tipping

-- do i have to draw you a diaphragm (Rock Hardy), Saturday, January 20, 2007 10:37 AM (Saturday, January 20, 2007 10:37 AM) Bookmark Link

god i miss changeable user names!

QUESTION:

if you have no change for a good tip, is it better to tip £1 on a £22 bill or nothing at all?

I think nothing at all is better: it's like spitting in their faces if you give a pound.

My dad tipped 7 euros (on 88 euros) for takeaway. Which is very uncommon in Belgium. hah

so i bet him $20 i could convince his friend otherwise and i won

lol genius.

Sometimes America's tip-happy culture strikes me as kind of gauche or unctuous or something. (I tip anyway.)

I kind of hate at a coffee shop when the jar says "starving college students fund" or something. "But I'M a starving college student." Which is why I'm buying coffee at a coffeeshop, of course.

this economy doesn't have time for your identity politics

No one has time for an Abbott anymore.

Me and the railroads, waning in this world of euros...

Why don't they tip (poorly paid) salespeople? I'm serious, why doesn't this happen????????????????

Salespeople aren't as poorly-paid as servers. They're guaranteed at least the minimum wage, where servers earn $2.35/hour. In the event that a server doesn't make enough in tips to reach the minimum wage for a shift, the restaurant is supposed to make up the difference (never heard of this actually happening, though, even on the occasion when a waiter had two tables for the entire night, etc.)

why not just make it mandatory to pay the minimum wage and let them raise the prices?

You could do that, but to what end? Just so people wouldn't have to figure out how to divide by five in their head?

Servers would actually be getting $12-15+ an hour. You've just quintupled labor costs for the front of the house - and restaurants would have to make up the tip out that goes to hosts/bussers/bar staff as well.

Final cost to the patron is probably the same, it would help some waiters (bad ones, or unlucky ones) and hurt some good waiters (who make more by virtue of bigger sections, better tips). Kind of pointless to overhaul an entire industry for that.

why is the industry different to begin with? these people are working at the bar/restaurant, so why aren't they paid like a normal employee?

and you're omitting that it would also charge everyone equally for the service costs, not just good tippers.

good waiters will still get tips, at least they do where i'm at (where service charges are usually included, and servers are subject to a reasonable minimum wage) and at least others would be getting a living wage fram a shitty job.

^^good point. like i said, i actually get paid really well in comparison to the rest of the hospo industry in NZ, but i still get tips occasionally. during our busiest time of the year i probably make an average of NZ$3-5 p/hr in tips, but now that we're hitting winter it's about NZ$2 p/hr.

xp - Tradition. Don't know what to tell you - I'm sure there are studies and studies on the History of Tipping In America. The history is irrelevant, though - what incentive is there to change the system drastically? What's the big deal?

I've never known a waiter (above the level of Denny's) who wasn't averaging a living wage. That's the draw of serving in the US - despite the stress and aggravation, it pays pretty well compared to jobs of its class.

A good waiter at a nice restaurant can make a good living in most cities. Most of my waiter/bartender friends make way more than I do, and tax free at that!

I know a guy who tends bar 4 shifts a week and brings home $900 -$1000 each week... and the bar is beer/wine only! can you say E-Z!?

http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/food/2008/07/oh_no_british_people.html

LOL

Comments are hilarious.

I wonder what this waiter has a degree in?

neat gin? stout fella

He should just stop being so passive aggressive.

Germans were always much worse than Britishes

Comments are hilarious.

Didn't expect to find myself writing the phrase "Tory even by Comment Is Free standards" today, but looks like I just did

hmmm

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/12/magazine/12tipping-t.html?_r=1&oref=slogin&pagewanted=print

Under the old system, waiters earned between $25 and $35 an hour, much of which was untaxed. “Now, waiters make about $25 an hour, which is fully taxed,” Boyd says.

Fuck a bunch of that.

i had a horrendous experience at a bar a few weeks ago. don't think i posted about it -- basically, a bitchy bartender told me off for requesting her cheapest beer. she thought i wasn't gonna tip her, but the whole point was that i wanted a cheap drink so i could like, afford a tip. so after she refused to serve me at first, and gave me all the lip (it was awful), i refused to take the beer. then her friend asked me to leave and i said no, i'm here for a friend's birthday and that's stupid. then their guy friend came up and was like, uh, she was just a huge bitch to him, leave him alone. and he gave me a free beer. new york is fucked.

what bar was this at?

"The Edge."

uh yeah if i were her manager i would have told her to go home and i would be calling her to tell her when her next shift was. i.e. never. that sucks.

milo that is pretty lame seeing as it's a huge reduction in salary but seriously - $25-$35 an hour UNTAXED for serving food is a little... weird. don't get me wrong, it's created some of the most decadent night life in the world, especially in big cities where you can make more money bartending til 4am than a bank manager does doing his 9-5.

it's created a crazy scene that i treasure. but if there really is $42 billion a year in tips, think of the lost tax revenue. there's no reason for anyone making that much an hour to evade paying taxes.

(uh i mean there are PLENTY of reasons but you know what i mean)

Yeah, $25-35 seems high. But if you figure in the cost of living in San Diego, I guess it's not that much more than what I averaged as a waiter ($16ish) from 2000-2003. (Unless they were getting their $8 wage on top of that, in which case... nice). It's a physically demanding, stressful job that pays pretty well.

re: taxes, every place I worked made you claim 10% of your cash gross (if they/you didn't that's when the IRS started getting snoopy, supposedly) and all of your credit card tips. Assuming an average night balanced out to 15%, and you tipped out 3.5%, credit cards being half your gross for the night - at worst you're underreporting ~5% of your income. (some nights more, some nights less, and most waiters are out some change rounding up on a bill - you don't want to drop a check presenter with a bunch of coins most of the time).

Although the bar I help out at now (not a bartender, security/door/barback/what needs to be done) has some crazy-ass system where the bartenders claim a ridiculously small amount. So it may be a bigger issue in places like that.

"$25-$35 an hour UNTAXED for serving food is a little... weird"

Very few people pay no taxes on their tips as most restaurants won't risk the inevitable IRS audit. It's also worth noting that it's not in the restaurant's best interests to have servers declare their entire tip amount as the restaurant then has to pay payroll taxes on that as well. Most restaurants/servers have a set % that gets declared.

I have mixed feelings about the tipping system in the US. One the one hand I think it's a great boon to big cities where it helps allow young creative types and non-college grads to support themselves with a living wage in places. On the other hand, it doesn't lead to good service, it fosters a perception of service as a "non-serious" profession, and from a tax perspective it's pretty lame. The Chez Panis/Charlie Trotter/French model seems like a good one though (sort of a share the wealth approach. This dude model, I'm less keen on.

So... what about tip pooling then? Does that occur in the US at all or only in some Canadian restaurants? Cos it's kind of frustrating to think that even if you've received good service and leave an appropriate tip it's just going to be pooled and divided in the end anyway... kind of unfair on the servers who put in more time and work than others, y'know?

And really, it's a requirement by law in Canadian provinces that restaurant staff are all paid (a) minimum wage (um I think a couple have separate wages for servers/bartenders but it's not much less than normal minimum wage). Yes, in some cases that isn't very good, but it's pretty much on par with the rest of the service/retail sector... it's not like in the US where there's a massive gap between state minimum wage and the wages servers get... yet people still follow the same tipping custom... which might be even more frustrating because it seems so unnecessary compared to in the US.

It occurs at a lot of San Francisco restaurants, yes.

Tips on Tipping (i.e., greasing palms)

1. Go. You’d be surprised what you can get just by showing up.
2. Dress appropriately. Your chances improve considerably if you look like you belong.
3. Don’t feel ashamed. They don’t. You shouldn’t.
4. Have the money ready. Prefolded, in thirds or fourths, with the amount showing.
5. Identify the person who’s in charge, even if you have to ask.
6. Isolate the person in charge. Ask to speak with that person, if necessary.
7. Look the person in the eye when you slip him the money. Don’t look at the money.
8. Be specific about what you want. “Do you have a better table?” “Can you speed up my wait?” A good fallback: “This is a really important night for me.”
9. Tip the maître d’ on the way out if he turned down the money but still gave you a table.
10. Ask for the maître d’s card as you’re leaving. You are now one of his best customers

"I have mixed feelings about the tipping system in the US. One the one hand I think it's a great boon to big cities where it helps allow young creative types and non-college grads to support themselves with a living wage in places. On the other hand, it doesn't lead to good service, it fosters a perception of service as a "non-serious" profession, and from a tax perspective it's pretty lame."

BBBuuut - aren't you saying that the service is non-serious since the servers should all, in your humble opinion, be doing something else?

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seems short for a classic clusterfuck thread

Hoos- are you the voice of reason?

You're the tipping compass.

I don't think that anyone outside of some very compassionate San Franciscans think that waiting tables is in any way a "profession", let alone serious. It's a job, and no insult intended to folks in food service, but nobody aspires to be a waiter.

most people don't make their living doing things they aspired to when they are younger in my experience.

are younger, were younger

I'm not saying that something is a profession if and only if everyone who does it wanted to do it since they were young(er).

I have seen a lot of older, very nice waitresses in my day. But you're right I think a lot of people move through it when they're younger into other professions, eventually.

This was certainly true in the college town I grew up in.

"BBBuuut - aren't you saying that the service is non-serious since the servers should all, in your humble opinion, be doing something else?"

No.

If everyone did what they should be doing for a living, then taking a shit would be a life-threatening experience.

that doesn't even make sense!!