tipping

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!!

lol at "some very compassionate San Franciscans"

What kind of yardstick should I use to tip the doormen in my rent-stabilized apt building for the holidays?

There are 4: daytime guy, evening guy, weekend guy, overnight guy. The first 3 hold mail/UPS packages etc at the desk for me, the fourth buzzes me in late on Sat nights. I wanna be fair w/out causing myself pain (and I'm getting socked with unavoidable spending).

Reading the last thread revival, wow, I need to get a job as a waitress. Not that anyone will hire me, because I have no food service experience, but I make between minimum wage and $2 above minimum wage at multiple jobs. I could use some tips.

makes me glad i don't have doormen to tip, though. i have no idea what you should tip. the ny times has a comments discussion on that right now, though i don't know if it'll help you!

given my ceiling is prob $40, I wd bet not.

yeah probably. usually i can tell when their "big new trend" articles are about rich people, but since i've never lived in ny i had to ask my roommate who grew up there how common it is to have a doormen.

until I got this place, I didn't think rentals -- let alone rent-stab'd ones -- would!

have so much respect for americans' mental arithmetic prowess - still can't get used to having to do sums when eg drunk, as now, and my tipping method is literally to tip whatever random number under 10 comes into my head

I feel so much better about tipping now that I realize that I never want to go to a restaurant again!

my friend texted me and asked if he should tip a livery driver. I said yes just because i didn't want to admit i didn't know what a livery driver was

oh man, memmories of many misadventures in nyc gypsy cabs flooding back. tipping them is a must unless they try to rip you off.

lool

also lol @ surmounter up there

Trying to find info on if/how much you tip the Peapod delivery dude; there is no consensus online. Does 10 percent of the order cost seem reasonable?

yes

oh man this is why i would never order groceries. i eat beans and rice at home because it's cheap, coming up with the $60 minimum order PLUS delivery fee PLUS tip is going to have to wait until comfortable, lazy middle age.

I would like to know a) where you are living and b) how many people you are feeding with groceries that cost less than $60.

lex after a long, drunk meal i have no idea how to figure out splitting up between eight people + tip either, especially when one person's all "well i just had two vegetarian starters and only one drink so i don't think i should have to pay as much"

that person usually gets punched

i don't tip less than 15% on anything unless the next increment is way higher, but i don't know what customs are like in the second city (and deliver my own groceries)