Be Excellent To Each Other

A friend of mine always leaves a tip unless something has gone very wrong. I hardly ever do, unless something has gone very right, or if service is included on the bill (which rages me but I rarely ask them to take it off).

What about you?

Pretty much always, 10% or so.

No. I'm not American and there's a service charge.

I tend to leave a quid or so out of habit if the service was decent enough. More for great service and less if it was appalling.

When I washed dishes through college, the tips would only ever get shared out to the waiting staff. This annoyed me.

Mostly 10% minimum and always in cash after the bill has been paid unless there was a major fuckup.

Service included annoys me as well as the staff rarely see any of it.

I do if the waiter/waitress has been nice, almost regardless of food quality, unless it's been truly disastrous.
I always provide the tip in cash, never on the credit card bill, as I'm convinced this goes straight to the business owner rather than the staff.

Service charges are optional though (cover charges aren't, but they're very rare), so if you leave them on your bill you are still tipping people.
Well, in my head anyway.

Same.

To be fair I only tip if the service has been good.

I also ask the the service charge to be taken off

Always leave a few quid unless it was a particularly bad experience. I never leave any extra if the bill states a service charge was included though.

Almost always, and based on the service rather than the food. I dunno whether tips are more expected over here or not, but when I lived in the UK and Ireland I did pretty much the same thing.

I perhaps missed out an important point in the first post: Why?
How come you feel that the people that work in this one industry (and only a subsection of it at that, unless you tip (harder-working) KFC people) deserve money above their wages?

Also, as a side note and going on what I've read, cash tips are equally as likely to be spread around the company as card ones.

I sometimes tip Cabbies too.

Why does nobody tip Graphic Designers?

If there's no service charge included and the service was at least "pretty good", I leave a cash tip on the table as the law says that's the staff's property - though there are still extra-scummy cunts who take it off the staff. If the restaurant applies one of those "optional service charge for parties of 8 or more" I ask everyone at the table if it's alright to get it removed so we can leave cash (if the service warranted it).

At Bistro Pierre in Liverpool one night, the service was absolutely shocking and the food was shit despite the place being nearly empty, so when they added the optional charge I stormed to the til and demanded it be removed, then convinced everyone to leave no cash. I was very angry.

Not as angry as when I got told to leave the Philharmonic Pub before anyone-except-two had even received their mains. That was grossly offensive - it'd been half an hour since the two had been served, and about an hour since ordering, and off-duty staff sat a table over started having a go at me for being upset to my group by the service. I've not been back since, funnily enough.

Conditioning, I guess. You're kind of expected to do it, so you do. Same with taxi drivers, barbers, that sort of thing. Kind of stupid I admit. I mean, I work in retail and in spite of the fact I may spend an hour or more with a customer getting them exactly the right product, nobody* offers me a tip based on the exemplary service I give them.

*One person actually offered me $10 for helping them out but I had to turn it down, as that sort of thing was apparently frowned upon by the company I worked for at the time.

I think because it's kind of become so commonplace to tip that wages are probably based partly around it. I wouldn't want some of the wretched spotty specimens who work in the local KFC leering over my dinner table.

That’s quite a coincidence as I was going to start a thread like this last Friday!

We went out on a works do on Thursday and the bill included a discretionary service charge of 10%. This worked out at £15 and me and a colleague had an argument over it. She was adamant that you had to pay it but I wasn’t going to.

I think that it’s a damn cheek when they ask for it outright and presume you’re going to pay it. It’s almost like they hide it in the bill.

No one gives me a tip for doing my job. Why should they get one?

I do this if it's like 9 quid i'll give them a tenner and say keep the change. or something similar

I'm sure I can remember some one telling me ( possibly on this board ) about them being chased down a road by a waiter somewhere in the far east because he had "left his change behind" and the waiter was utterly unfamiliar with the concept of tipping.

I tip if they are polite and friendly, and the service they provide is good. Generally around 10%, and never if there is a service charge already on the bill. I do it mainly because it amounts to performance related pay, and in a restaurant the performance of the staff actually makes a noticeable difference to the experience you have.

I'm fairly sure I wrote out a formula for this ages back, but damned if I remember where, when, or why.

Generally 10%, if waitress is exceptionally hot and wears a short skirt, up to 17%, 20% if the serving staff leave me the fuck alone for the most part.

And bar staff, "take your own" usually means about 10 or 20p in these parts.

I'm not convinced that's true - everything is the property of the person you hand it to unless they've signed a contract otherwise.

Unless you're at a posh-ish restaurant, chances are the wait staff will be less well-trained than the ones at KFC, as they do a simpler job.

What about, say, Pizza Hut? That's as close to fast-food as it can be but you sit down and get served. What about Nando's, where you don't get served?

HA! As if I'd eat in Nandos!

I like Nando's. but then I don't eat KFC or McDonalds very often if at all

That is interesting. They say you can't fire an employee for not sharing their tips, but can you refuse to employ them?

That's a little odd. It's the property of who, the person picking up the cash? What if I want part of that tip to go to the sommelier, who may have given fantastic service at the start of the meal, but certainly won't be the person clearing plates.

Reminds me, a colleague here went out for dinner with a couple of people we sometimes work with at one of the trade shows. A good meal was had, and my colleague and others left the usual tip in cash on the table. One chose not to. Fair enough.
But as they turned round to collect their coats, he caught sight of this chap hoovering the change up off the table into his pocket!

Total WTF moment, which clearly could not be addressed within any normal bounds of social convention.

I tip.

Your KFC is posher than mine.

I enjoyed a very enjoyable pint of milk enjoy yesterday, so I went and tipped the cow.

I ate there once, and was met with much haughtiness from the guy at the till because I didn't know how their silly little system worked, as though the place was posh.

"What kind of chicken d'ya want?"

"Oh, er... piri-piri, please."

*cue snooty pointing towards stupid 'heat' ratings behind him*

A sommelier probably gets a decent wage, but you could always wander over and slip them some cash. The quote does say they "belong to the member of staff to whom they have been given," so cash on the table would imply the person who served it. It gets tricky if multiple staff members serve, I suppose.

I disagree. A kick in the crotch is within the bounds of social convention.

What about the Chef?

I also tend to tip bar staff more often than waiting staff. Sometimes because they're good craic, but more often (in busy pubs at least) as bribery so that I get served as soon as I get up to the bar

Well, precisely. At the Manchester posh food meal, there was a guy who was a little bit thick, who was enthusiastic about describing what he was bringing us, even though he got most of it wrong. I'd have tipped him for his attitude, and no mistake. The wine guy, however, promised me extra free wine, then did not bring extra free wine! No tip for him!

A good chef would* get a good wage, like a good sommelier. As an unskilled trade, good waiting staff can't command a good wage, and moreover are easily replaced by cheap, hot but awful 16 year olds.

* Should.

What about sous-chefs? Pot-washers?

My girlfriends mom told us a similar story.

She was at a restaurant once and one of the party was winding up someone else about stealing the knives and forks. It was all in jest to start with but then, all of a sudden.. The person who was being joked about stood up and said “Fine, keep your stupid knives and forks. I only wanted a couple”

With this they started emptying their handbag of all the cutlery they’d tried to steal.

How awkward!

Disclosure time: A certain fast food company (let's call them Rubray) is doing research with us at the moment into the feasibility of starting a somewhat aggressive tipping campaign for their staff. Adverts will (correctly) explain that their staff work harder, handle a lot more covers and perform more roles than the staff at a Frankie and Bennies-type restaurant, but get paid about the same, yet people don't ever consider tipping them. It's all quantitative research though, so it's all numbers, not actual explanations in English, and I'm interested.

So why not tip the person that serves you at Burger King, people that do tip?

I've had a think about it, and realised I only tip in situations where I've received the service before paying. For some reason I've never tipped the lovely barmaid at my local pub, even when I've had a meal at the bar instead of the restaurant, entirely because I've paid up front. This should change.

Aiming for the high-paying jobs. Or too stupid to get a less stressful saturday one.

I'm hardly staunchly in favour of the current system, I just think what we've got is better than the prior alternative ("owners take all the tips and use some of them to top up pathetic rates").

I only do this if I can reclaim the cab fare on expenses - "make out a receipt for a tenner" sort of thing. Otherwise I'm not that fussed about giving cabbies extra money - they could generally stand to have to eat less through penury, the fat racist cunts.

I tip in restaurants when the service was good or the waitress was a hotty, usually around 10%. I always remove the "service charge".

I have, I have to say, been less generous with tipping since the minimum wage came in.

EDIT - also, Nandos is fucking awesome, and anyone who says otherwise is a galactic-sized silly wronghead.

I think not having to deal with the general public means that a lower wage is inevitable. As a waiter/ress you are the 'face' of the restaurant.

I tip most of the time. Very small if it's been merely ok, but I do go up to 20% if it's been fantastic or I'm feeling in a generous mood.

Yeah; being in the kitchen means you only have to deal with one or two cunts (head chef, owner) rather than the constant stream of twats that come through the front door.

Because there's no 'service' inherent in turning around, getting a burger off the shelf, and putting it in front of me.

The only difference between a BK staff member and a waitress is the distance they walk between you and the food, though.