I went out with a friend of mine yesterday. She's a wonderful person, but she does something that really bothers me. She doesn't really believe in tipping. She told me that it is not possible to undertip.
We were at Olive Garden and my meal came to about $8 ($8.44 w tax), and hers came to $12 ($12.66 w tax) (total of $20 + $1.11 tax = $21.11). Of course, they bring the bill to you with everyone's meal on the same ticket. I had cash, and decided to just throw in a $10 bill, because I was rather happy with the service, and it was easier to than figuring out a more exact tip.
(The waiter was friendly, but not patronizing. He was also attentive, but yet discrete. Really I couldn't complain about his service in any way.)
Well, she decided to pay with a credit card, so she picked up the $10 and put her card in the little folder. I thought that the tip should be $3.50, which I came to by multiplying the sales tax (5.5%) times three, and then a bit more to round it off. Well, she only gave him $3.00 in tip. When I asked her why, she said that it was because she didn't tip on the sales tax, so I guess she figured that $3 being 15% of $20 was good enough.
I was upset, because my generous tip had just turned into a bare minimum.
I tossed an extra $.50 in the folder before leaving. When I got back to the car, I did the math and found that she had indeed undertipped, because even 15% of $12 would be $1.80. (If she'd given her minimum fair share of $1.80, the total tip would have been $3.36.) When I confronted her about it, she insisted on paying me back for the $.50 that I'd left on the table, which I didn't want from her. I really think she missed the point.
She's not from America, so maybe her world view in the restaurant atmosphere is just different enough for this whole tipping thing not to fit. Here, when you to go a sit-down restaurant, you know that you pay for two things. One price, that of the food, is set. The other, the service, is variable, but should fall between 15% and 20% of the total. I don't know what the official word is on whether you should include the sales tax in your calculations or not. At any rate, the idea, at least as I understand it, is that you would have to pay more for the food if the restaurant paid the waiter for the service. So, it's your own responsibility to be fair in paying the service in exchange for not having had to pay more to the restaurant.
With some people, I think rough estimates are fine, but I think in the future when I go out to eat with her, I will just insist on an exact calculation of each person's check, and then have each person pay separately. That way, I can figure out my own tip, and not have it be affected by anyone else's lack of tipping.
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2 comments:
You can’t teach an old dog new tricks Karen. But it’s good that you confronted her about it because a waiter doesn’t make that much and some of them basically live off tips. (Trust me, I hear this pretty often), so hats off to you for saying something. I had to teach a friend about tipping when he thought that three dollars all the time was good enough. You see I’m not good with the calculations all the time so I’m the wild guess type of person. I figure if I eat alone then the tip should be at least five dollars and at least 10 with a friend. So maybe some waiters/waitresses are getting over on me but I usually get pretty good service so I don’t mind. So keep up the lessons, everybody needs to be told off sometime!
J.A.W.
James, I think that $5 for one person is probably pretty extreme, unless your meal cost $25 or more.
I generally tip between 15% and 20%. I almost never go above or below. For more than 20%, there needs to be some degree of walking on water. For less then 15%, the person really has to have screwed up!
One time, we had this waitress at Olive Garden who came by way too often and obviously didn't actually listen to what we told her. The restaurant wasn't even particularly busy at the time. Anyway, we asked for lemons at least 3 or 4 times. When she finally did bring "lemons", it wasn't the little wedges to put in your water, but rather lemon pie! Her tip dropped substantially. For me, to lose a tip, you either need to be 1) rude, 2) screw up an order more than once (everyone makes mistakes, so I do have some tolerance!), or 3) keep me waiting on something that I've already requested 3 or 4 times!
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