skchin

In Seoul, I had was chased by a waitress for leaving a tip. She came chasing me to return the 5000 won ($USD 5.50) I left for her.

Devildawg13

I know in one situation where a friend of mine had a roll of pennies in his pocket, and because the server was rude and service bad, unrolled the pennies and left that spawled out all over the table, chairs and floor for her tip!

Me? I would her given her ZIP !

Devildawg13

WHAT #$%!!!@#$%&* would Gordon Ramsey say ?

PFKMan23

ChinaShrek,

I agree with remphish. The onus is on the waiter/waitress to tell us that s/he is not well or her replacement to do so. The fact that waitress 2 did not pick up the slack shows me that they were unprofessional and did not deserve a tip. If her situation was truly that dire I would have assumed that she would make sure that the service was still good from her replacement and that there is/was an explanation for her lack of service.

User Name

If a server dared to chase me outside of a restaurant things would get ugly very quickly indeed...

CarolynUK

Chinashrek - i would have stood my ground with them.

The SERVICE which is what you were tipping for was unquestionably bad. You had to wait for your food for an unacceptably long time - and when it was brought - there was no apology or explanation. The waitresses had a further chance to apologise/ explain when the second girl cleared the table but again nothing was said.

We all get sick/ have headaches/ get busy (and / or a restaurant may be understaffed) but if a tip is wanted it has to be EARNED. In your case it quite clearly wasn't.

nkedel

Frankly, once she brought up being sick, I'd be thinking "Great! She's so desperate for cash she risked getting my family sick to make a buck?" and seeing as it's a tourist spot (where I generally won't bother talking to the manager the way I would at a local place I might return to) I'd probably resort to saying "sorry," shrugging, and walking off.

But seriously, why is understaffed or having an off day supposed to be a reason to tip higher than the service deserves? From my own perspective, very slow service is not a reason not to tip at all, but what you left doesn't sound like it was THAT far under 10%.

francophile

Seven years ago, I had lunch at Le Cinq in Paris, then a Michelin three star now demoted to two. After an excellent lunch with outstanding service, I was ready to sign the credit card slip when I noticed there was no line to write in a tip.

I asked the restaurant manager in French where on the credit card slip I could leave a tip (I used the term "pourboire" which means tip in Canadian French. He didn't know what that word meant. I also used the term "service"). He replied that it wasn't possible to leave something extra and then said in English "maybe next time".

Also when dining at the Georgian Room at Harrods in London, there was no place on the credit card slip to leave something extra.

SixString

As someone who spent a few years on the other side of the table, I can say that I've never confronted anyone about tips nor do I know anyone who has.

Most people I worked with could recognize when they did a sub-par job and had a bad tip coming. But these were people that cared about their job and were also good at it.

As a customer, I never had anyone confront me about my tips. Chances are, if someone is taking 20 minutes to get my drinks and 20 minutes to get me my check, I'll be long gone by the time they see what kind of tip I left.

msv

I was chased once when I was very young (and the drinking age was lower) over a tip for a bar bill. We did leave a tip but honestly didn't think it deserved 15% for slow service and a few beers. She made such a scene that even (many) years later I'm still waiting for it to happen again

mdlee3

Actually had this happen about a month ago. My girlfriend and I went out to eat. We both ordered and just before my girlfriend's meal came out, our waitress come up and said she forgot to put my order in so I immediately told her that I would need to see her manager. The manager came out and I explained to him what happened. He was extremely apologetic and I got my portion of the meal for free. I told him then that his waitress better not think she deserves a tip and he said he understood completely and it was well within my right to not tip if I felt the service wasn't appropriate.

We get our bill and it was like $17.43 or something like that. I gave the waitress a $20 and told her I wanted the change back, which she brought. Then upon getting up to leave, the waitress was walking by and looked at the table and saw we weren't leaving her anything and she started following us to the door asking why we didn't leave her a tip. I turned around just long enough to let her know that I only tip if the service was worthy of a tip and to use her imagination to find out what I thought of her service. I then turned around and walked out with my girlfriend while the waitress stood there looking confused.

mike_asia

Wirelessly posted (BlackBerry8330m/4.5.0.186 Profile/MIDP-2.0 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 VendorID/104)

I would be hesitant to complain before getting the food because of possible sabatoge by the waitress and/or cooks

JayhawkCO

As a server at a nice restaurant, obviously I would never chase someone down for a bad tip -- a terrible reflection on both the restaurant and my professionalism. I have however, tried to catch someone when they take both credit card slips with them, which would result in me getting no tip (and actually, losing money on the table since I have to tip out the host staff, et al). I'm curious if those posting in this thread would find that rude.

Chris

davef139

I have quite a friends and family members who have waited, mostly in college and such, and have been told leaving pocket change is more of an insult then nothing at all.

PFKMan23

My view on that is, it depends. Now I'm not going to speak to your particular instance. However I will say that taking both slips could indicate one of a few things. First being that the party intentionally did not tip, for whatever reason. Not going to draw that out as that's been addressed in the topic already. Second being it was just a mistake, meaning they took both slips but did not mean to do so. I've seen both instances, usually the second one is a bit more common IME. Sometimes you just randomly grab stuff without thinking. Now on whether that is considered rude, it very well could be and I'm sure that regardless of the circumstance, some would consider it rude.

If you were coming up to me, probably not, but then again, if I did not tip you intentionally, I think you should be smart enough to know why.