Hear! Hear!

I thoroughly detest the bill being presented with the final box accusingly blank. I just sign and keep my copy so that if anyone decided to award themselves something extra I can challenge it.

Even worse on one occasion was the bill presented in Charlston SC on which the server wrote "15% service not included".

We returned the credit card slip rounding the amount up to the nearest dollar (a might 2 cents as I recall) with the correction "15% service not provided". Needless to say we did not return. I have to say that the food was awful, and the waiter had all the charm of a cheese grater.

The story did not quite end there. We had been dining prior to this at an excellent restaurant that was called Magnolia (I think) where the food and service were excellent. Providing 20% was indeed easy in such a delightful establishment. We told the person who was looking after us of our adventure, and he asked to see the bill. He took it away and came back laughing. The owner of the restaurant was in the bar and went incandescent.

I gather that such rudeness to foreign visitors wasnot part of the restaurant's policy, and was I might add totally at odds with the way we were treated in a part of the USA that I have came to love very much.