Should you tip the waitress and how much thread

lurkingdirk_sl said:

There are a lot of things to keep in mind when tipping. If the food is slow, it is almost certainly not the fault of your server/waiter. If the kitchen is slow, don't punish your waiter/waitress by not tipping. They'd love to bring you your food really quickly. A slow kitchen kills tips, and the wait staff suffer the most.

Here's an idea. I've worked in the food industry a lot. If you get good service, leave a good tip for the waiter. I suggest 20%. Then, go to the kitchen and drop a fiver for the kitchen staff. They probably get a small percentage of the tips anyway, but it's a good idea. Get to know the wait staff, make them remember you. Next time you're there, when they bring the order back, the waiter/waitress is going to say to the cooks "This is for that guy that came back and tipped you last time he was here." Your portion size goes up. Your drink size goes up. Your order gets pushed up the queue.

If you find a restaurant you like, tip well. They'll like you back.

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The best thing you can do for a local restaurant you like is frequent them regularly and preferably mid-week when they are slow (they will show you a lotta love). It's a tough racket, repeat business and talking it up to friends will help them more than anything. Places I love, I grab gift cards for at x-mas and give em out as presents, trying to get other people hooked, I want those places to stay in business. Always tell em you had a great time on the way out.

Merkins4Brazil_sl said:

The best thing you can do for a local restaurant you like is frequent them regularly and preferably mid-week when they are slow (they will show you a lotta love). It's a tough racket, repeat business and talking it up to friends will help them more than anything. Places I love, I grab gift cards for at x-mas and give em out as presents, trying to get other people hooked, I want those places to stay in business. Always tell em you had a great time on the way out.

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There's truth in that there post.

Diasy_Adair_sl said:

If a server or establishment warrants more, we locate the manager on hand and tell them about the wonderful time we had. The idea of tipping as motivation is moot to people who get tipped constantly. They just expect it. Giving compliments to the management could be more rewarding for the individual, or the team all together.

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As a former waiter/bartender, and current manager, they don't give half a shit about your compliment. Your tip is still bad.


Edit: A compliment on top of a good tip is very appreciated.

lurkingdirk_sl said:

They'd love to bring you your food really quickly. A slow kitchen kills tips, and the wait staff suffer the most.

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I used to work as a line cook and if was a waitress/waiter we hated we made sure to cook their food the slowest. Quickest way to piss a customer off and fuck the waiter

Jx3_sl said:

I used to work as a line cook and if was a waitress/waiter we hated we made sure to cook their food the slowest. Quickest way to piss a customer off and fuck the waiter

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Yeah, I've played that game, too. I'm certainly not proud of it, though.

I live in Australia, we do tip, but it's only really at restaurants, normally only up to about 10%, if the waiter/tress has been quite good or the whole experience good it'll go up a bit more.

Other than that, another common thing is to let someone like a taxi driver or pizza delivery guy (ie low wage) 'keep the change', hand them a $30.00 in bills and they can keep the $1.20 instead of having to stand there and count it out. I did Pizza delivery myself and interestingly it was the rich people who never did this. In our area was a luxury island gated community thing, the amount of times I had to stand there and count out the exact change to some prick out the front of his 7 million dollar mansion, while I was earning minimum wage made you curse under your breath. It was regular blue collar guys who might of had a few drinks, saw you as their buddy / on the same level = keep the change mate.

Surprised to read here that you tip a bar-man. To fill a glass with the drink you want and put it in front of you?? That takes a few seconds and pretty difficult to get wrong or go slow. Now that I've read it here I know.

I worked in the food service industry for about 15 years. Cooking, cleaning, food prep, delivery, etc. When I eat out I tip 15% for good service, less for worse, more for the rare really good service. I tip 15% minus delivery charge for delivery, though I make 2$ minimum there. I don't tip at all for carry out unless you give me something to drink or similar while I wait. Though these days I usually order ahead so it's in and out.

Gamma Rays_sl said:

Surprised to read here that you tip a bar-man. To fill a glass with the drink you want and put it in front of you?? That takes a few seconds and pretty difficult to get wrong or go slow. Now that I've read it here I know.

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Everyone on here drinks fruity mixed drinks with umbrellas, so it takes a little skill.

When I delivered pizza Dominos had the 555 deal, so 3 medium pizzas, after tax and delivery came to $19.97, and people would give me a $20 and say "Keep the change" like I was going to give them pennies.

I usually tip $4-5, I don't eat out very often, and I do feel a bit of camaraderie with delivery drivers, so I always make sure I tip them.

boozebagbeefhole_sl said:

This is spot on man, but your missing TO GO food. If you want me to TIP after driving there my self and not taking a table in your section or need anything other than plastic cutlery. GO FUCK YOURSELF! 10% auto grats on to go food. Why should I have to give you a tip for putting my food in a box then in a bag.

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when i get a to go order i always tip but demand the tip goes to the cooks because they are the ones who did all the work. they cooked the items put them in the boxes and got them ready for you all the server did was walk back and grab it. that and i worked as a cook for several yours and you bust your butt and are lucky if you ever receive a tip.

Now when it comes to eating in i tend to start at 20% and go up or down depending on service and quality of the food. i have even tipped over 100% before

People tip bartenders when they want to get overpouring, which will get them fired if their manager finds out. You order X, I pour larger proportions, you pay me extra as a tip, and we're colluding to steal from my employer.

StarKiller_sl said:

when i get a to go order i always tip but demand the tip goes to the cooks because they are the ones who did all the work. they cooked the items put them in the boxes and got them ready for you all the server did was walk back and grab it. that and i worked as a cook for several yours and you bust your butt and are lucky if you ever receive a tip.

Now when it comes to eating in i tend to start at 20% and go up or down depending on service and quality of the food. i have even tipped over 100% before

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This is not the case at every restaurant. Where I worked yes the cooks still made the entree, and apps, but salads, soups, dessert , drinks were boxed up by a server, or manager. Of course it varies from place to place, but just because you didn't see a server prep takeout food, doesn't mean they didn't.

Agraza_sl said:

People tip bartenders when they want to get overpouring, which will get them fired if their manager finds out. You order X, I pour larger proportions, you pay me extra as a tip, and we're colluding to steal from my employer.

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Eh, in my experience it is more for speed of drink delivery on busier nights. If you have a full bar (10+ drinks in the works at a time and constantly having people try to shout combinations of words that they think make sense at you) it can take a bit to get a drink. Even longer if you are with more than 1-2 people in your party. Generally as a bartender you make them as they come in, grouping shit that is easy to make multiples of such as cosmos and lemon drops and what not. When I tip, I don't want more alcohol, I want my shit to come up faster, not wait in line for 20 minutes waiting for a drink. It's what I did when I tended bar, and I sort of expect it from bartenders when I tip them. No lie, I've passed back drinks that were too strong, because I don't want sloppy people at my table or on the drive home haw.

The occasional overpour happens and managers have an allotment for that. Usually that overpour (we called it well waste) ends up being free drinks to promote people coming back on slower nights if we had stuff left in bottles that had passed their minimum. Kept business high and when I had to manage it looked really good on paper. The bar business is hilariously high on profit vs. cost ratio, so a few heavy pours a night barely budge the line. It's when you get stupid kids making drinks for their friends and grabbing the top shelf shit that you end up having to fire people. Nothing says suspicious like your Kettle One going belly up when the tabs only have well on them. Tards =|

Grumpus_sl said:

I don't tip based on percentage. But I don't eat at expensive restaurants or drink at bars often. Also I don't pay for large groups of people.

I generally accept that no one want's to wait on me and waiting on me well is appreciated.

When I go out to eat I look at it as a gamble. I choose where I am eating, I choose what I eat. If the food was poor lesson learned, it's not the waiters fault, I won't eat that or eat there again. I don't factor in food quality into the tip.

I tip $5 as a base tip. I leave that for everything. Pizza delivery gets 5, if I have coffee and a piece of pie you get 5, any food order under $30 you get 5 as a base tip.

Do you ever see the bottle of my beverage? Are you funny? Steer me towards the better choice? Do you ask if I want my bill when you take my clean plate? If you do any one of these things chances are you get a much larger tip. Do them all and I don't see anything wrong with leaving even a 50% tip.

I also assume that there are pricks out there that don't tip and factor that in.

I ordered pizza once and it took just over 2 hours. I was starving by the time it got to me. The driver was young, he explained that it was his first night and he looked like he was going to shit himself if he got yelled at by 1 more customer. I gave him $5 and thanked him for the pizza.

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That's pretty much identical to me. I just don't have it in me to leave no tip or an insult tip (.01 etc.). I've thrown a $20 tip on a $15 check, just because the entire experience was great. Great service, friendly waitress, no hassle or issues (even though i'm pretty understanding since i've been working in restaurants for the past 8 years in the kitchen).

Yea, when I worked as a hostess it was sort of an interesting experience. I was there to eventually get into the kitchen, but somehow got ringed into the front desk.

I had a hard time adjusting...or rather, I adjusted fine I was just disgusted - by the atmosphere of the people who work in a restaurant. Except for a scant few, the behind the scenes shit that goes on is atrocious. I used to fuck our servers for tables when I particularly annoyed with them. (And I realized as I wrote that how that can be interpreted...not legitimate fuck, just mess with them.) I cannot describe the type of servers we had...whiny, entitled bitches who were super whores and men who were players. Ugh. I think you're a piece of trash, so you get one table during lunch hour!

Interestingly enough, a few years later I went to eat at the restaurant (after I was no longer working there) and was amazed that there same people were there. I got waited on by one of the people I hated the most, and whose bank account I was hell bent on destroying because she was such a cunt. She gave us terrible service, and nothing made me feel better than tipping her under $10 on a $150 dollar check, and giving her a little personal message on the receipt. ("You don't remember me but it's nice to see that you're just as much of a bitch to your customers as you are to your co-workers. I'd give you less than 10 but I hate leaving odd numbers.")

When I ended up in the back of the house, I got to see the other side. The cooks get shit all for credit - I cannot tell you the amount of tells an order comes back that was wrong, that the server then bitches about. It's possible to screw an order up, but with an expeditor who is double checking everything, if your order is wrong it's generally the servers fault.

Restaurants are full of cliques. As a hostess, I stuck with the gals at the front, and we hated the servers and went out at night with the cooks. As a cook, we still hated the servers and went out at night with the managers.

Ahh, this thread is bringing back memories.

General rule: There's no reason for your server to suck, so stick it to them if they are.

I'll preface this by saying that this mostly applies to the casual dining crowd in the midwest. Other areas of the country have a much healthier industry than the fucked up state of affairs here. Fine dining works differently.

I tip 25% because fuck ya'll. Serving is a shit job that pays way less then people think. I'm not talking about the $2.15/ hr wage either. Yeah, during the rush they are pulling down decent money, but that's 3 hours out of 7. Those other 4 hours they are making shit. They don't get health insurance, and it's not that easy to hold down a second job when your hours and days change every week and management doesn't give a fuck because even if you are the best server ever - it's still a low tier job and no one cares if you quit or can't make work because both your serving jobs refuses to work with you. And here's the rub, it doesn't matter how fucking good of a server someone is the pay difference between a great server and a shitty server isn't very big. It's there, but the great server pulling in 22% isn't walking away with that much more money than the shit server pulling 18%.

Service is generally pretty shitty because the system is fucked all the way through. The margins aren't spectacular as it is, but instead of paying employees a stable income and providing benefits by raising prices that cost is passed on to the consumer in the form of tips, and the whims of the consumer public are fickle at best. Some people always tip well and some people always tip shit and in the end it's fucking amateur hour. If you want to go out to eat then the established contract is that you have to support the people who enable that. In the fucked up US system and abysmal state of the industry that means you need to add a decent fucking tip.

Bartending is different. It's a racket if you're good at it, but a lot of times it's not a good bartender it's just a good pair of tits. Tits get shit tips from me.

edit: I still hate working with servers and they are the really low on the industry totem poll, but part of the reason servers suck is largely because the industry sucks.

Tips no longer being a special thing is the worst, when I lived in Arizona I felt for the waitresses and people there because they make less than minimum wage since they get tips so it barely equals minimum wage in some places(Think it was something like 2.45/hour a couple years back). Moved to Oregon and it's minimum wage + tips out here and it's wrong. Friend of mine who is a server in a downtown bar would make more money than I would as an autobody tech assuming we worked the same hours. Not hating on them making money but I didn't apprentice for 4 years to make less than someone with no experience/training can make especially when half their tips go untaxed.

That all being said, I tip about a dollar a drink if I'm gonna be getting drunk or 2-3 a drink if its a local bar and about 5 bucks if I order a pizza.

Tea_sl said:

I tip 25% because fuck ya'll. Serving is a shit job that pays way less then people think. I'm not talking about the $2.15/ hr wage either.

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How much exactly do you think servers make compared to other jobs? At the restaurant i'm in now the servers make in 4 shifts what I make in 12 cooking. At the place I was before, I know at least a few of the servers hit the $30-40k range, I pulled in a whopping $19000 cooking. When I was in management at a gas station/convenient store I made about $21000 but that was a lot of overtime. Servers who aren't complete retards make a decent living compared to a lot of people. The ones who are retards not so much (usually the ones getting fired every 2 weeks).

LadyVex_sl said:

The cooks get shit all for credit

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The cooks also seem to to getcredit for all shit. More than once a server was hanging out behind the bar or chatting with staff, 30-45 mins or so passes since order was placed and get approached on the way into the back and politely informed how the kitchen's swamped/running behind/insert other unsolicited excuse as to why it is the kitchens fault. Instantly the server's back out to the table with cold food. Still haven't figured out how food goes cold just because the kitchen is slow or backed up.

Reading through this thread should show everyone why tipping is fucked up, and the peons need to rebel and get the shit laws changed that allow under-minimum wage laws for servers. Not that it would matter much to change the way restaurants fuck with the general public with regards to us tipping their workers instead of them paying them properly, but, it's a start. In a perfect world, menu prices would reflect workers getting paid properly, and tipping would be a rare occurrence.

When I go out to eat, I want to go enjoy myself with friends/family and get some good food. I do not care if you had a bad day, I don't care if your baby daddy just left you, do your job. Can't do your job? Don't go to work. I go to Best Buy and get a TV, I'm not tipping the guy who helped me pick out what I need - he's already getting paid to do that. I go to the book store and buy a book, I'm not tipping the gal who showed me where to find the book I wanted. The whole tipping culture is just fucked. I have to tip you so you'll do your job? Fuck you. The whole thing aggravates me to no end. If you can't be assed to do your job without expectation of a tip, get a different job you lowlife asshole.

That said, I do believe in showing gratitude to people who go above and beyond normal expectations of their job. I just don't believe it should ever be an expectation. And I'm sad to admit I do tip in general, because I know me not tipping is not going to change the culture or anything, or force employers to pay fair wages. But I have zero issues leaving no tip for people who can't give me decent service.

I find the only recourse I have is... not to go out to eat. And I rarely do. I get my pizza from take and bake, and I don't tip at the burrito place, the sandwich shop, or the Chinese takeout joint.

Food sitting in the pass for fucking ever has happened at every restaurant I've worked at, and never because the server is busy. 9/10 times the server went for a 20 minute smoke break, or sat behind the bar talking to the bartender etc.

I'm hoping that my experiences with servers were just an isolated bad crop because man, I seriously have no respect or sympathy for any of them.