You write in a tip on your credit card charge slip. What assurance, if any, do you have that the tip reaches the waitperson?

I don't think you can get absolute assurance. Assuming you are querying about legal arrangements, here are a couple of situations which come to mind: in Japanese habachi restaurants (Benihana, etc.), the tip is normally split between the table cook and the server; where the cook has been very good and the server lousy, I have seen others (and done it myself) give the cook some cash at the table.

Also, where a team is serving you (a primary server, a waterboy, busser, etc.), the tip may be split; I seem to remember specifically being told about such an arrangement at one of the National Park restaurants. I had asked because the waterboy (or girl) had done an excellent job of keeping drinks refilled and I wanted to make sure he or she received a portion of the tip.

In all of the restaurants where I worked, we typically had some type of "tip out" arrangement whereby we paid "others" either a set $$ amount at the end of the night or a fixed percentage of our total sales for our tables.

We, as waitstaff, "checked out" each night and were responsible for tallying all of our charge slips, cash receipts, etc. At one restaurant, our POS (point-of-sale) system told us how much we owed in one place (and we kept the tips in cash even off the charge slips - or if we didn't have enough cash receipts, the restaurant would give us cash back. At another, we manually added up what we thought we owed the restaurant and then a manager would review it before the waiter was cleared to clock out and go home. Everywhere I ever waited required us to maintain our own "bank" for change vs. using a common register or till.

You just have to hope, I suppose.

techgirl is right about the places with newer POS systems that would track it automatically, but for the old fashioned places there's no guarantee. I'd assume that if your server took the check from you after you wrote down the tip, he/she would be vigilant about making sure that he/she got the money owed.

Sometimes it doesn't.

When I worked as a waitress for Red Lobster (college years), we got 100% of our tips from cash and charge, as the busfolks and bartenders got living wages (over $7 an hour), we got $2.01/hour.

However, I recall one restaurant my husband and I frequented, a chinese buffet near our house. We went there at least 3 times a month, sometimes more. We always paid with credit card and left the tip on the charge slip.

One night, we were there with friends. The waitress would refill their water, but ignore us. We asked why, and she said, angrily, that we never tip!

We told her we always tipped on the charge card, but she didn't believe us. We asked to speak to the manager, and the person at the front desk said he wasn't available. The front desk person (who I later found out WAS the manager) refused to answer our questions about tips left on chargecards. We told them that we would be letting all our friends know about their scam, left the waitress a $20 tip in cash, handed to her personally, and left.

My husband called his friend at the local paper.

A month later they were closed.

Quick karma is sometimes helped along by practical connections

It doesn't always happen. There's a place in downtown ROC that's a great place to grab "plates" (ahh how I miss those) after a hard night of drinking but the owner is notorious for pulling fast ones. I've seen him pocket tips many of times and had learned to hand the tip directly to the waitress before paying up front.

Those girls in there earn their money - its a rough drunk crowd late-night and have to put up with a LOT of s%@!.

-JC

We went to a nice expensive place in a California mountain resort, big bill and nice tip too for the pleasant service, all on my credit card.

When I got home they had had a second take of a further $100 from my credit card some days after the initial transaction.

Before I got round to calling them got a very abrupt letter from "accounting and audit" which just said "Wrongly charged - extra $100". Photocopy of bill enclosed where auditor had written on it various corrections and then CROSSED OUT and subtracted the tip with "No tip - incorrectly billed !!" written alongside.

So they had taken every extra penny themselves they were in arrears and then taken all the tip away from the waiter. Where was the Maitre d' checking the bills (isn't that their job ?) Not nice.

That can only be Nick Tahoe's.

I've never eaten in, so I can't comment on tipping.

Yet another reason to avoid establishments where service is not included.

Believe it or not, not Nick's. Mark's down on Monroe Ave.

-JC

Where the server brings the credit card slip to your table and picks it up after you complete it, s/he can see what you wrote. If management tries to stiff the server after that, at least s/he knows what's going on. It's his/her issue at that point, not mine.

Where you take your bill to a cashier, I always tell servers "I'm not stiffing you, your tip will be on the credit card slip." So far nobody has objected, though many have thanked me for letting them know. If they had concerns about not getting their tips I think some would have said something.

The above posts about management not giving tips to the wait staff sound more like individual cases, either restaurants in deep financial yogurt or crooks running the joint, than a general concern about credit cards not being a viable way to tip from the server's point of view.

Yes. No waiters/waitresses at Nick's. Just vacuum cleaner salesmen

btw... Mark's are cheap imitations.

This was EXACTLY the system used at the restaurant where I worked. The POS system required the register operator to enter the amount of the tip, and then the total bill was computed and distributed to the appropriate bank card center for processing. At the end of the night, each server would "check out" and an itemized "receipt" would be generated showing any open checks (there shouldn't have been any) and the total sales for the night, along with the total tips owed to the server.