Yeah, I’ve never done it but running after your customer and saying “you seem to have left some spare change on the table, here it is” is what you do with mid-westerners who think the spare change in their pocket is all you need to tip. For GOOD service. They seem to think $0.25 is more than enough to show their appreciation even though you live in an area where you can’t rent a fucking room for less than $1000/month, much less pay your tuition, car, utilities and medical insurance.
After one appaling meal (including the main course being brought BEFORE the starter), I paid the exact bill then told the surly waitress that I had a tip for her … “bad service means no money for you”
The worst I’ve ever seen done (I did NOT do this myself) was when both waiter and busboy had been rude to us. My friend topped off his water glass from everyone else’s, removing the ice cubes, until it was full to the brim. He dropped some pocket change in it and put one of the dessert cards over the top. He flipped over the glass and set it on the table, and then pulled the dessert card out from under it. It looked like an empty upside-down glass with change in it. When the busboy or waiter picked it up, however, it probably spilled water everywhere (unless they saw what he did and did the same trick in reverse).
I do not advocate this, but I was almost as pissed off as my friend, so I didn’t stop him.
If the service is so poor that I have to go to the register, I don’t leave a tip. The smallest tip I’ve left is -$25.00, the cost of the meal deducted by the manager from the pay of the incredibly stoned and filth-producing waiter.
That’s the oldest trick in the book. Why didn’t you unscrew the salt & pepper shakers, spit in the ketchup bottle and steal the toilet paper from the bathroom while you’re at it?
Seriously, why don’t people just bitch out the management instead of gobbling up all the food and then being all passive aggressive?
I have never left less than 10% for a tip.
Too many people are too thin skinned about perceived service slights, in my opinion.
Because some of us have issues with confrontation? 
Fortunately, in the case of the worst service I recall from being in the US, I was out with fellow Kiwi co-workers and our project manager, a man who did not have issues with personal confrontation We went to a Hooters on the outskirts of Chicago (I think the Red Lobster next door had been the first choice but was full). The waitress was surly, and the service slow and just generally all-round poor. When we came to settle the check and started ante-ing up cash, the project manager stated instead that he’d foot the bill and took the entire check off and had hard words with the manager. I do not think our waitress received much if any tip. Since my meal ended up free (since the manager paid) I’d have to call it a win.
I’ve only had one incident of awful service - I don’t count slammed-busy nights where the waiter is obviously overwhelmed and/or new.
My husband and I had gone rollerblading along Chicago’s lakefront; we were with a couple friends of ours, and by the time we stopped I was overheated and dehydrated. It was mid-afternoon and we stopped in a restaurant that I think might have had one other table occupied, with them already eating. We were seated, and my friends asked for water right away, mentioning that I was seriously dehydrated. The waitress disappeared for at least 5 minutes. I had stopped sweating (and not because I was cooled off), so I went up to the bar and got a glass of water from the bus boy. No “sorry” or anything when the waitress finally showed up. The food took forever to come out - at one point we were pondering going to the nearby McDonalds and bringing some food in. She disappeared for long stretches of time, no apologies ever, a couple dishes were wrong, no offers for drink refills (we had to ask and they seemed like a chore from her response). The only people we saw were the bus boy and occasionally the waitress; I’m sure there was a cook in the back somewhere. My friend paid, but I’m pretty sure she got a penny tip. At that point we didn’t want to waste any more time in that place trying to hunt down a staff member.
One penny, for the first time in my life just last week. Waitress was so stoned she could barely walk, manager was invisible, 10 minutes to get two flat diet cokes (we’d ordered iced tea), 14 minutes to get water which the busboy brought, 28 minutes to get the wrong food (mine was at least poultry) which was so badly prepared as to be inedible, so after two bites each, we stood at the register for 12 minutes, then I wrote an explanation for walking out on the special of the day white board, and left.
(Oh, hell yes – The Rolling Pin in Minot ND)
A) Read the post you’re responding to. I didn’t do the water trick.
B) All of the things you describe are being nasty to other patrons. They don’t affect your server at all.
Generally speaking, I do speak to management. In the two instances I described in this thread, I talked directly to the server in one, and to the front desk person in the other.
I did read it. “You” in my post means you, your group.
But it’s being passive aggressive and the water trick probably doesn’t affect your server either, it affects the bus boy. Way to stick it to the bus boy! 
I’ve definitely had my share of bad service, so I certainly don’t mean to be tossing a grenade into the works…
But I have to ask. People wait 30 minutes to give their drink orders? An hour to give their dinner orders?
At 10 minutes, I’m flagging someone down (politely). At 15 minutes of no service (unless it’s a weird situation, like I’m out on a holiday evening with no reservations), I’m leaving, period. There are plenty of places in which I can spend my money, and most of them have a wait-staff person at my tableside within 5 minutes of my butt hitting the seat.
So, this is a serious question. What leads people to wait so long when the service is obviously going to be extraordinarily bad?
Depends on how much hassle it is to go elsewhere. Where you are, what else is around, what time it is, how many people will have to relocate to the new place, etc. If it’s a 20 minute drive in 3 separate cars to get to the nearest place that may or may not still be open, you’ll put up with more than if you were on a street lined with restaurants in walking distance at 7pm on a Friday night.
I grew up in the restaurant business and worked it until I was old enough to know better (about 20). Even then it seems I’ve always been around the business in some form or another.
I usually overtip great service and undertip poor service. For the worst of the worst I will leave 2 cents, most people in food service understand this as an insult.
An example, my wife and I had been going to a local bar for a long time. Neither of us drank, we just socialized, ate dinner, drank Coke and did the Karaoke thing. The waitresses were always polite and although I was not drinking, I always tipped as if I were.
One night the waitress was an older model who usually worked the back with the darters. She completely brushed us off. I went to the bar all night and got our drinks, always tipping the bartender and placed the food order with the cook herself. The cook actually brought it out to us. When we went to leave, we bussed the table ourselves and left the obligatory 2 cents for the waitress. As we started out the door we heard an commotion in the bar, I turned around and the waitress, pissed at the slight, was yelling at the manager and pointing at us. We left and never returned.
In my situation, we waited because I was feeling like crap after my brush with heat exhaustion and I didn’t feel up to moving that quickly until I got more fluid in me and had a chance to rest.
And what OpalCat said. It can be tough to get a table in any amount of time in Chicago and the burbs on a busy night, so it becomes “just 5/10/15 more minutes, we’re already seated, who knows how long it’d be over at ________.”
Oh, I forgot about the second poor tip that I can recall, in which we did leave. My husband and I were visiting San Francisco, and we went to a little Chinese food place on Lombard. We were eating dinner early but were a little concerned that no one else was in the place. I ordered some vegetarian potstickers as an appetizer, and we ordered main courses too. The waiter was a super newbie, probably starting that night or so. He didn’t recognize the beer names we read off their menu. He wrote down the order but had to come out to confirm with us what he’d written down, and fumbled through the menu trying to find what we were ordering.
This confirmation didn’t help as, after a significant wait, he brought out the potstickers - which turned out to be pork. Since I’m a vegetarian I was displeased. During this, a number of phoned-in orders had been leaving the kitchen in rapid succession, and a single guest came in and sat down. The waiter was quick to see to her, and she received her entree at the same time I got the replacement potstickers. Meanwhile my husband had been waiting a long time to get any food, and was fed up. He called the waiter over, said we were leaving, paid up for the beers and the potstickers, gave him a minimum tip, and we left.
We ended up going directly across the street to a fabulous sushi place. The waiter was attentive, but with the growing crowds he was a little harried, and forgot a sake order after a huge table came in and got sent to his section. He was apologetic when he figured that out but we had a great time overall, didn’t mind, and we tipped well.
Obviously, you didn’t read the post. Please do so before continuing to argue.
(A) I neither did the water trick nor condoned it.
(B) The busboy was most of the problem. Of course he was trying to stick it to the busboy.