the sandbox guide to tipping demographics

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

I know!!!

(hugglez all round)

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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.

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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."

Bring nationalism into it, that'll surely help

xp you went a long way for that one