What's the smallest tip you've left, and why?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
21

We went to a Mexican restaurant that we had never been to one birthday of mine. It was a last minute decision, made as we drove by the place and said “Let’s try this place.” It wasn’t a birthday celebration, it just happened to be us out doing things on that particular day. (I’m not big on birthday/holiday celebrations).

We were seated in a different waitress’ section at the same time as the couple ahead of us. We were given menus by the hostess, and told our waitress would be along soon. 10 or 15 minutes passed before we gave our waitress a drink order, we also ordered our meals at the same time. The couple who were seated at the same time as us were served their meal, and we were sitting there waiting for our drinks. Our drinks finally came, with a promise that our meals would be out shortly. The other couple finished up, got their check, paid, and left… we were still waiting for our meal. We asked their waitress if she could check on our meals, which she did, with a very cheery “of course!”. Instead of food arriving, the manager did. He asked if we were having a problem, and upon hearing the above story, apologized profusely, and told us that the entire meal would be on him… including another round of drinks, which he had ordered for us.

5 minutes later, our meals were delivered by the manager. No sign for the rest of the night of our waitress, at least not in spitting range of our table. The manager served us for the rest of the dinner. We left no tip for “our” waitress, but did give a $5 bill to the waitress who brought the manager. We got a healthy serving of “stink eye” from “our waitress,” and heard her grumble about us giving “her” tip to the other waitress.

We never went back.

A month later, we drove by the restaurant on our way somewhere, and to nobody’s surprise, it was closed. (at 6 PM on a Friday, so we assumed it was closed for good).

22

I once left no tip. Even wrote a mini-rant on it. To recap:

My group ordered four dishes. They were served separately, the final dish coming a half hour after the first. These weren’t anything complicated that required a lot of extra time. We complained to the manager about it. She said it was because each dish took a different length of time to prepare. :rolleyes: Funny how other restaurants find a way to work around that issue.

No tip from us, and we’ve removed that restaurant from our rotation. And bad-mouthed it to all our friends. It’s not a chain restaurant, so I won’t identify it here.

23

I once left twelve cents as a tip. This may not sound like much, but I have never had such poor service in my entire life. This was at a point where I depended on tips for my living as well, and was used to tipping 25% for good service, 50% for excellent. Now that you know where my default tipping point is, twelve cents is paltry.

Especially when it’s at Hooters. On Christmas night. Yes, it was that terrible.

24

Like many of your stories, we had one of those dinners with no refills, no checking on us, long waits – we didn’t even get any silverware until we flagged someone else down! There was a large party of business men seated near us, and she fluttered around there all evening. So we left 50 cents. The crazy part of my story was that she came up to us as we were walking out to ask why we only left 50 cents! We explained it to her, as she huffed off.

25

butler’s story reminds me of an incident where we stiffed the waitress, but still left a tip.

It was at a Las Vegas restaurant. No idea which one any more. Service was all around slow. We requested drink refills; got none. Entree took forever to be served. Asked for desert menu, never got it. Waitress seemed to have dropped off the face of the earth.

There was a busboy at a nearby table. We told him we wanted refills and a desert menu but couldn’t find our waitress; could he find her? He went to look for her, but came back after half a minute and said he couldn’t find her. He handed us a desert menu and asked what our drink orders were. Basically, he took over the slack the waitress had left.

While we were eating desert a manager came by. Don’t know if the busboy pointed us out or if the waitress ratted him out for stealing “her” table. The manager asked how dinner was. We told him the what happened, our problems with the waitress, and pointed the busboy for excellent service. The manager apologized and gave us one dish free.

Instead of leaving a tip on the table (since who knows how that gets divided up; we didn’t want the waitress to get anything) we handed the tip directly to the busboy. And he got a good one; we gave 20% off what we would’ve paid, plus a portion of the savings the manager gave us. He went out of his way to serve us and we wanted him to know we appreciated it.

That’s one thing we always do: if a manager comps part of a meal because of kitchen problems or other issues that aren’t the server’s fault, we give a portion of the savings to the server.

26

Surely if it’s not a chain restaurant, that makes it all the more justified to name it here? I mean, if one branch of MegaChow has crappy service, that doesn’t necessarily mean the others do, but if a one-off place is crappy, it deserves to be known as such. Right?

27

My ex-wife was a waitress for years when she was in her teens and twenties so it took a lot to get her to agree to giving a shitty tip. We had a waitress who wasn’t just rude, she was downright hostile. I have no idea what her deal was but she was in the wrong profession.

In one pile I left the exact amount of the bill in cash. In another pile I left eleven cents.

28

As someone who waits tables, I am baffled as to how a lot of these situations can occur. I mean, 20 minutes or 45 just for the server to come over and take a drink order? How is that possible?

Literally, that cannot happen where I work. If I have a table that is seated and waiting for me, it won’t even get to five minutes before another server will tell me about it (this assumes that for some reason I didn’t see it already when I was walking through my section or the hostess didn’t tell me.) If I still don’t go out, then they’ll just go ahead and take it themselves, or at least just get a drink order and bitch at me for not doing anything. I’ve never seen anyone wait more than five to seven minutes, at the latest, before someone greeted them and got drink orders.

And from there, more time after to take a food order? I ask when I bring the drinks if they are ready to order, usually people are. And speaking of drinks, if the bar is backed up and it will take more than a couple minutes, I’ll bring out the non-alcoholic drinks first and let them know the bar is backed up. Same thing if the food is late.

I can’t imagine any server having their job more than a week if they do the things I’m reading about here. I mean, even on my worst nights, all I’ve done is messed up an order and forgot to refill a drink.

29

I once left a silver dollar in the bottom of an empty wine glass that my date left a cigarette butt in.

Lousy service+poor attitude+$200 dinner bill.

30

Even worse: we ate out once where the person who seated us took our drink order. We waited 10 minutes for our drinks and then started trying to flag down the person who took the drink order. After another 10 minutes (yes, we checked our watches), we just got up and left.

31

The last time my wife and I went to the place we went on our first date. We knew all the staff there, the food was fantastic and decently priced. It was a little hole in the wall place, but a real find. Hell, we had our wedding rehearsal dinner there.

The place got sold to new owners who had the wisdom to keep the same menu, chefs and pricing, but they brought in new servers.

Our next time in, we were ignored all around. Since we had nowhere to be, I actually timed him on my stopwatch to see how long it took from taking our entrees away to bringing our cheque. Coffee and dessert was not offered. At the 25 minute mark, I finally asked for our cheque.

I left no tip, and as we were leaving, he was standing outside having a cigarette and talking to some girl. As I was starting the car, he gestured at me. I got out of the car and asked him if perhaps he was describing to his girlfriend the abysmal service he had just provided us. He allowed as how that wasn’t, and I suggested that perhaps a career as a waiter wasn’t his best bet.

Didn’t go back, and the place has since closed.

32

Once in the Bahamas I was with my girlfriend and we ate a restaurant in Freeport. They were not busy. The waiter took forever to take our order, forever to bring the food, and then never came back until about an hour after the food came I hunted him down for the check. The check included a 15% service charge. I complained to the manager and he said we didn’t have to pay the service charge, and he apologized sent us away with two cocktails to go.

So I guess that’s a negative tip?

33

Zero. Twice so far.

1> About 15 years ago. Mamma D’s, if anyone in the Twin Cities remembers those places - the one in Robbinsdale which closed a few months later.

My friend and I went there for lunch. There was a couple at the table clear across the restaurant and I guess the waitress could only chose one table to serve, so she chose them. :rolleyes: We got really tired of yelling across the place to get her attention and having her deliberately ignore her. I actually chucked a fork full force in her direction - about 60’ - at one point to get her attention because she was willfully ignoring us.

Unfortunately for her, when we walked out to pay our bill, much later than we would have liked to leave, Mamma D herself was sitting up by the front register. We gave her an ear full of the bad service, for which we only got a very reluctant apology.

Paid to the penny, never went back.

2> About five years ago, Billabongs in Bloomington (MN - hell yes I’m naming names!). Our waitress said she was new, but nothing excused her behavior. She didn’t know the specials, was a total space case. I suspect she was doing coke or out smoking pot most of the night. Disappeared for more than 30 minutes after seating us before coming back to take just our drink orders - JUST our drink orders, when we were ready to order food. Disappeared for another 45 Fucking Minutes before returning with our drinks. Or more correctly, some random drinks, because two of them were not what we ordered and two of them were FLAT. Ran off before we managed to get out any complaints about what she was giving us. Came back a while later (30+ minutes) to take our food orders. By this time we were already pissed and had flagged down another waiter to get our drinks corrected.

Disappears after taking the food order for close to an hour before bringing the food out. At least it was correct, but we asked for more drinks and she ran off again. We never saw her again. We had to flag down other waiters to get our second drinks, more silverware, and something else I forget. We complained to them about our waitresses absence and failures, and we saw a “manager” running around, but why he didn’t come talk to us and why they didn’t do anything is beyond me. We finally had to flag down another person to get our check.

I paid to the penny, no tip. Never gone back.
Usually I’m a pretty generous tipper. I leave at least 20%, and can go 25-30% if I’m really happy with the service. Hell, a really happy day, good food, good service and a small bill and I’ve been known to tip 50%! Crap service will get around 10%. No service at all, and this is the only two times it’s ever happened to me, deserves no tip.

34

At Boston Pizza, a pasta chain here in Canada, they’ve mastered it.

At our last, and I do mean last, trip to Boston Pizza, it took 20 minutes to get drinks, 40 minutes to get my spaghetti, and an HOUR AND FIFTEEN MINUTES for my wife to get her personal pan pizza. The pizza was served with some of the toppings frozen as solid as a glacier. When my wife brought the pizza to the manager, demanding an explanation, she was told “uh, uh, ummm… uh… it’s supposed to be like that.”

Actually, now that I think about it, we refused to pay at all. So I guess the tip is irrelevant.

35

?
I’m curious about the name. We don’t have a “Boston Pizza” here in Boston. We DO have a chain of Regina’s Pizza, extending from Regina’s Pizzeria in the North End. I wonder if they’re either a Boston brand chaging the name so people will get the reference, or else someone trying to cash in on the North End associations. Do people outside Boston – heck, outside the US – even know about the Italian North End? (Those pasta commercials with Anthony stopped running AGES ago)
And no way any Boston pizza place would dare serve a pizza with Frozen toppings.

36

17 cents.

We were left out in the blazing sun with no refills or actual food being delivered for nearly an hour in an uncrowded reasaurant. Although the place has a policy of allowing their waitstaff to pursue and publicly harangue poor tippers… I was just waiting for the opportunity.

Now I just leave if a place is sucking.

37

Nah. It’s a small independent place with no other locations. Basically no chance of accidentally stumbling across it, unless you live near me. And I name names to those who live near me, so they know to avoid it.

Actually, if I have a bad experience at a chain restaurant, I tend to avoid the whole chain for a while. Might not be fair to the good locations, but that’s the point of a chain for me. By branding itself, a restaurant is associating itself with other restaurants for good or ill.

38

My bill came to 24 and change and literally all I had to my name was the $25 in my wallet. We were celebrating our last and toughest exam being finished at the end of first year university. I can’t remember what the others left but we were all in a similar boat.

If services is really bad my low is around 10%.

39

It is the Canadian resturant with an American name that is owned by Greeks and serves Itilian food. Did that clear things up?

40

“Why would a company named Franco-American make Italian food?”

  • The Alchemist
    (From ‘The Venture Bros’)