<p>I think the good tippers are those of us who have been wait staff. You have to admit the rules don’t make much sense. What other business expects clients to pay extra for basic service? It is only in the US that we are expected to, in most of the world small tips are left when service is exceptional.</p>
<p>I waited tables throughout undergrad and grad school. You get sophisticated when you need to make maximum money and look for well run restaurants because what the kitchen crew does so heavily reflects on tips. In all honesty, it’s not a bad idea to under tip when the restaurant has too few wait staff or service is slow for other reasons. A few nights of poor tips due to mismanagement gets the wait staff screaming and the owners listening.</p>
<p>My H is more generous than me. He leaves at least 20% no matter what, whereas I generally end up around 18% or so. (I figure 15% and 20% and leave a tip to the nearest dollar between the two.) But that is figured on post-tax bills, so it’s probably over 20% if you’re figuring pre-tax.</p>
<p>A kitchen can be bad and you can still get great service. We’ve had waitstaff stop by with extra bread, plenty of refills, and lots of apologies. We don’t penalize them. On the other hand, we had a waitress recently who took our order, and we never saw her again until she brought the bill. Someone else brought our food out, and no one ever refilled or drinks or asked us if everything was okay. I had to flag someone down to get a spoon to eat my meal. She was there in a split second to clear the table, after we stood up, though!</p>
<p>My H was going to leave his normal tip, and I objected. She barely earned whatever the restaurant pays her, let alone anything extra. I think she ended up with about 15%.</p>
<p>I agree with whomever posted about the entitlement mentality. Tips are supposed to be up to the patron, as a reward for good service, not something the employee has a right to expect. We eat out (inexpensive places) about once a week, and they are always crowded. I haven’t seen any evidence of decline around here.</p>
<p>One other point - when we used to have younger children who ate off the kiddie menu, or for free, we always tipped extra, to cover the extra work they caused. We also tend to sneak back to the table after my F-I-L has paid, to increase his meager tips. He seems to think if he complains enough during the meal, then he can justify leaving a smaller tip - so we tip extra to make up for the complaining!</p>
<p>binx, a waiter can do all of the things you suggest to take care of the patrons at their tables, but when they are sitting over an hour in a restaurant that is not fine dining because it takes that long for the kitchen to get out those plates, and they would like to get out at some reasonable point, they still get annoyed and often leave what is considered a lousy tip.</p>
<p>For average to upper priced restaurants, I leave a 20% tip (I’ve left more for exemplerary service). If the service is kind of crummy, I leave 15%. For lower priced restaurants, I leave a higher percentage tip. Only once have I had what I would consider very bad service, but I still left 10%. The thought crossed my mind to leave nothing, but I decided to give the person the benefit of the doubt.</p>
<p>I worked at several restaurants as a waiter form Ho-Jos up to fine dining. Just like the 6% commission on real estate became crazy when prices went inot the $500,000 range, so did the tip earnings when the average dinner tab for two went well over $100 in a nice restaurant. An average of $100 night net ($20/hr)for five hours work is plenty for the work an average waiter does. With tipouts you might need gross tips of $150.</p>
<p>I tip 20% or more at places I like and go to often. 15% at the rest. I don’t expect others to tip over 15% say is we are a party splitting the check.</p>
If this were to happen routinely at a particular restaurant it sounds like a good reason for the waitstaff to quit and go to a restaurant that’s managed better.</p>
<p>My attitudes towards tipping have changed dramatically since my daughter has been a server for the last year. She now works at a high end restaurant, most dinners are $100/person plus drinks. </p>
<p>Some people do tip well (and yes, the servers expect a 20% tip). If they receive less than that, they feel that the customer was not happy with the service. She had a group recently that spent well over a thousand and then tipped less than 10%–the man apologized and said that he couldn’t go over the “budget”. Now, this group took up hours of time.</p>
<p>Another consideration of which I wasn’t aware until she started doing this type of work, is that here (NC) servers are paid $2.13/hr. Some nights, she may not get a table and thus will go home with not making any more than that–hardly covers gas to work.</p>
<p>The other issue is that yes, most “nice” restaurants require “tipping out”. Of her tips, 33% goes to bartenders, busboys and hostesses.</p>
<p>It is a tough job. And one never knows how much they will make in a given week–makes budgeting very difficult.</p>
<p>One big pet peeve I hear from others in this field—the people who come in, order a drink and maybe an appetizer, then sit for 4 hours talking–then leave a tip based on their bill. Never considering how long they tied up that table.</p>
<p>I, for one, would love to see restaurants have to pay the servers at least what is minimum wage for everyone else. I don’t understand how they get by with this. </p>
<p>So now, I tip 15% for poor service, 20% for good service, and 25% for outstanding service.</p>
<p>I am not familiar with US labor laws but I thought most States requires the employers to pay at least somethng like at least 70% of minimum wage? </p>
<p>In California, I think waiters/waitresses get the minimum wage in full ($8 per hour) on top of their tips.</p>
<p>Sam, you are right. Daughter has friends in CA and yes, they do get full minimum. I don’t understand either why they get away with paying so little in some states. Honestly, until my d. started waiting tables, I had no idea that they essentially worked for tips only–opened my eyes.</p>
<p>I’d like that and pay less tips. LOL! Perhaps because I come from Hong Kong, I feel like this “tipping culture” in America essentially shifts the burden of paying the workers to the customers. Even though I’ve been here for a while, I still get that weird feeling that I <em>have to</em> pay tips when “tips” are supposed to be voluntary. It also creates a situation where some waiters don’t make anyting in slow restaurants while some others make more (sometime way more) than school teachers. I feel bad for the former and cynical for the latter!</p>
<p>I also go to bars and see people giving 2 bucks or 5 or whatever per drink to bartenders who would give people “the look” if they leave just a buck! I know in popular areas like West Hollywood, bartenders can make a lot of $$$ (good look and muscles and you are hired). It’s really weird.</p>
<p>Where did the “20%” come from? I understand that waitstaff would like as much as they can get but why would they ‘expect’ 20%? When one has a group at a restaurant they usually automatically add the gratuity to the bill and I think that’s generally 18% so where did this 20% come from? </p>
<p>
I guess that restaurant doesn’t follow the ‘gratuity added to the bill’ for groups paradigm.</p>
<p>Since there seems to be a disparity in areas, i.e. California paying waitstaff min wage but some other states paying well below min wage, do you think that the formula for the tip should be different in California than those other areas?</p>
<p>Now, what about the tax situation? I think people making money on cash tips are notorious for not reporting some portion of their tip income which results in a net gain on their part to the detriment of uncle sam.</p>
<p>I don’t go anywhere often enough for them to remember me. In the city since my grad student days I always doubled the tax which meant I left 16%. I tend to leave more now. I’m apt to leave more when I’ve had less - like endless cups of coffee and breakfast at the diner. I always left extra when I had little kids - especially if they’d been messy. </p>
<p>My mother in law, when she was beginning to go gaga once took us out and left ONE DOLLAR for a party of four. I added more money when I thought she wasn’t looking, but she saw the extra money and put in her purse!</p>
<p>In Germany all you were supposed to do was round up to the nearest convenient amount to pay. So for a 19 DM meal (before Euros), you’d leave 20.</p>
<p>I live in a 7% sales tax state. For average service I just double the sales tax, and I triple it for good service. Makes things easy. </p>
<p>What ****es me off is that restaurant owners, against the law, do not bring their servers hourly wage up to the state’s minimum wage which is $7.15/hr. Restaurant owners in NJ are allowed to pay their servers just $2.10/hr. But, state law requires that if a server does not make a cobo of pay plus tips equal to the min. wage the owner must make up the difference equal to min. wage. The vast majority of restaurant owners don’t do this because their industry has the lobbyists to convince the government officials to ignore the law. The non-organized servers do not have any representation. And the servers do not complain about their predicament out of fear of losing their jobs. Sad.</p>
<p>It does seem tipping should be different in the various areas, since base pay varies.</p>
<p>ucsd, for her restaurant the “group gratuity” is for parties of 10 people or over–this one was only 8 people (with lots of drinks);).</p>
<p>Sam, I agree with you. I would like better pay or just automatically add the cost to the bill.</p>
<p>The 3 different restaurants my d. has worked, it is very hard for a server to get away with keeping cash tips–they are required to enter tips into the computer, if the manager thinks some amount is questionable, he is sure to confront the server. All this stuff is so new to me–I always assumed they “pocketed” their tips, IRS free and had no idea they tipped out so much to the other staff.</p>