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Don’t Leave a Tip
Tipping in restaurants has always been a complicated issue. I usually leave around 20 percent, which is more than the 15 percent expected, but my feeling is, in Obama’s America everyone needs a little more help.
And there are tip jars in almost every coffee shop and take-out place, and what I usually do is just dump the change into it. But it’s a complicated and awkward business no matter how you slice it.
Word now comes from Danny Meyer, one of the most successful (deservedly so) and celebrated restauranteurs in America, that he’s going to eliminate the practice in his restaurants, beginning with the high-end Modern in the Museum of Modern Art. From Eater NY:
Starting in late November, sharp-eyed guests sitting down for dinner will notice four new things over the course of their meal. First, many prices on the menu will be markedly higher than they previously had been. Second, menus will carry a note informing diners of the new policy. Third, the only supplemental charge on the itemized bill will be for sales tax. And fourth, there will be no space on the guest check for leaving a tip — just a line for the diner’s signature.
His reasoning is pretty compelling:
The American system of tipping is awkward for all parties involved: restaurant patrons are expected to have the expertise to motivate and properly remunerate service professionals; servers are expected to please up to 1,000 different employers (for most of us, one boss is enough!); and restaurateurs surrender their use of compensation as an appropriate tool to reward merit and promote excellence … Imagine, if to prompt better service from your shoe salesman, you had to tip on the cost of your shoes, factoring in your perception of his shoe knowledge and the number of trips he took to the stockroom in search of your size. As a customer, isn’t it less complicated that the service he performs is included in the price of your shoes?
What I like the most about this policy is that there will be no little space on the bill for something extra. It’s a No Tipping Period policy. No guilt. No disingenuous little empty space.
Not everyone agrees. From France (of course) comes another way to look at tipping. Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry isn’t thrilled with the French policy of service compris. He likes the Tipping Culture:
I come from France. Worse, I come from Paris. Here, waiters are almost universally dour, unkind, frequently forget or mess up your orders, and generally scowly. No, tourists, it’s not just you. I mean, they probably turn it up to 11 for the tourists, but it’s already a 10 for the rest of us. Smiling doesn’t help. Being nice doesn’t help.
Service, for Parisians, is one of the small inconveniences of life. It’s not the worst thing in the world, but it will wear you down.
And so when I first had a meal at an American restaurant, where the waitress was friendly and peppy, quick with the order, and inquisitive about how everything was, I felt like I had landed on a different planet. And it wasn’t a fluke! It happened over, and over, and over again.
I went back to my home country, and it was like telling them that in America, whiskey comes out of the tap.
It does, at my house. But back to the subject at hand:
… when I see Americans — predominantly, let’s face it, elite, liberal Americans — who want to destroy one of the nicest things about their country, and one of the nicest things in my life, I get positively angry. I am talking, of course, about the movement against tipping, seen here recently in The Economist (The Economist! Not Pravda! The Economist!), and also in Vox (of course).
I’m no fool. I realize my waitress (or waiter) is not smiling at me out of the overflowing goodness of her heart. There’s something in it for her. But in France, tipping is basically illegal. The waiter doesn’t have any reason to be nice.
I guess I’ll be happy to see tipping disappear — it’s a nuisance — but I also see Gobry’s point. How about this for a compromise? We don’t tip waiters and waitresses, but we do tip IRS agents and congressmen? After all, they’re the ones currently delivering lousy service, right?
Published in Culture, Economics, Humor
Yes, but no one notices because the cost of living there is insanely high. I’ve eaten in Tokyo, Osaka, Kyoto and I’m so shocked at $300 Kobe steaks I don’t even worry about gratuities.
First, many prices on the menu will be markedly higher than they previously had been.
This is the wildcard in his deck. How much more is going to be charged? If it’s enough to pay his people $10 an hour rather than $3 an hour in order to keep them motivated, folks are going to stop eating at his restaurants. (Not surprised he’s starting it out in a museum eatery which are always overpriced.) All I know is, if I were a waiter, I’d want tipping as much as I’d want to work on weekend nights.
Hmmm. I have never tipped there. We should get an authoritative ruling from our Japan contingent, when they wake up.
BTW – I never order the Kobe beef because I don’t find the quality to be worth the premium.
Do RNC campaign consultants expect a tip?
Happy for you that you’re able to resist the Kobe. I can’t. I don’t travel and work so hard so I can order soba or ramen.
They get a commission. Or so I’ve been told.
Yes.
If I want to tip someone at McDonald’s, they shouldn’t get in trouble with their manager.
I like that – and have done it.
If they make the “full” minimum wage, then why? The argument for tipping waitstaff has so far been that they don’t get paid the full minimum wage.
In Canuckistan their tip would be a senate seat.
Hey-ooooo!
Sharing tips is supposed to create the incentive for servers to act like they are on a team, with each one helping the others. So, you might see someone other than your own waitress bringing out the food because your waitress is taking orders at another table, and instead of letting the food sit there and get cold someone who is free at the moment takes it out. Or maybe there are employees whose job is only to do that. Or maybe the busboy and the bartender need to share the tips because the waiter can only serve the drinks after the bartender makes them, and can only sit a table that the busboy has cleaned.
One reason that tipping is preferable to the restaurant owner is that there are often times when there aren’t many customers, and so paying the staff the full minimum wage could be pricey, and could lead to restaurants having to close during slow hours, such as late at night.
Servers know that serving is risky, that there are shifts when they make a killing and shifts when they earn next to nothing.
American servers know that Canadians don’t tip. If you don’t know why I say this, ask one (an American server, that is).
Kobe beef is delicious and worth every penny. Or yen.
Mr. Meyer may want to consider: the wait staff no longer has a fiscal interest in seeing the backs of the customers, thus turnover in the dining room will go down, and so will profits. A good waiter or waitress gets their fannies out of the seats so someone else can be
clippedserved.I don’t mind tipping for good service. If we get bad service, we don’t tip. I don’t care if the wait staff thinks we are jerks, we got bad service and usually we also won’t be back. Usually tip 20%, 25% for exceptional service, 15% for medium service, and nothing it its bad service.
On the IRS, the 8% is equivalent to withholding on wages, if you actually make more than the 8% you are required by law to report every dollar over the 8%. To the extent your tips were on a charge card, the total can be audited, and you can be prosecuted for failing to report your income. If your tips are in cash, its a lot harder to prove you got them. We always try to tip in cash, to allow the individual server flexibility on their personal decisions. Also maybe they don’t turn in all the cash under the socialist tip sharing arrangements, that is their business, not mine. You can claim a refund of all or part of the 8% withheld if you can establish that you actually received less, but the onus is on you to prove it to the IRS
Some of the previous comments described tipping in establishments where you expect to be a repeat customer. It makes a whole lot of sense to be known in such places as a good tipper. But if you are not expecting to be coming back, such as to restaurants at a tourist destination, one would only tip out of moral obligation.
Of course, if the idea of “moral obligation” is completely foreign to you, this could happen: (Trigger warning: This video portrays the use of actual triggers. Also bad language.)
Yeah, They do. We just don’t realize it until We use a vending machine and the change doesn’t work; it always turns out to be one of Their useless Canadian nickels.
You really need to ask an actual American waiter if Canadians tip. He’ll explain it to you.
I should try this idea of doing a half-way job and then telling my boss I had no incentive to do a good job because I wasn’t tipped enough. I wonder how long I’ll stay employed? That kind of entitled mindset and lack of work ethic is a perfect picture of what’s wrong with society. You agreed to do a job for a wage. The expectation is that you are doing it as best you can. If you’re slacking because you don’t get paid what you think you should, then quit and stop ripping off your boss and customers.
I don’t mind tipping for good service. What I hate is that it’s socially mandatory, so now I’m evil and they are allowed to give me worse service if don’t to tip for their original bad service. It is rediculous to pay extra just so they don’t crap on you.
I’m all for getting rid of mandatory tipping, but I want to keep voluntary tipping available for the times that service is superb… or for when my baby spills rice all over the floor.
1) It’s called a joke; humor.
B) You have absolutely no knowledge of My experience with/in the industry.
Back in the 70s my dad had the idea of a little flag at each table that you could raise or lower on a little flagpole to let your server (and the manager) know at a glance whether you were happy with your service or not, before the check came. I’m not sure whether that was an original idea or something he experienced somewhere.
That said, leaving notes on the check when a Manhattan bartender has been serving you warm beer all night is not appreciated the next night. Whoops.
I can only observe your commentary as a lazy cook who dines out 5 nights a week. Tips and consistent business mean a lot to wait staff.
The best tip I can give to consumers is to eat dinner at the bar. Bartenders are always happy to get some main course business, generally give the best service, and will never complain when you ask them to change the channel to ESPN.
:)
I got your joke. I think it was funny.
But you didn’t indicate that you understood what I was driving at. That’s why I repeated the “ask a server” comment.
The downside is that while eating at the bar, people (other than the bartender/waitstaff) may want to talk to me. Not a problem when I’m sitting at a booth or table.
I’m not sure I can like this comment but I did giggle.
;-)
I don’t actually dine out much. I get a lot of to-go so I can get home to multitask most nights. Tipping is fundamentally broken in the US. If I get lousy service and leave no tip, you will never hear the server say, “I did a poor job.” You will instead hear, “That jackwagon stiffed me!” So the tip has become something a server feels entitled to regardless of performance. Making it worse, if I’m a repeat customer, that server will now badmouth me to the rest of the staff. There’s a very real possibility of having your food messed with the next time you dine there. The tip then turns into a kind of extortion: pay up, regardless of service, or run the risk of your food being fouled.
The most sage advise on this thread.
I place a book on the counter. Works flawlessly even if never opened. (For future reference, The Bible works best in all public situations when wanting to avoid interaction)