Rant: Tip Culture

[33anda3rd]

There are a million things that are out of a servers control that could lead to poor service. Maybe the computer is acting up, or another server is putting in an order for a 20 top, or another table had a ton of special requests and it slipped his mind he has your check in his pocket.

I think usually it's a situation like this when the check takes forever. The server wants to get you your bill and get you rung up and out the door so they can get more people seated in their section, especially if it's busy. In a not-busy place where (s)he's standing around gabbing with co-workers, that's just lazy.

[AWvsCBsteeeerike3]

A quick word goes a long way. There's nothing worse than not getting your check and not getting an explanation. Lest my food is comped, I'll still tip but simply never return. There are a million places to choose from, unless it's my favorite place ever, I'm just not coming back.

[jim]

If I get lousy service I don't care if it's in or out of the servers control. It's lousy service, so the tip will be adjusted accordingly. I tip for service, not intentions.

[Schlich]

If good tips were actually a good indicator/prognosticator/enforcer of good service, then why isn't literally every single service job tip-based? Because it's a dumb system is why.

[stlouie_lipp]

A hardworking employee, he didn't call attention to the measly $23 dollars he was handed for the total $22.67 tab, choosing to just grin and keeping moving to his next stop.

The next day, however, something unexpected happened when Schaffer, 25, walked into work.

"He [Schaffer's boss] handed me a card and it said, 'A Thank You Note' across the front," the shocked employee recalled. "And I opened it up and it totally made my day. I had never gotten anything like that from a customer in six years of delivering."

The handmade card from the couple had a stamped cupcake on the front, and inside contained an additional $20 bill to make up for their tipping miscalculations the night prior.

http://gma.yahoo.com/blogs/abc-blogs/or ... cipes.html

[Jocephus]

i had a $14 lunch ticket on saturday. i left $3.50. am i a good person or no?

[stlouie_lipp]

i had a $14 lunch ticket on saturday. i left $3.50. am i a good person or no?

You'd be a better person if you rounded it up to $4.00.

[jim]

A hardworking employee, he didn't call attention to the measly $23 dollars he was handed for the total $22.67 tab, choosing to just grin and keeping moving to his next stop.

The next day, however, something unexpected happened when Schaffer, 25, walked into work.

"He [Schaffer's boss] handed me a card and it said, 'A Thank You Note' across the front," the shocked employee recalled. "And I opened it up and it totally made my day. I had never gotten anything like that from a customer in six years of delivering."

The handmade card from the couple had a stamped cupcake on the front, and inside contained an additional $20 bill to make up for their tipping miscalculations the night prior.

http://gma.yahoo.com/blogs/abc-blogs/or ... cipes.html

The same thing happened to me - sort of. It was a pretty nice restaurant, I don't remember the bill it was probably close to $100 for my wife and I. Anyway, the service was really good and the food was good - I had duck. A couple of weeks later, my wife is going through the bills and something doesn't add up - the bill at the restaurant was about $20 lower than what our receipt said. What happened was I wrote in the tip on the copy we kept, and left the other copy without anything written in.

I felt horrible. Luckily the place was 2 miles from where we lived, I called and tried to describe the guy and it so happened was working. I didn't go overboard with my mistake - it was honest - but I did remember giving him something like $30. It really kind of hit me how he took it, he wasn't so much worried about the money (so he said), but that he thought he did a good waiting on us and wondered what he did that caused us not to leave a tip. Anyway, made it better, and now I always triple check that when I leave.

[JL21]

I had the opposite of that happen. I took the correct copy, and the correct amount cleared my account. But the next time I was in the same bar, the bartender accused me of taking the wrong version. He said I'd stiffed him. Up to that point, the dude had been a pretty good bartender. And I guess he still is- I still get perfectly good service in there, and tip accordingly. But it definitely rubbed me the wrong way that he was accusing me of not tipping him.

[Michael]

I leave all the receipts at the restaurant and move on with my life.