tipping your waitress?

Monster2

Monster2

New member
I really hate when I'm told I have to tip. I really hate the whole system. Just charge more for your food, and pay your waitress.
When I was (almost 40 now) 10% was standard, or NOTHING for bad service.
I just read an article that say you should tip 20 standard, and 25 for good service? Really? That's the dumbest shit I've ever read.
My theory about all of this mega-tipping crap is that some dickhead (excuse the language, but it's true) wanted to outdo someone else, and eventually, but sadly, everyone felt the need to auto tip. I'll tip 15%, maybe 20% if I eat by myself and I have to round up. ($10 is very often my bill, and either won't have coins, or I just won't bother)
Seriously... when did it become okay to waitress less than minimum wage? Not that min. wage is good, but I would feel better if I get the OPTION to tip, rather than some "social contract" BS that is sort of required of me. Although, I really will leave ZERO tip on the rare occasion that service is bad. (I'm usually pretty forgiving when a restaurant is busy, etc.)
You know, maybe I'll stick with fast food now I think of it. The food's cheaper and the servers get paid more.
restaurants like Chipotle and Carolina BarBQ have shown that this model is still possible when you do serve better food.
 
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I don't care what people say I should or shouldn't do. I tip however much I see fit. Yes, I got some strange looks when I was in the States, but seriously, I don't give a flying youknowwhat.

If the service is bad, there's no tip. Simple. If it's average, I usually round up to the next full figure, or add a little bit extra, depending on the original amount on the bill.

25%? You'd have to serve my food naked and add a lap-dance to your performance to get 25% out of me.

Ridiculous.
 
Never heard of it. 10% where I'm from. And I always just round it up to the next dollar.

Also, I prefer "voluntary tipping" over "automatic gratuity".
 
It depends where you're from. Australia has really good minimum wages, and so while tipping is becoming customary, I don't see why I would (it was nearly $15/ hour when I last worked for minimum wage about 5 years ago). The UK and the US more so- I've never had to tip myself (I tend to go out with groups, where there's a designated person who decides a tip, or my boyfriend, who handles that), but I can understand tipping where the minimum wage is dreadful. Haven't thought about how much- I'd probably just round it (either to the nearest unit of currency, or the nearest 5/10, depending on how good the service was and/ or how much I'd spent. I think my boyfriend rounds to 5 for reasonable-good, then adds a little if it's very good)

There are some chain restaurants in the UK where you shouldn't tip though- the management take it and just pay the staff minimum wage anyway (and staff are prohibited from taking anything on the side). Unfortunately I can't remember off the top of my head which ones they are.
 
If the bill is around £25 or so, I'll usually tip between £2-£5 depending on service. Otherwise you get shitty looks :( No tip when the service is bad though. Hate feeling like we have to!!! Spesh when the food is over-priced in the first place!!
 
Sunflower said:
If the bill is around £25 or so, I'll usually tip between £2-£5 depending on service. Otherwise you get shitty looks :( No tip when the service is bad though. Hate feeling like we have to!!! Spesh when the food is over-priced in the first place!!
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^ When isn't the food overpriced anymore? I'm sure you've noticed (at least you guys in the US) that restaurant prices have really, REALLY, really gone up over the past year or two.
 
Yeah :( In England we have a chain called Wetherspoons where it was cheap and cheerful (as cheap as £1.99 for a decent sized meal) and they recently re-did it all so there are gourmet burgers and stuff for almost £10. Too 'spensive for a lowly student! I didn't mind when then used to bang the food down on the table and be surly when the food was cheap but whilst the prices have changed, the staff haven't so I very rarely tip there anymore!
 
amy1985 said:
It depends where you're from. Australia has really good minimum wages....
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Minimum wage here (Texas) is $7.25/hr but only $2.13/hr for wait staff. Thats why there's more tippin here.

As a born/bret Englishman I STILL find the tipping system here odd.
 
Iain1974 said:
Minimum wage here (Texas) is $7.25/hr but only $2.13/hr for wait staff. Thats why there's more tippin here.
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HOWEVER>.... IF tips do not make up the difference to at least min. wage, employers are still required to make up the difference. Still.... Why are the wait staff of most restaurants paid much less than a McDonald's employee?
Yes... makes no sense.
 
I was a waiter just out of High School, at a Denny's of all places. I did really good tip wise, but I had a knack for it. I felt as if I had done something wrong if I didn't get at least 2 dollars per patron at the table. My worst nights still had me taking home $80-90 per night. Best nights were $150 to 250 depending.

And the server wages were $2.13 / hour back then (11 years ago!). I can't believe they havn't raised those as minimum wage has gone up $2 since then!

But yeah, if you want to have some fun, start out with $10 in ones and quarters on the table, and explain to your server this is their potential tip and whenever your dissatisfied take a lil' bit of it away....
 
I only tip if service is good (UK).
The most I've ever tipped is about £2.50 though, 1 because I'm a skint student and 2 because I never eat anywhere expensive anyway!
Sometimes I'll just leave a note on the table and leave and they can help themselves to the change.
One time I didn't tip even though the service was really good, because they had a shift handover and she'd gone! This guy just tagged on the give us the bill basically and because it's a cash system not through the till I couldn't specify who to tip so I didnt. Does that make me a bad person!?
 
Im a waitress...and we dont make shit our tips are our pay and lively hood...believe it or not waitressing is hard work. if every person that came in thought like you guys..expecially right now when its slow season and you might have 3 or 4 tables a night you would only make around $10 and the $3 and hour you make..tips are our pay and trust me we bust our ass for it!
 
I'm going out on a limb here now, but....it's a well known fast that waitresses don't get paid much in the States, right? (Gotta stick with the States, because in the UK and Germany we have a decent minimum wage system, and tips are on top of the regular wage, not part of it)

Let me brutally honest here - if you don't like what you get paid, go and get a different job. Yes, yes, I know, jobs don't grown on trees and it's difficult, but if you take a job as a waitress, knowing full well that the pay is shit, then you can't really complain about it. It's like jumping in a pool and then complaining about getting wet - you knew there's water in it, what the hell do you expect???
 
Back when I started out 30 years ago I was a waitress and I always appreciated my tips regardless of my wage. So, I have always tipped. If it's my regular restaurant that charges 10% gratuity then every few trips there I will leave £20 and at Christmas I leave £50 for the staff. In places I don't know I will still leave a very healthy tip plus I'll give the regular delivery guys who deliver to my home £20 at Christmas.

Why?

Because I appreciate when people are reliable, take care about their work and make sure my life runs smoothly. But if service is obviously poor then I won't tip and I'm just as likely to tell the manager what I think of their service!
 
Ababe08 said:
Im a waitress...and we dont make shit our tips are our pay and lively hood...believe it or not waitressing is hard work. if every person that came in thought like you guys..expecially right now when its slow season and you might have 3 or 4 tables a night you would only make around $10 and the $3 and hour you make..tips are our pay and trust me we bust our ass for it!
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Waitresses (and waiters) that say they don't make a lot of money for what they do either A) work in a crappy restaurant, B) work in a restaurant that has a bad location, C) suck at their job and don't make tips because of their lousy performance or D) are expecting way too much out of their job.

I've worked at restaurants where waitresses were making $200+ per night for 5 hours of work and I would hear nothing but bitching and moaning about how they didn't make enough money. But, there I was, working 16 hours days in a kitchen making nothing even close to what they were getting.

It all depends on where you work, what kind of crowd frequents the restaurant and how good you are at your job.
 
ChefChiTown said:
I've worked at restaurants where waitresses were making $200+ per night for 5 hours of work and I would hear nothing but bitching and moaning about how they didn't make enough money. But, there I was, working 16 hours days in a kitchen making nothing even close to what they were getting.
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And this is what gets me. At least in countries with a standard minimum wage (no exceptions for wait staff etc), you're served by all sorts of people who are paid that sum of money. Why is the service of wait staff deserving of extra money than cashiers and other people who work in regular stores, the people cooking your food (assuming you're talking about a restaurant where cooks are paid minimum wage, they do exist), etc? These people are putting in the same amount of time (in some instances with the same level of customer interaction), and variable amounts of work (sometimes the same, sometimes less, sometimes more) for the same shit money. Why the double standard?
 
amy1985 said:
And this is what gets me. At least in countries with a standard minimum wage (no exceptions for wait staff etc), you're served by all sorts of people who are paid that sum of money. Why is the service of wait staff deserving of extra money than cashiers and other people who work in regular stores, the people cooking your food (assuming you're talking about a restaurant where cooks are paid minimum wage, they do exist), etc? These people are putting in the same amount of time (in some instances with the same level of customer interaction), and variable amounts of work (sometimes the same, sometimes less, sometimes more) for the same shit money. Why the double standard?
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Here's my whole philosophy on tipping servers (and I may have said this somewhere else on the forum already, but I don't remember):

The job of a server is to do the following

1) Take the order
2) Hand the order to the kitchen
3) Bring the food to the customer when the food is ready

Now, there are minor differences between establishments (some servers are responsible for getting customers drinks, some servers are responsible for bussing the tables when finished and, to be fair, sometimes a runner brings the food to the customers, not the server, etc), but, for the most part, the job of a server is relatively the same across the board. Anyway...

My biggest gripe about the 'standard' of tipping is that its often based on how much money the customer spends and not how much work the server does. It's not even based on the quality of the work done by the server. It all boils down to the total of the customer's check, regardless of the work done by the server, which pisses me off to no end. And, let me tell explain to people why...

Let's take a look at one of the most iconic servers in the United States - the pizza delivery guy.

Scenario 1

I call up to Joe's Pizza and order a large pepperoni pizza. A pepperoni pizza from Joe's is topped with pizza sauce, cheese and pepperoni - fairly inexpensive ingredients. A large pepperoni pizza measures 14" in diameter and fits into a box of the same size. The combined weight of the pizza and the box is 3 lbs. The total price of the pizza is $15.00.

The pizza delivery guy does the following - he boxes up the pizza once it has finished cooking, he puts the pizza into a warming bag, he gets into his car, he drives 1/2 mile to get to my house, he gets out of his car, he walks up to my door carrying the pizza, he rings the door bell and he hands me the pizza when I open the door.

From the time I placed my order, it took 30 minutes for the delivery guy to ring my door bell. He was pleasant, well dressed and extremely courteous. The total price of the pizza is $15.00. I give the pizza delivery guy $20.00 and tell him to keep it. He says "thank you" and, as he walks away, he has a big smile on his face because he's thinking, ""A $5 tip for a $15 pizza? What a nice guy." He returns to the pizza shop and brags about how good of a tipper I am.

Scenario 2

I call up to Joe's Pizza and order a large chef's special pizza. A chef's special pizza from Joe's is topped with alfredo sauce, three cheeses, spinach, saffron, lobster and crab - fairly expensive ingredients. The chef's special pizza measures 14" in diameter and fits into a box of the same size. The combined weight of the pizza and the box is 3 lbs. The total price of the pizza is $75.00.

The pizza delivery guy does the following - he boxes up the pizza once it has finished cooking, he puts the pizza into a warming bag, he gets into his car, he drives 1/2 mile to get to my house, he gets out of his car, he walks up to my door carrying the pizza, he rings the door bell and he hands me the pizza when I open the door.

From the time I placed my order, it took 30 minutes for the delivery guy to ring my door bell. He was pleasant, well dressed and extremely courteous. The total price of the pizza is $75.00. I give the pizza delivery guy $80.00 and tell him to keep it. He says "thank you" but, as he walks away, he has a big scowl on his face because he's thinking, "A $5 tip for a $75 pizza? What a cheap fuck." He returns to the pizza shop and bitches about how I stiffed him on a tip.

Conclusion

Now, the delivery guys in both scenarios did the same exact amount of work - they boxed up a 14" pizza weighing exactly 3 lbs, put the pizza into a warming bag, drove the pizza to my house which is exactly 1/2 mile away from the pizza shop, carried the pizza up to the door and rang the door bell.

Wouldn't logic dictate that both delivery guys deserve to be tipped the exact same amount of money? Considering they did the same exact amount of work in the same exact amount of time with the same exact courtesy?

Logic says "YES!!!"
Society says "Da fuuuuuck? You crazy, boy?"

Why does the delivery guy in Scenario 2 'deserve' a bigger tip? His pizza was no larger than the one in Scenario 1. His pizza was no heavier than the one in Scenario 1. His delivery route was no farther than the one in Scenario 1. Nothing changed for him. His job was the exact same as the delivery guy's in Scenario 1. Yet, society tells us that we should be paying him a bigger tip and spending more money, because (and you'll love this)...

We, the customer, have already spent more money.

That's like charging a man with a 1984 Ford Taurus $1.37 for a gallon of gas and then immediately turning around and charging a man with a Rolls Royce $38.11 for the same gallon.

Sorry, but I don't buy into it. I tip what servers they deserve, not what they THINK they deserve.
 
Hey CCT, I think your onto it. Hence working at a Denny's, I was happy with 2 buck or so per person at the table, and with the fast turn-around I could do well with the tips.

Now when I went to Fort Wayne, same restaurant chain, I was lucky if I left with 20 dollars at the end of my shift. Difference, shitty reputation at that place before I got there, no one coming in on the day shifts, only real patrons were midnights where the drunks came in to order off a menu that they could point to what they wanted without having to try and say it in their inebriated state. Anywho, it's not always the waiter's/waitress' fault, it can be the place they're at too.

After two months of this, I did as you said and quit, to work minimum wage at a retail store. Why, because it was much more than what I made at the restaurant.

And I was a damn good waiter. Hell, even had a guy offer me a job on the spot at his restaurant while I was working because of how I handled a upset customer and turned them into a satisfied customer. Problem was his restaurant's work hours interfered with my school at the time.
 
Jofthepeace said:
Hey CCT, I think your onto it. Hence working at a Denny's, I was happy with 2 buck or so per person at the table, and with the fast turn-around I could do well with the tips.

Now when I went to Fort Wayne, same restaurant chain, I was lucky if I left with 20 dollars at the end of my shift. Difference, shitty reputation at that place before I got there, no one coming in on the day shifts, only real patrons were midnights where the drunks came in to order off a menu that they could point to what they wanted without having to try and say it in their inebriated state. Anywho, it's not always the waiter's/waitress' fault, it can be the place they're at too.

After two months of this, I did as you said and quit, to work minimum wage at a retail store. Why, because it was much more than what I made at the restaurant.

And I was a damn good waiter. Hell, even had a guy offer me a job on the spot at his restaurant while I was working because of how I handled a upset customer and turned them into a satisfied customer. Problem was his restaurant's work hours interfered with my school at the time.
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I truly believe it all depends on the four things I said. You could be a great server, but work in a restaurant that has crappy food or is in a bad location, and you won't get tipped well. Or, you could be a crappy server, but work in a restaurant that has great food and a good location, and walk away with a wallet full of cash every night.

A lot of it has to do with the luck of the draw, I guess.

I worked with a girl who was probably the worst server I've ever seen, but she made a good $250-300 a night when she worked. Not because she was good at her job or because she worked hard, but because the restaurant was in Wrigleyville (near Wrigley Field in Chicago) and it was normal for people to throw their money around.
 
ChefChiTown said:
I worked with a girl who was probably the worst server I've ever seen, but she made a good $250-300 a night......
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I know the kind of place you mean :party:
 
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