That's great, but tipping isn't a gesture in North America. It's an expected part of staff wages. There's no getting away from it, no matter how much one dislikes it, or how much we try to rephrase it as appreciation or reward or a gratuity. Nobody over there takes a waiting job and calculates their income on the basic wage.

Hence the US posters use terms like "jerks" who "stiff" the waitperson about those who tip less than 15% (or 20% or 25% depending on who's talking) , as if they're doing something dishonest by not "overpaying" (as, OTOH, we foreigners might see it).

the expected percentage does seem to be accelerating. Presumably it will slow down as it approaches 50%. Or perhaps it would then move towards a pay what you want model?

They can expect as much as they want but if their service is crap they won't get a dime from me.
What they will get is a rational and polite explanation as to why they don't deserve one, which I make clear I'm quite happy to put into writing,with their name, to the company owners. That soon softens their cough.
Never let the tail wag the dog.

Oh aye, you've got to show them who's boss!

Not my role though. By and large you get pretty good value in the states even with your 18% added so I don't grudge the tips. What I do grudge is the surly attitude one encounters (mostly online rather than real life) toward foreigners who don't quite "get" the system.

Or the pre-emptive "bad service to those Euro/Aussie-tightwads on table four" attitude one hears about. (Haven't actually encountered it much though - once again, it's more prevalent online)

In the absence of a service charge I tip at least 15 per cent of the pre-tax total going to 20 or even higher if I'm a regular patron.

If you are a regular even for a few days do not underestimate the power of a tip. Three friends and I once stayed a week at a small hotel in London where breakfast was included. The server was a nasty, unpleasant woman and service was poor. I left a couple of pound coins at my plate and urged my companions to do the same despite their objections. The server was transformed and for the rest of the week kept our coffee topped up and our toast replenished while the rest of the dining room was largely ignored. :)

So, not a "reward" for good service at all, but a "facilitation payment" to stop the bad service.

Isn't this just what all the anti-tippers have been saying?

Heh, so by that standard the folks I know who did 10% well into my childhood

18% has always been a restaurant-labelled thing for large parties, IME. These days with smartphones (and higher sales tax in places) it might be practical, but prior to smartphones, people have pretty much always used rules of thumb and rounding.

20% has been the high end of the normal range since at least the early 1990s (hence the band name: see http://www.tippersmusic.com/ and they were around in 1991) ... and 15% is still a perfectly acceptable tip.

I haven't seen it anywhere but this thread, except in the specific case of "tipping over a normal amount for genuinely exceptional service."

I don't see any sign of that.

Trip/delivery charge plus mandatory gratuity is pretty standard at fancier hotels. It's an unreasonable charge, but then again, room service is generally priced unreasonably across-the-board.

A few blowhards do not change the fact that a 15% tip is still perfectly acceptable.

Note that he's talking about pound coins; that's not in the US :D

My grandmother used to carry around a "tip card"--a credit-card-sized piece of plastic with a long list in small print of the amount to tip for a given meal. The two columns were labeled "15%" and "20%."

I first remember seeing it as a kid in the early 1990s, so, as you said, the 15-to-20% rule was standard at least back to then. And outside of NYC and a few recent comments on this thread, I've never heard of it being any different today than back then.

Never take tipping advice from someone with an ulterior motive. Those publications would clearly qualify.

My own rule for room service is if there's a small flat-dollar-amount fee for delivery, I'll tip on top of that; if there's already a precomputed percentage fee for service (or gratituity!), that's the tip.

Almost every other price rises; service charges on the bill (or the cost of service incorporated into the menu price) would go up to.

As for the standard percentages, if those went up during the 1970s and a little more during the 1980s -- what appears to have been the case in that case (rather more slowly in some other recollections, quicker than that in others, which I question) -- remember that was the era of stagflation, where we had inflation with less of a linkage between inflation and wage growth than we usually have had.

I'm a regular at a couple places. I try to get the same person & tip around 20%. Get very well taken care of :)

I don't really understand why most waiters seem to think that their job is something so hard/important that they deserve to be paid at least 60k+ a year. C'mon, I know, some people can be rude, especially when drunk, but it's still a meanal service job, without any real skills required, not a nuclear physics.
If you think that working in finances, IT or whereever is so much easier then just go to college, get a degree, and get yourself a job suitable for your capabilities, instead of expecting me to pay you hundred bucks per hour for bringing my food from point A to point B...

This comment exemplifies the misinformation surrounding tips. It's best categorized as urban myth.

Can I assume you never earned tips?

When I got a tip on a credit card, I deducted the the amount from the cash I collected per shift. I left the remaining amount as a remittance for the company (cash paid by customers - charge tips = total remittance). Unfortunately most days charge tips would exceed cash collected, so we would take home all the cash, remit our paperwork, and line up to collect the remaining cash from accounting the following week.

If you believe that a signed tip to a credit card means either tax will be paid or that the tip pool will be enforced, then you are sorely mistaken.

Cash out the door, is cash out the door. All tips charged to a guests room or to credit cards came back to me in cash. Yes, I tipped out to other staff. Yes, I paid some tax. But one is NOT connected to the other.

I don't know where you worked; each place seems to have its own system. But the bottom line is that if you or the restaurant gets audited by the IRS, there is a record of credit card tips. If the restaurant's records show that you received credit card tips higher than what you claimed on your tax return, you will be liable for penalties. If a customer leaves cash on the table and you pick it up and slip it in your pocket, no one will ever know except you and the customer.

Some restaurants do tip outs based on a percentage of the tips you get, others based on your total sales. The latter makes it impossible to cheat, but also potentially unfair to the other support staff.

Currently staying at the Grand Hyatt and we frequent the club lounge daily. I'm getting to know all of the workers really well going onto our 11th night of the trip. They've provided fantastic service. But do they get tips?. I since found out I can leave a tip by posting directly onto the Hyatt Bill. The hotel will ensure that tips get distributed.

Any suggestions how much I should tip for 14 days of breakfast, snacks and hor d'ourves? Tipping is not required, but I like to leave a nice gesture. We've been tipping the chambermaids almost daily as well with my cash on hand.

If the hotel will distribute it so you don't have to worry about it, I'd probably do a few dollars/day/person.

Tipping housekeeping I just don't get.

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/trave...y-5-hotel.html