A Tipping Question

You asked for our advice. Sorry it didn't fit your narrative.

I've been on both sides of that tap dance, and seen it played every way. When a good restaurant steps up, as this one did, a good tip shows you noticed. You'll see each other again, right? Build on that.

That other place? Yeah, whip out the 11-cent tip. The two experiences are not related.

 

Had a horrible experience with the cooks in a restaurant, and this is exactly what we did. Waitstaff had bent over backwards to get it right, so we left her what we'd planned to spend, plus the tip we would have left.

Tip should be based on the full price of what you ordered and adjust from there.

We chose to reward the waitstaff who provided excellent service during a horrible experience. You cheaped out, then posted here to validate your decision.

 

What hit a nerve was the insinuation that I was being cheap. Being cheap comes with intent, and it wasn't my intent. If I was being cheap I wouldn't have left anything. I did the math wrong and violated the first rule of tipping -- when in doubt, leave a little more.
I'll drive over there this afternoon and give the guy an extra $20 or $30 and sign over the title to my car. Hopefully that will be enough to appease the angry internet gods.

 

Too bad you can't pay them in melodrama.

 

I haven't delivered food for money in 21 years.

If you dropped me in my college town in 2017 where I delivered about 15,000 orders a year, I could drive around - all these years later - and tell you the apartments/houses with the best tips and the ones that would almost always stiff me.

Yes, the common stiffs would always get their food last when I would have a run of 4-5 deliveries. Good tippers always first, even if it meant to route was non-linear.

Servers have a long memory when it comes to cash.

That being said, I'm a cheap SOB when it comes to the place itself. I clip coupons. I make our kids get $5.99 haircuts. But I tip 7 bucks on those cheap haircuts. I'll leave an $8 tip on a $14 bill for a 2-for-1 meal deal. I usually get carry out specials so I don't tip people. I'll carry my own bags at hotels.

The surprised smile on a server/stylist's face when the cheap coupon bastard over tips is always worth it. Always.

 

Batman,

I denounce this.

VB

(And by that, I mean don't take the comments too seriously - it's a message board. I still contend most of us would have great conversations sitting around a table.)

 

So that means all of the times I've left excellent tips at that same restaurant should count for something, right?

 

Perhaps it does. You probably won't get lousy service the next time you go back.

I would outsource a food taster, just to be safe.

 

I was very friendly and affable as a dealer, usually making $80-$100 an hour in my tip box. Of course it was split evenly by dealer hour for the week.

Some weeks we would make $20,000 in dealer tips. Divide that by about 1400 "dealer hours" and that's what each person made per hour on top of the $4.25 minimum back then. If you worked 66 hours a week, you made a ton of cash.

There is a slight backstory on the $1,000 tip I took illegally.

Our conversation was very friendly at the table. I took the year off college to get in-state tuition. His daughter was my age and at the same university. I think he appreciated what I was trying to do. His winning 6k that day didn't hurt.

When we met at the gas station, I had changed into a hoodie and out of my tux/bow tie look. It was like a drug deal.

I was already rattled by the Natives that I worked for. I was a statistics major with a 31 ACT and I was taking orders from uneducated 50 year olds who, as I found out later thanks to online court records, had long rap sheets for DUIs and burglaries and bad checks. I just wanted to get along and do the job but one guy - a floor supervisor - in particular would do anything to make my life difficult. Sometimes if a white person was winning big, he would take me to surveillance (think the hammer in Casino) and accuse me of working with him.

By the time the $1,000 tip came about, I was about to give my notice and go back to school anyway.