Yeah, same in my family. Gifts are inter-generational or between spouses only.
I’m not sure I agree. I recall getting pretty slow service in foreign countries.
And I recall working for an international company and when the London team would come to the headquarters (where I’d work) and we’d go out for lunch they’d always be astonished at the fantastic service.
“Wow, I just asked for that extra salad dressing like… not even a minute ago, and it’s already here!!!”
“Wow, this is like the third time they’ve refilled my water!!!”
“Wow, our waitress is so friendly!!!”
This is the last I’ll muck up this Scrooge thread. But I’ll give you first-hand examples of both.
Wife and I went to dinner at a place that usually has good service. Lady comes up, takes our order. I order a personal pizza with pepperoni. My wife orders a wrap with no avocado and no tomato.
The order comes out. My pizza has sausage instead of pepperoni, and my wife’s wrap has extra avocado and tomato. I suck it up and eat the pizza, b/c the sausage is an acceptable substitute. My wife sends her sandwich back. When we get the receipt it says clear as day on the ticket sausage pizza and a wrap w/ extra avocado & tomato.
Another time, different place, my buddy and I stop in to get a burger after golfing. Guy comes over, takes our drink order (two beers, nothing complicated) and walks away. Place isn’t too crowded, but busy enough. Few minutes goes by, we can see the bartender doing her job, and two pints of beer are at the waiter station. Meanwhile, our guy is chatting with a group of guys at aonther table. This is more than just rapport. Converstaion is animated. He’s hi-fiving his buddies. He goes picks up their drink order (ours is sitting right next to it), goes back to the table and keeps chatting. THEN, someone must have asked him for another beer, so he goes to the bar and behind it, grabs a bottle from the cooler and brings it back to the guy.
More than 5 minutes later, he goes off to take care of his other tables, one of which was right next to ours. We had to ask him to check on our drinks. He went up tot he bar, grabbed the two that were sitting there and brought them over. No apologies. Nothing. He didn’t even give us a chance to order. He went right back to the table to chat.
I would definitely not leave a good tip in the second scenario as that’s willful bad service.
Server screwed up in the first scenario for sure, but depending on how busy they were and how friendly and how apologetic over the mistakes, I might be inclined to cut them a break.
I input the wrong thing in the computer too sometimes.
When I waited tables the restaurant required us to report at least 10% of our checks… whether or not we actually made that much. We normally always did in aggregate, although there would be the occasional customer that would stiff or cheap out so for any particular table you might not. And worse the night you were “first out” and got a giant table of teenagers who ordered a ton of food and left a tiny tip. You might not have enough other tables to make up for it, plus the other customers are grumpy from the rowdy teenagers being loud and obnoxious so less inclined to leave a good tip.
It sucks paying taxes on money you didn’t actually earn.
So being sensitive to that, for generally not good service I leave 10%. But for the guy who let your beers sit there getting warm I might leave less, or nothing depending on how the rest of the service was.
Simple compromise, eliminate the distinction between tipped and nontipped minimum wage by raising the tipped minimum wage.
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Well my anecdotes are from asia. As I’m asian. I can see Europeans being as rude as Americans, regardless of tips.
I wouldn’t argue against that.
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But how often did you make more than 10%? You were paying zero tax on money you made.
If I made $175 but had to pay tax on $200 one night, but made $350 and had to pay tax on only $250, I’d be happy indeed.
Hmmm, yeah, I’ve not traveled in Asia, so I have no direct experience there.
My husband travels to Asia a lot and hates it because as an African-American he gets treated poorly many places. (Remember the McDonalds in China that had the sign saying that black people were not allowed to enter the restaurant? A lot of people act like they wish their employer had a similar sign, even if the business doesn’t actually have such a sign.). So I guess I have a generally negative impression of customer service in Asia because I hear his stories.
But maybe for Asian and white people the service is better. That would not be even slightly surprising.
Yes, asians are pretty racist towards anyone not asian and they get most of their foreign references from hollywood, which furthers the stereotypes against blacks.
OK, still on the tipping and service thing. Thanks, twig!
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Yeah, overall I was underreporting for sure. It was a rare night when I had to report more than I earned for the whole night.
I reported more than 10%, unless I made less than 10% in which case I reported exactly 10%. But over the course of the year I’m sure I underreported. But I was afraid the IRS would find it suspicious if I reported exactly 10% every single night, so I usually reported around 12% -ish.
I tried to be careful to specify “for the table” or “for the night” in my post. Because if I reported 12% of whatever my sales were then any time I made less than that then the transaction existing was a negative.
Incidentally if I ever get a Social Security exempt job where I get hit with the Windfall Elimination Provision, I really screwed myself by under-reporting my tips because one year I was like $30 under the “substantial earnings” threshold. May well end up being irrelevant though. But I suppose it’d serve me right for cheating.
Been pretty honest since then though.