the sandbox guide to tipping demographics

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!