I gently moved her aside and used the confusion to get a discount on the dress I had liked better in the first place so I got a $550 dress (which is damned cheap for a wedding dress, IMHO) but it struck me as odd that it never occurred to her that the pricing was just a mix-up by someone in the store and not an evil plot to overthrow America.
She just naturally assumes that service places are out to screw her out of every last dime and she responds in kind. I know she wouldn’t do that if she had ever worked in customer service in any capacity because she is kind and generous in every other aspect of her life but she just can’t seem to grasp that customer service mistakes happen just like everywhere else in life.
Having been a waitperson is not a guarantee that someone will be nicer to other waitstaff. Back in the day when I was a waitress, I worked with an entitled little princess minus the automatic paycheques from daddy. In essence, the world owed everything to her, but she owed the world nothing. I dined with her once (and only once) and she was a nightmare from beginning to end. As soon as we sat down, she demanded that someone wipe the table because “I haven’t seen anyone clean it myself, so I don’t know if it’s actually clean” to getting snippy with the waitress because her drink had too much ice in it. Then, at the end, she left 10% tip on the bill because that was “standard”. Luckily, we were paying for ourselves, so I didn’t get lumped into her cheapness.
I asked her how she could be so harsh on the waitress when she knows what it’s like when customers are harsh with her, she said “I treat them how waitresses should be treated. This is a haaaard job so if they can’t deal with doing a good job, then they shouldn’t be doing it!”
Funny part was, she was terrible at her job as a waitress. And she’d pawn off the “difficult” customers on a meek younger girl because she was manipulative like that.
The demanding assholes are just that… doesn’t matter if they have had experience in a horrid customer service job before. They will always have justification on why it’s okay to treat people like shit.
The table I worked HARD for with special requests, little side things, etc. The tip was under 10% - I knew I was screwed when the wife took out her checkbook.
I had little old ladies who tipped 10% exactly to make sure I was taken care of - that did not bother me as I knew that they were going off of older standards. They were also a delight to serve (and always offered to introduce me to their granddaughters). The money was bad, but the interactions were fun.
I’m always picking up the slack for my older brother. He thinks a couple of bucks is enough for anybody. I wait until everybody is standing up and turning away from the table, then throw the difference on top of his $2. :rolleyes:
I certainly agree. So the store comped you a hundred bucks, or about a 16% discount, just for having made a trivial mistake in arranging their merchandise (which btw might even conceivably have been the fault of another customer rather than of the store staff)?
Just because your companion was being a snarling cunt (and I don’t like to say something like that about a “wonderful person”, but I think it’s a fair way to describe the kind of gratuitous hostility and intimidation she showed) about their mistake?
I’d say the store treated you extremely generously. I’m glad you got a good deal out of it, but it’s a pity that the snarling cunt’s unspeakable behavior was rewarded. I imagine that one of the reasons she keeps pulling these stunts is that it pays off in concessions like this, that businesses make to placate her when she goes into her irrational rages.
When I was in college, I slung popcorn at a movie theater to make ends meet.
I was already in my mid-twenties, had pulled a stint in the Army, so I wasn’t just your average pimple-faced teenager working a summer job.
Anyway…
One night an elderly gentleman and his wife came in, and the guy ordered some popcorn. FRESH popcorn. Like, right out of the kettle. He was kind of a dick about it, but since a batch of popcorn was just about to cook up, I thought, no problem. I’ll give him fresh popcorn.
He reiterated to me, yelling: “I want FRESH popcorn, young man!!!” He stayed right at the counter, leaning over it as far as could, glowering at me and scrutinizing my. every. move. As the batch started to pop, I placed his (large-sized) popcorn bag under it, so the hottest, freshest kernels fell in.
But our “large” popcorn bag held considerably more than one batch’s worth. So after the batch had all popped out, I took the half-full bag, and very carefully started scooping from only the top-most, freshest layer of popcorn that had fallen outside of the bag. In other words, popcorn that was literally only seconds old, but had fallen into the popper and touched other (“older”) kernels (note that “older” here means, 10 - 15 minutes, tops).
When he saw that, he hit the f**king ceiling. I swear to God, he must have been psychotic. Or drunk. Or both.
He screamed AS LOUD AS HE COULD, his face red, flecks of spittle flying from his lips:
“GOD-FKING-DAMMIT you pipsqueak cksucking motherf**ker! I said FRESH popcorn and now you try to sneak some old sh*t into the bag! I will have your job and your ass!”
His chest was literally heaving with rage. His wife, apparently used to this sociopathic behavior, was sitting demurely on the bench in the lobby, seemingly bored.
I stammered out an apology, to which his response was, “Yeah, I KNOW you’re sorry, you little prick! And I’m gonna make you sorry you were ever born!!!” Now, I interpreted that as an actual THREAT, so I looked at my manager–who was standing right there and not doing a thing–and was about to ask him to call the police, when the old man waved his hand and said, “Nevermind! Nevermind! I’m just never coming back to this goddamn theater again!” and he stormed off.
After the couple went into their theater, my manager told me, “Yeah, he comes in here from time to time. He can be a real asshole.”
Yeah. Understatement of the century. And you can be a lame-duck imbecile of a boss.
So, has the neighborhood/ethnic group been revealed by the OP yet?
I’m guessing Astoria.
I too worked for Domino’s, for two different time intervals: from 1989-90 and 2000-2007.
The first time around, tipping a driver was considered a gift, since it wasn’t collected on business property, and we were technically a bakery. We were taught to accept whatever was offered as tip and be gracious. But we were at least paid minimum (actually, $4.50 to $5.50 /hr), and giving 6% as a vehicle compensation (no store vehicles where I worked, except for a go-cart for promotions).
The next time, US Congress in their @!#?@! wisdom had changed the tax codes so that pizza delivery people were classified as tipped employees, allowing the bosses to pay less than minimum (which we were), the vehicle compensation was only 3%. Fortunately, the norm for tips had about tripled, from $1 per order to $3.
Oh, and that “delivery charge” that is now tacked on to most delivery orders: IT IS NOT GIVEN TO THE DRIVERS! It’s nominally the increase in price for delivering the supplies to the store. :rolleyes: But they don’t @!#@?! charge it to carry-out orders. (The drivers do get 3% of that $1.50 charge, but that’s a whole 4.5 cents.)