Originally Posted by
cbn42
Why are you bringing up regulars? What difference does it make whether you're a regular or not? The vast majority of customers at a restaurant are not regulars.
I was responding to this comment:
BINGO! You hit the nail right on the head. It's like an auction, where you are bidding for the server's affection. In order to get the server to like you and treat you well the next time you come to that restaurant, you have to tip more than everyone else. Everyone else has the same idea, so the amount keeps increasing.
If you're not a regular, why would you ever see that server again, or even worry about your reputation with other servers? Even if it's someplace you go to very occasionally -- the odds of being remembered as one out of many is unlikely.
There's no "bidding," as the tip is purely after the meal.
If you go to the same restaurant regularly, obviously things are different, but assuming the staff doesn't turn over quickly (in which case tipping better won't help either) just being a known quantity and polite to staff in my experience is enough to get better treatment as a regular at that point even as a thoroughly average tipper.
I doubt Dadaluma's Facebook friend was a regular at this restaurant she posted about.
Right, which means she's back to some silly notion of karma, rather than any hope of an impact on future service.
Originally Posted by
WillCAD
Unfortunately, it's more common, at least among the Disney crowd, than you'd imagine. Heck, there is a raging debate over whether a server at a buffet deserves less, the same, or higher percentage tip than a server at a full-service restaurant. Some say the buffet server works harder because he has to clear more plates, and so deserves a higher tip, while others say that bussing tables and taking drink orders is far less skilled work than waiting full-service tables, where you have to memorize menus and get orders straight and synchronize food delivery and split checks.
Sounds like the Disney crowd is a little nuts.
Frankly, for buffets, I'm going to tend to tip a flat couple of bucks per person. At a cheap place, that'll likely be a normal tip. At an expensive one, that's going to be a very small percentage of the bill.
$40-$60 covers a wide range of restaurants.
At Disney, perhaps.
IME outside of resorts and hotels, that's kind of a gap where you don't see many meals in if you're a non-drinker -- too expensive for all but the most overpriced of casual places ($30 entree at a casual place?), too cheap for steakhouses or the low end of fine dining.
Alcohol at a pricier casual place can readily push you up into that range.
I have come to the conclusion, however, that a lot of the tip creep we've seen over the last 20 years is simply due to the fact that Americans are becoming mathematical dullards who don't understand the difference between flat amounts and percentages. They think, "same percentage" means "same amount", even when you're talking about a higher bill, and fail to realize that 15% of $10 is $1.50, but 15% of $100 is $15, so yeah, the server is getting a higher tip, even if you use the same percentage you used in 1987.
Perhaps this comes of coming of age in NYC, but I haven't seen tip creep over the last 20 years. 20 years ago, 15%-20% was standard. Maybe in flyover country, it was still 15%-20% in the early 1990s, but it definitely was not in the urban Northeast.
It's still standard in Norcal, and in the parts of the Northeast where my family remains*. When I lived 20 years ago, the sales tax was 8.25%, it's 8.875% now. It's 8.5% here now (was 7.75% here 20 years ago). "Twice the tax" has been a rule of thumb for at least that long, and has been within the normal range for tipping that entire time in the major metro areas I've lived.
(NH, which lacks a major metro area anywhere in the state, and where I went to college, had a 8% meals and rooms tax despite the lack of other sales taxes. "Twice the tax" was a common rule of thumb there too. Obviously, won't work in places with significantly lower sales tax.)
(* since they're mostly in Queens, and my brother who works in Manhattan isn't exactly hobnobbing with investment bankers, it's quite possible that the subset of Manhattanites who spawned the "$500k is middle class" BS a few years ago may have a different standard... NYC is a big place, culturally more diverse and with a bigger population than many states.)