Clearly. Waiters seem to think they are entitled to be paid by someone other than their employer FOR DOING THEIR JOB.
This is an important point.
Also, it’s worth taking a look at how tipping affects minimum wages by state. In California, for example, minimum cash wage regardless of tipped status is $7.15, vs. federal minumum wage of $5.15.
http://www.dol.gov/esa/programs/whd/state/tipped.htm
storyteller0910, thanks for your responses.
heh… except I think you missed the irony in the quote.
The legal system seems to think they are too, or we wouldn’t have states in which waiters are paid $2.13 an hour by their employers, eh?
It is worth re-iterating that NOBODY has said you shouldn’t tip. NO ONE. People should tip for anything but crappy service, because everyone knows that in the States, a significant portion of a waiter’s income derives from tips. Everyone has said that people who stiff decent waiters are assholes.
But that doesn’t change the fact that people do not HAVE to tip. They don’t. And if a waiter, on behalf of other waiters, informs you “you have to tip me,” a perfectly correct response to such an irritating notification is “Actually, no, I don’t.”
I am a former waiter (cook, hostess, phone order taker, delivery driver, bartender, shift supervisor). I always tip. If the service is so terrible that no tip is deserved, then I will have called the manager over before the end of the meal. (This has happened maybe twice in my entire life.) I am hugely sympathetic to the difficulties of customer service. But I worked in those trenches for years; I know how hard it is, but I also know what can be done and what level of service it is reasonable to expect. I expect to be treated well as a customer because that’s how I treated my customers.
Exactly. And Weirddave completely quoted me out of context. Right after he snipped I stated that I usually give 15%-20% because the service is rarely bad enough to deduct anything from the tip.
I agree with most of your friend’s rant, though I prefer Kalhoun’s take on tipping, but the part about the empty tables issue is absolute BS, IMO.
I don’t even understand what he’s trying to say. “We can’t take your money at this time because it would be too much work for us so we’re going to corral you uncomfortably till we deign to let you know when we can!” Isn’t multi-tasking part of a server’s job?? Wow, I’d love it if my boss could “corral” deadline-related work for me till I felt up to it but guess what, I’m in a service profession too and it gets dumped on my desk and I figure out how to work it in.
I really have the utmost sympathy for waiters, mainly because my mom is in a very C.S. related profession (financial planner/sales) and I loathe what she has to go through with some bad apples in the general public…but some servers really are just walking around with a big old cross on their back. There isn’t a single service profession, maybe other than doctors*, where workers in that industry don’t put up with insane amounts of crap from people/clients…including jobs that require advanced education, like lawerying and finance. You’re either in it for the money/because you like it or because you don’t want to make the effort to branch into anything else, so just deal and quit whining.
*although Quadgop’s stories come close.
This is why I always get pissed at the tipping threads. In Washington, servers are paid Washington State’s minimum wage–end of story. So each time a server tells me how much they need my tips, I think bullshit. You are making one of the highest minimum wages in the country and you want 20+ percent on top of that?
I tip well because I am very easy to remember and I don’t want to get my food spit in. That’s the only reason. Servers in Washington are already well compensated for their work.
Just remember- PIT spelled backwards is… TIP. (I think; I’m sure someone will correct me if I’m wrong- dyslexia is sometimes great for spelling things backwards but when you try to spell things backwards it can be a total ficking butch.)
I have the opposite view on this- if I can go into a situation, transaction, whatever, with reasonable expectations, I am much more likely to be pleased with the results. Going into it with unrealistic expectations almost guarantees disappointment.
I consider it good manners. And smart- using the above examples, if I am aware of the dealership’s needs and goals, I can make a better-informed decision. With the insurance claim, if I know what is reasonable and/or expected from several points of view (insurance company, agent, other party), I will be much better off.
I think a good customer also had the ability to see it from the other side. Of course, some people just want to be right. Or outraged. Or indignant. For me, life is just too short to be pissed off.
YMMV, obviously.
[posted under wife’s account] --LHOD
Two suggestions:
-If you want to not tip or undertip, tell the server ahead of time, so everyone can enter the transaction with accurate expectations about what will occur.
-If you want to stay at a table far past the normal time, consider tipping the waiter extra. You’re denying them income; make it up to them.
I’m not setting these up in some sort of arcane contractual ethical theory; these are simply decent things to do.
Daniel
Reasonable suggestion, unless, of course, VCO3 is your server. 
Tipping is part of the cost of going out. If you do not tip, then you are stealing from the wait staff. You can bitch and moan about how that’s technically not true, and say “change the law” all you like, but right now, in this country and culture, tipping is an expected cost incurred when dining out, and the law and the salaries of people working as servers reflects that. These people are paid, quite legally, far under the minimum wage, in the expectation that they will receive tips. If you refuse to tip then you are expecting them to work for slave wages. You want to change the law and require a minimum wage of $10/hour for servers and pay the higher menu prices that would bring? Fine. But until you do that, the food price on the menu does most definitely NOT include the cost of your being waited on. The great thing about this system is that if the server truly doesn’t deserve the tip-he dropped your sandwich, spilled hot soup down grandma’s neck, put his thumb in your pudding, whatever, then you don’t have to pay him. But that’s because of what he did or didn’t do, not for a “The tip wasn’t on the menu so I’m not paying it” bullshit reason.
As for the dopefest thing, I have been to several large dopefests at restaurants, most notably the one at the Rainforest Cafe Tyson’s Corner in Feb. 2003, where internet heros from these boards who don’t believe in tipping just toss the cost of their food in the kitty when the bill goes around and slink off in to the night. I’m not going to let the server of any party I’m a part of get ripped off (particularly when a party of 30ish means that he hasn’t had any other tables to wait on for the past couple of hours) just because some assholes and thieves want to shortchange the staff under the cover of a group. On that particular day, I made up the difference to what it should be. A hamburger and a kid’s meal wound up costing me $45. Since then, if I’m getting the bill together, if I don’t know you well enough to know that you won’t steal,( IOW you’re a stranger who hasn’t gotten together with the other MADs before) I’m going to tell you what you owe, including the tip. “Let’s see, your burger was $7.99…$1.99 for your drink…$12.00 outta cover it”. If someone want to argue with me about it at that point then we WILL have a man to weasel discussion, which will probably culminate with me publicly humiliating the cheap asshole in front of the entire restaurant (I’d introduce you to everyone in the section: "EVERYONE, CAN I HAVE YOU ATTENTION FOR A MOMENT? SORRY TO BOTHER YOU, BUT I WANTED TO SHOW YOU WHAT A WEASEL LOOKS LIKE. THIS GUY HERE HAS JOINED OUR PARTY FOR AN EVENING OF FELLOWSHIP AND FUN, AND NOW HE’S REFUSING TO PITCH IN TO COVER THE TIP, BECAUSE HE “DOESN’T BELIEVE IN TIPPING”. HE IS OF THE OPINION THAT THIS FINE YOUNG WOMAN (gesture towards waitress), WHO HAS DONE A FABULOUS JOB WITH OUR PARTY TONIGHT, DOES NOT DESERVE TO BE COMPENSATED FOR HER LABOR, AND IN FACT PRETTY MUCH DESERVES TO BE HIS SLAVE. WON’T YOU ALL JOIN ME IN A LARGE ROUND OF APPLAUSE TO LET MR. CHEAPSKATE KNOW THE HIGH REGARD IN WHICH WE HOLD HIM?) That’s not any kind of threat, it’s a promise. Pay your way or pay the consequences. When you eat out the tip is part of paying your own way.
Oh, and Frank? Could you please clarify the threat that I made? I may not be the most popular poster on the boards, but saying that someone was going to have to discuss the situation with me is hardly what I would call a threat.
I interpreted it as a veiled threat, ambiguous enough that you only got a note and not a warning.
I believe it was the statement that the friendly chat was going to be very up close and personal. If you don’t see why that was interpreted as a threat you have real problems.
zhongguorenmin
I think you are confused about the difference between an “expectation” and a “requirement.” Tipping is the custom in the U.S. but it is not a requirement, so your descripton of failing to tip as stealing remains incorrect. Not just “technically not true,” wrong in every respect.
Not ONE SINGLE PERSON in this entire thread has advanced the argument that "the tip was not on the menu so I’m not paying for it. You can set up strawmen for the fun of knocking them down if you like, but the only person to set out this “bullshit reason” was you.
That doesn’t make you the Tip Enforcer for any gathering you might attend. Those people were not your children, they were other adults; it is neither your right nor your responsibility to police their behavior for them, or to compel them to act as you think they should.
Fine. Make up the difference yourself.
You can tell them whatever you like, but you can’t make them pay it. These are grown-ups. They don’t have to allow you to tell them what they owe or what they must pay.
You can make whatever sort of scene you choose, wherever you choose, over whatever injustice you perceive. But if you think most people made unwlling audience members to your shout-out are going to think the other guy is the asshole in this scenario, I think you’re mistaken. And I think you’re also mistaken if you think the waiter would thank you for it. They don’t like being embarrassed anymore than anyone else does.
What constitutes “paying their own way” is not for you to decide. But I’m sure any person contemplating dining out with you will be happy to have the information that you do not hesitate to be an officious boor who doesn’t shirk at embarrassing others if they don’t meet his personal expectations of proper social behavior.
Don’t get me wrong: Someone who tosses in a ten for a $9.50 charge, I think the money-sorter is perfectly within his/her rights to say “Hey, what about the tip?” on the grounds that most people leave tips for anything other than completely shitty service, so the other guy’s failure to tip must have been an oversight, right? But to go beyond that to telling people what they must tip, chastizing them if they fail to tip as you think appropriate (“a man to weasel talk”) and making a spectacle of yourself is ridiculous.
If you’re trying to convince me that I am wrong, you’re doing a very bad job. If your waiting skills are as good as your debating skills, I can see why you’re so keyed up about this: you are often stiffed on the tip.
I’ve decided for myself that they’re justified.
Cowardly? Nah… it’s the only act I can commit and still keep my job. it’s a compromise.
That’s true, most don’t.
Again the cowardly/lack of courage thing…look, it’s the only course I have available to me if I wish to see justice served and also keep my job. It’s a compromise. I would rather tell the offender off and perhaps punch them, but I would also like to keep my job…
Also, I don’t know where you worked, but I’d say that if in six years you never witnessed a single instance of food tomfoolery then you weren’t paying attention or you didn’t work in an average restaurant.