Tipping

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What about "crappy service"? Sometimes we'll get someone who just messes up half of the orders, doesn't really try to fix them, doesn't offer us a complimentary order or anything like that.

Restaurant: $1/per person in the party, base. For quality or superior service, additional compensation is in order. I don't find it right when an 8-top pops in for two hours of coffee, and tips out $2 for all the running that the server did. If we've been there for two-three hours working and talking (and having them run for refills), then the tip for those eight coffee drinkers might be 50% of the bill or more. Similarly, I don't think that whether the server brought out scrambled eggs or filet mignon should determine how much I tip them - they did the same amount of work.

Delivery: Based on timeliness. Given the price of fuel, the idea of (1 Gallon+10%) is insane - also, I live in a town about ten miles long so there is little justification for such expense. For example, a pizza delivered on time will probably get $2.50 or so from me. Early service can be $4.00 or more. If they have screwed around, or as in one instance, didn't even try to make the delivery (as I watched them slow then drive away from the front porch) then I'm not going to tip for their foibles.

Services: Depends on quality. A good haircut will always get a good tip; same with a shoe shine. Rewarding people for mediocre work does not make sense to me, though - it must be earned.


M.

At a lot of places in the US, the waitstaff are paid very little, on the understanding that tips will make up a significant part of their salary. In fact, this is why they can be paid less than minimum wage. So basically, if they don't get tips, they end up in dire financial straits. And that is severely uncool. Thanks to this rubbish, my tip no longer means "here's something extra," but instead, "I'm not deliberately depriving you of what you need to feed your family."

So I try to be as sympathetic as my wallet allows. If I'm sitting down to eat, I put in at least 10% more. If the service is bad, I leave nothing. If the service is good, I might leave plenty more. I always tip the pizza guy, the barber, and the bartender well. This ensures I get warm pizza, decent cuts, and strong drinks.

Incidentally, I never leave a fractional tip. If a meal costs $8.75, a 10% rounds me up to $10. If I want to tip more for great service, I'll do it in $1 increments. Likewise, I never leave less than $1 if I decide to tip at all (unless I'm dumping spare change into a tip cup). I don't want to send the message that I'd rather count change than break out the bills, when someone at least made an effort to be friendly to me. But hey, that's just me.

Wait-Staff

Having worked in the food service industry for about 10 years, I can say that in America, wait-staff earn ALL of their income through tips. American restaurants pay wait-staff about $2.25 per hour. All of this goes to taxes. So you're left with your tips alone.

On top of that, most restaurants require wait-staff to give a certain percentage of their tips to other employees like bussers, hosts, and dishwashers. So ALL you make is your tips MINUS 10% of the total you've made at the end of the day.

The price you pay for the food at a restaurant does not include the wait-staff's wages. It's not very expensive for them to buy food in bulk either. Oh but there are other Operating Costs, including all kinds of weird taxes and fees, rent and utilities (very high for restaurants!), the kitchen staff's wages, and all the wasted food product (a lot is wasted due to the impossibility of predicting exactly how much of each item will be ordered in a given week).

Delivery Drivers

Tipping people like delivery drivers is a slightly different matter. Establishments have varied policies on what they pay delivery drivers. When I delivered pizza, I was paid minimum wage ($6 per hour). I had to use my own car and pay for all the gas I used delivering pizza. Sometimes the cost of the gas to get to the customer's location was more than what they tipped me. Most people tipped about $3.

One time, I delivered 10 extra-large pizzas and had to park far away from the office they were going to. I had to carry this mountain of hot pizzas across a huge parking lot and through a couple of office buildings on a hot summer day, and they just gave me $1 and acted like I should be happy to get that!

I made decent money as a delivery driver, but I worried how much I was going to have to pay for the effects on my car - leaving it idling so much, driving lots of short distances, etc. Also, the place I worked for made me responsible for my insurance, and I couldn't afford commercial car insurance, so if I had been in an accident while obviously working, my insurance would not have covered it.

Fortunately, that car got totaled not long after I quit that job, so I never got to see what expensive parts I was going to have to replace because of the abuse it took while I worked as a delivery driver.

Please respect people who earn tips - their employers know they get tipped and therefore pay them as little as they can get away with.

15% if mediocre,
20% if good,
25-33% if service is great,
10% would have to be truly awful.

As for delivery: pick it up/no mistakes/no tip/shorter wait.

Donate my long hair to charity, haircut is free, so tip $5 because the love of money is the root of evil.

I always assume that tipping is obligatory in sit-down type restaurants and leave a round number slightly less that 20%, never lower than 15% unless the service is bad. The expected earnings from tips is figured into their wages so you’re ripping them off by not tipping.

I find it kind of annoying when places have "optional" tips though (food courts etc.). I usually don't do those.

I tip well when the server does their job well, a surly, obnoxious or doesn't give a s**t attitude will not get a tip from me. If I get seated and the hostess doesn't bother getting me coffee combined with wait staff not showing up, then I will simply get up and leave rather than hang around to be ignored. I do make allowances for a busy restuarant but not for any sense of entitlement for lousy service. For very bad service I will explain to the manager why I will not be coming back. For a good breakfast place in the Bay Area where the bill is $10.00 or less I do NOT consider 15% adequate for proper service, 30% will be more like it.

Yeah, I give smaller tips for bad service, but a person would have to be doing their job really badly to deserve to be completely unpaid for it.

When I get good service, or just a nice server, I try to tip generously, if my funds allow it. I think I have an exaggerated sense of tip-empathy, having been in that business so long. I try to pass it off as "karma", but I don't really believe in karma.

I usually give a dollar tip, two if the service was exceptional. But I am always tempted to write advice on a napkin and leave that as a tip.

I tend to do roughly 20% for restaurants when everything goes well, if I have the money. I also round up to the nearest dollar. So a $7.50 meal would still get $2. That's just my way of doing it. However, I might be ok with that simply because my $7.50 meal that I get at the nearby truck stop is always huge and delicious.

Now what's a good tip for a bartender? Same as a tip at a restaurant or not? Last weekend was the first time I ever went to a bar; I gave the guy a dollar a drink because it happened to be the change for my twenty, and it seemed reasonable to me. I'm talking about a sit-down and BS with friends type bar, not the noisy clubs where everyone gets piss drunk to dance. I didn't tip there.

Last edited by Blasty on 04 Jun 2008, 3:03 am, edited 2 times in total.

I really hope you are mostly patronizing the class of restaurant that asks if you'd like fries with your order. 1 or 2 dollars is viewed as an insult in most nicer establishments, and is just generally rude. You know the movie Waiting, where the redneck gets all pissed because his waiter returned his insulting "tip"? Don't be that guy.

I have a tendency to tip a lot, primarily because I don't like money and other people do. I have been known to leave $20 on a $1.09 cup of coffee.

I feel like I need to explain my system better...

4 People, Sit-down Dinner with drinks, Good Service: Tab = $90, Tip = Base $4 + Drinks $4 + Good Service $10 = $18 tip
8 People, Coffee only, 3 Hours, Average Service: Tab = ~$20, Tip = Base $8 + Duration $4-6 = $12-14 as tip
2 People, Highend Dinner with drinks, Poor Service: Tab = $120, Tip = $4 base + $4-8 Drink = $8-10 tip

Is it perfect? No. But like I said before, I'm not going to discriminate between the server simply because of what they carry on their tray. Often, I find better service at the smaller establishments anyway.


M.