Tipping in North America.

M

macdo

Joined
Jan 20, 2006
Messages
429
OK, I live on a non-tipping country but I've lived in the US so I know how it works, or thought I did. In Vancouver recently I was a little surprised to have a taxi driver explain to me that I should add 20% to the meter. Now we had got to the hotel alive, he had put my case in the trunk and he had been reasonably genial en route but it was almost an instruction.
Then a friend was in Boston last week and put 15% on the credit card for her meal and was chased out of the restaurant by a server yelling "20%!'
Whats the deal these days?
 
20% is the deal, now have a server ever dare to step out of line.. Ever in my future restaurant and ya boi on Hells Kitchen will look like the kid who sits In The corner and eats glue
 
20%? No. Unless the service is exceptional.

10-15% is normal for good service in a restaurant. Cab? 10%, maybe to 15% is the cabbie helped with bags, showed exceptional skill in negotiating difficult traffic, etc (you should add a bit more on if your destination is somewhere where he's going to have a more difficult time getting another fare, a suburban residential neighborhood, for example).
 
macdo said:
Then a friend was in Boston last week and put 15% on the credit card for her meal and was chased out of the restaurant by a server yelling "20%!'
Whats the deal these days?
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Knock that place down on Yelp.
 
Lots of people say 15%, that was cool 5 years ago, 10%'s a gip, it's movin to 20% man, inflation.

I generally don't even play percent i just give the money i dont have away, if my pizza total is $15 I'm out of a twenty dollar bill anyway so I just toss em the whole thing.
 
I live in Quebec and I know that at the end of their shift, a waitress pays 5% of her sales as taxes. So by giving nothing, you're actually costing him/her money. Also, since our tax is about 15%, if I'm lazy I just match the taxes or round to a nice number.
 
Gollnick said:
20%? No. Unless the service is exceptional.

10-15% is normal for good service in a restaurant. Cab? 10%, maybe to 15% is the cabbie helped with bags, showed exceptional skill in negotiating difficult traffic, etc (you should add a bit more on if your destination is somewhere where he's going to have a more difficult time getting another fare, a suburban residential neighborhood, for example).
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This is my tipping custom as well.
 
macdo said:
OK, I live on a non-tipping country but I've lived in the US so I know how it works, or thought I did. In Vancouver recently I was a little surprised to have a taxi driver explain to me that I should add 20% to the meter. Now we had got to the hotel alive, he had put my case in the trunk and he had been reasonably genial en route but it was almost an instruction.
Then a friend was in Boston last week and put 15% on the credit card for her meal and was chased out of the restaurant by a server yelling "20%!'
Whats the deal these days?
Click to expand...

Pathological sense of entitlement would be my guess.
 
Rewarding bad service by "usually throwing up the minimum" encourages the sense of entitlement. If the server's tips don't meet their expectations, they should look at their attitude. If that doesn't work, join a union and demand more $$. If that doesn't work, consider a different line of work. If a business is "structured with the gratuity in mind", include it in the price of the service instead of forcibly shaming people or counting on their guilt as your source of extra income.

Want a 15% tip? Bring me a 15% bigger portion.
 
Would someone mind explaining why you should always tip to fill up the wages for the people, instead of actually getting a movement going and try to increase salaries to the point that tipping is optional, not mandatory?

I live in Sweden, tipping here isn't exactly common, and most of the time it's forbidden for people at restaurants, gas stations, cab companies and the like to accept tips. Might seem weird if you aren't used to it, but the whole idea here is that you'll always get enough money to make it, even if you have a streak of costumers that don't tip.
 
I was under the impression that 15% is the norm. Unless the service is disgustingly bad I won't deviate from that. I've known people who were servers and they always tell me horror stories about SUPER demanding customers who expected to be treated like royalty while complaining about everything.... and then barely leaving any tip. I've also heard of times where the customer would not leave a tip at all and write down on the receipt some BS like, "sorry I'm just a student". IMO if you can't afford to leave tip, you can't afford to eat out. If you're a poor college student you can order the food to go.
 
I tip based on service, not just a flat amount. Bad service? Bad tip! Great service, great tip. But if I was told by a server,driver, ect how much to tip then zero is automatic.
For normal service, I follow the same general rules stated by Gollnick.
 
Try to "shame" me into tipping 20% and you'll get zip. I pay servers $20/hour for the time they spend waiting on me. If that happens to be a total of five minutes taking my order, bringing it out and dropping off the check, they don't get much. It's still more than I would make for the same amount of work.
 
I work as a chef and 15% seems normal.

of course that number can change if you hook up customers, im lucky to be in a situation where I make and serve food (sushi).

I dont expect any tips, my salary is decent. But I always remember generous people and treat them as such.

knife nuts seem to tip well haha. Theyll usually ask about my knives.
 
stvpourciau said:
Lots of people say 15%, that was cool 5 years ago, 10%'s a gip, it's movin to 20% man, inflation.
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No. Inflation is when the cost of the meal goes up... and the tip, which is a percentage of the cost of the meal, goes up with it.



Raising the percentage of the tip? Mr. DB731 described that best, a "Pathological sense of entitlement."
 
LeonJ said:
I live in Sweden, tipping here isn't exactly common, and most of the time it's forbidden for people at restaurants, gas stations, cab companies and the like to accept tips. Might seem weird if you aren't used to it, but the whole idea here is that you'll always get enough money to make it, even if you have a streak of costumers that don't tip.
Click to expand...

Not weird at all. Logical, in fact.
 
I'm like Sean. Great service=great tip. Crappy service=tiny tip. Piss me off=zero tip.

My wife always says if she was a waitress she'd love to wait my table. I'm really generous.
I left a 13 cent tip once.
 
It's only a matter of time until we have to give 100% tips. I only tip if the service is good, if its great then they get a little bit more.
 
Oh... I once put a negative tip on a restaurant credit card slip and totaled it out subtracting 10%, the service was so bad.

The waiter protested, but I told him (Biblical quote), "What is written is written."

The manager stopped us on our way out and asked what had happened. I explained it. He tore up the bill and asked us to wait one moment. He returned with gift certificates for everyone. That manager was smart, by the way, because he incentivized is to come back and give a second chance.
 
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