tipping

seriously my customer service jobs were way harder than what i'm doing now making twice the pay, and i was always well above minimum & never had to split tips. that labor law allows people to get away with paying what they do for service work is not fucking right.

meant to say 'more difficult,' a good distinction

true. to clarify what I meant when I said "deserve what they make", i was referring to the servers that make 12-20$ an hour or more off their tips, of which they're a lot of them.

in struggling restaurants, though, like I worked in...it sucks

$10 for the bang trim takes into account the freeness of the service, yeah. But I think it's reasonable to adjust the bang trim tip to the cost of the haircut, although I would still tip $5 on a bang trim when the hair cut is $10, because it's a nice thing that stylists do for free.

I tip 20% on a haircut/color, but that is because I pay fancy-salon-in-the-big-city prices (ie out the wazoo) for the services, so 20% is a hefty tip. $50 for a $40 haircut is more than 20%, but that is logical and also a nice round number.

I don't know. This all makes sense to me!

And I always tip on take out orders. Every restaurant where I've worked, servers were responsible for packing up take out orders, which means stopping what you're doing (ie waiting on seated tables who are going to pay you based on your perceived worth and skill as a tableside server) to fart around with bags and plastic forks and little fucking styrofoam ramekins of salad dressing and arrrrrrrrgggggggg. So yeah, that definitely deserves a tip in my book.

There is no way in sweet fuck I would ever ever tip a hairdresser. They must get paid well - they charge minimum $60 for a wash/cut where I go and it can extend well above $140 for colouring and cut. Tipping them!? Why.

Local custom, really.

tip a few dollars, also depends on the ethnicity of the buffet

????

― The New Dirty Vicar, Friday, April 29, 2011 12:33 AM (7 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

re. the ethnicity thing.

― The New Dirty Vicar, Friday, April 29, 2011 12:33 AM (7 hours ago) Bookmark

haha sorry for the crypto-racist remark. but uh, if it's a chinese buffet and all the waitstaff are chinese, I pretty much assume that anything I tip is going straight into the pockets of management, that the waitstaff are probably getting paid a fixed rate under the table, and that chinese people don't expect you to tip anyway. sooooooooo

I tipped my stylist here after the 2nd haircut I got from him, but I think it made him uncomfortable because after my 3rd and 4th haircuts by him he immediately disappears when it's time to pay the cashier

you do see how there's more work in a latte than a beer though, right?

― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Friday, April 29, 2011 1:23 AM (6 hours ago) Bookmark

yeah but it's been made clear that tipping is not about giving money in proportion to work done, it's about giving money to compensate for fucked up wage laws. do you tip your airplane pilot?

^ if s/he's the pilot of a regional airline, I'd sure like to. They make around $14k/year.

Airline pilots are hideously underpaid - http://blogs.wsj.com/middleseat/2009/06/16/pilot-pay-want-to-know-how-much-your-captain-earns/.

xp

Yeah tbh the poor-pay thing is why the only people I do tip are taxi drivers. Sure a lot of them are shit and dont know where they're going but when they do, and the cab is clean and theyre friendly and knowledgeable I'll tip em, because I know they get ripped off hardcore by the taxi directorate (something horrible like they only end up making $7 an hour after all the money's skimmed off for the directorate, their cab manager, petrol/maintenance etc)

well I did not know that! I'll have the flight attendant bring a 20 to the cockpit

I was pretty shocked to learn how much flight attendants at cathay pacific, a well known and respected international airline, make. but they get a lot of free comps and perks.

but still, shifting the burden of proper compensation onto the consumer is the greatest trick the devil ever pulled. those fatcats are laughing all the way to the bank

xp Not every hairdresser makes that kind of money--I've never paid more than $20 (US) for a haircut.

I would never go to a $20 haircut place.

(its the one thing I'm snobby about - my hair is... difficult)

Ehhh, this whole discussion, when it becomes inter-national, gets weird. I've lived in NY for 10 years, used to tipping, fine, 'most everything gets 20%, no thought involved.

Weird thing is going to Australia and paying fucking $11 for a sandwich (vs $6) or $4 for a coffee (vs $2). Tres expensive, but also fine UNTIL Australians come to the US and wonder why American sandwiches and coffee are cheap!? Cos the cost of labor isn't factored in! So just pay proper tips and shut up.

I always assumed that was a big part of it, sure.

But where the frick are you buying $11 sandwiches from!?

When you calculate your tip at the end of a meal do you just do it re the total amount or the amount pre-tax and any other additions? I dunno if it even makes much difference but just wondered.

I calculate before tax

yeah but it's been made clear that tipping is not about giving money in proportion to work done, it's about giving money to compensate for fucked up wage laws. do you tip your airplane pilot?

― br8080 (dayo), Friday, April 29, 2011 12:19 AM (5 hours ago) Bookmark

this is not an either/or proposition. it's primarily to compensate for fucked up wage laws and partially to reward for extra work well done--this is why there's a social 'standard' of 15%--to compensate for wage laws--while plenty of people tip more to reward a job well done.

*tips you 5% for that post*

do you tip your library circ counter worker when they track down a particularly hard volume to find for you

do you tip your subway sandwich artist

ill tip fast food workers sure

dudes have p much the worst jobs in the service industry so

do you tip your library circ counter worker when they track down a particularly hard volume to find for you

― br8080 (dayo), Friday, April 29, 2011 6:30 AM (12 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

no, because they're volunteering--first part of the two part compact doesn't apply.

do you tip your subway sandwich artist

― br8080 (dayo), Friday, April 29, 2011 6:31 AM (11 minutes ago) Bookmark

have you noticed they have a tip jar? and yeah i have used it

library workers are volunteers???

where do you draw the line

THIS IS MADNESS, MAN

MADNESS

I don't think library employees are necessarily going to be volunteers. Maybe in small towns?

it 100% depends on the library/library system; my mom's library used to turn away volunteers because a short-lived experiment with using them showed they couldn't grasp the concept of shelving books (! btw, as an employee's kid I often got roped into shelving books when I was in grade school and it was the easiest fucking thing to figure out) but, more importantly, most of them thought "working in the library" meant "curling up in a corner with their favorite book and reading"

i tip my priest tbrr

yeah for some reason i misread dayo's post as "library volunteer," that was my bad, but it didn't reg as weird cause where i grew up the library staff was half volunteer & half paid

i tip my priest tbrr

― So seveir, no more beir (darraghmac), Friday, April 29, 2011 3:16 PM (7 seconds ago) Bookmark

i mean dude is delivering yr salvation imo

Weird thing is going to Australia and paying fucking $11 for a sandwich (vs $6) or $4 for a coffee (vs $2). Tres expensive, but also fine UNTIL Australians come to the US and wonder why American sandwiches and coffee are cheap!? Cos the cost of labor isn't factored in! So just pay proper tips and shut up.

Well, we know this now we've all read the ILX threads, but it's not always easy for foreigners to know that kind of thing. Especially coming from an Anglophone country so you don't even need to buy a phrase book which might have tipping info in.

Plus I think Britishers and Australians both have an idea that everything is unusually expensive in our own countries - I know Aus can be pretty expensive with the cost of importing so much, and the UK always used to be a lot more expensive than other European countries, not so much these days tho - so when we go abroad and everything seems ridiculously cheap we're too busy going "well of course it is, this is awesome" to think about it much.

(I went to the US pre-ILX and tipped my usual British 10-12% and not at all on drinks - not that I spent much time in bars without eating - so god knows what was said about me behind my back. Sorry to the good people of California, 1999)

dad tipped me off on tipping bartenders when i was over there- result was instant & copious buybacks.

Priest never even threw me a free confession tho so f/that

is it customary in Australia to tip cows?

only in their individual units of steak

Well, we know this now we've all read the ILX threads, but it's not always easy for foreigners to know that kind of thing.

yusss. things are often bizarrely differently priced in different countries for no immediately apparent reason, so an Australian's first thought in America would probably be "Strewth, coffee is very cheap here, wonder what it's like with beer".

a friend's father was in the USA for some kind of work exchange reasons and he started hanging around in a bar and chatting to the friendly bartender. On the second or third time he was there, the bar tender said to him "Listen Bob, there's no easy way of saying this, but in this country people tip bar tenders".

Ordering an $11 sandwich in Australia, but not having to tip gave me the same comfortable feeling of going to a liquor store in my state and seeing that sales tax is already figured into the listed price. Everyone getting paid + me not having to do math in my head = always a good thing.

(Sales tax also already in the price in AUS. No pennies either. I could do math in my head all day long down there.)

I suspect this was discussed already upthread, but how do you deal with tipping on alcohol with a meal? Confusing because you could drop 20 bucks on a bottle or 200, and it is the same amount of work, but if you tip based on total dinner bill wtf to do here.

I mean I am always afraid of undertipping so I just do 20% on the full bill.

I think the idea is 20% on the full bill, which is why my Mormon mom would push drinks harder than anyone back when she w3aited tables.

yeah I agree, but hard to justify the tip differential on a 20 vs. a 200 dollar bottle of wine! There is one cork to open, period! I mean maybe your server brings you fancier glasses for the pricier bottle. . .

it's definitely the full bill, that's why we were always asked to offer margaritas at every table, because it benefitted "both of us"

also I think this thread is now breaking down into a "tip for specific function" discussion which is overanalyzing it a bit.

I've never tipped bartenders a dollar or more a drink just because of our national situation paying wages to food and drink service people, but because of my selfish desire that they notice me the next time I go up for another round of drinks.

Sorry, to answer:

$11 sandwich? Some cafes in inner Sydney. (As a random thought, I expected meat pies to be...$2?, like picking up a pizza slice in NY. They were double that! Soda was often $2-3!)

I've never experienced a buyback. Not once in 11 years. Maybe I don't stay at the same bar long enough? Usually only two drinks or so? I tip normally (dollar on beer, two on cocktail)... maybe bartenders just don't like the look of me? Do you have to strike up a conversation?