Rant: Tip Culture

[Maclowery]

If you want to help out your server or bartender after a good time out, there are 3 levels you can aspire to:

1. Leave a large tip. We'll be happy, and remember you if you come back.
2. Tell a manager specifically about your positive experience. Both your server and the manager will remember you if you come back.
3. Leave a positive review on yelp or tripadvisor, and mention your server. The manager will be ecstatic, the server will hear about it, and you might even bring in a few extra dollars to the place.

Not to derail the derail, but I loathe Yelp as few do. Too many of the reviews are due to outlier experiences that grouchy customers had, and want to hurt the company. Too few are positive reviews from outstanding experiences customers had.

In the past 6 months I have been threatened with termination due to a horse-dung hyperbolic yelper, and also praised by our all-business-no-smiles owner for an exceptionally positive one. So, yeah, tip me another few bucks, but leave that positive review! We (career industry people) need more positives! High fives all around everyone!

[planet planet]

If you want to help out your server or bartender after a good time out, there are 3 levels you can aspire to:

1. Leave a large tip. We'll be happy, and remember you if you come back.
2. Tell a manager specifically about your positive experience. Both your server and the manager will remember you if you come back.
3. Leave a positive review on yelp or tripadvisor, and mention your server. The manager will be ecstatic, the server will hear about it, and you might even bring in a few extra dollars to the place.

Not to derail the derail, but I loathe Yelp as few do. Too many of the reviews are due to outlier experiences that grouchy customers had, and want to hurt the company. Too few are positive reviews from outstanding experiences customers had.

In the past 6 months I have been threatened with termination due to a horse-dung hyperbolic yelper, and also praised by our all-business-no-smiles owner for an exceptionally positive one. So, yeah, tip me another few bucks, but leave that positive review! We (career industry people) need more positives! High fives all around everyone!

I find that true of many online reviews. We build apps for companies and they are always upset about the negative reviews, but if they look at similar apps from other companies, they are reviewed the same way. People just aren't motivated to communicate great experiences like they are crappy experiences.

[tlombard]

A person has a great experience and they'll normally tell a friend or two. That same person has a bad experience and they'll tell everyone. Unless you are talking about one person I know. In that case you'll hear about absolutely everything she does 24/7 plus half a dozen quotes a day that she posts to Facebook.

I can't delete her though. She runs one of my softball teams and does everything on Facebook (an event for each game so she knows who is or isn't making it). I have gotten really good at ingorning 99.9% of the posts thankfully.

[go birds]

If you want to help out your server or bartender after a good time out, there are 3 levels you can aspire to:

1. Leave a large tip. We'll be happy, and remember you if you come back.
2. Tell a manager specifically about your positive experience. Both your server and the manager will remember you if you come back.
3. Leave a positive review on yelp or tripadvisor, and mention your server. The manager will be ecstatic, the server will hear about it, and you might even bring in a few extra dollars to the place.

yep, i never forgot the bad tippers either though.

[cardsfansince82]

I really think all reviews good and bad should expire after a certain amount of time. Too many people are influenced by reading what one angry person with an axe to grind wrote five years ago. Unless I see numerous people having bad experiences recently that don't sound like they were written by a self absorbed crazy person, I try to ignore them.

[lukethedrifter]

yelp is stupid anyway because it's much of the time it seems those people are forcing themselves to have an opinion on everything. and it shows.

[Diddy]

If I have a really good experience I try to remember to leave a good review online but often forget. I don't think I'd ever leave a negative one but I know who your talking about and really that's the only reason I even bother to leave good online reviews.

We were at toys r us the other night to return something. The lady in front of us was upset and the service lady went out of her way to make the lady happy even giving her a coupon towards a future purchase. After the transaction was over the lady proceeded to cause a big scene yelling at the lady at the counter. Threatening to get her fired and all sorts of things. I finally just got to the counter and put my stuff on the counter so that the lady was behind me. That pretty much got her to stop and leave. Her issue was really with the store policy not the worker who had corrected the issue. To me those are the people that leave bad online reviews.

[33anda3rd]

Luke, they don't pool. I like it that way. Our two worst servers are quick to tell you we should pool, but they're the only ones. The ones that understand the wine list, the beer list, the food the best, the ones we can go to and say "chef needs you to move the salmon entree tonight" and will move the salmon entree tonight, they make more money than the two students we have who work 2 nights/week and who are fine but not exemplary. One of the good ones is a level 2 somm. He crushes it in wine sales. It's not fair to him, when he averages 23-24% in grat on the highest sales of our team, to pool with the two kids who do an ok job and get between 18-20% on lower sales. On a Saturday night the good one will ring $1500 and get $360 in grat. One of the kids will have the same covers, ring $1300 and have $250 in grat. The good one earns it, and I'd not feel good about pooling, paying both $305. The extra $110 the good one earns he's paid for in money and time spent getting that L2 somm certification, and that should pay off for him I believe.

[33anda3rd]

So, yeah, tip me another few bucks, but leave that positive review! We (career industry people) need more positives! High fives all around everyone!

++++++++

First and foremost, standing behind the stick is a hospitality job, and the one thing that's lost in the whole craft cocktail revolution of moustache wax and vests and pocket watches and gingham-on-gingham and who-can-outdo-who-with-the-most-obscure-housemade-bitters and this-is-distilled-by-a-vegan-couple-in-rural-Oregon thing is that it's a hospitality job*. Not to take away from the folks pushing cocktail culture forward, which is great but a good bartender wants you to feel welcome and have a good time first and foremost. A bad one wants you to come in and see The Bartender Show. Those folks that are helping you have a good time, make sure they know it beyond monetarily.

*My criteria for a bartender: hospitality, work ethic, attention to detail, desire to learn. I don't care if they've never stirred a martini, because I'm going to train them to make a drink the way I want it made anyway.

[Smith Corks One]

Protip: Tip your pizza guy in cash. He'll get to keep all of it and he will love you for it. (I'm not sure if the same goes for restaurant servers)

Not necessarily. If he/she doesn't report enough tips, they will get a bill from the IRS, possibly with a nice fine attached. This doesn't have to be an individual audit, either - the entire restaurant can be audited, especially if reported tips are low for the whole restaurant. Personally, I reported all of my tips (at least for my last several years in that job) because I needed to be able to prove my full income for purchasing houses, cars, etc. I would much rather have a nice fat credit card tip than a couple of singles the customer happened to have on hand.