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What I don't quite understand I why it makes sense to tip a percentage of the bill. In some cases, the total amount is indicative of the service received (lots of courses or lots of drinks) but often it is not. For a simple lunch with a soft drink, it is posible to pay from 10 dollars (=$1.50 tip) to $40 (=$6.00 tip). In both cases, the waiter had exactly the same thing to do.

I tend to tip more as a percentage when the prices are low than when they are high.

SmilingBoy.

Elke did the right thing. I'm sure the server appreciated the gratuity. Yes, servers make $2.13 per hour and know it. But it is also customary to tip in the US. The better the service the higher the tip.

What some seem to miss is, if wages were higher for servers, the price of the food is going to go up.

That tip you give to the server does not only go to the server. That tip is split with the busboy, the bartender, the expediter, the host/hostess, and on charged tips 4-5% to the house. The house has to pay for charge services. And drum roll--Uncle Sam!!!

I used to be a server and my two week paycheck was never more than $10. So yeah, be as nice as you want, but leave the dough.

One night, I remember I was the closing server. White table cloth restaurant in Sears Tower. A Saturday night. Just before closing, a 4 top walks in. The only people in the house for 3 hours. I didn't mind, their check was over $200. And they asked me to order a limo for them. I knew somebody to call as was able to get them a limo at the last minute. Nice people. Paid in cash. As they were leaving the guy who paid the bill and palmed my tip stating how much they appreciated the great service and the limo. Not to be rude, I slipped the money in my pocket without looking and wished them a wonderful evening.

I pulled the tip out of my pocket. He left me $5.00. I still had to tip the busboy, the bartender, the hostess, the expediter (already had left since I had just one table) not the house because it was a cash tip. BUT, it cost me money that night to go to work because it's assumed I'd make between 15-20% in tips. That's what my tip out to the rest of the people I tipped out to expected because that was the house rules.

I became a Flight Attendant soon afterwards. I don't have to rely on tips.

Not to stray too far off-topic, but what does a server do when they've given good service yet gotten stiffed on the tip??

I remember an incident a million years ago when I was a kid. Parents and I went to an upscale steakhouse for an early dinner. Restaurant was not crowded but we were given a seat by the kitchen door. Service was slower than slow. Orders were all wrong. Drinks were removed from the table before they were finished. Check came and it was wrong. Waiter was quite angry when it was called to his attention and returned to slap the check down on the table without a thank you (and yes, he did slap the check down).

So...my Dad left no tip (very unusual for him; he was a good tipper).

I remember it like it was yesterday. The waiter came out into the parking lot and said "was there something wrong with the service?". My Dad turned around and said "as a matter of fact, there was". He proceeded to itemize to the waiter all of the negatives (most of which he had already pointed out as they occurred at the table).

The waiter apologized profusely. I don't recall if he tried to make any excuses or not (frankly, I was mortified and cringing in the car). My Dad offered the waiter 5 bucks for having the nerve to come out and at least ask (remember this was in the early 70s at most). Waiter refused it and told us to come back and ask for him and he'd take care of us. Needless to say, we never went back.

Funny what you remember....

Maybe that's why both my brother and I are overly conscious of tipping for good service (my brother routinely tips 40-50% especially if the waitress is blonde and pretty).

And just to get back to the topic of tipping by percentage, if you stop into a diner and have a cup of coffee for $1.50, do you really only leave a quarter or less???

How could I stop at a diner and not order hash browns and a couple scrambled eggs with my coffee? :D

I think I'd round up to $2, especially if I leave the $2 on the counter instead of paying at a register. If the waitress was very attentive or very cute, or both, I might leave a one dollar bill for a tip, especially if I was paying at a register.

When a server gets "skunked," what can they do? One just has to take it. In my case, I almost started crying. And I realized it was time for me to find a new career. I didn't want to continue to rely on the generousity of other. :)

The waiter who confronted your father was very lucky your father didn't walk back into the restaurant and complain to management. The waiter probably would have been fired for confronting a guest.

When I go for a cup of coffee in a diner, I tip at least a dollar maybe two considering the length of time taking up the booth.

Now I get it. My tips were suffering despite my good service, I wasn't cute enough. ;)

No different than the music biz. I learned early on that I wasn't cute enough to wait tables and ended up a busboy for years. :td:

I wouldn't tip for what I didn't buy. How ridiculous is that? The bar was full so you took a table. If there isn't a "food service at tables during lunch hours" policy then you've done nothing but create your own guilt. Tipping is so out of control is the US it's not even funny. The way you make more as a server is to work in more upscale restaurants where you are turning $500 or more in meals per hour. I'll tip 15% to 20%, and even tip a buck or two on a $10 buffet for someone to bring me a soda that if I'm in 7-11 I can pour myself.

Out of control. :rolleyes:

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I agree. How did it happen that a culture like this has developed in North America?

Everybody seems to be unhappy:

The guests as they have moral issues when you occupy a table and don't buy the average amount.

The servers who sometimes get way short-changed. (But can't be that bad because otherwise why do so many do thi job?)

And finally the foreigners. If there is a meal for $8 and a drink for $1.60, they expect to pay $10 with tip. But no, on top of that are taxes and tip so the total come out at $14.

(I was very upset about this as a European cost-concious teenager when dining at the hard-rock cafe in the Skydome...)

So why not switch to all-inclusive pricing?

SmilingBoy.

And another thing...

What's with the "American Way" of trying to shove customers out the door before they've even had a chance to wipe their mouths.

"Would you like to see a dessert menu? No? Well, buh-bye."

In parts of Europe and Asia, once you sit down to dinner that table is yours until you ask for a check and decide to leave.

I once ate in a seafood restaurant in Seattle and ended up with the salad, the entree AND the dessert on the table at the same time before I finished the salad. Later after I calmed down I asked for the manager, he apologized and comped the meal. Honestly I did not go there for a comped meal only a nice stressless seafood meal. Oh yes and there was no tip for the stupid waitress regardless what the guilt-ridden FTers say, what waiter.com describes, or tip.com recommends.

MisterNice

Basically same here - $5-6; the buck a drink think is for at the bar (IMO) or when the drinks are cheap enough that 15-20% is under a buck a drink. $5 is more than 20% on $25 if that latter includes tax; 15-20% on the pretax is what I do as a rule - most often "twice the sales tax and round up a little " which is 8.25% to 8.75% depending on the county around here.

Given the circumstances, an extra couple of bucks seems both nice and pretty reasonably - so $5 or $6, sure... but $14 on $25 post-tax? That's ridiculous. If they didn't want "just drinks" customers in at lunch, it's their business to say so.

Someone else higher up suggested $2/drink, and that seems like a good maximum beyond which it's getting silly. But hey, it was her money, so *shrug*

As a separate note, I do sympathize with the OP about splitting the bill when other folks are ordering liquor and one isn't drinking; I'm not much of a drinker, and have on occasion had to be assertive about not getting stuck with my "share" of the alcohol bill from a meal when all I had was coke or water.

Yeah that would be better, but...

When they're at home, sure. When they're here, if they don't tip like the locals they are just being their own version of an "ugly American." The system here sucks, but it's how things work, and it really is NOT fair to service workers who live on tips if you use their service.

Why should US citizens pay for OTHER FOLKS taxes when abroad? You'll pay tax on restaurant meals etc in pretty much every country that has VAT or similar (which may or may not be figured into the menu price.) Why are those not refunded for foreigners?

Often there are mandatory service charges as well, rather than having that figured into the menu price. It's all sub-optimal from a customer's point of view, and a matter of very stupid pricing games, whether here or there. Here one just has the freedom to stiff the waiter if one is a jerk (good ettiquette rule: if service is bad enough that the tip is going to be < 10%, it's bad enough the manager should know about it.)

The menu price is going to go up, yes. The total price people pay will stay roughly similar.

The same would be true if all prices were posted inclusive of sales tax, rather than having taxes added later.

What's an "expediter"?

Despite the lack of tips, it seems like going between professions which both get a lot of abuse from customers.

Depends on the service. If it's $1.50 for a single, non-refilled drink at the counter or to go, I'd probably tip the change on $2. If it's table service, I'd tip $1 minimum.

Beyond that, if there are free refills, and they keep my glass full, the tip goes up.

It wouldn't occur to me to tip based on the amount of time I'm sitting at a booth/table. Indeed, a lot of the time, that corresponds to service being slow, and thus the tip being lower.

If I'm hanging around not ordering anything, I'm not getting any service either. If I'm going to tip above par, it's because I'm using/getting more service than typical (frequent drink refills, special orders, inlaws along and being a pain in the ...) or because the quality of the service in some way impressed me.

We ought to. The problem is how to get from here to there: any individual restaurant that does is going to be perceived as "more expensive" unless all restaurants do it at the same time.

I rather like getting the check promptly, and in most cases when you get the check has very little to do with how long "that table is yours" -- I've only rarely felt pressure to pay up and leave once getting the check.

Meanwhile, many places will continue with drink refills, etc. after dropping it off... and if anything, my experience is here in the states many places are too slow to get me the check (or have a waiter reachable at all) when I'm done with my entree.

It's tough in those cases to try to figure out whether the fault was with the waitress or the kitchen; in general, I try not to penalize waitstaff for things that are obviously kitchen screwups as long as the restaurant fixes the problem, but in cases where it's a general failure of service or of pacing the meal, you might well be fully justified. The waitress is, after all, the main responsible customer-facing person, and it was a problem which you DID take up with the manager.

Now, if you'd NOT complained to the manager, comp or not, and then just stiffed the waitress, that would (IMO) have been poor form.

-

As a separate question, what's the general opinion on tipping on promotions/coupons when a restaurant runs them consistently? Does it matter if you would not otherwise eat at that restaurant?

In general, I do tip on what I normally would have paid on comps or coupons, but I'm of mixed opinion on whether to do that at places which run coupons so consistently that the discount is really the "regular price."

I think $10 would have been fine, but I believe in karma, so what's another $4??
Unless I missed it, I didn't see if you mentioned the profession of your friends....I haven't been a tipped employee since being a breakfast waiter and busboy in High School, but if I recall way back when......it was always the Doctors that were the absolute worst tippers and Psychiatrists were the absolute worst of the worst.

A similar thing happened to me at a client dinner, my boss's boss paid the bill at an upscale restaurant and left a 10% tip.....I was mortified because somehow the client saw the tip ammount and the client was the one who picked the restaurant....he was a regular there! I had to discretely go back and throw another $20 onto the table when no one was looking. I ended up having to do a "Chicago Hat" with my expense report that week to get the $20 back......

??
 

are you kidding me? 2.13 usd ? thats a joke isnt it?

i cant believe that anybody would work for that money...

is that the norm in the us? so if you work 10 hours you earn 20usd and 5 days a week 100usd .. so 400usd per month ?

than i would recommend that these people start working in a factory in china as you get more money in china working in a factory which is producing all the goods for the world...

dp

some ideas :)
 

one thing about size of meals...

when i was in the us , we went for mexican food , in the us everything is so huge, i mean the enchilada was 3x the size of a asian one, and double the size of an european one..

so maybe you start serving less food , paying your waiters more money so they are not paid less than a Chinese Worker !

and i think that most people agree to tip more on a smaller amount i.e > 50usd .

i am still shocked about th 2.13 usd .. is this true . can anybody confirm this?
if this is true i will tip change my tipping habits in the us. i thought that 10% if service is ok, 15% if service is good and 20% if service is exceptional is fine but if this is true i will tip more the next time i am in the us.

one thing i dont agree with is that some posters still think that the us system is better than the european system or the asian system.

so you have to pay tax in other countries for your meals. do you know why you dont get back your tax ? because you are eating the meal or drinking it, and what ever you leave of that wont be TAX FREE :D

but we have to pay tax too in the us.

i was not referring to the TAx but to the TIPs that you have to tip a lot because you dont have real social system. the american way, it might be wonderful for 10% , but 90% of the population are suffering...

and if in europe 10% service charge is included and you receive bad service you can just leave without tipping or round up a 99euro bill to 100euro.
in the us you would have a least tip 15% for the same or worse service.

if i receive bad service, i mean really bad service (even this guy earns 2.13 usd) it still is hard for me to accept that i have to pay 15% tip in the us...

but , if the 2.13 usd is true, well i will do my best to support your waiters in the future...

dp

I suppose you could tell the doctors because they were in scrubs? In general, it would be hard to determine the profession of your customers.

Far easier to determine the obvious demographics. I hate to say it, but it's as true for my kids to day as it was for me 35 years ago. Tables of middle aged women and african-americans will leave smaller tips. Doesn't matter if the server is a middle aged woman or african-american.

Nobody's working for $2.13. With tips, most servers are up over $10 an hour.

Yes, our restaurant portion sizes are generally too large. I see it as
an effort to retail more product to an unsuspecting audience which
has subsequently grown to expect the excess (hence the readily
availability of take-out containers in pretty much all restaurants).

It is a reflection of the antediluvian nature of some of our nation's attitudes
that my citation below is from the Women's Bureau of our government labor
department (and it may say something that there is such a bureau at all).

From U.S. Department of Labor, Women's Bureau
The issue here is that employers can simply lie about their staff's tips.
And the system encourages the employees to lie about their tips as well.

Though the rationale of the system is to encourage better service by
encouraging tipping, there are some effects that were not intended
by whoever formulated the system.

No, because they were staying at the hotel I was working at, so maybe in 30 years they have gotten more stingey with tips;)....Doctors were the worst tippers...waitresses and bartenders were the best...come to think of it, I got a few "Jehova's Witness" type cards left as tips in lieu of cash from some Ministers...my soul appreciated it, but my gas tank was still on fumes......anyone who has worked for tips is usually a good tipper, my minimum is 20% and if the service is off, I start to deduct from there.

wow wow wow
 

this is shocking!

so an employee can get away with only paying 2.13 usd per hour if he claims that the tips and the 2.13 usd he pays are more than the miniumum wage...

wow !

there is something wrong in the US.

anyway, after this shocking news , i will make 15% for a bad waiter, 20% for a good waiter and 25% for a very good waiter the norm when i am in the US...

its worse than i could ever have expected it to be. i assumed that these guys earned 7-10usd + tips per hour....

i thought slavery was forbidden in the us......

dp

The $2.13 is a national minimum. Many cities and states have higher minimums. Most the servers in the restaurants that I go to get between $10-$30 an hour after tips. Otherwise, they wouldn't be there.

Just as Red Caps at the airport got minimum wage, and got 95% of their money on tips, servers make the majority of their money from tips. Sure they nothing from some, but 30% on others. I believe that the government figures they get 8-10% average on their tickets. Most get 15% or more if they're good.

The thing that I *do* like about the US system, is that you can easily show your displeasure with their service via the tip. Often in Europe I've had horrible service, and they don't care, since the service is already in the bill.

I'm sorry , but this is not slavery or anything close to it. You're told here that good servers make the overwhelming majority of their income from tips. And for a good server in a quality restaurant, it can be 6 figures a year. Those of us who enjoy and reward good service would have it no other way.

Every one of these servers has the ability change jobs or careers. No one keeps them chained in the kitchen.

And reporting taxable income works in the favor of most servers who declare no more than a percent of their cash tip income, thereby illegally avoiding income taxes.

2.13 usd..
 

wow , if i am ever going to open a restaurant this will be in the US...

i mean even 5usd as the minumum wage is laughable...

and NOW one hint for the US people who always call any other guy cheap,

please do explain that these waiters do ONLY EARN 2.13 USD..

now i understand why my friends tried to explain to me "these guys work for tips" i mean if you are not from the us and you dont know about this , you would assume that they earn 8-10 usd per hour + tips and you just cant understand what is meant by "work for tips" .

dp

Once more and I'll give up.

It has nothing to do with being cheap. It is simply a different cost structure. You may have noticed that restaurant meals are less expensive, generally, in the US than in Europe. The cost structure permits this. Of course, after you add your 15-20% tip to the bill, the difference becomes less.

If you owned a restaurant and your food was as good as the competition, but you decided to pay your servers $10 an hour (plus tips), you would have higher prices and fewer customers. 2 years down the road, you're out of business.

well
 

what i wanted to say is that americans should just explain to visitors that 2.13 per hour is the usual payment waiters receive + tips...

i really didnt get it until this 2.13 usd was mentioned in this thread.

anybody will understand why we should leave at least 15% tips even if there was no service at all...

dp

It's not that they want to sell more food per se, but rather that their prices are going to be high regardless, and "selling more food" makes those prices more palateable to most customers.

With some exceptions, the raw food itself is a relatively small part of the cost of a meal: Fixed costs - space, equipment, wages for non-tipped staff - of serving a meal tend to be quite high in comparison. So for most dishes, increasing the portion size has a relatively small impact on the net cost of the meal.