In most of the restaurants I've eaten at lately, the waiter (the person who took my order) does NOT bring any food to the table--these restaurants have "busboys", they bring (and refill) water glasses, bread to the table, and the various courses of the meal, the water (to whom I leave the tip), generally only brings me (if I'm ordering a glass) wine and the bill at the end.

:D Same here.

Since when is it the diners responsibility to take steps to ensure that the server obeys the tax laws, and also that he shares his tips with others if mandated by the restaurant?

It's bad enough that we're being extorted out of outrageous sums for tips in the first place, but now we're expected to become the Tip Police and de facto IRS agents?

No. Freakin. Way.

I will give my server my tip in any form I deem appropriate, and in any amount I deem appropriate. If folks dislike the system enough, perhaps the OP was right - the tipping culture in the US should be abolished and replaced with signs that say, "We pay our staff a living wage. No tipping is necessary."

I look forward to that day.

+100, but even your sign won't be good enough to stop it, as the posts about Oregon and Washington show. It would have to say, "We pay our staff a living wage and they are not allowed to accept tips. Please respect our policies."

Harsh maybe? When I worked for minimum wage way back when, that was exactly the policy of the store I worked for and everyone respected it.

I give the money direct to servers because of all those restaurant owners who pocket tips rather than give them to staff.

As for tax evasion - absolutely.

I don't think you are and i think you'd have difficulty proving it. You arguably encourage tax evasion when you ask for a discount for cash but that's another matter.

Compulsory tips or pressurised tips of the order of 25% (or face getting berated by the staff) are nothing short of an industry wide scam (particularly when they're added on wine) and when your chased out into the street legitimised mugging.

What next? The equivalent of the Resort Fee at a restaurant - compulsory $25 per person and this includes some salt and pepper, bread, cutlery, a glass of tap water, wifi, a copy of USA today to read whilst you wait and kitchen staff tips (you only have to tip for the car park attendant, doorman, receptionist, Maitre D, Sommelier, barman, cloakroom assistant, and your waiter)

I love going into self-serve restaurants, pay by credit card
and be presented with the TIP line when I sign.

Sorry, self serve = no tip.

Drew Brees is not a bad tipper
 

http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/nfl-sh...182448587.html

Does the recommended tip percentage ever go DOWN?

It seems to be constantly subject to percentage creep, on top of the natural cost increasde that a fixed percentage would incur.

I recall when I first went to the USA in the 70s, as a young Aussie backpacker, the (American) guidebook I had bought coyly suggested that a 5% tip for good service is customary.

As if. Several abusive encounters later I gradually got used to the idea that , even then, more like 10% was considered compulsory, even if you sat at the counter, even if the service was rubbish.

One barman (and he owned the joint, ) in Texas used to chuck my 5c change in the tip jar every time I bought a 70c beer (those were the days!) with 3 quarters. I thought it was presumptuous and outrageous behaviour - although that 7.14% tip would be considered tiny and insulting today.

It was a "beer bar" under some weird local rule that you could buy bottles of beer but not draft, or buy soft drinks for mixers and bring your own spirits in a paper bag, and keep them covered. I was just standing at the bar, no seats or anything. He was just serving bottles out of the fridge. Sometimes we even had to get them and open them ourselves. But you were called all sorts of names if you didn't. Never mind, we had good banter for the two months I was there and I gave as good as I got.

But I still didn't really understand the tipping thing until an incident at the Tex-Mex joint across the street. A waitress came to me and said "Do you know those people?"

They were hippy types who occasionally drank at the bar I mentioned. She was in tears.

Five of them had walked out without paying for their meal and she was going to get docked that amount from her take. She had no wage, it was a "tips only" job and she hadn't enough to cover it anyway. I didn't even know that was legal, but apparently at that place and time, it was.

Anyway, I ran after them and persuaded them to go back and pay. They tried to make out it was a mistake but they were evasive and I suspected they had done it deliberately.

After that I was treated well at that place, although I must still have seemed like a stingy tipper.

Anyway, that's when it finally dawned on me how the system worked over there, (despite the mealy-mouthed platitudes about "reward for good service" that you still see in guidebooks/websites) so as much as I dislike the system, I tip well in the USA/Canada.

(And I can afford it these days. It was much harder as a penniless traveller anxiously scanning menus to see what I could afford. I had to keep reminding myself to allow enough cash for a tip - it wasn't normal to me)

Ever dine in Italy and get hit with a coperta, sometimes with a service charge on the menu on top of it?

It's been the same range 15%-20% for the last 20 years I've been an adult. The creep from a 10-15% range to a 15-20% range seems to have occurred while I was a kid in the 1980s, since I definitely remember 10% being normal back then and some of my older relatives still stick to it.

I can't say I remember the 1970s enough to know if 5% tip was ever OK.

I've yet to see any claims that any actually customer treats 20-25% as the normal range, and most of the claims by servers mentioned in this thread seem to be attempts to take advantage of foreigners.

Well, that was my initial reaction when first I got to America and people started telling me I need to tip for this and that and whatever else. I thought they were trying to con me, which probably led to bad feelings on both sides. I thought they were being dishonest and they thought (and often said) I was a "cheap @$$hole"

I have a better idea of how it works now but you do have to wonder about how impartial some of the tipping advice is.

I think so, sometimes. However in my experience it's been a small fixed price on the coperta and maybe 10% max on the service charge.

I had a similar experience in a German town with a big international summer music festival. A colleague vigorously insisted that tips were not included, and the waitress agreed. I was skeptical, since I spend a fair amount of time in the EU and had never heard of this, other than the small-change rounding up that is customary. I later concluded we had gotten the milk-the-guilt-stricken-American-tourist line (and my friend was misinformed).

It's amazing also how many restaurants you go into where the words " a XX% service charge is automatically added to your bill " are always the smallest printed on the menu and in the place you're least likely to read.

Particularly in restaurants where the tip line is left vacant on the check that already includes a service charge.

I work on the principle that restaurants, especially the swankiest, are there to try to rip you off and it's best to get your retaliation in first - which is why I always ask at the outset if service charge is included.

My other bugbear is having my wine glass filled by a waiter. The first time they do it I always tell them politely that I'll be working the wine bottle.If they do it again I call the manager over. If it happens again I cause a scene.

Eating out is on my terms not theirs.

Dined in a West London Middle Eastern restaurant tonight. They weren't kidding when they said Service wasn't included on the menu. Perhaps I had to order it with the food - without doubt the 5hitiest surliest service I've had in years. Just glad there was no service charge included because it allowed me to adjust the tip to a sum the service and food deserved - nil! If I could have given less i would have.

all three things you described were, and are, very illegal: (1) dining and dashing, (2) docking an employee's pay when someone dines and dashes, and (3) failing to pay wages but forcing the server to live on tips only.

while the "hippy types" are petty thiefs, that woman's employer was the real criminal.

Well that's what I thought too, but I was told I was mistaken.

I'm also told by a colleague in Florida whose wife is a wine supplier that at least one national chain is doing it now. I mentioned it online, and was told it could not be so, so I asked him again, and her insisted it was. I decided to drop the subject.

Isn't promoting tax evasion EXACTLY what tipping does?

As I understand it, in the US, they take a percentage of servers' sale to estimate tips. What other profession are they estimating revenue. Other jobs pay tax on all their earnings, not just a guess based on an inaccurate calculation.

In many parts of Canada, the waiter claims how much tips they made per years. A friend of mine just claims that he was a bad waiter and didn't make any.

In a sense it's tipping itself that promotes tax evasion.

I read a facebook discussion from one of my friends a few months back where she went out on a date with a guy and he only tipped 20% and was ranting about how cheap he was. Several people chimed in saying 15-20% is standard and she was having none of it. Said 25% is the bare minimum and was quite adamant about it.

Her reason for tipping in the 25-30%, even above range? None other than giving out that much will make the server's day. Was saying that it was only a little bit more to you but will mean a lot to the server.

So that is why we have tip creep. There are always people who tip above just because they feel it is the right thing to do, the majority just go along with what is standard, and a few always tip below. Eventually the people who overtip do it often enough that servers come to expect it and suddenly what was overtipping a decade ago is suddenly standard.

Let's follow this thought...

While people will attack your numbers, they are not that far fetched.

Here's a story of "a friend of mine"

"She" would have 4 seatings, 6 tables each. The goal was $20 per table.
Some small tables gave $5. while other larger ones gave $80+. There were 6 servers in the restaurant will equal sized sections. They were full 150 days per year (or more).

The goal would have her easily at $480 (to 600+) per day in tips. Mostly, she would make more. Some days less. She would also tip those who supported her, leaving usually with about 350 (to 550) cash. The employer also paid a decent wage (appx $60 after tax), medical, dental, pension, etc.

So for the 150 days work, this person would make appx $61,000 (or more) after tax dollars... and take the other 22 weeks of the year off without pay.

Many servers make more. Many less. It's based on volume and meal price. And it adds up to a lot.

Indeed. I don't pull over on the highway on a sweltering hot day and give the road construction crew a $20 bill because I empathize that their work is difficult on a hot day. I don't pay the doctor extra because his surgery solved a chronic issue. And I certainly don't pay the janitors money for keeping a building clean even though I know their employers pay them too low a wage to survive.

CLASSIC! :D This shows how ridiculous tipping is.^ ^ ^

Another great point.

What comes around, goes around.
It's natural. In good times, people on the way up are going to spread it around.

Just as relevant, those who are having bad times, NEED to tip less.

The 10% - 20% Rule is as much for the ability of the tipper as the rating of service. ^

Sean, that's being back to the way tipping, where it exists, is in most countries. Or has been up till now.

You tip if and what you feel like, there is no formula. That's why I find these lists of what to tip in X country a major fail. It's projecting North America.

Sales, or salary? It would be interesting to see how much the revenue assumes.

No, if the tip is given by credit card, then there is a record of it and the server is forced to share it with the other employees who are entitled to a cut (cooks, dishwashers, etc.) and pay taxes on it.

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.

I see it all the time on the Disney world message boards. It's insane to me to suggest a 25% tip for meals in the $40-$60 per person range, especially for families of 4 or more.

Wait, $40-60/pp INCLUDING the small children? And 25% tip on top of that?? Clearly I live in a different America than the the typical Disney family. But then, wasn't it Disney that built the town of Celebration, FL (?), a buffed and polished simulacrum of what America should be?

Of course, for a family with several active small children, a 25% tip could be too low.

They'll be very lucky to get anything more than 10-15% from a British Tourist in Florida

Well, I stand corrected: there are a few nutters out there arguing for 25% tips, not just servers trying to scam foreigners. I can't see it being common.

Gotcha. So we've got an individual nutter there; mind, there have always been big tippers, but excoriating someone else for being cheap in the usual range is uncalled for.

Frankly, my own rounding rules these days -- always round up to a whole dollar or throw an extra 50c-$1 in if there's any doubt -- makes for relatively large tips at the very least expensive restaurants, although it makes eff-all difference in percentage at pricier ones.

Servers don't get what they expect to make; they get what people expect to give, and that expectation AFAICT has been constant for the 20+ years I've been an adult and paying for my own meals.

Who the heck asks for a specific server at a restaurant where you're not a regular? Or even if you are, how often do you do that?

If you are a regular, and you're not an a-hole, you're going to get better service (and more likely to get a server who isn't brand new) than some yutz off the street who's never been there before even if you leave a tip merely in the normal range. How often does the restaurant have so many regulars that they're competing for individual servers?

I'm sure it happens at some ultra-trendy places, but I can't imagine this is remotely common.

Youch. Of course, one goes someplace like Disney World expecting to be ripped off, and paying $40-$60 per person with kids is insane. That's low for fine dining, but fine dining with pre-adolescent kids is wasted, and it's above the reasonable range for casual dining unless you're spending a fair bit on alcohol.

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 doubt Dadaluma's Facebook friend was a regular at this restaurant she posted about.

Children's menus at the Disney restaurants ARE cheaper. However, Disney moved the cut-off age between adult prices and child prices to 10 - 10 and above pay full boat.

Of course, there is no prohibition against adults ordering from the children's menus in the Disney restaurants, and many who aren't big eaters do so quite often. But Disney has been shoving their Disney Dining Plan down the guests' throats for several years now; the DDP is a pre-paid meal credit system, and on that system, those age 10 and up pay full boat.

I really love WDW, and I love many of the restaurants there, but I'm no fanboy - I despise some of the ways they've come up with to separate unsuspecting newbs from their hard-earned vacation dollars.

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.

$40-$60 covers a wide range of restaurants. The signature restaurants, the ones that really could be considered fine dining, are by far the most expensive, and tend to have fewer kids because of the price and the higher level of culinary sophistication. Granted, you're not going to find a true five-star restaurant at WDW - I think Victoria and Alberts, the best on site, is rated four star - but there are a few exceptional places down there is you care to look.

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.

I was responding to this comment:
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.

Right, which means she's back to some silly notion of karma, rather than any hope of an impact on future service.

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.

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.

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.)

People still want to make their server happy, it's just human nature. It's not rational, but then again, nothing about tipping is rational.

It's still "bidding" in the sense that a few people will tip more than the going rate. Others will follow, and eventually that will become the new standard. Then a few years later someone will raise it again and the cycle will repeat itself.

The rule is round up the bill when in Germany, unless of course you happen to be American, then the rule is feel free to tip your customary 20% and confuse the hell out of the wait staff. :)

Some people do. Some people just stiff them. Most people seem to follow the social convention for its own sake, with very little to do with the actual server.

The standard range has been consistent my whole adult life; if it's a cycle, it's a wicked slow one.

It was around 10% in the 1920s (Emily Post's advice) and 15% became standard a few decades after. Now it's "15 to 20%" or whatever it is.

I think it goes up each generation.

"10-15%" seems to have been standard for nearly a half century, then -- if it was standard a couple of decades after the 1920s through to when I was a kid in the 1980s. That's a lot slower than once a generation.

15% is still an acceptable tip anywhere in the US, a few odd folks online and a few irate servers trying to bully people aside. IOW, I wouldn't worry about it; at the level of changing from a flat 10% to a range of 15-20% in 70 years (and then being stable for another 20) doesn't make it sound like it's individuals "bidding" it up so much as major structural changes in the economy ... and even then, that stuff seems to change faster.

We need someone like Clint Eastwood to sort this out.
I make that a 1.7% tip.

There is nothing benign in percentages going up, no matter how slowly. A so-called "flat" percentage is still an increasing amount, as prices keep going up.

This sub-section of FT has to do with Dining, BUT, in Las Vegas (there are various publications, like "Whats On in Vegas", which are in your hotel room), tips in general have gone "off the deep end":)--per those publications, which have a page of "suggested" tips...if you follow those suggestions, you could be out of money in a day or two.:D
[When you order room service in most of these hotels, they add a service charge to the exhorbitantly priced food, on top of that are you supposed to give the deliverer a tip also?]

Yes, I say with a chuckle, we of the Disney crowd are a little bit nuts. But at least we're nuts in a positive way, even if it does cost us enormous sums of money.

And I agree with you on buffets. When I'm at a $13-$18 place like Golden Corral or one of the local Chinese buffets/hibachi grills, I tip a flat $2. When on vacation at WDW, where the buffets range from $25 up to a whopping $35, I tend to tip a percentage. But being that it's a buffet, I tip 10%, not my standard 15%.

I have lived in the suburbs of Baltimore my whole life.

When I first started going to restaurants with my parents in the mid 1970s, the percentage was 15%. I still abide by that.

By the late 1990s, the 18% thing started to appear.

Inevitably, the 20% thing came along in the mid-2000s.

Over the last 3 or 4 years, I've been seeing the 25% thing a lot.

It's been a slow creep, from 15% to 25% in 40 or so years, but it seems to be accelerating.

Related story: A friend recently was at WDW and couldn't find bananas in the hotel's store, so she asked for some from room service. They sent her four bananas, and a bill that read:

Whole fruit (4 bananas): $11.96
Trip charge: $3.00
Subtotal: $14.96
18% gratuity: $2.15
Tax: $0.98
Total: $18.09

So, $18 for four bananas? Even the Minions wouldn't pay that much! She complained to management and they removed the entire charge, but the whole thing left a sour taste in her mouth (so to speak), because bananas at fruit stands in WDW are $1.50, but from room service they're $2.99, PLUS a "trip charge", PLUS a mandatory 18% gratuity? Bonkers!

It's important to remember that gratuities are voluntary and not obligatory.

I never let anyone try to intimidate me into paying for a service which I think has been sub-standard and if they want to cause a scene I'm willing and able to out-scene them.

This is why I think Tripadvisor, for all its faults, is a fantastic way to keep restaurants and hotels on their toes.

That and health inspectors. They're always my last line of defence when restaurant owners are particularly rude and their standards are poor. The inspectors will always find something wrong in a kitchen. Any kitchen.

Having said that I believe when service is outstanding there should be an equally appropriate response. I remember calling into a motorway service area very late at night on a long journey when my kids were young and starving. The kitchens had closed and the place was all but deserted but a kindly waitress quickly rustled up a snack for the kids and a cup of strong coffee for me. Later I sent a letter and a monetary gift for the waitress to the company's head office - their response made clear both they and the waitress really appreciated the gesture.