Buffet Style Restaurant Waiter / Waitress 5% to 10% of the total bill is suggested. This depends heavily on exactly how much work is done by the waitstaff. In some restaurants, the waitstaff does very little. Usually is simply bringing fresh linen and/or utensils. In some other restaurants, the staff brings drinks, and some orders from the kitchen directly. http://tipping.org/tips/TipsPageBuffet.html complete list of tips (US): http://tipping.org/tips/TipsPageTipsUS.html
Thanks for the links! It's nice to see it all written down somewhere. Honestly, though, I had no idea you were supposed to tip on some of these things. Flower delivery? Grocery bagger? Tow truck? Hotel chambermaid (surely this doesn't apply at Econo Lodge or Motel 6, does it?) ? I just thought these things were included in the money you were already paying. I can't afford all that. Looks like I'll just have to stay in my house and not answer the door.
Those of you blaming the 'system' or the owners should be completely on side with the restaurant in this case. They included the 'tip' in the price. Stated it on the menu. No guess work. Don't want to pay 18% -- don't eat there. It's on the menu. Part of the deal. Arbitrarily reducing the tip, in this case, would be no different then deciding the chicken was really worth $5.00 instead of the $18.99 listed on the menu. If you're unhappy with the food/service, you call management, and work it out. But it ain't up to you to reduce the bill as long as you knew what the price was in the first place. Faos, Pgab and Dada got it right.
ya, what happened to minimum wage, the guy that was arrested should bring tht up if the owner pullls bs about the waitress being paid 2 something.
Okay here is the deal. I tried to explain earlier. We can pay them 2.13 and hour as long as the tips they make added on to their hourly then averaged out by their hours is minimum wage or more. Lets say you worked 5 hours and minimum wage is umm 6 bucks and hour. 1. You get 10.65 for the hours you worked at 2.13 2. you make $45 in tips in those 5 hours 3. you make a total of 55.65 in those 5 hours 4 you divide that by the hours you worked which was 5 and you have $11.13 and hour. So that way they are making more than minimum wage. If they do not make at least minimum wage then you are technically obligated to pay them the difference. But the odds are very slim that they make less than the minimum wage.
I absolutely don't believe in tipping. It's a shame that waiters/waitresses only make $2.13 an hour. But if they don't like their job, they should work in a different industry. It's really not my problem. If any tipping industry (restaurants, barber shops, car washes, pizza delivery, etc.) wants to raise prices and give 15% of the final cost to the server, I'm fine with that. But I don't feel I should be obligated to tip if its not a part of the price. Since I don't eat at restaurants and don't eat pizza, tipping doesn't effect me. However, when I get car washes or hair cuts, I'd say I tip about 10% of the time, and only when I'm blown away by the service. Example: last week I went to Champps to watch the UT game. I sat at the bar for an hour drinking diet cokes while watching the UG game. The waitress was friendly and didn't charge me for the cokes, since it wasn't alcohol. Before getting up and moving to join some other people, I gave her a $10 tip. Outstanding service = great tip. Regular service = no tip. By the way, do you tippers tip at Sonic? In this instance, the customers are wrong. The menu says 18% is mandatory for large groups. Plus, that is standard fare... even someone like me who hasn't eaten in a restaurant in five years knows this fact. If they didn't want to pay the mandatory tip, they should have walked out. Not seeing the fine print about a mandatory tip is no excuse.
You should be prepared to tip 15% MINIMUM if you go out to eat, regardless of quality of service. If you don't like it, DON'T GO OUT TO EAT. If you have a problem with the food, DON'T GO BACK. You can even tell others how bad it was. It's really pretty simple. It bugs me when sissies complain about the food they ordered. Ordering food is a gamble going in, you should expect this. The guy that got arrested is a cheap, disrespectful b*stard and I hope he does time.
regardless of quality of service, you're entitled to a tip? nothing you do earns or "dis-earns" you a tip?? if that's so, what the hell is it? i thought a tip was to be earned? don't get me wrong...i'll tip 20% for very standard service. but if you NEVER show up at my table...if you bring my food out cold...and you never refill my drink...i won't tip you...and i'll look you straight in the eye and with a kind voice i'll tell you why. the idea that it just is because it is blows me away. we all earn a living. just showing up doesn't cut it. just showing up gets a paychek from your employer.
As the son of a first generation American, I absolutely believe in tipping when I go to restaurants. I mean, that's what fed me the first few years in the States. As some one who've worked in restaurants, I can tell you this. If you go to a restaurants on regular basis (for lunch during work or one that's really close to your home) you better tip well. While I've never seen some one goes as far as putting semen in food, it's very easy to stuff to it with out knowing, or drag out the order time for your lunch so you take too long of a break.
Anything over 15% IS earned. 15% is the minimum tip. Again, if you don't like it, don't go out to eat. We do all earn a living, and a 15%-minimum tip is what being a waiter/waitress earns you.
i go out to eat all the time. all the time. i think i've not tipped once in my life...and it was a situation similar to the one i described. meet the most minimum of all expectations, and you'll get 20% from me. even leave me wanting for a refill..you'll still get the 20%. but avoid your job altogether, and, as Danny Noonan put it, "you ain't getting no coke." the 15% tip is what you earn if you do the job. if you don't earn the tip...you don't get the tip. the key word is earn.
That's the way I've had experience with mandatory tips. They're just built in to the bill on a line-item. Interestingly, I've been in that situation and ended up paying essentially a double tip because I didn't notice the line-item until after the fact. By the way, for everyone who complains about small tippers, do you also insist on returning any excess tips? I mean, I'm sure there are times when you didn't really go out of your way to give above-average service but still may have gotten a tip in excess of the "norm". Shouldn't you give that excess back to the customer? I mean, if you want the bad tippers to pay more, shouldn't you also want the overtippers to pay less to even things out? Or do you want to, as they say, have your cake and eat it, too? I am quite often an overtipper. But if the service is below average, I'm not paying the average tip. Of course, I can count on one hand the times I've had what I would consider below average service in a restaurant in my entire lifetime. So, it's exceedingly rare that I would leave less than 15% (and it's actually very rare that I leave less than 20%). I don't buy the 15% is the minimum no matter how bad the service is line, either. I mean, by that standard, the wait staff could piss in your potatoes right in front of your table and still rightfully expect a 15% tip.
Given your response to these multiple points, you're probably wrong. You are getting mad just thinking about people tipping low. If my food sucks, even if my service is average, I can do a couple of things. 1) I can tell my waiter the food sucks. Most likely nothing will come of this. Maybe a manager will come over and compy me dessert. Great, so now I have to eat some free crappy dessert as I likely haven;t ordered any yet cause the food sucks. Or maybe I'll get comped appetizers - great, so now I just had to pay for a crappy entree. I have never personally been comped an entire meal and I infrequently get comped anything at all. 2) Get really pissed and let it been known quite loudly an dobnoxiously that I'm dissapointed. As you stated yourself earlier, this is uncalled for and doesn't work. 3) I can leave little or no tip. What does this accomplish? Well, in most cases it really pisses off the waiter (if it pisses you off just thinking about it, which it clearly does, it's guaranteed to piss you off when it happens). It makes his service worse for everyone else and it impacts the restaurant as a whole. Do I feel bad that the waiter has been underpaid? Absolutely not!! If you're complaining that being a waiter is hard you've likely never had a job that requires you to work 85+ hours a week - try going through med school or working as a young analyst on Wall Street. If you're a waiter and you feel like you're constantly getting screwed on tips, either stop being a waiter or wait somewhere else.
I've actually been comped a meal once. It was a Ruby Tuesday in Nashville, Tennessee. The thing is, I didn't even complain. I ordered meat loaf, and the meat loaf was fine, I just didn't eat very much of it. The manager or someone came by, noticed I hadn't really eaten any of the meat loaf and asked if the food was okay. I said it was fine and that I just wasn't as hungry as I thought I was. He went on for a minute letting me know that he'd be happy to get me something else if I preferred. I politely refused the offer because I really just wasn't hungry. He told me that if I changed my mind, just let him know, and he walked off. I figured that was the end of it. Then the bill came and he'd had them take off the meat loaf. It really was incredible to me because the little bit I ate of the meat loaf actually was good. I really just wasn't very hungry. But he was probably just being nice because they, as a city, were plotting to steal my favorite football team.
