Was it wrong of me not to leave a tip?

Great Debates
21

RES –

It’s not illegal in any jurisdiction that I know of. Restaurants are allowed to pay servers less than minimum wage precisely because it is assumed that in most cases the waiter will receive a certain amount in tips to make up the difference.

I don’t think there’d be grounds to sue for a tip. The waiter is not entitled to one. Tips are left to the discretion of the customer and therefore cannot be demanded. Note: There is an exception for establishments who add a flat 15% gratuity to all checks. Then the waiter is entitled to receive that tip from the restaurant as part of his or her wages and may demand it if it is witheld. This is because the restaurant is setting and collecting the tip and it is not left to the discretion of the customer.

22

Jodi–

Huh. I never knew that. I just looked up 29 USC 203 (the National Fair Labor standards) and it looks like you’re right:

Section (m): “In determining the wage of a tipped employee, the amount paid such employee shall be by his employer shall be deemed to be increased on account of tips by an amount determined by the employer…except that the amount of increase on account of tips determined by the employer may not exceed the value of tips actually received by the employee.” The important provision here is that the employer has to notify the employees of this law.

Go figure.

23

ResIpsaLoquitor,

It’s a very common practice to pay below minimum wage, even at some of the nicest restaurants. Around half of minimum wage seems to be a pretty standard pay rate for waitstaff. They even pay taxes assuming tips as a certain percentage of their sales, whether they actually received the tip or not.

Zev,

Based on your description, you probably are well justified not to leave one (or at least a smaller one), but I’ll have to disagree with some here about the tomatoes on the sandwich part. While a good waitperson will indeed send back food that is obviously misprepared, I don’t expect them to check the dressing on my sandwich. A burnt steak when I ordered medium rare would be a good example of what they should not bring you. If the steak is medium, instead of medium rare, I would not hold that against them, as it’s pretty hard to tell the difference without them cutting it open, which I’d prefer they didn’t do. By the same token, I don’t want them pulling my sandwich apart to make sure it’s correctly made.

My rule of thumb, if the problem is something that you can’t reasonably expect the waiter/waitress to have control over (even if it’s just because they are busy), then they get a full tip.

24

It would be a damn site easier and fairer all round if restaurants started paying minimum-level wages so waitpeople had a proper base salary (which would result in higher food bills, fair enough, the cost would go somewhere) and people could then be left to tip what they liked when they liked for good/exceptional service.

If the service was appalling, a complaint should then be made to the managers/owners of the restaurant.

Because as far as I’m concerned, the waitperson is the restaurant’s employee, not mine. It’s the proprietor’s job to punish bad work and pay fairly for acceptable work, not mine. I am just there to get a meal, not pay one person for food and another for service.

25

In theory, a server’s sub-minimum wage plus tips must average at least minimum wage for whatever pay cycle their on. In reality, some managers will “shave” hours so that they can make their numbers and get a nice juicy bonus at the server’s expense.

Also, if employees are required to come in on their day off to do a regular bar cleanup for example, those hours should be paid at minimum wage (at least). Since they don’t have an opportunity to make tips that day, the hours should be separate from the minimum wage calcualtion for the pay period. Again, in reality if they have made enough tips to average minumum wage counting those hours then that is all they’re likely to get. Quite illegal and also quite common.

26

I disagree with that; it’s the waiter’s job to bring me the food that I ordered, and I don’t really care what the reason is for the food not being correct. OTOH, people make mistakes occasionally. I don’t penalize a tip if the waiter responds reasonably to a mistake - as long as they don’t give me any trouble about taking a missing item off of the bill, or take the well-done steak that I ordered medium-rare back and get me a new one without trouble, then they’re still doing their job. If, however, the mistake (whoever’s fault it is in the back room) results in hassle for me, like me having to argue about an item on the bill, then they can expect a small or singe-penny tip. I haven’t had this happen to me in years, though.

27

I disagree with the idea that the waitstaff being busy should be a reason for giving a full tip. If they’re busy, that means that they have a lot of customers, which means that they’re getting more tips. If I give half the normal tip because the waitstaff is so busy dealing with twice as many customers as normal, then that works out to be the same amount.

Also, why shouldn’t I punish the waitstaff for what the cook does? I just pay what the meal’s worth to me. How that money gets split up is not something I concern myself with. If the waitstaff is continually getting shortchanged because of poor performance of the cooks, then they need to take that up with the cooks, not with me. If the waitstaff is really bad, I won’t eat there at all, so the cooks will suffer. If the cooks can suffer because of the quality of the waitstaff, why should the reverse not be true?

28

In Washington, employers can’t count tips against the minimum wage - they have to pay at least $6.90/hr even if the waiters are making $10/hr in tips.

I wouldn’t have left a tip… the way I see it, the waiter’s job is to take your order and make sure you get what you ordered, all within a reasonable amount of time. If he won’t do an excellent job of it, by making sure you get exactly what you ordered, you shouldn’t make him think he’s done an excellent job by leaving a nice tip. OTOH, it’s not always appropriate for the waiter to do that (how many hands do you really want taking apart your sandwich?), so you should take into account whether you asked for it to be fixed, and how quickly it was fixed.

(Tipping delivery drivers is a different issue… the Chinese food driver might just get a sealed bag and an address, so you can’t fault him for an incomplete or wrong order. A slow order is a judgment call - how big is the restaurant, can you expect them to have enough drivers to handle 10 orders per hour on Friday night, when an order might take 20 minutes just to come out of the kitchen? Half as much tip with twice as many orders is not the same for drivers, because twice as many orders means twice as much wear on the car.)

29

In other words, it isn’t a tip, it’s protection money? Any system where you have to pay people not to adulterate your food is seriously screwed up.

30

Screwed up maybe, but that’s the way things work. I had a friend who used to work in a pizza place. The delivery drivers would let the pizza chefs know exactly which regulars were lousy tippers (the chefs would get a share of the tips) and the chefs would do all manner of disgusting stuff to the pizzas.

I particularly remember a story he told me about a devout muslim who ordered pizza, instructed that all fresh utensils were used in its preparation so that there was no chance any harroum food touched the utensils, and after all of this fuss, didn’t tip a dime. Generally they made sure to dip the utensils in the bacon, ham and sausage before making his pizza.

Remember this stuff when you think about not tipping.

31

I vote for not tipping.

I had a somewhat similar experience last night. After a play, my sister, husband & I went out to dinner. The server took about 10 minutes to bring our water and take our orders. Then he took 20 minutes to bring one of our appetizers (we saw him, and he wasn’t even checking to see if it was ready). He said the other appetizer would be comped, since it fell on the floor and they had to make us a new one. When it came out, the chips were horribly stale. Then our meals came out, and there were problems with those. He didn’t ask if we wanted dessert, didn’t offer to bring a to-go-box, and didn’t return so we could ask for one.

When we told him about the stale chips, he took a bite of one while explaining how the kitchen had just fried them, then agreed that they were stale. When he brought out our check, it still had the charge for the appetizer that should have been comped.

Not a pleasant experience. I don’t fault him for the kitchen problems, but I definitely fault him for the others. And yes, I did tip him, but not nearly as much as I would have had he done a decent job.

32

They have to provide their own cars?

33

Depends on the restaurant. All the delivery cars I’ve seen for local restaurants (including chains like Papa John’s and Pizza Pipeline) have been owned by the drivers. An easy way to check is to look at the car - if it’s owned by the restaurant, it should have the name and phone number painted on the side. If the restaurant’s name is only visible on a magnetic sign, or missing entirely, assume the driver is paying for gas and repairs.

The restaurant may add a delivery charge which is supposed to cover gas and regular maintenance (locally, Chinese delivery does but pizza delivery doesn’t), but when you have to go in for 30K service every 9 months, or your air conditioner dies from too much summertime stop-and-go driving, $2-$3 per order just ain’t gonna cut it.

34

In addition, the cars may not be insured. I can’t speak for every employer, but the place I’m familiar with requires drivers to have a license and an insurance card - but doesn’t verify that the policy actually covers them while they’re on the job.

A typical auto insurance policy doesn’t cover cars that are used as taxicabs or delivery vehicles. Yeah, the driver is a fool if he goes around uninsured - but keep in mind that he’s either completely vulnerable to drunks and bad parkers, or he’s paying FAR more than you are for car insurance.

35

As a former waitress, if I was her, I would not be expecting a tip from you either.

You did the right thing.

I would have complained to management. Then not ever go back to the place again.

36

Well, I won’t go that far for two reasons:

  1. It was a one time occurence. I’ve been eating there for a few years and generally receive good service. This was the exception to the rule. If it happened more often, I might consider leaving the place for good, but I’m not going to abandon it over a one-time incident.

  2. There is a limited number of kosher resturaunts in downtown Manhattan. I really don’t want to cut one out of the mix without a real good reason.

Zev Steinhardt

37

Well, that’s an easy one. Most waitstaff bus stations are set up fairly similarly (in my experience). Soda fountain, ice, iced tea machine, coffee, decaf, glasses, lemons for tea and creamers sitting on ice, coffee cups, kids cups, lids, straws, bev naps, napkins. No frig.

Milk must be kept in a frig which can be as far as behind the cooking area. I never forgot milk, but I can see why someone might.

As a former waitress (5+ years) I can honestly say that it’s an incredibly hard and stressful job. I would never have done it for minimum wage, no way. At the time, minimum wage was 4.25 and I got 2.13 + tips. The restaurant opened at 11, if I came in at 10 to set up, I got 2.13. If my last table left at 9 but I had to roll 100 silverware, clean my tables, fill the salad dressing, cut the lemons (or whatever else my side work was), I got paid 2.13 til I got it all done.

I was a really good waitress, really good. I could think of all my tables as one single table, bringing a to go box for 1, drinks for 2, extra napkins and sour cream for 3 and change for 4 in one trip.

Sometimes though, no matter how good you are, you get “in the weeds” where you are just slammed. My restaurant had an added degree of difficulty since the bar was upstairs. I used to have awful awful dreams where I was waiting on the entire downstairs but I was trapped in the bar waiting on drinks.

My experience has left me a critical patron, but generally very forgiving. Someone would have to be verbally rude to me to not get a tip, I could excuse nearly everything else because I know what it’s like. Why would a server want to do a poor job? There money depends on pleasing you, ergo, I generally excuse poor service as beyond their control.

It’s interesting to see the customer view from people who have different tipping views than I do. It makes me very very glad I’m out of that business, and my livelihood is not dependent on the kindness of strangers.

38

In general, I would agree with this. In the OP’s example of ordering a sandwich sans tomato, the waiter could reasonably be expected to check for the presence of said tomato before delivering the sandwich. However, in your example of steak doneness, I disagree. You can’t really tell the difference between a medium well and medium rare steak just by looking at the outside, and I would not expect my waiter to cut into my steak for me to check the doneness.

Out of curiosity: would you prefer that the waiter simply handle the problem back in the kitchen, thus causing an unexplained delay in serving time as the cooks have to re-prepare your meal, or would you prefer that the waiter come out and explain, “The cooks prepared your dinner incorrectly the first time, so there will be a delay while they fix the problem”? (Personally I’d rather know what the source of the problem was, and I would not dock the waiter’s tip as a result.)

39

Heh

Heh heh

Heh heh heh

Heh

Heh

Heh heh

Shaddap, Beavis.

40

The Federal Minimum Wage is established by legislation enacted by the U. S. Congress. It was last raised to $5.15 per hour effective September 1, 1997. Any future increase in the minimum wage requires enactment of new legislation passed by the Congress.

Employees under 20 years of age may be paid $4.25 per hour during their first 90 consecutive calendar days of employment with an employer.

Certain full-time students, student learners, apprentices, and workers with disabilities may be paid less than the minimum wage under special certificates issued by the Department of Labor.

Tip Credit: Employers of “tipped employees” must pay a cash wage of at least $2.13 per hour if they claim a tip credit against their minimum wage obligation. If an employee’s tips combined with the employer’s cash wage of at least $2.13 per hour do not equal the minimum hourly wage, the employer must make up the difference. Certain other conditions must also be met.

(Italics mine.)

Source: http://www.dol.gov/dol/esa/public/minwage/mwposter.htm