the sandbox guide to tipping demographics

How do you think they got rich in the first place, huh, sonny?

I do actually have a big problem with people just assuming that they're getting a tip because they do some form of service? You wouldn't think to tip the cashier at the store where you bought the furniture. Like I said, I generally do tip people who deliver large items or movers and stuff, especially if they are friendly and very helpful, but seriously when I've worked in stores that offered delivery service, those people made significantly, significantly more $$$$$$$$$$$$ than the other people who worked in the store. So, in closing, teeny please do not feel bad.

anyway i enjoy tipping - you give a guy a couple bucks then you both feel good abt the situation.

restaurants = 20%

counter service = usually a dollar if the counter person has to do any actual work

GOOD service = 20%

I always try to break 15% percent and round up unless the service is awful.

If the bill is tiny, you gotta do 20% because who wants a sub $2 tip?

sonic and coffeeshops always give me anxiety though. never sure if I should and how much.

goodbye!

Normally I tip 10-15% for a meal.

Moving house guys usually = my mates + a hired van and therefore tip = crate or two of beer once we're all done.

I don't tip delivery people apart from the paper boy.

Tipping barstaff is a rarity apart from in my Dad's local where there is good value in buying the barmaids a couple of drinks.

There's a definite UK/US cultural divide on tipping but I think it's becoming more common in the UK. We now have people sitting on toilets in some city pubs giving out hand towels and cheap aftershave and staring meaningfully at their saucers of loose change.

I just remembered I tip food delivery people too.

God, I should only tip 10%

We now have people sitting on toilets in some city pubs giving out hand towels and cheap aftershave and staring meaningfully at their saucers of loose change.

Least favorite part of seeing shows at "upscale" venues here... fucking cocoa butter smell in the lav.

Labor and employment lawyers are awesome tippers!
Social justice types = good tippers
Current/former servers = good tippers unless they receive bad service in which case they are ruthless.

Also, in flagrant violation of laws posted right there in the back of the cab, every cab driver in Chicago constantly talks on a cell phone while driving. But that's clearly another thread.

place on christie and grand totally not fancy but has a bathroom attendant wtf

But I am (almost) a labor and employment lawyer, a social justice type, AND a former server/low wage worker so I'm pretty much a giant bleeding heart when it comes to tipping. Except I won't counter tip if all the person did was ring up my order and hand me change. I think counter tipping is becoming a way for employers to weasel out of paying their employees more money (but you make tips!!!) and I disapprove of this trend toward the private ordering of wages.

Pardon me, but WHAT THE CHRISTING FUCK ARE YOU ON ABOUT? I'm Canadian, as is Thermo Thinwall.

Ailsa, feel the love. It was more of a "huh?" than anything else.

I know!!!

(hugglez all round)

xpost

Which moving company was it? We used Starving Artists movers and they were smelly and clumsy but honest and hard working.

question: are you always supposed to tip $1 per drink? like for a $2-3 beer? or is that for fancy drinks? or are beers $1 and fancy drinks more? (just curious. i do it because it's an easy rule to go by. also, note that i do not live in ny.)

Trust me, we filed complaints with everyone we could find. Talked to my cousin thats a lawyer, and he said that the company pretty much covered their asses enough that fighting it wouldn't result in much. We'd have to go after the crew themselves, but with the high turnover we'd never find them again. Sucked big time. It was E-Z Movers, you see their big pink trucks all over the place.

When it comes to drink tipping, I usually tip two or three for the first beer and then usually a buck every other one if its the same bartender.

Just kidding. I think the rise in prescription medicine for "anxiety/depression" is directly related to tipping. It's impossible to leave the house without agonising over what, and where, and when, to tip.
The tip cup phenomena is just...awful.
"Tipping is not a city in China!"
um, well, since we're in Massachusetts I guess I don't have to care.
I tip everyone, all of the time. especially the gas station attendents who pump the gas. But I also make them check the oil.
i am a little bit obnoxious when it comes to restaurant tipping. Having been a server, I tip 20% all the time. You have to really piss me off -basically pour hot coffee on my lap - to get a 15% tip.
I also live in a small town - so tipping is obligatory, since I will see these people again. Sometimes, at a party. or at a bar. Also, i'm getting to the age where my friends kids are serving the coffee and donuts.
Thankfully, not serving the drinks!
I figure, since I'm going to tip, why not get the most bang for my buck? Which means..."you, server, need to have a random conversation with me because I am paying you to do so." It's cheaper than a shrink!
Plus, they have to be nice to you.
Unlike shrinks.
But sometimes I don't even want to leave the house because I am calculating all of the tips that might happen.

Normally I tip 10-15% for a meal.

this is terrible. 10% is considered a BAD tip. it's considered pretty much the minimum for poor service. 15% is like a "C" tip. i hope you realize that wait staff curse you out behind your back. if you are a regular of any restaurants, whenever the wait staff sees you come in, they argue over trying to get someone else to serve you. if the restaurant gets remotely busy, a server will know to ignore you and give better service to their other customers.

you should know this.

anyways, let that be a lesson to you Americans. too many people seriously do think 10% is an acceptable tip.

if your meal is less than $10, or really cheap, TIP MORE THAN 20%. 20% IS NOT AN ACCEPTABLE TIP ANYMORE. if you leave your server $1.50, they don't give a fuck what percent that is. it's still a dollar fifty. they still have to serve you a hundred more times just to pay their electricity bill that month. most servers do not get paid by their restaurants, the money only goes towards taxes, so YOU are the SOLE person paying their monthly bills. a dollar fifty isn't going to cut it. get ready to get poor service if you become known for this.

(xx post)

But yeah, back on topic, hm very much OTM.

I found when I was waiting tables in college, that college kids were generally GREAT tippers because they knew what it was like to work a shit job for shit pay. Also, if you are even a semi-cute guy, you can make tons from the groups of high school girls that go out to eat. High school boys though? You might as well be working for free.

jbr, yeah, it's definitely true that groups of "ladies" are bad news. of course not always, but frequently enough so that servers develop aversions.

but also, don't be too quick to assume the worst about your server. too many people think their servers are nefarious evildoers who at the first sign of WHATEVER will choose to ignore you the entire evening. in my years of serving, i've seen that happen only a couple times. almost every time something like that happens, there's something else behind the scenes. who knows what's going in the kitchen? the manager giving the server some kind of shit? another table being ridiculously needy and hogging attention? something wrong with the computer system?

the other day i had a table of about twenty people who all wanted separate checks. UGH. do they realize it takes like 5 minutes to even print that many checks? then, as i was ringing them all up (BIG SURPRISE -- this was a Church group) one woman's credit card was declined. when i tried to return it to her and delicately let her know that her ass is broke, she was all, "OH, I THOUGHT THAT ONE WOULD DECLINE! I JUST WANTED TO TEST IT AND MAKE SURE!" thanks you fucking bitch, it's not like i have other customers waiting on stuff. please, let me ring up your friends twenty separate credit cards plus a few extras just to test and make sure they are still maxed out. thanks! the rest of my customers appreciate it!

you don't even need to be semi-cute. giggling high school girls were always the best tippers when i lived on tips.

we don't like it when you sit at the table for a long time after your meal is over. it costs us money since we have to wait for you to leave instead of serving the next party. it would be appreciated if you considered raising your tip slightly to compensate for the extra hour.

we do understand this, however, it is after all your night out. however, if you are going to do this, when the meal is over -- PAY YOUR BILL. this is the single CRUELEST thing you can do to a server. often, if you pay your bill, your server can end their shift and leave to enjoy the rest of the night. if you refuse to pay your bill and simply sit there for hours, you are forcing your server to sit around and wait for you. your server is not paid by the hour. he is standing around and smiling like an idiot for hours solely because you are too self-centered to realize that simply paying your bill will let him go home.

(a) Maybe it's just New York pricing, but you can rest assured that I've never gotten anything remotely approaching good service at any place where a meal cost less than $10.

(b) And maybe this is just an NYC thing, too -- I don't recall it happening so much before I moved here -- but sometimes customers don't like sitting at their tables for a long time after the meal is over, either. And yet I wind up doing it at 80% of meals, because nobody will ever bring the damn check. It's worst when you're reading a book: it's like you become invisible. You have no idea how many times I've decided I'm just going to try to leave without paying, since the worst that will happen is that they'll (gasp) make me pay, which was all I wanted in the first place -- I've only tried this once, and they didn't even notice, and so once I was out on the sidewalk I had to walk guiltily right back in and wait some more.

with placenta

regarding point b -- I've heard people complain about that before, but honestly it's never been a problem with me. I've never once ate at a restaurant and not had my check given to me in a reasonable time. I don't think I've ever done that to a customer either.

xpost
alison murchie, working on it. :(
probation keeping me from moving to a different area isn't making this easy. despite what it may sound like though, i do love waiting tables. i plan on doing this on the side well into my career.

(This is at a restaurant I stupidly keep going back to, because it's convenient, even though they've served me rancid meat, mashed potatoes with a plastic cigarette-pack wrapper in them, salad with a ROCK in it, and a "seafood gratin" that was pretty much the worst dish ever concocted by people who weren't starving to death. And yet ILX's own Ed contends they have one of the best burgers in Manhattan.)

??

I tip a dollar per drink, and roughly 20% in restaurants (rounding up for good service and down for bad service). This seems fairly normal -- were you expecting me to go on some controversial tirade?

I am sad to say this is not true among my friends. Most of them have not actually worked shit jobs for shit pay, though.

(For full disclosure, sometimes I'm guilty of pretty bad tipping due to shortness of money, even though I order the cheapest thing on the menu then. I try to keep a karmic balance at the 2 restaurants and 1 bar nearby by tipping extra at other times. Maybe I should stay home and eat pasta those days...but my friends, I like them...don't get mad at me! I'm sorry! I'm sorry!)

xpost xpost xpost.

i rarely get angry at restaurants since i'm a lot more sympathetic and aware of all the things that can go wrong despite a server's best intentions. the only time in recent memory i remember being really angry was going to a cheap vietnamese pho place by myself with a book, sitting down, and being utterly ignored for about 10 minutes while other people, all vietnamese, who came in after me were promptly waited on. finally i asked someone if i was going to be served, so they chose to serve me. the food was delivered and that was the end of it. i was never checked back on, drink never filled, nothing. it was the only time i considered walking out without paying. i did completely stiff the server though, i gave him a $0.0 tip. it pretty much takes something like that for me to give someone below 15%. 15% really is not a good tip. 10% is an insult. anything below 10% is a monetary way of saying "i will never come back here again."

I remember one five-hour lunch I endured in sultry Savannah where the waitress seemed to feel that any sort of attention at all to our table would be rude. She strolled over after we'd first been sitting for 45 minutes to ask, "So ... y'all want a menu?"

all the other pho joints in this city do those. maybe they are just smart enough to cater to my white restaurant expectations.

check out this conversation i had with a girl at work AKA SANDBOX STUPID COWORKERS THREAD

(xpost)

haha JUST COMING HERE TO POST THAT

anybody you hear who compliments service ("you are a very good server. thank you so much.") IS NOT GOING TO TIP WORTH SHIT. 15% at absolute most.

(I guess I have a lot of wacky restaurant stories. My grandchildren will love me for them.)

this happened to me late at night in a French restaurant in London = ?

Delivery definitely but to-go orders picked up in house might be the worst from what I hear. People assume you don't have to tip because you're not being waited on or delivered to but there is usually a server assigned to takeout who has to package everything up with napkins and utensils and organize the whole thing while still dealing with their other tables. And at the end of the night the servers have to tip the kitchen staff out of their tips. So huge takeout orders with no tips means tons of wasted time and money for the unlucky server who has to deal with it.

There must have been a conversation I don't fully remember.

Ha, okay, I'm still totally vexed by this question -- it's like the "does this make me look fat" of servers. "Do you need anything" doesn't confuse me, because I know if I need anything. "How are your meals" is just ... I'm not supposed to be, like, honest, right? But then why the hell am I going to a restaurant and paying them money and then being forced to pretend -- "oh, they're fine, thanks!" -- that I like a crappy dish? I get really awkward about this, and I wish there were some way I could express that (a) the food sucks, (b) I accept that the food sucks and do not want to send it back, and (c) I'm not blaming the server -- all without drawing the server into my own awkwardness. (Cause if you tell them it sucks but don't ask for any kind of solution, they get all frozen and freaked out, not knowing what to do.)

Maybe from now on I'll complain, and then if they ask what I want them to do about it, I'll start crying and say "I'm not asking you to fix it, I just want you to listen to me."

at the store i once worked at if you told the cashier what you were looking for they'd page someone in that department and have one brought to you, provided we had it. if we didn't have it they'd tell you when it was coming in next or if it was an item we'd stopped carrying.

Civil servants were the worst. They don't make much money, they're assholes and they have an enormous sense of entitlement. This goes for civil servants in all areas of life, actually.

European tourists were actually even worse, but rare enough to not be bothersome. English tourists usually not so bad compared to Germans or the French. Still confused about tipping as a concept, less prone to running your hard.

I had to deal with this Friday night at a new place here. It's going for semi-upscale in a town that doesn't do upscale at all, and there were a million problems. The waitstaff were all nervous high-schoolers, so I didn't feel comfortable really letting our server know all the things that were wrong, for fear she'd run out into traffic. I'm thinking about writing a short critique aimed at the chef and management, the real culprits, and sticking it under the door sometime when they're closed.

The last straw was the fact that my salmon was served with no starch and no veg, just a salmon fillet, a couple of shreds of onion and bell pepper, and a bit of sauce.

also: A significant portion of the people I worked with in bars and restaurants would swear on a Bible that black customers were the worst tippers and had no qualms saying this to anyone and everyone.

xpost -- Milo, I have actually had a black person take my tip and then tell me she wasn't surprised, since black people never tip well.

Are you one of those people who will punish the server because the kitchen screwed up or the food was bad? Then send it back and tip well.
And even if you don't blame the server, you're a decent person and getting something new out isn't that much of a hassle for the server.

(unless the problem is a mistake you made in ordering, then sit quietly and eat)

I liked to go with a vague "How's everyone doing" question rather than specifics. Then you can tell me if the food sucks or you want something new to drink or whatever.

also: A significant portion of the people I worked with in bars and restaurants would swear on a Bible that black customers were the worst tippers and had no qualms saying this to anyone and everyone.

When I lived in a more "diverse" neighborhood, I rarely saw any of the blacks tip at Dunkin Donuts.

* of course, who knows about RICH BLACKS!?@!@
** in retrospect, I shouldn't have tipped either -- fuckers were slow and fucked up all the time!

This is another reason I want to see $1 and $2 U.S. coins hit the mainstream, so I can put what I feel is right into the jar and not set off anybody's cheapskate radar.

ok, anyone who works that kind of job want to fess up to putting those bills in there to make people feel bad?

If you get anything more complex than a coffee and a bagel. Maybe tip if the bagel is toasted. Anything that requires anything more than shoveling stuff into a bag and pouring = TIP

xpost

Poor bastards nothing. The last time I had movers in they were four hours late turning up, they slagged off the programme I was watching on the telly and then slagged me off when I got mad at them for being four hours late. They broke my picture frame and they tried to overcharge me for storage despite us having already agreed a rate. They can fuck off.

xp

-- jw (jo...), December 18th, 2006.

yes, I did that a lot. when i worked at a coffee shop for 5 years, that is.

I always tip coffee people if they're making anything more than a coffee and an untoasted bagel. My rule of thumb is to round up to the nearest dollar (if the order costs less than $x.50, and throw in a quarter or two if it costs more than $x.50) If there's any prep-work involved, or a call-ahead order I make sure there's at least a dollar in the pot, and if I'm ordering for more than 5 people I usually tip $2-3. What's unfortunate about all of this is that by-and-large the barristas snag the gratuities, while the kitchen help is jacked in spite of the fact that they're more responsible for the product.

trannies are terrible tippers
roman catholics (even church-ladies) are fairly decent tippers.
social workers, teachers, and clergy-members are good tippers.
fathers with their school-aged kids on the weekends are the best customers.
mothers on weekday nights with their kids are a mixed bag, inclined toward terrible customers.
construction workers, laborers, etc., are among the more easy-going clients.

http://www.waiterrant.net/wordpress2/

Do you tip at Maccas? What happens if you ask for it without pickles?

Couldn't get too mad at those people, though. The stories were tips enough.

x-p: I currently have the ignore function turned on for Rock Hardy. I am also about to exchange my perfectly good American dollar bills for Australian coins. Goodbye, Useful Wallet, at least for now...

haXor?

This is interesting. I live in Oregon, where we have the highest mandatory minimum wage in the country. It also applies to servers. The restaurant lobby complains, but the working-class folks I know make more money as a result.

I recently started a second job in preparation for a trip abroad next year. I'm baking (breads/pastries/etc) for the first time in a while. The restaurant divides all tips equally between everybody who worked that day - total tips divided by total hours. On a good day I can make an extra $5/hour.

Ok I'm intrigued now as nothing surfaces from the mists of memory as the best Burger in Manhattan, I can't even remember eating a burger at all last time I was in Manhattan.
However I am prepared to admit that it could have been something I might have said, what is this place?

My sis is a waitron so I tip between 20 and 25 per cent, at least in Minneapolis (our pho places are table-served and Mexican order-at-counter/pick-up/eat on-site rate $2 for each 10 spent). If you do 15 per cent on the nail that's a bit of a passive chuckyufarley. On Monday our bartender made Chris K's drink with the wrong vodka and then when she was a ways into it, hadn't noticed, he came back with the korrekt drink and said 'see if you like this one better' and was sorta willing us to hang onto both although CK and I misread those signals. He was tipped HANDSOMELY eg. full food rate. I'm sure we will get the red carpet if we go back.

When a barista is involved my tip is anything between 50¢ and $1 - unless I order a sandwich and there is table service.

This may have to do with me feeling like the dollar is Monopoly money right now, though, as pounds are hella advantageous in current exchange rates.

My g/f was a waitress over the summer and she said it generally held true for her. (Lesbians didn't tip well either.)

To clarify, I meant EVERYONE was a shitty tipper (regardless of skin color), not EVERY ONE was a shitty tipper (meaning all black people). The place I worked was one of the "meals for less than $10" places discussed above!

The most awkward race-related moment in my career happened at the aforementioned southern redneck bar and grille when I brought out sandwiches to a big table of lunchers and one woman's plate was lacking a pickle. She asked why she (the only black woman) was the only one at this table without a pickle on her plate? I was mortified for two reasons: 1) The kitchen staff puts pickles on the plate so I had nothing to do with it but even if I had, I in no way wanted her to think that I was making some shitty little passive aggressive racist gesture; and 2) the owners and most of the staff at this place WERE huge racists (the owner once explained to me that most boxers were black because black people were better able to take blows to the head and when I challenged his source for that idiotic idea he shouted, "Doctors! You're not some civil rights activist, are you?" He also called the Filipino cook "Hop Sing." Horrible. Also one other (white) waitress generally dated black men and was thus regularly called "n*gger lover" I could go on and on but I quit) and for all I knew, the cook DID leave the pickle off her plate in some shitty little passive aggressive racist gesture.

Anyway, I brought her about ten pickle spears and apologized my head off and I just hope that it didn't ruin her day, because shit like that really can. My tip was shit but that's because they were all rednecks and they used a fucking coupon and the concept of calculating the tip before the discount was like fucking alien to everybody who ate there.

this is obviously not always the case, as aimchurchie says. at least once a week i'll be surprised by a large tip from black people.

i believe black people are bad tippers because (at least in this area) they are disproportionally poorer than the white minority. statistically, the average black table i serve is more likely to make $8.00 an hr than the average white table. if a black table isn't lower class, they are just as unpredictable as a white table and all the other regular modifiers apply. button up shirt and tie "business man" who is black = good. i-just-got-out-of-my-baptist-church middle class black man = bad. etc. lower class white people are just as likely to be piss poor tippers as lower class blacks people. i am just as unhappy to have a table of white rednecks with dirt under their fingers as i am to serve some black people still wearing their food lion uniforms. there's no difference.

i guess that pretty much sums up my theory on it. in summary, black people deserve their reputation for being poor tippers, but there's a reason for it and anybody who thinks it's directly related to their race is an idiot.

And then it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

The worst for me were drunk yuppie-rednecks (nee Republicans) on the lake - fifteen-plus on the patio, separate checks, ordering drinks for each other, moving around, management wouldn't let me make them pay by the drink.

snapping your fingers to get my attention = i am not a dog. no tip.
"reminding" me to refill your drink when it is still 3/4s full = thank you for making it clear you consider me an absolute idiot. no tip.
answering "how are you doing?" with "i want a jack and coke" = is that how you speak to your mother too? no tip.
refusing to stop talking and give me a moment to speak when i approach you = if you don't even recognize my existence, your wallet won't either.
etc, etc.

but to balance all this negativity out... yesterday i served 3 very elderly people. the man seemed somewhat rude, although the 2 women were very sweet. they were very needy. being very needy is almost always a sign of a poor tipper. they actually tipped me very well. after they left, a server told me about what they did for amanda, a girl who worked in our restaurant a year ago before i started. amanda told the 3 people (who are obviously regulars) that she is trying to go back to college. they tipped her $1,000. sometimes the world is a beautiful place.

I did have an experience with cross dressers that threw me for a loop. The ladies came in, en masse, from a meeting for men who are choosing to dress as women - big, burly, married cross dressers.
I was polite and acceptant of their choice. To be dressed as women and their desire to be seen as women. I was running the place, and i let them use the women's room, the only caveat being if someone complained.
HOWEVER - after three weeks of accomodating them and being nice, i sat down at the table with them and said:
"You can carry a purse, and wear make up and wear a dress. And i respect that. but what part of cross dressing makes you think that separate checks and a 10% tip is gender specific? I'm tacking a gratuity on if you don't step up to the plate. Also, no more separate checks. Look to the person next to you - you will now be sharing a check. ok, ladies?"
Cross dresser dominatrix!
They loved it! But, y'know, I defended their right ( or, rather, the right they don't have), to use the ladies room - and, believe me, I had to stand up to some very angry men about it.
"Get those freaks outta here!"
My reply? "You're the freak who's leaving if you keep up with that talk. Look, I have your beer in my hand! Want it back? Behave."
I made lots of money from both sides of the gender debate.

lesbians are the best! i love them! no (well, rarely) any kids to spend their money on. they spend their money on recreation. i love lesbians.

No one has yet presented their anecdote as a truism.

Umm, judging by the rest of your post, we should be abandoning the "black people are poor tippers" notion in favor of "poor people are poor tippers" (with a related "black people are more likely to be poor").

This thread makes me wonder if servers are more likely to give the full recommended donation at museums and such.

That said, I still hate tipping for an order from any place that already charges a $5 delivery fee.

I think it's desperately unfair that people are expected to tip because the employer won't pay a proper wage but not half as unfair as making workers reliant on the goodwill of others (who don't know them or have any context to understand where they're coming from mood-wise that day) above the cost of the product (or service). As a European, tipping is definitely seen as rewarding the individual on top of their basic salary, my understanding above is that in the US and Canada people are tipped because they are not paid properly. This is awful and open to all manner of abuse as has been shown in this thread and others.

So what do I tip? Restaurants at the very minimum 10%, even if service awful, going up to (or beyond) 20% should there be a bunch of us or if the service was fun/pleasant/just as needed. At bars, I'll tip if on holiday and I know that's what's done. I don't think I've tipped all that much in bars here, it's just not the done thing but people who bring me drinks or food at my table I tip well out of guilt at my own laziness for not going to the bar! For deliveries I round up to the nearest 5 at the bare minimum and like jbr I take into account how far they have had to travel. Plumbers or electricians I don't tip, there is no need. If the job is done well though and the disruption is minor then I'll throw in extra. Taxis I tip but have recently stopped giving as much, I don't feel that most of the time anything extra is deserved with the high cost of waving one down, the rudeness that I seem to get 7/10 and the really high rates.

I'm a great believer in money over gifts. We saw it where I worked over the past while: what use is a gift voucher for lots of dosh when I've got xmas/credit card/mortgage/etc to pay off? We are ungrateful brutes for sure but to have it for something more practical would be nice!

I come off as awfully cheap I'm sure and apologise for long post. Reading through the thread I was thinking that I was lucky to work in bars in Europe, the tips weren't great but at least I had enough to live on!

PS. My nightmare involving tipping is maths. Multiples of 10% only I'm afraid, everything else is too complicated!

-- the pony-poop paradox (n!t$u...), December 21st, 2006.

i don't go to museums. i almost always give money to homeless people though. does that count?

-- lexpretend (lexusjee...), December 21st, 2006.

thanks. i needed one more reason to consider you an idiot.

here's a hint. first calculate 10% of the bill. you can round doing this. consider $32.57 to just be $30. 10% would be $3. then, take half of that, which in this case would be $1.50. add that to the original 10% = $4.50.

Sometimes I do, sometimes I don't. If you guys say I'm crazy, I'll stop.

My roommate just asked me to call her a cab, I asked where she was going, etc. She said that she expected the cab to cost $14, I told her I'd drive her for $8.

Do I get tipped?

Last night ate out and the bill was 30 and change. . I tipped 6.50 and then felt bad b/c that seemed kind of chintzy right here at the holidays. I should've just gave her ten. :(

...on the other hand i'm not on probation

Shit, is there a tip db

unfortunately, then finals hit and we all moved out and completely forgot about the paper tip! aaah! we will have to do it when we get back in january. what's appropriate?

i get frustrated by a lot of waitstaff tho b/c i feel like i'm low-key and so they're not super attentive or whatever -- like just notice when i've got my arm sort of gently waving and take my order, and then notice it again when i want my check and otherwise whatever dude. even tho i always tip well, i feel like lots of places don't have this very basic concept down and so you get waitstaff totally preoccupied with this or that more demanding table or issue instead of first just trying to keep orders and bills straight.

valet parking came with my hotel room package (in chicago)...how much do i tip the dude that brings me my car tomorrow morning? and do i give it to him or the front desk (logic is that someone else parked it and they should share, or something?

If it was me, I would. I always tip more when I expect to use a service again, and would like people to think kindly of me. I realise this is a capitalist crime: using my money to get superior service, but I don't care. I tip my hairdresser well because she cuts only my hair when she is dealing with me, she doesn't flit off to talk to other clients, she doesn't stand around chatting to other hairdressers, and she gets a great cut done quickly. That earns you a big tip in my book.

One of the nice things about working in a charity shop was that people kind of gave you tips, by putting money in the collection tin on the counter. So even though the charity got the money, we all got to feel like it was our good service that was getting that little bit extra for them.

Did I miss something? Have you moved back? Or do you mean now that you live in the UK?

I did recently get completely gamed by a pizza deliveryman who seemed to refuse to understand that I wanted change from him (he did a very amusing "I no longer understand English" thing at which I point I just shrugged and let him keep it haha.)

If, tho, I'm tipping a beautician who has her hands busy with other customer (pedicure, etc) if I'm acquainted w/ someone from previous visits I put bill into apron pocket directly.

PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF CHRIST DO NOT DO THIS. It pissed me off every time someone did it - this is not The Sands circa 1962, you are not Dean Martin. Doubly bad when it's a lousy tip.

no, it's a salon, present-day where that's the usual way you tip someone

or you can put the tip in the little envelope and give it to the person behind the desk. i don't see why you wouldn't trust them - how many times are they going to get away with 'no, s/he didn't leave a tip' when the stylist person comes asking?

But the only time I got cuts in a gen-u-ine salon I was dating a stylist and the tip was dinner.

Tonight went to happy hour with friend and we tipped as if full price on happy hour drinks and snacks. Server got $8 on $28 check.

Clearly you don't have much experience waiting on the French, Dutch, German or Brits. Oh and Canadians! They are the ones that'll sneak up on you: no strong accent--except the French-Canadians--and then at the end of the meal--BLAM! You get a credit card with the dreaded maple leaf.

I will always give each group of people consistent service because while I might suspect that a German or Black person might tip me poorly, I would only be guaranteeing that by favoring others who fit the good-tipping demographic.

Not true at all! I delivered pizza for one of the big US chains when I was in college, and found that rather than a percentage, people tend to tip a specific dollar amount. Say the order was $20, you'd most likely get $2 from it. A lot of people don't tip at all, specifically Born-Again Christians (though I now have a good collection of Chick tracts), poor whites, poor blacks, realtors, and office managers (when delivering to offices). It's different being alone with someone on their turf—they can be as rude as they'd like and there's no societal pressure on them to make themselves look good. You guys in restaurants had it easy. Five dollar tips were considered good. We would also have to pay for our own gas and car maintenance. For each delivery we took, we got $.50 for gas, which in many cases wouldn't cover the distance there and back. To make up for this , we'd try to take more than one delivery at a time, if they're both going in the same direction and ordered at the same time. Oh, and if the cook fucks up, I have to make a second delivery FOR FREE (though if you're charming, you can turn a second-trip into a $5 tip). On a typical Saturday night, I'd make ~$75 for about 30 deliveries, putting about 105 miles on my car (but it's stop-and-go driving, so I was getting the low end of my Camry's fuel economy) so minus $12 for gas. And people ordered more and tipped less in bad weather. Fight nights and Bowl games were good, though.

While my single best tip ($50 for a $12 order) came from an older black lady who lived in a rough apartment complex), the best tippers tended to be single working mothers, liberals, fat people, and former servers/drivers. Drunk/stoned people were a mixed bag. I quickly learned the bartender trick: never carry coins or any bill larger than a one (if the bill is $15, and they hand you a twenty, you're more likely to see something back if you don't give them a $5).

Also, and I've mentioned this on a previous Mickey-complaining-about-tips thread, as a delivery driver I have had my car run off the road and into a guardrail, I have been mugged at gunpoint ($65 worth of tips gone), bitten by dogs, and threatened by more people who meant it than you could imagine.

urgent tipping question: some guys are coming in an hour to clean and fix the gutters on our roof. $260 for the job. should we tip and if so how much??

― nice catch cuauhtemoc blanco niño (dayo), Tuesday, December 27, 2011 7:51 AM (32 seconds ago) Bookmark

count the leaves at the end give them a dollar for every gold leaf and take one away for every silver leaf and if the difference is more than fifty send them hang-gliding

a++

aye, it's good hang-gliding weather this time of year, it's true

Good joke, that

tipper rarely

Bring nationalism into it, that'll surely help

xp you went a long way for that one