Originally Posted by
weekilter
About a month ago, we brought you the story of overpriced NYC hotel bars that were adding automatic 18-20% gratuities to tabs, claiming that they had to do so because so many of their patrons were from Europe and other parts of the world where tipping isn't part of the culture. Now we hear from a waiter who proves they might have a point.
Over at ServerNotServant, they have the tale of a waiter at a Boston restaurant who was stiffed by a table of seven non-American women.
The tab for the septet totaled $590.11 and they only paid $600, leaving a less than 2% tip for the restaurant staff.
While the waiter didn't make a fuss about the chintzy tip, he wanted to know how viable of an excuse is the whole "foreign customers don't tip" thing, especially in a day when it's incredibly easy for travelers to learn these things:
http://consumerist.com/2010/12/is-im...py-tipper.html
Europeans are not used to tipping as taxes and service charges are built into their bills/tabs, etc. Kudos to the waiter for not making a scene or embarrassing the patrons. It would be appropriate not to expect, or criticize a non US citizen for the lack of a tip since europeans arent accustomed to it. Many (not all) Americans typically expect everyone to be exactly like us and immediately take up our culture, which makes that kind of ignorance unfortunate.