Thought you meant pets/animals in restaurants :-)

it is strange that servers don’t come to try to offer more beverages - because yes it will boost the check, but it’s also a nice treat for the diner. We all enjoy another cuppa something!

I worked in a restaurant when I was 18/19. We practically dropped a fresh bottle on a table when the last one was finished, and we were always asking if anyone wanted something else, and the “Irish coffee?” question at the end of the meal always raised the bill by £20. Not doing this stuff is throwing money away!

My pet peeve and I know this dead horse has been beaten and then some but I'm tired of the whole passive aggressive way tipping is suggested at sit down table service restaurants where people will say that tipping is great because it allows the customer to tip according to service and the server will work harder for good tips and the customer is free to leave bad tips for bad service, but also in the same breath say its mandatory to leave 20+% because the server is just trying to pay their bills and you are a cheap horrible person if you dont tip that much at least. Either tipping is truly optional based on service quality or its not, can't have it both ways.

Which leads into my rant, a few months ago for the first time in my life I could say I had truly awful, incompetent service at a restaurant. For years I've always tipped 20% regardless of service for table service in the US, and according to local custom elsewhere in the world and it has always been fine. Every time I've eaten at a sit down restaurant the server got me drinks, brought over food, and took the check. Pretty simple stuff that can't really be screwed up, naturally there were small variances but nothing to really complain about, sometimes service a little slower than it should have been, food a little colder, but nothing really out of the ordinary, until a few months ago.

Me, my wife, and our toddler son were eating lunch at a sit down steak restaurant with her family, probably about a dozen of us and we had a reservation and they had pulled a few tables together for us so everything was set and they knew a decent sized group was coming. Other than us the restaurant was slow, only a couple other diners on a mid Saturday afternoon after lunch but before dinner so the place was nearly dead. Most of us had arrived at the reserved time, but there were a couple of stragglers in the family. The server had waited until every last person had arrived before taking basic drink orders. So we sat for like 30 minutes to be even asked what we wanted to drink, red flag and that set the tone for the whole day. Took like another 30 minutes after drinks to come back to take our food order, food took forever to be brought out, and I counted 45 minutes for the server to come around to bring the check. All in all we were there almost 3 hours. Unbelievable and anyone with young kids know how horrible that is, me and my wife had to take turns walking our son around outside, trying to entertain him, etc especially after the first hour. I could have some sympathy if the place was just slammed but that was not the case, only a couple of other diners in the restaurant and I even started to see people who arrived after us finish up and leave.

If that wasnt bad enough the icing on the cake was the server gave my bill and credit card to the wrong table. I only noticed when the server was handing out the bills and cards to everyone else in the group and I see this other person holding my credit card in their hand tap the server on the shoulder and hand the server my card and bill. Then the server later handed it to me.

Slow, truly awful service and giving bills and credit cards to entirely different tables. For the first time ever I truly wanted to leave 0 tip at all, but unfortunately with credit cards with my name on it I was afraid of zeroing out the tip line and being the next viral post on some server blog tip shaming people, so after double checking the bill to make sure there wasnt already an auto gratuity I reluctantly left about 15%, a little smaller than the 20% I had always given, but was too afraid to leave 0 on the tip line due to my name on the credit card and possibly attached to the recept in their system. The service truly deserved a 0 tip and a rant to the manager, but didnt want to make a scene with my wife and her family there.

So next time just in case I will bring enough cash to cover the bill, and next time a 0 tip is deserved just pay in cash to be able to leave the appropriate tip anonymously by simply pocketing all the change returned, which of course for us flyertalkers is really hard to do, with all the great dining bonuses on credit cards out there nowadays.