Tipping is now at about 20% for good service

[Alberta_Beef]

Originally Posted by ken0042

I do agree that in a case like Alberta_Beef's leaving pennies may not have been called for; a 0 tip maybe.

However leaving pennies does send a powerful message. The reason for no tip wasn't due to being cheap, forgetting, or any other thing that could be dismissed. It tells the server you had a real problem with the service.

The point was a message like you suggest. I work in the service industry myself, so I knew exactly what I was doing. I wanted her to realize how she was treating her customers was unacceptable. But something was wrong with that one, normally someone doing something like that makes the server feel shame, but this one was clueless and she just got angry.

[Dion]

Originally Posted by oilyfan

I think the pennies tip is pretty rude, if you are not happy with the service why not just leave no tip?

It may have been rude but it did get the attention of the server and resulted in an exchange of words where she was made aware of her lousy service. I gaurentee she won't forget AB and his method.

[Daradon]

Originally Posted by ken0042

I do agree that in a case like Alberta_Beef's leaving pennies may not have been called for; a 0 tip maybe.

However leaving pennies does send a powerful message. The reason for no tip wasn't due to being cheap, forgetting, or any other thing that could be dismissed. It tells the server you had a real problem with the service.

I did this once MANY years ago and it was on a Visa bill (back in the day of the carbon copies) so they knew it wasn't just being cheap. I left a one cent tip.

Without going into the whole story, the experience was awful. Not just our server, but the service of the whole restaurant. Our food took forever, was cold, got a broken glass, etc. You think of things that can happen to you in a restaurant and it did.

ANYWAY, there is a bit more to this story than just that. As fate would have it, I made the boneheaded mistake of leaving my brand new Oakley sunglasses at the restaurant. Got home and noticed and knew right away where they probably were. As you can imagine I was a little nervous about returning to the scene of my 'insult' no matter how deserved it may have been. As well, I was also worried that perhaps the server might just take them in lieu of the tip I didn't leave and they would simply say, they didn't find them.

I called first to make sure they had em. They did, and nothing else was mentioned on the phone. So I drive back and I'm thinking, 'ok, sneak in, make the trade so to speak, and sneak out'. However when I got to the front I told them why I was there and the hostess said, 'oh you're the guy who left the glasses. We'll go get them for you, but the manager will bring them out to you.'

So I'm a little nervous now. But it ended up being ok. The manager just wanted to check with me to see why I was so displeased with the service. After I told her the various points she seemed satisfied and actually gave us a voucher to use for our next visit so we would come back and try them again.

But at the time it was a pretty funny and somewhat nervous experience.

[19Yzerman19]

I have four tip amounts.

20% - For very good service where the server or staff enriched the experience of eating there.
15% - My average, where there was no fault to be found with the service or product.
10% - For poor service, where the server or staff diminished the experience. Usually there will still be good things about it - i.e. it took an absurd amount of time to get the food, but the food was good.
0% - Numerous things went wrong and the experience ruined my day. I could count the number of times this has happened on one hand and the staff always knows.

[Reaper]

Originally Posted by Dan02

Funny you should mention that was at national on 10th on the weekend, watched the bartender pour a double vodka seven for one of the waitresses, the second shot wasn't even half full.

Short pouring is how self entitled bartenders make extra money.

[GP_Matt]

Am I the only one who tips a standard amount regardless of service (unless it is terrible which is almost never) and just doesn't go back if it wasn't enjoyable?
I do tip better if it is somewhere I go all the time and they know who I am otherwise it is pretty standard though

[AltaGuy]

Originally Posted by Reaper

Short pouring is how self entitled bartenders make extra money.

There are some really interesting things happening with liquor control these days.

Weigh-in-weigh-out has been around forever, and many bars use paybacks at the end of the night for the bartenders for missing booze. Many also even do blind cashouts every night now, so basically the bartenders just hand over their money to a manager, and the manager will tell them how much money they owe for the booze they poured. Sometimes leads to bartenders making little to no money.

Unfortunate side effect of this system is that while bars are minimizing their losses, they are also making it very much in bartenders' self-interest to short-pour customers.

I have heard of numerous bars who also have a "plus" system now built into inventory - so when calculating how much money the bartenders owe at the end of the night, they add 10% or more everytime, in effect making the bartenders short-pour patrons.

[moon]

Originally Posted by GP_Matt

Am I the only one who tips a standard amount regardless of service (unless it is terrible which is almost never) and just doesn't go back if it wasn't enjoyable?
I do tip better if it is somewhere I go all the time and they know who I am otherwise it is pretty standard though

I usually tip between 15-20% based on whatever makes the bill a easy round number to pay without getting change. The overall service rarely comes into to play for me, but I would also say that for me (going out about 8 times a month) I haven't really noticed a lot of variation in service in terms of terrible or great service. It all seems pretty standard to me.

In the past when I have had a "regular" bar I went to I would tip better with people that I knew but I knew that I would be served by them again and would get better service if I did. I don't get the practice that some guys have of tipping supposedly hot chicks more.

[normtwofinger]

The tip should be built into the price, or added on automatically to the bill. Then if the service was extra good, you could leave something extra for the server.

Costa Rica does this. 10% is automatically added to the final bill. If you do leave more, it is appreciated, but not expected. I think it works well.

[TheyCallMeBruce]

I usually start my tipping at around 100%. If it's really good service, then 200%. If it's bad, then 50%. If it is really bad, then -50%.

[albertGQ]

Originally Posted by TheyCallMeBruce

I usually start my tipping at around 100%. If it's really good service, then 200%. If it's bad, then 50%. If it is really bad, then -50%.

If your meal was $50 and the service is good, you tip $100?

You pay 3X your meal price sometimes for good service?

[RedMileDJ]

Woosh...

[SportsJunky]

One scenario that always bothers me is the delivery charge on food. As I sit here in my hotel waiting for my pizza to arrive I'm wondering how much to tip the driver. The girl on the phone told me there is a 5 dollar delivery charge. Does that all go to the driver? I almost always tip the driver on top of the delivery charge but I'd like to know if they get the 5 bucks on top of the tip. I'm not sure that I'll get an honest answer if I ask him directly.

[jayswin]

Originally Posted by albertGQ

If your meal was $50 and the service is good, you tip $100?

You pay 3X your meal price sometimes for good service?

You're way too serious for you own good, sometimes.

[flylock shox]

Originally Posted by SportsJunky

One scenario that always bothers me is the delivery charge on food. As I sit here in my hotel waiting for my pizza to arrive I'm wondering how much to tip the driver. The girl on the phone told me there is a 5 dollar delivery charge. Does that all go to the driver? I almost always tip the driver on top of the delivery charge but I'd like to know if they get the 5 bucks on top of the tip. I'm not sure that I'll get an honest answer if I ask him directly.

F it. You're in a hotel. Pay what you want. No one can call you on it.

Hell, answer the door with a sock on your wang and ripped out pages of the King James plastered to your ass, and you might get the damned thing for free.

[GGG]

I dont think you should ever tip 0 even for attrocious service. Because the server has to tip out the kicthen based on a percentage of the bill so if you goose egg a tip the server actually loses money on you having been in the restaurant. So at least tip 4% to 8% to cover the tip out. Also if you are going to tip a low amount or zero you should speak to a manager as they will want to know your negative experience and deal with it. If you tip 0 and dont talk to a manager you shouldnt go back.

I am firmly against tip creep and also against the concept of tipping so regardless of service I tip 15% these days and call it part of the meal expense. To me this has the same affect of just eliminating tipping and raising menu prices. I also dont tip bartenders unless it is busy.

[flylock shox]

Originally Posted by GGG

I dont think you should ever tip 0 even for attrocious service. Because the server has to tip out the kicthen based on a percentage of the bill so if you goose egg a tip the server actually loses money on you having been in the restaurant. So at least tip 4% to 8% to cover the tip out. Also if you are going to tip a low amount or zero you should speak to a manager as they will want to know your negative experience and deal with it. If you tip 0 and dont talk to a manager you shouldnt go back.

I am firmly against tip creep and also against the concept of tipping so regardless of service I tip 15% these days and call it part of the meal expense. To me this has the same affect of just eliminating tipping and raising menu prices. I also dont tip bartenders unless it is busy.

I would file that under "N" for "not my problem".

I see it as a product plus service. If the service is good , I tip. Otherwise it's the same as buying it from Subway or Mac's: it's just a product so why would I pay more than the cost of the product?

And if the service was so bad I left nothing, odds are I'm not going back anyway.

[Nuje]

Pretty much, yeah. I've tipped 0 maybe twice in my life. The service did have to be truly atrocious for them to achieve that though. Like, a dead pub with 2 servers working (3 tables total) and seeing them 3 times in almost 2 hours. That deserves 0, and nobody will convince me otherwise, I'm sorry. It's not my fault if the server is pretty much going out of their way to be bad at their job.

[The Coppernian One]

I dislike tipping (I dislike the fact it's seemingly creeping into everything more and more), but still do it, and usually at a decent amount (15-20%).

I've left no tip twice. Both times back in university.

First time - A group of us went out for a lunch, each had a meal and a beer or two. The total bill was around $75.00. We had forgotten to let our server know that we would like separate bills, so it all came on one bill. We were all using debit so went up one at a time to each pay our share.

My share was around $15.00 plus tip, I was going to put $20.00 in. By that time there was only about $3 left on the total bill so most of my share was actually forming her tip (would have worked out to between 20-25%, about 11 years ago). When I got to the till I could hear her in kitchen complaining to the cook about our table all paying separately and how this was inconvenient for her and she just knew we were going to leave her with a tiny tip and how she hated customers that did that. I paid only the remaining $3.00ish, told her that if she felt the need to complain about customers she may want to do it where we couldn't hear. Told my friends what had went on and bought each of them a drink later on to make up for my share.

Second time I was judging a pub crawl and was stationed in a strip club (university was so tough). Each team had paid an entry fee to the organizers and would get some "free" booze at each bar (this allowed us to guarantee each bar that there would be money coming in and tip for staff). We were awaiting a final tally on participants so that we knew how much we could tip. As this was before cell phones someone would actually come let us know and bring us the money.

Near the end I went to the bathroom and while I was there a bartender and a patron (who we saw later was actually a bouncer) came in and had a "random" converation about how the early shift had moved a bunch of beer and not gotten tipped. The bartender was actually looking at me as he said it and the "patron" just stood behind me by the door and never actually used the bathroom. When we left after the crawl was done I left a tip for the early crew with the manager and explained what had happened. When I asked the bartender what the tally was I gave him the exact amount, smiled, let him know I could have left an additional $200.00 (which was true) and walked out.

[malcolmk14]

One time we had a table of 8 at Hooters on Barlow and the server refused to write our order down. I asked her a few times to please write it down because I knew it would be complicated and she'd probably get it wrong if she tried to remember it. She insisted that she had a good memory and that she'd nail it. I told her that fine, I believe her, but if she got it wrong we weren't tipping. She said ok and took the order.

She forgot 3 items including one person at the table's entire order. Forgot almost all of the side items and mods that were requested. No tip on a $207 bill.

That was the only time I've ever not tipped.

I tip $4-6 on delivery regardless of order size (unless it's over $100 or something, which is pretty rare), and I tip $0 on takeout.