21–30 of 187 posts
The worst service that I ever received was in France, where tips were mandatory and could not be varied. I've never been so offended at being asked to tip as when it was done by the smug jerk who had just arranged to make sure that I didn't enjoy my meal, and who knew that they would get their full cut of my unhappy experience. I have no problem tipping in the moment. And sometimes for very different amounts than exp…
I dread the day I have to eat at US restaurants, or even get something delivered. Part of the reason is cultural: I’ve never lived in a country where a tip is mandatory and you’ll be called out if you don’t. The other reason being it involves a degree of social pressure and shame, if one doesn’t tip enough. Both don’t sit well with me. But I can attest that if I’m forced to tip, I’ll not return to that establishment.
It's a broken system but it will never go away since tips are tax-advantaged (there's no sales tax on the tip). The mental block can be helped a little by adding 1/3rd to all the menu prices as you read them.
To be clear, I am promoting eliminating tips, and paying everybody in the lower 90% of wage earners more for their work. I have no interest in shortchanging waiters.
A concrete example: a bakery near me uses the same POS terminal for both cafe sales and bread sales, meaning I get asked to tip on loaves of bread. I've seen people get flummoxed and tip $1-2 on bread sales because of this.
Customers actually do have a way to retaliate against establishments they feel are abusive: leave a bad review. Businesses depend on the organic traffic they get from Google and Yelp listings, so sustained feedback against abusive tipping pressure will get noticed if people start to make a point to write reviews about it.
It’s trivial to have reviews removed
The other one I'm seeing lately is a semi-stealth "service charge" on the bill. Something like 18% to 20% added to the bill without really standing out. This used to be something they'd do for "larger parties", but now I'm seeing it even when I'm eating solo. This makes for an uncomfortable situation where I now have to ask the waiter or bartender if they receive this as a tip. Then I need to decide if I want to tip…
Far more common here are ~3% "kitchen appreciation fees" that get paid directly to the kitchen staff. I'm AOK with these but some people really complain about them.
Customers actually do have a way to retaliate against establishments they feel are abusive: leave a bad review. Businesses depend on the organic traffic they get from Google and Yelp listings, so sustained feedback against abusive tipping pressure will get noticed if people start to make a point to write reviews about it.
It’s trivial to have reviews removed
The other one I'm seeing lately is a semi-stealth "service charge" on the bill. Something like 18% to 20% added to the bill without really standing out. This used to be something they'd do for "larger parties", but now I'm seeing it even when I'm eating solo. This makes for an uncomfortable situation where I now have to ask the waiter or bartender if they receive this as a tip. Then I need to decide if I want to tip…
Jesus. Please don’t. Tipping 25% is absurd. Don’t normalize this.
I've noticed a related phenomenon to this, one that (I assume) comes more from POS providers like Square than from businesses themselves: the default "flow" on these tablet-style POS systems doesn't distinguish between culturally tip-able transactions and ones that are not conventionally tip-able. As a result, people feel pressured to tip on things that weren't previously considered. A concrete example: a bakery near…
I dread the day I have to eat at US restaurants, or even get something delivered. Part of the reason is cultural: I’ve never lived in a country where a tip is mandatory and you’ll be called out if you don’t. The other reason being it involves a degree of social pressure and shame, if one doesn’t tip enough. Both don’t sit well with me. But I can attest that if I’m forced to tip, I’ll not return to that establishment.
It's standard to tip 15% for decent service in a restaurant(sans win). You are of course free to tip more for good service or less for crappy service, but unless your experience is truly exceptional (in either a good or bad way) you can never go wrong with 15%. This is standard any US restaurant where you sit down and are served by a waiter or waitress. You are never "forced to tip", but you will be universally looked down upon in any sit-down establishment that you fail to tip in, so you might be best off not returning.
The worst service that I ever received was in France, where tips were mandatory and could not be varied. I've never been so offended at being asked to tip as when it was done by the smug jerk who had just arranged to make sure that I didn't enjoy my meal, and who knew that they would get their full cut of my unhappy experience. I have no problem tipping in the moment. And sometimes for very different amounts than exp…