Yes, I was insufficiently clear. By 'didn't pay enough' I didn't mean that the restaurant is entitled to more. I meant that the check is what you pay the restaurant, and it doesn't include what you pay the waitstaff until you add that amount. It's as if you're the customer of two different entitles, you need to pay them both, but for one of those transactions you have some (limited) discretion in how much you pay. I'm not arguing that this makes sense. It just is.
Am I right in thinking that in some states they add the service charge in at the point of payment? A percentage of the total bill. I may have convinced myself of this though. Can any of you Americans out there confirm this for me?
Haha I think it's going to happen to me a lot ! But I guess it won't be too annoying for people, since I'm from France, I will be able to blame my lack of comprehension on that lol.
You'll get on fine. There are strong cultural bonds between our nations dating back to the thirteenth century. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auld_Alliance You'll be the latest in a long line playing a role in Franco-Scots relations.
It's because the legal minimum wage for waiters is $2.15 per hour, and that pretty much just pays their tax. Tipping in the US is seen as reward for good service, and a way to keep service good. It's standard to tip 20% of the bill if the server did a good job. You can drop it if they were a bad server.
I don't think it's a state-by-state thing, though I haven't been in all states, so I could be wrong. On a restaurant-by-restaurant basis, some restaurants add a service charge and don't have tipping. More often, many restaurants add a service charge for large (often eight people or more) parties. I think that this is because a server might spend a large percentage of their shift serving that party, so the possibility of a lousy tip is too much of a gamble.
I don't see it as a reward for good service, I see it as paying an employee--non-optional. The optional part, for me, is the decision of how much to tip, starting at a minimum of fifteen percent. (Though I don't know if I've ever actually tipped below twenty percent. I suspect a server would have to attack me with a high chair for me to tip them less.)
I'm talking about culturally as a whole. Most people see it that way these days, but I never tip less than 20%. If you're a good server, you always get more from me.
All this talk about tipping is making me want to rewatch Reservoir Dogs. But I always tip when I think someone has provided me good service, if not not.
I eat my peas with honey I've done it all my life It makes the peas taste funny but it keeps them on my knife
It's probably a peculiarly British thing but I tip irrespective of the standard of service. I know I shouldn't but I seem to invariably do it just as a matter of course, before I've even thought about it. I recently had an obnoxious, racist taxi driver spouting bile and intolerance intermittently during the journey. I automatically and without thinking rounded it up to the next pound on my arrival home and tipped the goon. Similarly with takeaway deliveries, I've waited for far in excess of an hour and still tip the driver when they arrive with my lukewarm, tepid curry.
Yep, that is the scene that always comes to mind when I talk about tipping. It is a perfectly valid argument that waiters should make a living on paychecks instead of tips, but it is difficult to make that argument without sounding like a stingy asshole to someone who does not understand the argument.
It's also hard to make it when you know it's not currently the law, so if you abstain from tipping to try and get the minimum wage change, in the meantime you are actively harming someone's income. It's really tough. If I lived in the US I don't know what I'd do. Thankfully I don't, so my choice to only tip truly exceptional service doesn't come with a big dilemma. I really hate how tipping has become the norm here, so that you get people on minimum wage who DON'T get tips tipping other people on the same minimum wage just because they work in a different industry. Or restaurants keeping tips because they don't have to give them to the staff who earned them. Madness.
What pisses me off is when a restaurant posts signs about tipping the waiters. I've seen them like this: "Our staff works very hard to serve your family, and they do it happily. They don't want to leave at the end of their shift without making ends meat. Please don't forget to leave a tip!" Um. Just because you don't legally have to pay them more than $2.15 an hour doesn't mean that you can't. How about you take the first step and ensure that they don't work hard all day for nothing, rather than posting a sign? I mean ... if you really value their hard work, as you say you do.
If you really refuse to tip, the only ethical choice that I can see is to refrain from eating at restaurants with table service. (Well, except for the rare exceptions that do pay real wages and don't allow tipping.) Just refraining from tipping won't do a bit of good; you'll just be harming the individual server. My choice is to tip well, and also to vote for every minimum wage increase that comes up.
You forgot tonic. And yeah, some places, you ask for a coke, they ask, "Okay, what kind? We have Coca Cola, ginger ale, root beer,..." So which word should everyone standardize to, to go with their sub/grinder/hoagie/torpedo/po' boy/bomb?
I don't know I'd go quite as far as tipping a truly unpleasant person, but I also always tip for service. I worked for many years in an industry where tipping was "done" ...although all our workers got paid the same, and didn't have to rely on tips. I remember how chuffed I always felt when somebody tipped me. Even a little tip meant a lot. That was back in the day where tips were left tucked underneath the plate at restaurants. And as a pizza delivery driver, I got them handed to me, or told to 'keep the change.' It was nice. Not life-changing, but nice. I totally disapprove of the idea of paying service people less and expecting them to make their wages in tips though. Here in the UK, when you're in a restaurant, the tips apparently get shared out at the end of the day, with all the workers, not just the ones who bring stuff to your table. However, I've also heard of unscrupulous restaurants that keep the tips for themselves as well. So it's hard to know for sure who gets what. Still ...I always tip.
There's virtually no tipping in Finland. The explanation? Apparently "service is included in the price" (a direct translation). I read an article about our tipping culture or the lack thereof, and some people said they don't want to tip because they already pay so much for their meals and drinks (if any of you have been to London or Oslo, you should have a fairly good idea of how friggin' much) while some considered expecting tips a form of begging (begging is incredibly stigmatized here). Generally speaking, you are free to tip or not to tip, so if you don't, you won't get the evil eye. Service is usually pretty good in restaurants and cafés, and considering the average monthly income of a full-time waiter is 1924 EUR ($ 2161.31), their rent, gas, or contents of the fridge really won't depend on the amount of tips they get.
Same here. My husband tells me that some waiters in Prague - not all - would give you change in loads of tiny silver coins (1kc, 2kc coins - think like giving a customer change in the form of hundreds of pennies) if they feel you didn't tip them enough Between the British, American and Czech tipping system, I like the Czech's best. First of all, no maths needed - you just tip a standard 20-30kc. And second of all, no need to rummage for change like the Brits would have to! If your bill was 347kc, you just tell them to charge 360kc or 370kc for example, and that's considered the tip. Else you just say "Dobry" (it's ok - think @Ivana said the Serbs did the same here?) and they won't give you change at all. It also seems to be polite to round things up, even at places like McDonald's. So if your meal came to 219kc you might tell them to simply charge 220kc. And usually staff prefers it if you'd round things up - say, so if your meal was 211kc and you pay with a 500kc note, if you're courteous you would provide also a 1kc coin, so the staff doesn't have to fiddle with change. I once accidentally tipped 50kc at a cafe though I gave the staff a note and asked in English, "Is it okay?" (cus it was a larger bill than needed) The staff thought I said, "It's okay" and translated that to be the Czech way of saying "Dobry aka no change needed". It was too awkward to correct her so I just left the cafe
I'm glad so many of you joined and discussing our cultural differences! It's fun! As for the tipping, I've heard that in some Eastern countries, Japan for example, it's considered rude to even offer a tip. Can anyone confirm? @Mckk yep, we usually say "U redu je", meaning "It's ok" and they can keep the change. Oh, yeah, I forgot to mention swearing in my original post. Wow, we do swear a lot. And pretty nasty, too. For example, one of the most common Serbian swears would translate as "I f..k your mother" and it's quite normal to say that to a close friend. But, you can offend someone with saying that as well - regarding your tone of voice. The other interesting swear is "Go to you mother's vagina (only we use the rude word for that part of the body)". Creative, huh?
Tipping is included in the prices in the Netherlands too. People will sometimes still tip, but not that much and the staff is not dependent on it. When it comes to shoes - wearing your shoes indoors is normal here. I happen to be an exception because I used to live with my boyfriend for four years, who is from Indonesian origin. Wearing shoes inside the house was unthinkable to him. Even now I don't live there anymore, I've gotten used to it and don't usually wear them indoors. But guests would consider it rude if you asked them to take off their shoes. For the rest, we complain a lot, apparently not unlike the Finnish. We don't like the government, the king, celebrities, people who make more money than we do, and the weather. O, don't get me started on the weather. We talk about that all day, every day. It's always too cold/hot/windy/wet/dry and just plain wrong. And we're travellers. We go everywhere. You can travel to the most remote village in southern Nepal or be in the middle of nowhere in Africa - there is simply no getting rid of us. Trust me - I've tried.
I had planned to write again here after my trip to the UK, but I forgot, so better late than never . I went to Glasgow and Manchester, and I must say I was shocked to see how nice and friendly people were compared to France !! Especially in Glasgow, but in Manchester as well, people were so nice when I asked them for directions or a certain shop or bank or whatever, a lot of them would take like 10-15 min to bring me to the place I wanted to go to or to explain to me the directions on my map etc. The police was helpful and nice as well, which is really not the case in France(in my experience at least) people in shops were very nice and understanding even when I had trouble with the currency lol. And strangers in parks were much nicer than in France too. In Glasgow a man who was eating his lunch on the same bench asked my sister and I if we were on a trip and offered us biscuits. At first my sister and I thought he was creepy lol because in France strangers never talk to each other, but hewas actually very nice and gave me info about the cost of life in Glasgow and Manchester since I told him I was hesitating between these two cities for doing my master degree. I've honestly never seen people so friendly and polite when they didnt have to : for example I went to a bank asking if they knew where the HSBC bank was , and the lady looked on internet and wrote the directions for me, whereas in France they would have rudely said " we dont know " I definitely see myself living in the UK over France !!
Oh yeah, Brits (and Scots) are usually really friendly, chatty, and open. Yet sometimes I can't help but laugh when I hear Brits grumble how annoyingly chatty and open Americans are. When me and my hubby were adventuring around the Brompton cemetery in London, an eldelry lady came to talk to us, showed us around (Emmeline Pankhurst is buried there so we also got a lesson on suffragettes), showcased remarkable knowledge of Finland, and was all in all super loveable. I don't want to generalize too much, but I think Brits often come across genuinely nice and friendly, like, when they're being nice, they really aren't faking it.
