tipping

theyre a stupid way of making sure that servers get paid at least a minimum wage

10% in the UK is fair enough I think (more for great service), as eating out can be a lot more expensive. I never used to tip in the jar at the counter when getting a coffee or whatever though, only table service. How expected is this in the US?

Here in the US, eating out is generally a fair bit cheaper so 15-20% doesn't work out so expensive. Also the service is generally a lot better - people give you glasses of water without having to ask! They bring the bill quickly! That said, in the UK I've never experienced bitchy service - if it's not up to scratch it's usually just incompetence or gormlessness....

i don't tip for coffee and you shouldn't. if i ordered a fancy coffee drink or sandwich maybe.

Also I've read a few accounts of (American) servers who just assume Brits won't tip. So I'm still feeling a bit like I need to tip on the higher end just to over-compensate. But then if you get crappy service it rankles a bit, either pay through the nose or reinforce their 'tight Brits' assumptions!

Britishes were never unreasonable about service/tipping. Germans and the French, OTOH, fucking sucked.

Also, civil servants.

Right on.

In the USA, do you reckon the per centage you have to tip has gone up over the years? I have the impression that in days of yore it was c. 10%, but it has now crept up to c. 20%.

Yes, it has gone up from 10% for good/15% great to 15%/20%, just in the last couple of decades. I'm guessing this has to do with the preponderance of chain restaurants paying a shitty wage but not having a high volume for servers to depend on (and forcing servers to tip out other employees to cut labor costs as well).

I have some 70s-tastic Berlitz guide to deciphering menus round the world which also mentions US and UK differences and tipping etiquette worldwide and it says US tips 10-15%, so I thought "oh that is like Britisherland 10%-and-round-up, no problem", but subsequent years of ILXing have made me realise I was a v. mean tipper when in the States

sorry Californian wait staff, April/May 1999 :(

in the situation of outright bitchy service i would probably leave a smaller tip than usual but would not leave none

boggling my mind a little

i just want to pop in and say that i now make it regular practice to tip extra big on the first drink, for good luck

wait what, you americans tip bar staff?!!1!?

popcorn.gif

― Colonel Poo, Wednesday, 20 January 2010 17:57 (2 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i just want to pop in and say that i now make it regular practice to tip extra big on the first drink, for good luck

― you have to forgive me (surm), Wednesday, January 20, 2010 2:19 PM (50 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

$2 on the first beer always!

wait what, you americans tip bar staff?!!1!?

― free the charmless but occasionally brilliant Dom Passantino (history mayne), Wednesday, January 20, 2010 8:02 PM (10 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

is this a joke??

What about soft drinks? Serious cos I am trying to cut down my alcohol intake..

if yr bartender is charging you for a soda you should go to a different bar

If you're not drinking booze at all, a bartender should charge you for a soda. Plus, at some bars, they get that money.

in the situation of outright bitchy service i would probably leave a smaller tip than usual but would not leave none

boggling my mind a little

In the states, leaving no tip at all is basically taking money from the server. If a clerk at the grocery store is rude, should you be able to take a dollar or two from their wallet?

hmm good idea

In the states, leaving no tip at all is basically taking money from the server. If a clerk at the grocery store is rude, should you be able to take a dollar or two from their wallet?

― smashing aspirant (milo z), Wednesday, January 20, 2010 8:42 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i work in the service industry, and it's really not that hard to not be a bitch. if i treated people like shit, even once, i wouldn't expect to get tipped.

otm

Depends on your definition of bitchy. Some people think it's bitchy if the bread takes a little while to get to the table.

If the server yells at me or throws a drink in my face, sure, no tip. But anything short of having the meal completely and utterly ruined, you still have to tip.

mhmm, i don't think i've ever not tipped at a restaurant.

say what you want but In the states, leaving no tip at all is basically taking money from the server is mind-boggling

well, this idea necessitates an implicit understanding of the industry payscale on behalf of the customer, which isn't always the case, obviously

PS it's a slow workday today

some people are embarrassingly bitchy about food service; i am not one of them. i don't recall ever failing to tip on food. but i certainly reserve the right to not tip if the server is an asshole.

It's the way they figure out how much to tax those tips (yes, they have to be declared) that makes the proposition of 'stealing from the server' accurate. In the US, servers are responsible for declaring their table takings - their employer is then required to pass that on to the tax man, and as the figure they estimate as the server's taxable income is 10 per cent of the house's takings.

It's not just taxes - everyone lies about their tipped income, anyway - it's that at your average restaurant, the server is tipping out the hostesses and busboys on gross sales and the service bar on liquor sales. This accounts for 2-5% of their tips for the evening, and cannot be avoided.

So even aside from taking up time and a table, and whatever they might pay in taxes, they're paying out a percentage of your meal's cost for the privilege of waiting on you.

Short of having a meal completely ruined (in which case it should be comped anyway), it's never acceptable to not tip on a meal.

my last waiting job i flirted w/ middleaged women and got crazy tips, i wld b a good gigolo i think

I'm surprised more places don't include a gratuity on the bill, in that case (I mean, if it's so definitely expected that you tip a certain amount, and people's accounts depend on it). They often do if it's a party of 6 or more, but occasionally I've seen it (in the US) for smaller parties. Would this be considered too cheeky by the public? I didn't mind when I saw it on the bill, as it was on the conservative side, and you can always leave extra cash on the table if you want.

I think in the UK (correct me if this seems wrong) a tip is seen more as an optional extra which is impolite not to do.

TBH I hate the whole thing, I'm one of those people who likes to know what a thing costs and just pay it, rather than have the tip I leave be considered as some kind of judgment of performance by me, the mighty customer.

$2 on the first beer always!

haha but what if, like me, you frequent fine establishments where your beers are $2.50?

also, for restaurant tipping, i'm confused about the symbolism of different tip percentages...i grew up being told 15% was standard, 10% was for subpar service, and 20% was for great service, but lately i've been hearing all of these numbers increased by 5-10%. honestly being paranoid about this influences me to order cheaper food so i can still spend the dollar amount i'd planned while not worrying about stiffing someone percentage-wise.

i always always always do 20%

even if your bill is 75 bucks, that would make your tip 15 if you do 20%. if you do 15%, it's 11.25. is it really worth that extra 3.75 to not tip 20%?

yeah i do 20% automatically regardless of quality of service as a silent protest against the stupid system

er, not 2-5% of their tips, 2-5% of their gross sales. So if it's a $1000 Friday night, they're tipping out ~$20-50 altogether and hopefully walking with at least a bill.

I was in a couple of places on holiday recently where they added 18% onto the bill. Dunno if this is standard, or whether in touristville FL they just figure the place is hoaching with dumb britishes who don't tip right. We tipped around 20% everywhere else we ate, and stayed out of pubs except one place where we just left five dollars on the bar after a couple of beers and then ran away in case they thought we were cheap because we didn't have a clue.

also maria i think you should still tip $2 for the first beer and $1 for each beer afterwards and if the booze is that cheap you should get buybacks every couple beers!

I tip 20% as a minimum, but more than that if I'm alone. Even 20% on a single person isn't much for taking up a table.

Like, if I go to Waffle House alone and my bill is $7 and change, I leave the rest of a $10.

some places add 18% automatically if its a big group

I'm surprised more places don't include a gratuity on the bill, in that case (I mean, if it's so definitely expected that you tip a certain amount, and people's accounts depend on it). They often do if it's a party of 6 or more, but occasionally I've seen it (in the US) for smaller parties. Would this be considered too cheeky by the public? I didn't mind when I saw it on the bill, as it was on the conservative side, and you can always leave extra cash on the table if you want.

I think in the UK (correct me if this seems wrong) a tip is seen more as an optional extra which is impolite not to do.

TBH I hate the whole thing, I'm one of those people who likes to know what a thing costs and just pay it, rather than have the tip I leave be considered as some kind of judgment of performance by me, the mighty customer.

― Not the real Village People, Wednesday, January 20, 2010 9:39 PM (48 seconds ago)

you could just add percent every time if ur in the uk and then u can 4get abt being all worried. if ur bill is 40 pay 44. tadaa!

Laurel:

Would be shocked if any employer actually paid the difference, btw. Can anyone confirm/deny?

I can't speak to New York, having never lived there, but everywhere else I lived and worked as a server/advocated for restaurant employees in some capacity, the employers generally do not pay the difference unless called out on it. However, a savvy and brave server, perhaps with help from his or her friends, can file a complaint with the state department of labor and get back pay, as well as putting the restaurant on notice that minimum wage law violations are not okay.

Basically restaurants rarely do this, but they are violating state and federal law every time they do so.

Please modify that sentence with "US" as applicable. Sorry for being so USA-centric.

The automatic 18% add-on we got was just for 2 of us, btw.

Ailsa, maybe they get a lot of people who aren't invested in the area/won't be coming back/are tourists who find it easy to be rude or drunk or just don't know, so they added the automatic gratuity.

There's a bistro-ish place near my house where they do the same...I think it comes from when it was a more depressed neighborhood and maybe people would stretch their dollars by eating out w/o tipping and think it was okay? Or be shirty about it. So they just made the tip mandatory. I'm fine with it, but then my service has always been v reasonable there.

not necessarily, i remember hearing a "this american life" story a while ago where they tested this and found that the same waitresses got better tips when they were bitchy, i guess because people wanted to be liked or something.

My sister has been a waitress for six years, and she has this hypothesis that she gets better tips if she invisibly makes her customers feel "kind of stupid" about the rules of the restaurant. She says if they eventually have to ask questions about where to pay or something like that, they give her a bigger tip. She thinks this is because they feel they have embarrassed themselves and leave cash to compensate & improve their image. She works at like the only $$$fancy$$$ restaurant in pop 50k Bumfuck, Idaho, so I think that's how she gets away with this.

yeah, we didn't mind at all because we'd have left it anyway, but I guess a few folk who don't know maybe wouldn't? (xpost to Laurel) A few places we went had signs up explaining what different percentages should be given depending on levels of service but thanks to a zillion ILX threads, I was well ahead of the game on that front.

Staff at Walt Disney World aren't allowed to accept tips! We tried to leave a tip, and had it handed back to us!

abbott this is definitely a thing in my exp

even if your bill is 75 bucks, that would make your tip 15 if you do 20%. if you do 15%, it's 11.25. is it really worth that extra 3.75 to not tip 20%?

no no, my point is that i'm more likely to try to order a cheaper meal in the first place, not reduce the tip on what i already ordered. and if you have, say, $20, whether a tip is going to be 15% or 25% or somewhere in between actually makes a difference as to whether you order a $12 or $15 meal, or whether you just have water or a soda (and if you're in a group, the other people are going to forget to calculate tax and you're going to have to throw in a couple bucks to help with their tips ANYWAY, so you have to order a little lower than you plan to spend regardless).

so yes, please add my tip to the bill and save me the hassle of figuring it out.

i do not tip $2 on a $2.50 beer though, i think that's a little ridiculous, and i usually only drink 1-3 anyway.

btw a beer in ireland is gonna set u back closer t $6 for nothin fancy

$1/beer (even the first) is perfectly acceptable, unless you're wanting to get in good with the bartender for some reason.