Tell me about it! I have this car right now and after driving it for less than 3000 miles I'm looking at a bill of $1500 at least! Not to mention the outrageous fuel consumption!

As far as tipping goes then it is not cuastomary to tip in OZ and neither do the staff expect it. And as a result you receive the same service whether you tip or not since tipping is usually done after the meal or service or whatever. In my, non-American opinion, tipping and asking for tips is equivalent to begging and as such should be discouraged in all non-US parts of the World.

[QUOTE]Originally posted by MIKESILV:
I feel like giving someone a few coins or a dollar for the service I received I do, end of story. My travel experiences are too precious to worry about stuff like that.
If you feel you harrassed complain to the management tell you wont return till the policy is changed and if enough people complain it will be. If not patronize somewhere else.

Maybe you some of you guys need to lighten up, enjoy life a little!!.

I think we've all been remarkably calm about this subject. We're trying to iron out what is the right thing to do. Acting like a cowboy and simply giving a couple bucks here and some loose change there does NOTHING to address the question of how best to reward appropriately good service. It's a tricky question people want to get right, that's what this topic is about.

I'm also all for enjoying life to the fullest. It helps that I make a living wage. Waiters, waitresses and others in the hospitality industry clearly do not earn a decent living without receiving tips.

You seem to be taking this thread way too personally.

I think tipping is a disgusting practice.
People ought to be paid a decent wage from their employers and tipping ought to be forbidden.

I don't mind it so much - I'm not a "suit" so when I go someplace new, I "don't get no respect"; when I go somewhere where they know me, they chat me up, listen to me whine, flirt with me, give me free drinks, all because I tip well. I'm not even talking about gobs of money, like 20-25%.

anyway, let me tell you what happened to me this weekend. I was staying at a nice hotel in Florida. I ordered breakfast both mornings. The menu had a note about an automatice 19% service charge, plus a $2.00 delivery charge on all room service orders. That alone is excessive, but you have no choice. The guy delivers the food, I give him $1 on top of all that, and what do you think happens the next day? He gives me an attitude like I'm a cheapskate! That's why I really HATE room service. They really don't appreciate tips like they should. Well, the joke's on them, because next time, I will simply not order room service, I'll stick with the folger's pack of coffee and non-dairy creamer they provide - oh, and tap water will be just fine...

?

There is not guilt/ innocence question here at all.

The reasons that tipping outside of the US- tipping conventions ruins it for the rest of us are: (1) the staff begins to expect (and, yes, in many cases solicit) tipping as regular compensation for all sorts of unexpected functions, and (2) it devalues the meaningfulness of work for wages, and lessens the value quality of regular work overall.

It used to be that a tip reflected the quality of the service provided, a gratuity in its true form. These days, it's totally turned around and is expected regardless of quality of service -- if not received or wasn't sufficient in the mind of the recipient its the customer was cheap and not taken as a reflection on their effort at all.

I got chased out of a restaurant in NYC once 'cos we left a 10% tip, not 15%. I'm a New Yorker and this guy was trying to tell my friends and I that "you no know new york - here tip must be 15%" I thought my friend was going to sock him one. I just flatly said that the service only deserved a 10% tip, no more, and that I was a NYr and most certainly knew the city.

I remember hearing that about 10yrs ago in Norwalk CT that a waiter chased a guy out of a Chinese restaurant and stabbed a customer who left a measly tip. I used to eat at that restaurant back then. This made me stop.


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I Love New York -- Viva España

Not necessarily. The 8% is automatic but they have to claim daily. Most people charge so they have to account for that and believe it or not there are a lot of people who do not leave any tips. Especially people from different countries where they are not accustom to tipping.

Sure some people don't claim everything but I know a lot of people who do.

My husband and I were visiting Maui and decided to take one of the major morning van tours to Hana. We paid I think around $75 each for the tour. Shortly after everyone was picked up for the trip the driver passed around a book and asked us to sign it and include our home addresses as he liked to know where everyone was from. Then he called everyone by first names and attempted to make a lot of jokes. Soon after our departure he proceeded to tell us that tour
drivers were providing a service just like hotel and restaurant employees and deserved to be tipped generously like them. He then told us the minimum amount we should tip him was $25 each. He emphasized that most of us were couples but that both of us should tip him at least $25 (Minimum total of $50) and that he would greatly appreciate a larger tip. He informed us that near the end of the trip he would pass out envelopes for the tip money. (His remarks really upset us and at one of the stops my husband and I discussed our dislike for being pressured and
told what to tip and decided that his attitude was not deserving of a tip)!! Throughout the trip he continued to talk about the high cost of living in Hawaii and that tour bus drivers could only survive from the tips they made. He passed out the envelopes and instructed us to write our
names on them and again instructed us as to the minimum tip he should receive. At the end of the trip he dropped each passenger at their hotel and stood at the bottom of the van steps to collect the envelopes. When he dropped us off, we did not give him an envelope!
(My husband and I have traveled extensively and taken many local day tours and are very
familiar with being told that tips are appreciated and/or seeing a sign in the bus or van to this effect but never have we been told a minimum amount to tip!! My husband and I always tip and before any trip we get several hundred dollars worth of ten, five and one dollar bills just for tips when we don’t use our credit cards.)
After we were dropped off at our hotel, we were freshening up to go out to dinner when the telephone rang in our room. I answered it and it was the van driver wanting to know why we did not tip him! He was outraged and yelling we owed him a tip and that if we could afford to stay in an expensive hotel then we had money to tip him. My husband was in the shower and was not aware of the phone call. I was dumb founded and scared as I wandered if he was at our hotel. I
hung up on him and informed my husband what had happened...we were both in shock. Then
we realized that we had to give our room number to the hotel concierge when we made our reservation for the trip and that he (the van driver) had this information. I wanted to call the hotel staff (it was too late to call the tour company) and inform them what had happened but my husband insisted we go to dinner and since we were leaving the next day that everything would
be ok. ( I stayed awake that night expecting the driver to come pounding on our door). After we got home, I wanted to write a letter to the tour company about this behavior but remembered the tour driver had our home address and decided it was best to just try and forget this terrible experience. I am happy to say that nothing like this has ever happened again and I do not give our room number when making reservations and definitely not my home address!

Sounds like the psycho tour bus driver from hell. Good for you in not succumbing to his pressure to tip him. If he'd been a jovial guy with a nice tour you probably would have tipped him anyway (not $25, though).

I wonder how well this worked for the guy, and how long he kept his job while coercing tips.

I saw 'Now Hiring' ads at two places yesterday. The first was at Starbucks and said 'starting at $9.25/hr'. The second was at Foods for Less and they were advertising 'starting at $8.50'. If people tip at Starbucks, why don't they tip the people at the supemarket?

I have friends who work as bartenders and they can make upto $600 per shift in tips. I'd say that is more than a minimum living wage. Even on slow nights they make $200 and don't forget that that is on top of wages.

[This message has been edited by parra (edited 09-19-2002).]

This is probably off topic, but it's related to tipping.

I'm just thinking that a poker dealer gets a lot of tips, since there will be at least one winner each round and almost always the dealer will get at least $1 tip, even more if the winner took a big pot. Conservatively speaking, if one round takes three minutes that's 20 rounds an hour, which means at least $20 tips per hour for the dealer. All this for doing exactly his job.

Not a bad profession especially in California's nonsmoking card rooms. Not bad at all.

Boo Boo,

I believe the UK minimum wage is now 6.40 GBP per hour. SIGNIFICANTLY MORE than you stated above.

As for tipping in NY as referenced above, I love when the Indian/Egyptian/Albanian guy with the heavy accent that has given crap service and been in the country for five minutes tries to give a 15% speech!! It cracks me up, I in turn inform them that it is illegal in NY state to require a percentage tip or include it in the bill. If they have a further problem I call the police. If the service was crap I have NO TIME for that garbage.

Sorry hfly - you are wrong on this and Boo Boo is right. On 1 October 2002 the UK minimum wage for workers age 22 and over will rise from GBP4.10 to GBP4.20. See
http://www.dti.gov.uk/er/nmw/

However, 69% of all households in the UK receive some form of welfare support, and 30% receive more than 50% of their income from welfare. Source:
UK Govt Stats




[This message has been edited by christep (edited 09-20-2002).]

What do you do about tipping on a bottle of wine?

Recently, at dinner, I ordered a fairly expensive bottle (1998 Far Niente Cab)and put it on a seperate tab as I would never submit this to my employer for reimbursement. So the tip on this tab was really nothing more than a corkage fee, however, I'm sure the server still gets taxed on 8% of the sale. I ended up tipping $25, less than 15%, but feeling like it was way too much.I expect the server was unhappy as well. What do you do in this situation?