the sandbox guide to tipping demographics

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!