Yeah, but in the original script Mr. Pink’s character was named Mr. White, or something.
And QT was supposed to play that guy, I think, but THANK GOD he realized he can’t act worth a damn.
Hey, as long as you don’t think I look like Steve Buscemi, we’re cool.
BTW, check that Wiki page, it has more guidelines for US tipping.
This may not apply in South Africa, but at least for the states, this is something I read the other day but didn’t know because my store doesn’t charge anyone a gratuity, no matter how large the party:
From here . I’ve never worked anywhere that charged an automatic gratuity on any size party, but if anyone reading this has, I’d be interested to know whether you receive the full amount or part of the 15% or whatever your place charges.
I always thought it was 10%, for the automatic type of tipping, more if the service was exceptional. I do find in more competitive and populous cities (New York, Montreal, Paris, Milan), the service is generally better, so I could see expecting to pay higher tips in places where the bar is much higher for service. The service also tends to be much better at more expensive restaurants, so the more you pay for your food the more you will have to tip. Ive been to some restaurants where the staff arent allowed to accept tips, in an effort to get more business.
20% is the standard for tipping these days. 25% for great service. From what servers have told me, it’s usually only senior citizens that tip 15%.
As far as the 12% tipping goes, I have a question. Are you people leaving exact change for tips? If your dinner was only $40, a 12% tip is $4.80. This is only .80 more than a ten percent tip. Would you be waiting for the twenty cents change to put back in your pockets?
Unless you are talking about meals over $100, then I can’t see bothering to calculate tips at anything but 5% increments. (Frankly, I would think that people who go to nice restaraunts aren’t the same types who give 12% tips.)
Tipping threads always turn out like this.
andrewdt85, I think the usefull lesson here is that you should NOT take etiquette lessons from Quentin Tarantino films.
The oldest etiquette books I have which mention tipping are from 1940 and 1946. Both say that the appropriate tip for a waiter or waitress is a “generous 10%,” assuming “decent service.” And you were never supposed to leave less than a nickel, even if the tab was only 15 cents (say, for a piece of pie and a cup of coffee). By the 1960s (I have a book from 1964, and one from 1967) it was up to 15% – again, assuming decent service. And by that time, the minimum tip was a dime, even if this was more than 15% of the tab. Recent authorities (my books from the last 5 years) are calling for 15% - 20%. The concept of a minimum (‘never leave less than a nickel or dime’) seems to have gone by the wayside – probably because you aren’t going to eat anywhere for a tab of less than 2 or 3 bucks, so the usual 15% or 20% is fine.
Here is a link to a tipping site that seems (on a cursory read) to be in line with the guidelines set by my most recent etiquette books.
I’d say the new minimus is a buck. Even if you only get a coffee and pastry, you can still leave $1 on the $2-3 tab. It’s the same concept with ordering a beer at the bar. Even if the beer’s only three bucks, you leave one as a tip. This is more than if you were paying a tab at the end of the night, but that’s the price you pay for tipping as you go.
I’m in the Detroit area, too. In my college years I helped sustain myself by working at a country club. You want to know what excellent service is?
Your cup (water, coffee, soft drink) never sits empty long enough for you to take note of it (as long as refilling it is free, of course).
Your server will never show up to your table with a tray full of food and then proceed to ask everyone who had which entree.
Your server will verify the properness of all orders before they leave the kitchen…ie you will not get a rare steak when you ordered well, you will always get the extra tartar sauce you ordered, etc.
(If it’s a members-only type place) Your server will greet you by your honorific and last name when addressing you.
Your server will check on you throughout the evening, offering more wine, cocktails, etc, but not stopping by your table every 2 minutes and interrupting conversations.
You will not have empty, dirty plates on your table long enough to notice that they are in the way.
The server will smile, and make the customer beleive that yes, they truly do think that being a waiter or waitress was their life calling, even if they are working toward another career.
You won’t be pressured into ordering something (ie dessert, appetizers) just to pad the bill (and thus get a bigger tip).
And, one of the most important things: Your server will know the menu. He or she will not have to go back into the kitchen to ask what “Chipotle sauce” or “carbonara” means on a dish.
Your server will be able to recommend wines to accompany the entree.
If you get all this, that’s exceptional service. Deviations end you up in the “average” category. Above and beyond can get a bigger tip.
Aaaand I make my usual contibution to theses threads;
15% for a taxi; more for a short run, less for longer. Don’t waste his time with change, bills only.
–furt, ex-hack
About the only place I get cabs anymore is in Vegas. If the guy doesn’t try to take me “sightseeing”, he gets a better tip. Another way to get a better tip (I only do this at night, when having some fun), I give the hack $1 for every other cab he passes and stays in front of on the way to our destination. Some of the guys drive like mad anyway, they like it. I like it when I hear the cab downshift into passing gear. Lets me know he’s doing his best to get me where I want to go. You can make more than a 100% tip if you try.
I know for sure that 10% was fine as a tip 50-60 years ago. I think that might be why, in Resevoir Dogs, Nice Guy Eddie (who was by far the oldest of the bunch) was the one to make the “12 percent” crack. For him, that was a nice tip.
Restaurant servers who may migrate within the U.S., be warned: contrary to what Debaser posted above, 20% is not the standard nationwide. 15% is still fine in much of the South, for example. It’s true that 15% will not particularly impress anyone with your overflowing generosity, but neither would it be considered cheap.
However, rounding down from 15% (e.g. leaving $4 on a $28 bill) is considered cheap.
That’s reasonable. A buck is probably my minimum tip, too – although I can’t remember the last time I paid a tab so small that 15% of it wouldn’t have been a buck anyway. However, I was speaking of the literature and, although in the older books a minimum was explicitly stated, nowadays it seems not to be.
A friend of mine has an idea for an invention called the Tip-O-Meter. It sits on your table with a red button and a green button, and a big display showing the tip percentage, so the staff gets immediate feedback on their performance. It starts out at the beginning of the meal at 15%. If you are not greeted promptly and asked for a drink order, you hit the red button and the figure drops a percentage point. If you don’t get what you ordered, it drops another 3%. If the waiter drops a plate of shrimp scampi (complete with hot butter) on your suit jacket, it goes WAY down (this actually happened to me once). If the server brings you extra napkins because she notices you have young children, you hit the green button and it goes up 2%. If your water glass is never less than half full, it goes up 2%. If you’re there for breakfast and you sit for 5 minutes with an empty coffee cup, red button time.
I always use 15% as a starting point in mid-range restaurants where service is fairly basic (such as most chain restuarants, where people come out with the food and have no idea who ordered what). I tip higher in cheaper places like diners because they work just as hard but the bill is lower. I tip higher in upscale places because the quality of service is much better. I only exceed 20% if the staff really exceeded expectations for type of establishment.
And I always calculate tip on the pre-tax total. The staff doesn’t get a bonus just because DC restaurant tax is ridiculously high.
Heh - hit the red button enough times and the waiter will owe you money. Oh - and you’ll wind up with a plate full of snot in place of your meal.
I have also heard all my life that standard tipping is 12%. If I remember correctly, it is also mentioned in an episode of Seinfeld (the one where he gets the knockoff electronic planner for his dad.) Even though that is what I was told I always figured that was a really low number and generally tip between 20-40%, but it depends on the place.
Here is a good guide for tipping, if you should ever come to Las Vegas.
I always tip pretty close to 20% in a restaurant.
In Europe, waiters and waitresses get a regular salary and insurance and paid vacations, etc.
In the USA, waiters and waitresses do not get paid enough to live on without tips.
So if you can’t afford the tip, you can’t afford to eat or drink there.
Period.
I like the US system where the waitstaff don’t get paid enough to live on. Direct reinforcement, if you frequent a place and the waitstaff knows you, you get much better service. If everybody was paid the same, and simply fired for being a bad waiter, then everybody would get the same mediocre service that’s barely good enough not to raise too many complaints. Who wants that?
In answer to this slight hijack, you are SO correct! Having lived in Europe for many years, their customer service at restaurants was generally horrible. Unless it was the owner, they didn’t give a flying F if you like the service or ever came back to that restaurant, and it showed.
Also, every non-American visitor I have ever had come to the states notices immediately how friendly the wait staff is over here. However, those same non-American visitors simply hate to tip more than 1% and I practically have to force them to fork over a tip at gunpoint. My last visitors from New Zealand simply got the heebie jeebies every time they would see me put 20% of the bill, in cash, on the table as a tip.
That is not the custom at all. It’s what a handful of cranks do. Doing that does nobody any good. The server probably doesn’t get why you did it and the manager never hears that there was a problem. So the server will just keep providing that bad service. And you’d better not ever go back to the same place again.
The custom is do as described in the post you responded to, which is to leave no tip and tell the manager why. I have only had service this bad twice.
A 12% tip has always been the baseline for average service for me. It dosen’t take too much effort attention to get to 15%. Just bring the right food and keep my water full.
To get to 20% I’d have to be engaged to the waitress, while treating my future in-laws to a nice meal.