Tipping

[SackAttack]

Originally Posted by ISiddiqui

Of course, I live in GA where they get paid $2.13... I think tipping culture will end when it becomes a federal rule to pay servers the fed min wage. Right now, the patchwork of states makes it a strange situation to eliminate tipping altogether.

Won't happen until the 2010 gerrymandering gets undone. If ever.

Here's the thing: allowing JOB CREATORS to pay their staff $2.13/hour and tell those people to bootstrap their way into a living wage is a completely Republican worldview. There is no Republican who's going to vote for revoking a circumstantial exemption to the minimum wage. They'll use the same argument against that as they do over the idea of raising the minimum wage for non-exempt hourly employees from $7.50 to $9 (because god forbid the minimum wage should have the same buying power in 2014 it had under Reagan).

[digamma]

Originally Posted by Logan

Do you Californians tip differently than you would if you previously lived elsewhere, or are traveling?

No.

[DanGarion]

Originally Posted by Blackadar

I also love how the tipping percentage continues to rise for waitstaff. It used to be 10% was acceptable, then 15% was considered a "good" tip, now you have many people saying 18% minimum, 20% is normal and 25% for good service. It's getting more and more absurd.

The tipping percentage keeps rising just as the price of food does. So not only do people expect more % but they get even more because the price as rose.

So a bill that used to be $20 would get you a $2 tip now costs $30 and gets you $6! Brilliant!

[DanGarion]

Originally Posted by Lathum

When was 10% acceptable?

In the 80s tipping was 10-15%.

[DanGarion]

How many of you lazy bums tip after tax instead of before tax?

[Izulde]

Yeah I calculate after tax.

[Lathum]

Originally Posted by DanGarion

In the 80s tipping was 10-15%.

I always remember the standard being 15%. My family ate out relativly often back then and I always remember my Dad saying that was the minimum barring bad service.

[DanGarion]

Originally Posted by Lathum

I always remember the standard being 15%. My family ate out relativly often back then and I always remember my Dad saying that was the minimum barring bad service.

I get my 80s tipping etiquette from Entertainment Guide coupons. I remember the book used to list that tipping was 10-15% of the before tip amount.

[DanGarion]

Originally Posted by Izulde

Yeah I calculate after tax.

So you are actually tipping an extra 1.6%? You like just throwing your money away eh?

[TroyF]

Originally Posted by Logan

Do you Californians tip differently than you would if you previously lived elsewhere, or are traveling?

Very simple answer. No. I tip the same everywhere.

Here is how I tip:

1) Start at 20% of the total bill (yep, after tax)
2) To get your 20%, be polite, get my order right, keep my glass filled, be polite
3) Some of those things don't happen, you start sliding quickly. 20% can turn into 5% with the "you are ruining my life because you came here to eat" attitude.

As a standard rule, there isn't a lot of middle ground. Either the wait staff did a good job and earned their 20% or they drop below 10% and get pissed off. I don't have to worry much about spitting in my food because I'm a bad tipper. . . if the service sucks, I will rarely go back.

[RainMaker]

Are you supposed to tip on takeout orders? At nicer restaurants that is.

[MrBug708]

I don't and I generally tip everywhere

[CU Tiger]

Originally Posted by RainMaker

Are you supposed to tip on takeout orders? At nicer restaurants that is.

Heck no. They did nothing but hand you a bag.



This week I had a bedroom suite delved to my house. It was raining. The three dudes who delivered it set up an ez up tent outside and pretty assembled all they could there. They took their shoes off and apologized for water dripping off their clothes on the floor. I tipped them $40 ...largely because I only had 2 20s. 20 seemed too cheap. 40 seemed a bit much but whatever it's Christmas. About an hour after they left I realized they had ruined the dresser by ripping 2 boards apart when they assembled it with screw guns. The company was great and is sending a replacement..but I almost feel bad because I don't plan on tipping the delivery guy on the replacement....

[I. J. Reilly]

Originally Posted by RainMaker

Are you supposed to tip on takeout orders? At nicer restaurants that is.

I do. Only a few bucks or so, $5 at most

On another note, do you tip for complementary service?

The one that always throws me off is when I get my tires rotated, part of the purchase was free rotations for the life of the tires. I tipped once and the guy seemed really uncomfortable but he did take it, and then other times when I haven't it seemed like they were waiting for something. Maybe just my imagination.

[stevew]

Originally Posted by RainMaker

Are you supposed to tip on takeout orders? At nicer restaurants that is.

Depends on how the orders are routed and who is responsible for the tax implications of the take out orders. There's generally more to the order than simply throwing your shit in a bag and handing it to you. I wouldn't tip 20% or anything, but 3-5 bucks, sure.

[rowech]

Originally Posted by RainMaker

Are you supposed to tip on takeout orders? At nicer restaurants that is.

I tip 10% on takeout.

[Vince, Pt. II]

Originally Posted by CU Tiger

Heck no. They did nothing but hand you a bag...

This is patently false in about 100% of take out situations. Typically whoever is in charge of take out orders is responsible for taking, packaging, bagging, arranging, and organizing the order. Think about it - a plated order comes out of the kitchen, a waiter picks it up and walks it to the table. Meanwhile, a takeout order comes and the take out clerk has to package it (some times going as far as moving it from a plate to a take out box, though it's much more common to simply have to put a lid on it), secure it so it won't open in transit, bag it, put it with the rest of the order, and keep it warm/cold until the customer gets there. And they have no limit to the number of customers they have to deal with - waiters are inherently throttled by the number of tables they have in their section. Add in the fact that they are their own busboy/barback/restocker, and it's a pretty solid workload for little reward.

Honestly, they do more work than a waiter most of the time, aside from drink refills.

[Dutch]

Think of it as tipping the chef or cooks, not the lack of a food server.

[PilotMan]

Originally Posted by CU Tiger

Heck no. They did nothing but hand you a bag.

This is about as wrong as wrong can be. Even in smaller restaurants the person taking the order has to check it, expedite the order from the kitchen, add all the extras to the order that the kitchen doesn't put on it and make sure it's ready when you get there. It's probably only 1 person handling all the orders, and they are working hard like a server would be. In my previous career as a manager, the girls would generally fight over who had to do it because it's a lot of work for not enough tips.

In a nicer restaurant you should certainly be tipping for carryout.

[digamma]

Definitely for takeout, in part for the reasons suggested, but also because the restaurants where I tend to get takeout are repeat places and we've got to take care of each other.

[larrymcg421]

I tip 20% as standard and may go higher, but almost never go lower. The way I look at it, I've had lots of bad days at work throughout my professional life. But no matter how bad I screwed up, I still received the same hourly or salary pay. Also, I don't think anyone, even someone who screws up or has a bad attitude, deserves $2.13 an hour.

[Chief Rum]

Originally Posted by CU Tiger

Heck no. They did nothing but hand you a bag.

That's not all they do. They also deal directly with you (and for some of the people that come in, that alone is worth a tip), handle your payment, and ensure that the food you are receiving is properly packaged (they are likely doing that packaging themselves, btw) and that you have everything you need for a good meal.

While I certainly don't think that is worth some standard 15% tip, it wouldn't hurt to give them a buck or two or three (depending on order size) for the effort.

[RainMaker]

Car wash towel dryers. How much and what if there are 2?

[stevew]

How much was the wash itself? Thinking $2 or so total

[PilotMan]

I've tipped based on how good a job they do and how detailed they are about the inside. I'm assuming they are vacuuming the inside and trunk, plus wiping everything down. If they do a good job I'll do $2 per person, if it's just outside half that.

[CU Tiger]

I always give the towel dryer guys $5

[MrBug708]

I give about 3 for the standard wash if it goes a decent amount of time to clean. If I get a better wash package, I pay more. Lately they've been turning and burning and doing a terrible job.

[miami_fan]

We got the first Christmas gratuity envelope from our garbage guys this morning.

[Mike Lowe]

nevermind

[larrymcg421]

I'm just gonna say yikes to a comment on the first page of this thread.

[Lathum]

Why are the default tipping screens set so high? | The Hill

[NobodyHere]

I refuse to go places where I am expected to tip. I don't go to restaurants and and I don't order delivery.

And for some reason it annoys me to no end when I get asked for a tip when I pick up a pizza at Dominos. I stopped going there (which is probably better for my diet anyways).

[molson]

A few new places I've seen tip requests recently - doggy day care and boarding, and contractors doing work on your house.

Maybe we should try to reverse this. If there's a money-for-labor exchange at a set price, why should the person providing the money be the party that gives extra at the end?

Maybe the guy doing some repair or installation should say, "hey, thanks for being patient, I knew this took twice as long as we said it would, but you were nice, let us use the bathroom, stayed out of our way, so I'm going to knock off 10% on the price". And then if they don't tip us, we can go on the internet and complain that they're cheap.

[thesloppy]

The convenience store near me has added an unofficial tip jar to their counter.

[sterlingice]

The "fun" part about tipping is that it seems like a lot of time the tips don't even go to the workers, just back to the business. And even if it did go to the workers, you kindof get the idea that it's like the lottery money shell game where they just take it from somewhere else in the budget. Like the tip jar money would go to the worker but then, suddenly, in the budget, they wouldn't get their annual raise or whatever because they're getting the tip jar.

SI

[Toddzilla]

I'll always tip, and I'm happy to give more to anyone that's done a little something extra. People in the service industry always get something, they're trying to make a living and pay the bills. Five bucks never hurts.

I'll never understand, however, the jerks that don't tip and take some perverse pride in refusing to do so. I don't know who they are trying to impress or what they what to convey about themselves - but it always just makes them the biggest asshole in the room.

[Solecismic]

Originally Posted by Lathum

Why are the default tipping screens set so high? | The Hill

That's something I've noticed. I hope I've always been a good tipper when it comes to dining in, definitely aware that hourly pay is low because tips make up for it and that it encourages people who are good at their job to remain in service.

I've never tipped on take-out, though. Perhaps if I could open the bag and examine everything? But then I'm holding everyone up and making my food colder. So I take it home. There's no practical way to evaluate or reward good service until then.

Otherwise, at the restaurant, I can only be annoyed. And that's if the food isn't ready or I have to wait a long time to pay, maybe? And this has nothing to do with servers or maybe even the people who prepared the food. It's all a function of the restaurant. Tipping take-out is effectively tipping management when they're the ones setting the price of the food in the first place.

I don't want to be cheap with servers, but I just don't like the default tip screens. It feels like shaming when I have to click four extra buttons to decline to tip. I have stopped getting take-out at restaurants that use it.

I also worry when ordering online, because if the people preparing my meal see that I'm not tipping in advance, do they give me poor service? Seems like a minefield there, so I choose to pay at the restaurant.

I guess the restaurants do this because it works, but all it has done in our case is make take-out night Asian take-out night, because Asian restaurants in our area have not adopted the format.

[Edward64]

When dining in, I tip 20%. I don't tip for pickup (and hate the systems that defaults to a tip when doing pickup).

We used to order delivery but there was the delivery fee and then also tip expected. We haven't done that since Covid hit.

I used to tip Uber if it was good service. I do tip 20% for my haircut. Tip some change when I'm at a fancy hotel and they insist on taking my luggage to my room (typically in Asia).

I did try tipping in Belgium when I had a business dinner. Client gave me the "no" look so I didn't. Funny thing, she came to the US and took team out to nice steakhouse, she asked me how much to tip and I said 15-20%.

[Ksyrup]

Since the pandemic, I've routinely been tipping higher. Usually 30% or more.

But yeah, from what I've seen, the tipping screens at places where they do nothing or the minimum started at Panera and it's a shitty trend. Let me get this straight - you want me to tip you up-front, and then I have to seat myself, get my own drinks, go pick up my food from your counter, and then friggin walk my dirty plates over to the garbage can and separate the garbage from the plates and silverware? What effing planet are you people from? If I could deduct $5 on principle, I would.

[Ksyrup]

I know it's charity and not tipping, but I always think of this episode of South Park when it comes to the tipping screens:

[JonInMiddleGA]

Tipping annoyance (that I've noticed more recently): Uber et al auto figuring the driver tip based on the cost of the food PLUS the random delivery upcharge.

($1.49 delivery fee cited up front turns into $7.00 based on number of items ... but they include the friggin Taco Bell sauce packets as though you're ordering fucking 10 extra bricks or lead weights or something)