Would a waitress know specifically I didn't tip if I paid at the counter?

Factual Questions
1

Long story short I went to a restaurant with a gift card. I was told I could tip using gift card funds, and so at the end of the meal I paid entirely using the gift card and hit the button to add a tip at the front cashier.

So apparently they never took the tip off the gift card now that I checked the balance, so in essence I never tipped. Since it’s a regular place I go to I intend on making it up to the waitress next time I see her, but it made me curious, would the waitress even know I didn’t tip if I paid up front? She never handled the check at all, so would she know I had “stiffed” her?

2

She’ll find out when the cashier says ‘Hey, the person with the gift card didn’t tip you’.
If you’re feeling bad about it, stop in when it’s convenient and leave a tip with the cashier to give to her.

Unless the cashier writes the tips on the checks so they know how much each wait staff got.

ETA: Also, FWIW, if you’re a regular, enough that they recognize you when you walk in, I wouldn’t worry about it too much. They probably figured out that you didn’t tip because of the gift card.

3

I’ve overheard waitress, bus boys, cooks and cashiers chatting about work. They talk to each other about tips.

4

Obviously they all talk and of course nothing gets talked about more than getting stiffed: who did it, how much, wtf, IKR? A lot of waitstaff pool tips and/or have informal sharing agreements for getting stiffed.

5

I’ve worked in restaurants and dated a couple of waitresses (one was also an aspiring actress, which was ‘fun’) and all they talk about are tips, how shitty obnoxious or aggressive customers are, and their various resentments about the management. I mean, it’s understandable and the complaints are most valid but it makes for extremely tedious conversations.

Advice if you are going to pay with a gift card or other nonstandard payment is to carry enough to tip in cash. I used to almost always tip cash until the pandemic, and if I have the right denominations on me I’ll tip in cash even with paying with a credit card, at least if it is just me.

Stranger

6

I think the question has been answered so a different post:

In my humble experience in that industry, "we are, as Oscar Wide quipped, “all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars”.

Using pretty high end pricing here, but from the third world in the early 2000s, so multiply, as you wish.

We comiserated with the colleague who got a $3 dollar tip on a $300 bill, but when she said she gave it back (she felt deeply insulted) we laughed. Customer was noplussed, we thought, that’s $3 less for beer later… better than no $3

Working in an area with multiple tourists from multiple countries, some staff attempted to steer certain nationalities away from their “sections” (group of tables for which they are the respomsible waiter) and into someone else’s. This can be subtle in rush hour, but still fairly obvious.

Now, in general

Indians. I never queried from which part of the subcontinent (or indeed Durban, as I live in RSA) they came from. Rarely tipped. Easy clients though.

South African Black people: expect 10% (or nothing). Cultural differences, it was a newish concept. (Nouveau Rich Black people throw money around as if they were in an American music video, bit they also throw attitude, so at the end of the night - if it is there - that ostentacious display of wealth in ypur pocket feels just right.

South African White people: expect 10 to 15% no matter how good you are.

Sourh African Indian people: round the bill up to the nearest decimal. (Or nothing)

That’s the locals. I worked in a great fish restaurant in a habour, so we got a lot of foreign visitors.

Random, non scientific examples

USA: anything up from 20%, often 30%
Germany: 10% (travel booking details told them) but occasionally up to 30%
UK: 10 to 15%
Anywhere in Asia: 0% (it is not a cultural norm to tip)
Austalia: 0% (no culture of tipping, I think)
South Africa 10%… because decimal maths is easy for us.

Most of those who had read a guide book tipped in the way suggested by their book.

However. Rich people. Of any nation. They either tip extremely well or extremely poorly.

7

Correct. Here in the workers paradise the emphasis is on paying people properly, rather than having them have to complete their wages with a separate random payment method only partly dependent on service quality.

I’m sure Australians are rightly feared as restaurant customers, with our good looks and tight pockets. It helps when there is obligatory tipping advice on the bill, but we won’t be happy paying it.

We will tip in higher-end restaurants (I dont think rounding up to the nearest $10 is really considered tipping in that context, but that was in an age of banknotes and coin) but not for your normal sitting-down-food-place or cafe.

8

For me, it seemed like a 50/50 thing. If the Australian guest had read his Lonely Planet I got a decent tip.

If idiots off of a cruise ship, I made enough in commision selling them giant lobster

I know they taste nice, but they cost roughly double of what I normally earned, so tips be damned!! I got commission on big sales.

I did once get a roughly 100% tip from a Chinese gentleman because the lobster was in roe, so he got a tennis-ball size of lobster eggs as well. The Chinese are also not well known for tipping.

9

I actually hated this.

It said, something like “10% for good service, 15% for exceptional”. I rarely got below 20% because I (back in the day) was efficient, fast, dashingly handsome… no. I was just really good, in a really good restaurant, in a really expensive (for locals) place with a captive audience of comparitively rich people who thought prices were really low.

My skills, as much as I’d like to boast about them, were just one facet of that scenario.

Oh, fuck. I forgot to mention tbe kitchen. The kitchen is the restaurant. We waiters merely served the food. They make the food. There was a very good kitchen run by a very good chef.

10

That is likely to happen.

It could be a pain for the cashier to put the tip on the gift card so they just didn’t bother. Either way, you intended to tip, it’s actually the restaurant that stiffed the server, and it would be very nice of you to provide a tip in cash next time. Keep in mind that particular server may not be there next time, they change jobs often but it’s still a nice gesture.

11

The processing of tips to your charge card can vary depending upon how the business operates. I go to the local bar and have 4 beers for $10, tip $5. The $10 shows up on my dedit acct. right away. The $5 tip may not be applied for several days, especially if it was a weekend. 2 individual charges. Charged at the same time, reserved in my debit account as owed, but applied to my acct differently. Possibly due to taxes and accounting for employee wages. It seems to me that the manager processes tips separatly from actual sales on Monday. Two separate transactons.

Results in your state will vary.

12

Both the initial charge for the beer, and the tip, are reserved as owed when I check my acct. But only the first charge is actually deducted from my acct. The tip is showed as pending and then applied later.

13

This is what I always do when I pay the check by credit card- I pay the tip in cash. Wait staff get taxed on reported tips, and the employer is legally allowed to include a CC tip as part of the CC service charge. So I give them cash and they can choose who they want to share it with.

14

To get back to the OP - back in the day, when small restaurants - the sort where you pay at the till as often as not - with modest prices did a lot of cash business, I recall the waitresses on duty each had a jar. When the cashier took payment, they tossed the tip into the appropriate jar. Often it was whatever waitress not currently occupied who manned(?) the till for the moment. So likely, the individual waitress would not necessarily know but could likely ask their colleague if there was a tip involved.

As things transition to credit, IIRC from a restaurant my wife worked, she could add up the totals from each of the receipts for each server (I assume through the magic of computers) and pay out the total from cash at the end of the night. Canada did not oblige employers to track workers’ tips, but she noted that servers, especically in the bar, tended to make more than the manager. (It’s up to the server to “honestly” report tips on their income tax)

The servers were asked to put 2% of total bill (rather than x% of tip) in a jar to be distributed to kitchen staff as their share. This was purely voluntary and administered by one of the wait staff, since if the management did it then it would be considered wages and require taxing.

She occasionally comp’ed parts of a larger bill in order to create a tip, since some ethnicities (as noted above) were less participatory in the tipping culture, and generally some people were just plain cheapskates. Particularly, people with large groups assumed that the tip did not need to reflect the size of the bill.

I would be far happier with a no-tip culture, particularly since most of Canada does not heavily discount server wages on assumption of tips, and the tip prompt has gotten way out of hand with credit card machines… but it’s the norm for now. There’s also been a discussion recently on whether the servers even see those tips in some situations - for example, one of the food delivery services was allegedly taking a serious slice of the tips.

15

French restaurant in Melbourne, at lunch time. I tipped, because they asked me to, and I know that in France they add a service charge to the bill. But I was bitter, and I won’t be back. I’m particularly bitter because I know that staff here sometimes demand a tip from people with an American accent.

16

I once worked a table, with another guy. Big table, about 18 Muslim men, so we were not going to make money off drinks.

Except… these were apparently gangsters. I realised that when some guy brought out a Glock and compared to his table companion’s 9mm (not sure the brand). Table service stepped up a notch!

But every so often, one would come downstairs and order a brandy to come mixed with his next coke (double brandy, usually) on the pretext of using the toilet. So being good waiting staff, we got to know who was having what, and “same again, sir?” meant they did not need to sneak around.

The bill was pretty huge. The host of the party, who was paying for everyone gave us zero tip. I assume he knew about the drinkers because it was all there on the bill, or maybe it was beneath his dignity to actually read it.

One of the guys we’d served alcohol to clandestinely, equally clandestinely, gave us each a very good tip.

17

When this first started coming into fashion, I thought it was great, but lately I’ve been seeing the suggested list as 18%, 22% and 25%. You can futz around and make the tip 20%, but everyone will know it (I’m talking about the electronic notepad, here). A tad sneaky, but I love the technology.

18

Leonard? Is that you? Penny wants to know…

My parents ran a cafe back in the days before credit cards, when the tip was left at the table and the bill would be paid up front at the register. They had to watch certain known “characters” who would walk past uncleared tables where tips were still on the table, sneaking some or all of it as they walk past. They wanted to ban the guy, but because it was a very small town and they tried to avoid confrontations, they watched him very carefully. “They” being mostly the waitresses, looking out for each other.

19

I have actually seen 25%, 30%, 35% a couple of times

20

I don’t particularly mind that. However, I do make it a point to customize my tip, so that the total charge is $xx.00. Even if doing so requires me to round up past the 25% point.