Years back, decades, it was 10%; then it became 15%. In the last several years it is 20%! Will it be 25% next year?
I tip, but I despise the system. I think restaurant owners should just pay their workers a decent wage and be done with it. Bah humbug! Anyway, can anyone give me some kind of chronology?
Who assumes the right to establish such a standard?Tipping should be a personal choice based on quality of service--------not a gun-point directive!
The restaurants should pay a reasonable wage,add it into the meal cost and thereby stop all of the fumbling that goes on after a meal.
I use the 15%-20% as a guidline but tip on the value of the service and not on the bill. All things being equal why should a server get more money because I ordered a expensive cut of meat or jipped because I ordered the cheapest thing on the menu?
If I order the cheapest appitizer/meal/dessert I could spend the same as if I ordered just a higher priced meal - but the server would have to work harder for the 3 combo.
Mainly I like to eat on the cheap and usually ending up overtipping using the 15-20% guideline.
Also my best guess - it’s an easy step from 20-25% but it aint going any higher then that anytime soon.
There is no ISO standard for tips 
I am 44 and do not remember any time that 10% was considered standard. The custom I have followed all my life, and what is recommended to foreign tourists in tour guides, is 15% for most restaurants, 20% for more upscale ones where service is more intensive. If a sommelier helps you with wine you can toss in another 5%, maybe.
In practice I tip 20% when I’m happy with the service (attentive but not pesky, good attitude, every need promptly attended to, etc.). Strangely this usually happens in expensive restuarants and total dives; I have gotten great service in some cheap restaurants. I leave 15% for just the basics (takes the order, brings the food, checks on everything during the meal), and less than that for serious lapses (forgets part of the order or gets it wrong, nasty attitude, serves stuff that never should have come out of the kitchen, does not bring order from kitchen promptly when ready).
It began when the media started asking waiters what the standard tip was.
Actually, when the minimum wage is raised, owners claim the tip rate goes up so they don’t have to raise the waiter’s pay. Pay plus tip is supposed to be above minimum wage - not each hour, but overall.
According to this you should tip from 15-20%. If you have been told that 15% is no longer acceptable, you probably are hanging out with people that at some time in their life waited on tables. I have three children that are great tippers (20%) and their old man usually tips 15%, unless the service is over and beyond.
Also if you travel to foreign countries be sure to check the customs. We are going to France in May and I have read that there “service is always included”, which means it is on the bill.
I’ve often wondered how it came to be a percentage of the bill. If I order an expensive meal vs. a salad, am I paying for better service? Is the server somehow exerting more energy to deliver a T-bone vs. a hamburger and fries? I lived in Japan for three years and loved not having to worry about a tip there. Mind you, the food was quite a bit more expensive though. Something just doesn’t sit right with me for paying a server a % of my bill. I would love it if resturants would factor in what they though was fair, into the price of the food items, and pay the servers accordingly.
I have never heard of 20% being the standard. It’s 15% here. Conveniently, in Ontario you pay 15% tax (8% provincial, 7% federal) on your meal, so you get a 15% tip printed right on the bill, and can work from there.
For good service, I just figure on 15 and round up to the dollar, allowing for more if it’s a very small bill.
I’ve often wondered how it came to be a percentage of the bill. If I order an expensive meal vs. a salad, am I paying for better service? Is the server somehow exerting more energy to deliver a T-bone vs. a hamburger and fries? I lived in Japan for three years and loved not having to worry about a tip there. Mind you, the food was quite a bit more expensive though. Something just doesn’t sit right with me for paying a server a % of my bill. I would love it if resturants would factor in what they though was fair, into the price of the food items, and pay the servers accordingly.
I usually tip 20 just because it is easier to round up. If my friends and I go out in a large group I would say we usually tip more than 20, because we all put in more than we owe rather than make change, then we don’t feel like figuring out who should and who should not get money back…
The idea behind customer tipping is that it lets you reward good service, or punish bad. If the restaraunt just added it to the bill automatically (as part of the prices or otherwise), then the good servers would get exactly as much as the bad. If it’s added separately, then you can put in a larger tip for a server who goes the extra mile, or a smaller one for poor service.
I’ve no idea, though, why it’s a percentage of the bill, other than simplicity.
I would love to go off on a lengthy diatribe about how servers get the shaft and what it says about our culture as a whole, but I’m not going to do that.
Instead, let me point out that whether you tip your server or not, he or she is still taxed as if you did. Servers are required to claim a percentage of their sales every shift and pay witholding tax based on that amount. The tax structure assumes that every redneck with a credit card understands the implicit contract with their waiter when they sit down at the table, whether they actually do or not. Thus, when you order a big old $20 steak and potato meal and four or five beers to wash it down and then decide that you think tipping is an injustice to you and give your server nothing or ten percent because that’s how it was in the 50’s, the server is actually losing money on the transaction through no fault of his or her own.
Sure, tip bad servers badly and good servers well. But if the service is polite, the food hits the table in a reasonable shape, and your water glass stays full, I implore you to tip generously the people who brought you the food. After all, odds are they’re making half minimum wage.
I tip 20%. It is easier to calculate. Figure 10% and double it.
Talking to friends of mine about the subject once recently she commented “only senior citizens leave 10%”.
I also find, if you are a regular of the same resteraunts and bars, you will can and should be rewarded for tipping well. If I go to a bar a few times a month or more and always tip above 20% then I expect a few rounds of free drinks to be coming my way occasionally or I will stop going.
Color me confused.
I never know any more if I’m insulting the servitor or not. I thought of 15% as standard (base rate) and 20% as a sign of extra accolade.
The other night I went out to dinner and service was halfway decent, so I left 18% which seemed reasonable to me. I asked my sister first and she said 15-20% was the right amount, anything in between.
If the site linked to by kniz is to be believed, my 18% was well within the proper range.
But if the base rate is 20%, as someone insisted in the other tip thread, then I just dealt the servitor an insult.
I’m at my wits’ end because there seems no objective way to arbitrate these disagreements to everyone’s satisfactions. So I’ll just quit dining out, how about that? If everyone does that, all the servitors will be out of work and we can all just forget about tips!
Please don’t assume this is always true in other countries. For example, I waited tables at a restaurant in Paris for a few months last year, and although gratuity was included in the bill the waitstaff never saw a centime of it. It went straight to the restaurant.
A good rule of thumb I learned, for Paris at least, is that if a restaurant caters to a tourist crowd (especially near the Champs Elysee) and especially if the waitperson is young and not French, then they’re not getting any of the service compris. When I was working there, my wage was 34 francs (about 5 dollars) an hour – so I was indeed living off of tips just as in the States.
American tourists would ask if it was included, and I’d explain “Well, yes but no” and they’d usually leave 15-20% for me. Hell, even most French people would leave a 10 franc coin (about $1.50) on the table…so tipping is not absent from French culture.
Are you serious? You’d better come into the place I bartend a lot more than a “few times a month” or regularly leave tips over 30% if you’re getting free drinks. Thrice a month does not a regular make; the guys 'n gals who come in a few times a week (and tip) are the ones getting hooked up. But maybe you’ve stumbled across a generous barkeep, or a bar manager that doesn’t keep good tabs on how much alcohol is leaving the bar. In which case, lucky you!
Well…The service included in France actually doesn’t mean that it goes to the waiter’s pocket. It’s related to the bar/restaurant owners adding a “service” to their posted prices, long ago, resulting in the patron having eventually to pay more than he expected. So including the so-called “service” in the displayed prices has been made mandatory.
Actually, the owner can or cannot add these “service” fees to the waiters paychecks. It has some consequences on taxes for him, but I don’t know any specificics. In most cases he keeps them. Actually, even french people are mostly unaware of it and assume the “service” goes to the waiter in some way.
The regular waiter (as opposed to the student working one month in summer in some vacation resort or the illegal immigrant) is doing a lifelong job (not just doing that while a student or in between two “real” jobs). He’s paid more than the minimum wages (sometimes much more, but usually not), hence isn’t supposed to rely on tips for his living. Nor he’s taxed on the basis of some expected percentage of tips. He’s supposed to include the actual tips in his income, but I assume in most case he’ll underestimate them.
Tips aren’t unknown in France. But there isn’t any “mandatory” and generally agreed upon rule. Some people never tip, some always do except in the worst situations, some will give roughly the same amount whatever could be the price of the meal, others some guestimated percentage of the bill, other will leave the spare change, whatever… And since a waiter isn’t expected to rely on tips for his living, nobody will mind not leaving anything if the service was poor. Anyway, nobody would consider giving a 20% tip.
I would assume that a lot of french people won’t be able to grasp the concept of tips=mandatory, and will feel like it’s a a kind of scam or rip off if someone tells them so (even I would suspect if the fact that waiters doesn’t make the minimum wages or are taxed on the basis of expected tips is explained to them. Cultural habbits are very resilient).
On a related note, in the company I work for, tips paid for bussiness meals can’t be reimbursed. So, if someone gives a 20% tip during a bussiness trip in the US because he knows it’s “mandatory” there, the money will come from his pocket, not from the company’s.
Finally, I don’t buy in the theory relying on tips = better service. First because apparently in a mandatory tipping system people feel compelled to give a tip even when the service was poor. Second, and more importantly, because in a non-mandatory tipping system, like in any job, if a waiter’s service is consistently poor, and he pisses off patrons, his boss will fire him. So, mandatory tips or not, the waiter is expected to do correctly his job. I mean, I assume you expect your clerck bank to do his job, even though you don’t tip him…
What percentage? 15%? 20% Other? If it’s, say, 12 percent, should I not feel obligated to tip over that?
I’m in my 30s, and don’t recall this either. However, I have an old Mad Magazine (or possibly an old Mad Magazine paperback book) with a Dave Berg strip, where the guy in the strip is complaining about the tip rate now being 15 percent instead of ten percent. So it must have been 10 percent once. (In the strip, he’s complaining that figuring out a ten percent tip was easy, but he can never figure out 15 percent. He orders a tuna sandwich, even though he hates them, because he ends up with a round figure for the total bill that he can figure out 15 percent of for the tip.)
Me, I round up a little from 15 percent.
When a waitperson-ette (what a title) asks me if I wanted change back? … “Do you want a tip?”
Slam dunk. Then I tipped my customary 15% if service was “good”. I don’t mind tipping 20% (and sometimes more) for excellent service; I hate tipping anything above 5% for those that would be classified as “money grubbin’ mooches” that are unable to provide anything above lousy service.
Well, I’m not easily finding it with Google, but IIRC the IRS’ assumed rate for tips is 8%. If someone else has better info, please provide.
I tip 20% for great service, and at places where I hope to establish myself (which tend to be places with great service) and 15% otherwise, unless a statement needs to be made.
Well, I guess you have to be in your 50’s to remember a time when the standard was 10%. I think it was during the 60’s or early 70’s that it went up to 15%. As I recall the justification was an adjustment for inflation was needed. This is a bogus argument since as inflation goes up so does the price of a meal and so does the amouint of a 10% tip on that meal.