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How do you feel about tipping in restaurants/bars?  I've gotten into many arguments about this but I don't feel tipping should ever be based on the amount of the bill.  It makes no sense to me to give a bigger percentage to someone at the Cheesecake Factory then someone at Denny's just because the bill is higher.  Basically the service is the same, service takes your order, helps you through the meal, the end.  As for bartenders, I don't think popping the top of a beer bottle is worth a dollar tip.  Perhaps if they take time to make a mixed drink I'd give them more. 

Now let me say what I think tipping should be based on...performance.  I think I shouldn't have to wait more than 5 minutes after sitting down before someone asks for my drink order.  As for food delivery, I don't count that against the wait staff seeing the kitchen is often to blame.  However let me say, I hate having to look for the person taking care of my table.  If someone is wrong or taking longer let me know for God's sakes.  As for getting the bill and paying for it, I don't mind if they give me the check quicker than average.  At least I know its there and I can have it ready for them when they come back to take the plates away.   

I know I may sound like a prick about some of this and I know its not an easy job.  But I have to say when I go out to eat, I'm expecting great service for my money.  It takes a lot for me to stiff a waitress/waiter but I have.  One time at a place, they made a completely wrong pizza and asked if I wouldn't mind eating it because they were busy.  WTF!!!  Mix that with an inept waitress who showed up twice for the whole time it equaled no tip. 

Enough of my BS, how do you feel?

I never, ever tip anybody for anything....ever!  :wink:

If I pay for a service, whoever it is, provides it. You get what you want, they get their money, everybody should be happy with that. Why on earth should you fork out more to someone just doing their job, what they're supposed to do, that they get paid for already? I expect people to do their jobs well anyway and provide good service, that's what being professional is. What I will do though, is allow stores and such like to keep change if it's only a couple of pence.

I know some people will find that to come across as tight or "stingy", but that's just my view on this.

Agreed. :thumbup:

Wanna know how I feel about tipping?
Watch the video below.  I totally agree with Mr. Pink.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zBFUDbOldMs
(NOT SAFE FOR WORK!!)

Yes, I'm a cheap bastard!  :tongueout:

Tips are based on service. You give me good service, and you'll want to take me home to bang your mother based on my tip. You give me the minimum, you'll be lucky to buy gum with the tip. Give me bad service, I'll stiff you in two seconds and you damn well better hope I don't do my damnedest to get your fired or written up.

I have a bartender at this restaurant I go to most Saturday nights. She always gets a five dollar tip as long as my bill is at least $10.  She talks to me, makes beer suggestions, makes sure my food isn't just good but GREAT and chases away anyone who bothers me. I'd take a bullet for her in a heartbeat. That is great service.

There are waitresses in the same restaurant who can't be bothered to refill my soda even though I'm there for 40 minutes. If I feel good that day, they might get a dollar, no matter how big my bill is.

A tip should reflect the service you get. Mr. Pink is pretty much right.

Well, both my daughters have worked as waitresses and been dependent on those tips to pay the rent, so I'm a lot more sympathetic than I used to be. Plus, often the difference between 15% and 20% is less than a buck, so I'll go with the 20% more often than not. I agree with you all about bad service, but I haven't gotten a lot of that.

In places where I know and am friendly with the owners, I have the extra sympathy for the small business owner and I'll often be even more generous (but jeez, when you're talking about an $8 breakfast bill, it's not a whole lot of pain to go for $2.00 instead of $1.50).

Where I draw the line is with the tip cups at takeout counters in donut shops and Starbucks. I don't throw anything in those any more than I'd be likely to tip the cashier when I buy a pair of socks (not that we've gotten there yet in retail stores, but I won't be surprised if we ever do...)

That irks me as well.

I forgot to say in my initial posts when it comes to good service, I'm extremely generous as well.   Hell, I've even gone the extra mile to compliment on corporate numbers about awesome service (most recently with Red Robin).  Alas, some people have severely dropped the ball when it comes to service and I've called up corporate numbers to complain.  One time we were at a place where a waiter dropped a tray of drinks on my sister in law.  They at no time offered any complimentary items or offered an apology.  $100.00 in gift certificates later, they said sorry. 

I'll tip for a sit-down meal. I don't see any point in tipping for fast food, drinks, take-out, pizza or buffet. Somebody has to be doing more than handing me a bag or filling my water glass. Real table waiting, actually being responsible for my table the whole time I'm there, is what I consider worthy of a tip.

If the server is friendly and helpful, the service is reasonably prompt, my glass gets refilled before I have to ask, and nothing is wrong, forgotten or otherwise messed up, I'll leave a reasonably generous tip. Lacklustre service doesn't warrant a tip, and if service outright sucks (rarely happens), leaving a miniscule tip actually carries more sting than none at all.

Funny, back in my late teens/early 20s, I never tipped. I was basically Mr. Pink in that regard. The one exception I made was for waitresses who were kind of hot. Some of my friends had a similar policy. On one occasion, when we were in kind of a celebratory mood, we started one-upping each other, tossing small bills and change on the table at the end of the meal, until the lucky waitress ended up with a tip worth almost as much as the meal. We all walked out laughing about it, and the waitress got a nice surprise, although she had no clue it was because of her shapely tush and flirtatious demeanor.

These days, I try to leave a generous tip for anybody who seems to care whether I thoroughly enjoy my meal.

Waitresses or servers (as they like to be called now) at  sit down restaurants get paid something like half the minimum wage and have to use tips to make up the difference.  My wife has been a waitress before and is quite aware what these people have to do to make a decent wage.

Our standard is 20% for good service and maybe a little more if the place is busy and the person serving us still manages to do a good job. 

You ladies should do drive-ups more often.

As Geeze said, waitresses depend on those tips to make their wages.

I think it is cheapass for the restaurant industry, and others, to get away with that as they are allowed to pay someone under minimum wage as their wages are being made up by the tips they receive; as well, since their tips comprise most of their wages, they have to report those tips as income.

You are right, it is pretty cheap to expect someone to wait on you and not even be paid minimum wage.

I do also tip hair stylists. With the glut of franchised clip shops, they don't get paid very well up front. If they are renting a booth at a stylist shop, then they have to pay that rent out of whatever they make for that day.

Though it's not about trying to make someone's wages better. If someone provides a service that was well done, and even makes it enjoyable by their presence, not only is it a way of showing appreciation, it is also a way of paying it forward to keep good service in the future.

Of course, if you are a cheap bastard and never tip anybody, if you someday discover spit in your food, well...you probably earned that. :tongueout:

Reminds me of a long time ago when an entire tray of greasy dirty dishes, in slow motion, slid into my lap off of a server's tray - while she was "removing" them...  :bouncegiggle:  Makes for a good laugh, even then, but no one apologized for that sh!t.   :hatred:  I go to restaurants a lot (even tonight - aside from lousy service, a $200+ check for 5 of us, and there was a beer river - but that is another story...) and have had wrong drinks, wrong dinners, neglectful servers, and tip accordingly.  Great service yields a great tip. 

Are you both Scottish?   :twirl:  :drink:  :bouncegiggle:

In America, lads, servers are paid well under the minimum wage, and they all depend on tips.  It's just the way it is, though I can understand, particularly for a young person, how it would seem unreasonable to be expected to tip.  So, I tip well, especially for good service, however, bad service (though I still tip) gets a significantly reduced gratuity. 

When it comes to tipping, I base it on 3 factors, type of restaurant, level of service, and how big of an a$$hole I have acted like. If the place is one of these hellholes, and the wait staff member I have to deal with looks to be someone struggling to make ends meet, I tend to be a little more generous than an upscale place that likes to try to add a 20% charge on my CC if I pay with it.
If service is really bad, I tend to leave $1 or less. Way I see it, if half your wages are dependant on tips then you are going to make an effort to at least see that your customers have what they need. This doesn't mean I want them to hover over me cause that drives me just as nuts as if they had to be found with a search party and tracking dogs.
Now this doesn't happen often anymore but there are times I act like a complete a$$hole to a wait staff person. If that happens, I feel they deserve to be compensated for having to put up with me. I often leave a tip that is equal or more than my bill. My late brother, some friends, and I once left a waitress $500 in a tip at a Waffle House after having to put up with our drunken a$$es one morning. When she asked why, we told her she deserved it for putting up with our crap without tossing us out.

I agree. It seems like the whole custom of tipping has become perverted. Rather than being an incentive to give good service or an extra little gift for the front-line help, it's been factored in by the industry to pad their own bottom line, and exploited by government. I've heard that in some places, the restaurants autmatically add the tip to the bill. And a friend of mine was incensed when, on top of a pile of other added fees, the hall he booked for his wedding required a mandatory tip on top of the $10,000 rental and catering bill. Tipping should never have been formalized. It should be between the customer and the server.


Alas, 'tis a moot point for me, having mostly managed my own coiffure since the early 90s. I'd be happy to gripe about the insane price of razor blades. :teddyr:

Contrary to what I posted earlier, I do tip.  Usually when I go out to eat with friends or family.  Since I rarely go out to eat at restaurants where waiters and waitresses work, it doesn't come up too often.
When it does, we all throw in like that scene from Reservoir Dogs.
That doesn't mean that I have to like it, though.

I have several friends who have waited tables in the past and we've gotten into a couple of heated discussions about tipping.  The one thing they always say is, "Just wait until you have to wait tables and see how you like it when someone stiffs you!"
I usually come back and say that I never have and never will wait tables. 
Ain't gonna happen.

I wrote a thread on tipping here on this board almost 5 years ago in March of 2004.
Read it here:  http://www.badmovies.org/forum/index.php/topic,62545.0.html

In that old thread, I posted a link on tipping from Howstuffworks.com.  It still is very informative.
How Tipping Works (http://people.howstuffworks.com/tipping.htm)

Personally, I wish these business would pay their employees a good wage and not have them rely on tips.
Makes sense.

Mr. Pink's tipping speech in Resevoir Dogs sums up my attitude towards tipping perfectly.

So here's something I've always wondered about this: How come other countries can afford to pay their servers decent wages?

In the US, not only do they (restaurants) not pay a living wage so you'd be basically below the poverty level without the tips, but they are always in a hurry to get the customers finished with their meal and out the door so they can reuse the table.

We have people from the UK, I don't know what things are like there. But in Europe, Italy for example, tipping is rare, only a token amount of 5% or less if the service is really extraordinary. Servers are paid a decent wage. And you aren't hurried out of tables. You can sit there all night if you want, nobody would think of bothering you, asking if you want anything more, or giving you the check or any hint you should leave unless you ask for it. So how come Italian cafes can afford to behave like that and American ones can't?

That's the weird thing. I find the service at restaurants fairly speedy until it's time to pay. When I'm done eating, I want my bill right away, here's my card, run it through and I'll sign and be on my way. This would seem to be in line with the restaurant's goal of speedy turnover, but that's when things seem to slow down. I ask for the bill, I have to wait several minutes, then they bring it and disappear for a while, then I almost have to start trying to make eye contact with the waiter (which was not necessary before or during the meal), and then finally I get to pay. Lori and Ro have, in this time, both gone to the washroom, gotten their coats on and gone out to wait in the car.

I'm aware that some people want to look over the bill, divide it up, stare at it until the other guy picks it up, dig for change or whatever. But if it's just a couple and a kid having a simple dinner, would it hurt to wait just a moment while I reach into my pocket? Lately, I've taken to having my card out as soon as I'm ready for the bill, so I can wave it at the server.

I tip at restaurants, and my rare trips to bars and that's it.  My sister is a waitress off and on for the most part, and when she works weekends, she usually makes more than I do during a 2 week working period. 

If I paid to get my haircut (which I don't since my mother is a barber manager) I would tip.  I sometimes tip the local pizza places but that's not often, usually only if I feel generous, which is not often.

I've worked in the catering industry, I worked hard too, for a pathetic wage. I've seen what people do to good and bad customers, so I'll do whatever the hell I want. I don't care if you think I'm a "cheap bastard".  :tongueout:

I tip, usually pretty decently. One of the many flaws in Mr. Pink's argument is the idea waitresses get minimum wage. Often they do not. This is the way I look at it: They get paid less than MW because a standard tip is ~15%. Ok, so if they do a decent job, they get 15%. Keeping in mind that the cost of the meal is lowered by the establishment paying the waiting staff less than MW, it works out pretty even. If they want to do a poor job, they get poor pay, rather than having it already added to the menu prices. If they do a great job, they get a better tip. I also, keep in mind that if they have the time to do a GREAT job, they probably aren't making much do to slow business, and if it's not slow, they're really working their ass off.

The McDonalds analogy is very flawed, since a) they don't bring your food to you, b) they DO get >= minimum wage and c) you pay BEFORE you eat, and part of the tip is related to the quality of the food. I see 'Subway' has a tip line on their receipts, I don't tip there (unless the girl working the cash register has really big boobs  :teddyr:).

All in all, if there were no tipping, and the menu prices were raised enough to make up for the lost tips, service would SUCK, as there would be no reason to try and do good, yet you'd still pay just as much. Even with tips these days, waitress jobs don't pay so well that people are lining up for those jobs, so they'd have to pay at least close to as well. We can't really expect BETTER service when paying them LESS.

I tip because it makes me feel powerful.

Don't poke the Ymir.

In restaurants, I generally start around 18% and then adjust up or down based on certain factors (primarily service).  I used to leave quite a few 20% tips, but over the past few years I have found that most of my tips have been in the 15 - 18% range.

One factor I always consider is how much time I spend in the restaurant.  If I'm at a table for a long time, I figure the waiter or waitress could have seated another party at my table and received another tip instead of having me hang around.  For instance, on my wedding anniversary a few years ago, I told the waitress at the beginning of the meal that my wife and I were in no rush and would like to work our way slowly through the evening.  We ended up staying around 3 1/2 hours and had everything from cocktails to appetizers to Caesar salads to entrees to desert and coffee.  The waitress was excellent and never made us feel rushed.  The bill came to around $280 and I gave her $100 tip.  But this is a rare example associated with a special occasion.  Normally, I would not do this.

At bars, I usually run a tab and pay the tip at the end.  I usually give about 20% or maybe a little more if the bartender was extra attentive.  But there's usually more than just beer involved . . . probably several mixed drinks and maybe a special request or two.  If I pay every time they bring a drink, I usually either tip $1 or round off the tip to something close to $1 based on the price of the drink (so, if the drink is $3.25, I'll give $4.00 and let the server keep the 75 cent difference). 

Kinky :tongueout:

I don't go to restaurants often but I usually tip on how the service was and work from there.

Bars have become a problem here in NYC. I don't go to bars often like I to used but everytime I go that service seems horrible. Not opening the cans, rarely any buy backs and I'm talking about being in the place for 4-6 beers a shot and with a friend. I'm not talking about some fancy place or club I'm talking dive bars here. If you don't know the bartender your pretty much screwed. This happened to me in couple of different places so I rarely bother with bars anymore and just pick one place.

Even with the one bar I go to (my bartender switched shifts for awhile so I have to deal with...subpar service) I don't leave a tip if the person doesn't open the beer. Or I leave change. It happens damn often too. Its always me and a friend buying so its two beers. Forget about buy backs too. We actually cut out spending time there till "our" bartender is back and get some decent service.

I'm not a cheap tipper either. My regular bartender when shes working she gives up lots of buy backs and great service where we stay longer just because its just better experience.

I heard something about the tipping in NYC that sounds like it's really getting out of hand. I will sometimes feel like giving an extra $20 at the end of the year to my mailman or my trash collectors, but that's because of great service. NPR did a story about how it has become almost mandatory to draw out $1000 or more at Christmas time and give $100 tips to "service" people you barely know. Not only your doorman, but the aerobics instructor at the gym and somebody who came into feed your fish once (I exaggerate, but only a little).

Just how bad is the end of year tipping situation in New York?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5ODhIFawfs

...actually,I'm a very generous tipper. But I like this clip!

Well I never tipped a service person in my entire life. I live in the ghetto and tipping my super,mailman,doorman (which I don't have) or anything like that is non-existent. The service is horrible anyway and the mailmen are never the same so and again not that great. It my granps day yeah that was a standard but now I don't know. Most people who are middle class to poor I know don't tip like that either.

That article you read must have been about hipsters and rich Manhattan folk. So it not that out of hand.  :wink:

I'd say I'm a good tipper, I tip 15%-20% on average ... servers only get about $2.50 an hour so the tips in their wages. Now if the service sucks I will not tip and I'll leave 2 cents under a glass upside down full of water (this only works with plastic menus) that is the ultimate server insult. Since I'm known to tip decently at the places I go, I get excellent service and generally larger portions and free desserts. seated quickly and prompt service, more importantly I get the inside scoop of what I might want to avoid that day, or what's exceptionally good that day.

I give only a very minimal tip at buffet if they keep my glass full, maybe $3-$5 depending on the buffet cost.
I'm NOT tipping my trash guy, I get a huge bill from them every 3 months, not tipping the postman when they keep raising the price of a stamp, not tipping a doorman for getting the door, I'm not helpless I'll get my own door thanks.

If you don't tip, don't be surprised to find a big juicy booger in your burger.

Trust me bad tippers ... the servers don't forget who you are anymore than they remember good ones.

Yeah, that's true for the most part.  The place I'm at, the waitresses/servers and busboys get something like $2.43 an hour.  Fortunately, I'm not a server/busboy, so I get much more than they do.  I've seen them not get tipped for meals that cost something like $50 or more.  On a Friday night no less, when there's a line out the door.