Originally Posted by
uncertaintraveler
1) Paying (or "tipping") up to 1/4th of my bill simply because someone did their job is mind-boggling to me.
2) Paying (or "tipping") 18% for what I would consider to be poor service is equally mind-boggling.
3) Paying (or "tipping") 10% for what I would consider to be horrible service is simply crazy.
Do you actually receive tips based on these sorts of percentages??? If so, good for you, but I wouldn't be surprised if you didn't.
I would like to think I provide exemplary service to every table. I know I have my bad days, and I don't expect great tips if I screwed something up. I've been doing this job for a long time, so I would say my average tip is about 18-19% post-tax, so I guess about 21-22% pre-tax. I actually worked tonight and had six tables (slow night thanks to the Championship Game) so here's at least some data points:
1st table: party of two (probably business colleagues) $55 tab, $9 tip
2nd table: party of three (three businessmen) $127 tab, $25 tip
3rd table: party of two (couple) $44 tab, $8 tip
4th table: party of three (family) $78 tab, $15 tip
5th table: party of two (business colleagues) $70 tab, $20 tip
6th table: party of nine (business group) $320 tab, $55 auto-gratuity, no extra tip
This was a particularly good percentage night as you can see, but I would like to think that there's apparently a larger group of people who tip like me then maybe the select respondents in this thread think there are.
(As an interesting side note and back to the original topic at hand, the auto-gratuity was the worst tip percentage-wise I had tonight.
)
Chris