Couple busted for refusing to pay "mandatory gratuity" - Page 4

How hard is it to figure out 20%? You figure out 10% and double it. You do half of 10% and add it to get 15%. It's not calculus.

I think she's just saying she estimates what the 20% would be (not down to exact cent) and then just rounds up from that estimate to the next dollar. It's what I'd do.

Let's hug this bitch out.

I tip 20% at least (again, for basic, good service, but more if it's better), and then round it up to the nearest buck.

It's strange when you compare it to other countries.

Even in spite of their economic collapse, unemployment and high cost of living and low wages for so many especially in service industries, people in Japan have always been horrified when I've offered them a tip of any kind.

That's an enlightening perspective. Thanks.

Yeah I love how they do things in Ireland. When I was staying in Sligo it got to the point that I only ended up paying for every third drink or so. In Eastern Europe they are so used to infrequent tips just the very fact of tipping them got me free rounds quite often

Yes, define for me what a stereotype is. Please. This should be a riot. Additionally, as it happens, I have seen the majority of Canada. I love it there.

More name calling. Call me what ever you want, it doesn't bother me. Ignorant and moron are fine. Hey I am also hairy, have glasses and a decent gut too. Have at it , sport. You tantrum is cute.

Yeah and many places in Europe have a service charge for sit-down dining. The extra X amount of euros or whatever. That is almost like tipping off the top and is one of the reasons establishment owners can pay their staff so well. I like that system but I still tipped a bit extra anyway.

I like tipping with two dollar bills. I imagine that people enjoy recieving them

Seriously, unless you server just sucked all kinds of ass, I don't see the big deal about shelling out an extra few bucks. For those of you who think you're "fighting the system" by not tipping, you're jackasses and the only person you're hurting is the waiter.

Don't ever tip with credit cards.

Don't ever tip with credit cards unless maybe you're getting the whole bill reimbursed as a business expense (if they'll cover the tip as well). There were some restaurant chains in the UK exposed for taking the tips added onto the bill paid by credit card and adding it to "consolidated revenue". Ie none of it was going to the person providing the service. That plus they were threatening to fire anyone who told the customers this. I think if you can tip in cash, it's probably better because there's at least some chance at least some of it will get to the person it's intended to.

When did 20% become standard? I always understood a standard tip to be 15%?? Anymore than 20% and now that bill's getting up there. My wife and I pull in good salaries, and we eat out reasonably often; however, restaurant meals ain't cheap! Who the heck is giving 20+% tips regularly and still putting a roof over their heads?!

15% was the norm when I first moved to NY in 1989. With the cost of living going up, just like everything else, 20% is now right around the standard. That's not a hard and fast rule, but that's what I normally see when I go to restaurants.

Well, given that food prices are generally tied to inflation ... 15% should go as far today as it did before. I've read articles where generally people want to tip 'above' average because they want the servers to like them. However, as time passes what is average changes since everyone is trying to tip slightly above that. Thus the gradual increases over time. 18% is more of the accepted norm I think. Although I have no problem using the scale that was posted earlier.

20% is fairly normal in this neck of the woods, too. I usually do 15% if I get middling service, 10% for bad. Pretty notorious overtipper, most of the time.

All this math! If the bill is $20 or less, I tip $5. If it's more, I may still tip $5, I may tip more, depending on how much more than $20 that check was or how awesome the server was. If by some chance I eat for free, the minimum tip is $10, more depending on how good the server was.

I once had a brand new server and he tried SO HARD, but you could tell he was just flustered and couldn't find his flow. But damned if he wasn't determined to do a good job. There was like three of us and we sat there for a couple of hours just bullshitting and such, so, I tipped him $100 with a little note that said "Keep it up, you'll get better." Not sure if that was kosher or not but I felt good about it.

For piss poor service - no tip
For lackluster service to barely serviceable - I tip the sales tax amount
For average service - I tip double the sales tax
For good to great service - I tip 20%
For fantastic, unbelievable service - I tip 35-50%

Apropos of nothing, when tipping with a credit card, I always add the extra change so the total for the bill is $XX.00. This is for my own peace of mind.

ETC :Wrong version of "peace".

I just make sure that if you add the 2-digit dollars and and 2-digit cents number always add up to 99 (tip so the total is $34.65, $42.57, etc.) ... that way I'll know if the restaurant is trying to scam money off my card.*


*Just kidding, I don't actually do that ... but I'm kind of tempted to now.

One time my wife and I went out to dinner, and, well, wine was consumed. Come bill paying time, I fucked up the basic math needed to add the tip (not the advanced math needed to determine the tip, mind you). I don't remember exactly, but lets say the bill was $81, I wrote down a tip of $19, but only put $90 as the total. My first inclination was to phone the restaurant and explain, but curiosity got the better of me and I decided to wait and see what ended up getting charged to my credit card. I had every intention of making things right if the charge posted was only $90, and would have driven back to the restaurant to give the proper tip. I was pretty sure that's how it would play out (since the area for total was clearly filled out as $90), and was a little surprised when I checked a few days later and found that the restaurant had charged me $100 (which is what I had intended, but not what I wrote).

I probably could have made a stink, but instead just more aware to check my statement and make sure the restaurant charges are, you know, what I actually right on the bill.

I've had the opposite happen. Gave the wait staff an extra large tip for excellent service. And they ended up only charging me the price of the meal with no tip. I didn't bother to call them.

You're awesome for that. I haven't waited a table in 8 years and that still makes me smile.

Seriously. I would track him down for years and still act all fucked-up and flustered just to see if lightning would strike twice.

"Still not quite there. Here's $200."

Hahaha well I felt bad. Not only was he losing money by having us loiter all night long, but I watched other tables over the course of the time we were there and a LOT of people stiffed him on the tip, probably mistaking his newness for incompetence. One of those spur of the moment decisions. Not something I've ever been compelled to do again.

I'm definitely in both the LisaNy/Diva camp and the Rain Dog camp. I think that if I get good service that means the waiter/bartender busted their ass on my behalf and deserve being rewarded as such. But I also could never not leave a tip if I had shitty service (stupid Irish guilt) so I leave something smaller. When I lived in Boston we reached a point at the bar we were regulars at that the owner would refuse tips from us and sometimes we would purposely leave a 10 or 20 on the bar and just walk out cause otherwise he wouldn't accept it. But Sean also took care of us and would let us hang out after hours and feed us free drinks and let us smoke cigs in the bar.

I just think that if a waiter is doing a kick ass job they should be given the message to keep it up and vice versa. Great service isn't exactly easy to come by.

Coincidentally enough, my 8 year old son and I had a conversation about what a "tip" was this weekend. We went out of town for a football game, and we had shitty service at every single restaurant we went to the whole weekend. I was griping, mainly to myself, about how little a tip I was going to leave at this one place, and my son asked, "What's a tip?" We talked about it throughout the weekend, and before we left Sunday morning, we went to Waffle House. As soon as we got our food (which was quick), my son said, "Leave her a $7 tip!" I said, "That's more than 1/2 of our meal. We'll see." Sure enough, after we received our food, the waitress never came over again. My son wanted a to-go cup for his drink, and I wanted to pay. The waitress actually turned her back to us as my son was trying to get her attention. I went up to the register to pay, and stood there for 5 minutes until another waitress finally dumped all the dirty dishes she had and checked me out, and I asked her for a to-go cup. I went back to the table, looked at my son and said, "You still want to leave a $7 tip?" He said, "No way!" I left $2 and change on a $12.72 check.

My standard tip starts at 20%, until your service is shitty enough to knock it down. I wanted to create an invention called the "Tip-O-Meter", which would be like a counter, with + and - keys on it, and it would sit on the end of your table. You start at 15% (or whatever), and as service is good, you hit the +, and as it sucks, you hit the -. So the waiter/waitress is constantly aware of how you feel about the service. My wife said it would start too many fights to be a valued product.

Third Rock from the Sun

I don't know if this is true because I heard it second hand but it sounds like the sort of thing they'd do on the show.

Dick Solomon is at a restaurant. Before he's even ordered, he puts a stack of banknotes on the table before telling the waitress "This is your tip. Every time you do something unsatisfactory, I will remove a note from the pile." Of course, Dick being Dick, he reduces the woman to a nervous wreck in no time.

I am not sure if I am the only one who does this, but it wouldn't surprise me if I was. I try to imagine what it is like to work at a restaurant for the person who is serving me. I pay attention to how they seem to be doing, how the other employees are doing, and how the manager is treating people if I get a chance. If it looks like the people are miserable because of where they work, or if it looks like maybe they are having a bad day, I tip between 30-40% regardless of service and try to talk them up a little throughout the meal. If it's great service and they seem to be happy, I tip around the same. If it's ok service and they seem to be doing fine then that is when I tip the normal 20%. I don't think I have ever been in a restaurant where the service has been so bad that I haven't wanted to tip. Guess I've been lucky, but it also helps if you treat people decently and make them remember that they are human and appreciated.

I also tip at places like Subway for that same reason (usually around 10%). I guess I'm a sucker, but it's hard to work jobs like that, especially with the economy being the way it is. I never for once assume that the person who is working there is a loser or a bad person for taking that job. They could be there because they have no choice. They could genuinely like the job and be pursuing a degree in astrophysics at the same time. I've had to work at places like that. Sometimes it's been by choice (like when I took a job working in the kitchen of a Little Caesar's at the same time I was programming at a shitty shop - that job was fucking FUN), other times it's been because I really needed to work and there were no other opportunities.

I dunno, I guess my point is that I never make fun of a person or think they are less than I am because of where they are in their life. Life can be unfair, and if their lives have been hard I couldn't stomach being yet another judgmental asshole in their lives.

RE: the 20% thing. I generally go that high because food prices haven't been raised all that much in the restaurants I go to yet everything is more expensive. I accommodate for inflation, I am a socialist at heart :P

The most interesting tip I ever had to leave was in Edinborough. I was a young military musician performing in his very first outdoor military Tattoo, and they had us staying in stables that had been converted into barracks near the stadium. One of the pubs we went to (once they figured out we were from Canada - they weren't so friendly to the non-Commonwealth countries who were there) had a policy that the first tip you left was to tell a story about your time in the military.

Given I had all of 2 years in by that point, I only had one remarkable story, about a room-mate who had problems controlling his bowels when he had been drinking. The story culminated in him shitting all over another one of our bandmates he was attempting to hook up with (which we found out after she had come out of his room yelling 'HE SHIT ALL OVER ME!!"). I embellished it and tried to make a production out of the telling of the tale (which they expected and encouraged) and received a standing O for my efforts (and lots of really thick stout for free). On subsequent nights, we would tip normally, and before we left the city, we were each expected to "ring the bell" once, which meant ringing a brass bell attached to the bar and then purchasing a round for everyone that was there, including the staff. I found out later when I went into the Navy that this was an old (and fucking financially crippling as a private) tradition, but it was funny how much ceremony they had in a simple pub. Never been to a place like that since.

Oh that's from a movie...shit...SWEET NOVEMBER? Yeah? It mean it may have been on 3rd Rock too, but it was definitely in that movie.

It is in 3rd Rock, I remember seeing it, but couldn't tell you which eppisode.

Charges withdrawn.

The police believe it's a civil, not a criminal matter. And I doubt the restaurant is going to sue over $16, although they could argue the publicity has been bad for business and claim damages. But I imagine they just want to let this die.

No they can't.

No, it's not been good at all.

http://www.yelp.com/biz/lehigh-pub-bethlehem

Apparently there's a student boycott of the place. Also as fast as they delete reviews on this site, people keep adding new one star ratings. I have to wonder exactly what the customers are paying for in service if this description is accurate, that they have no waiters?