After you, no after YOU!

[HelenMumsnet]

Hello. Welcome to the new Etiquette topic.

We hope you enjoy it in (precisely) the correct fashion.

Great new topic :) Thank you MN!

Eating in the street is bad manners as you cannot use a napkin while walking. Also you cannot truly enjoy food scarfed as you stomp along.

WRT tipping - my pet peeve in restaurants is staff who are so bloody attentive when they are getting your food order but who then bugger off after pudding and do not come back to find out if you want coffee or indeed to allow you to pay the bill. I've had lunches before where we have had two courses served in under 20 minutes and then had to wait 40 minutes to pay . It's fine if you are a snogging couple but when you have children with you and they have eaten and they are bored and want to leave, you are upsetting the entire restaurant while you wait to pay

So if the bill doesn't come promptly when I've asked for it, or attempted to get their attention for more than 10 minutes, I use the tip money to buy the kids stickers for being so good while they waited.

Is this really rude?: For really poor service I leave a really mean tip. ie. 3p for a grumpy waiter.

Actually loopy that is quite insulting. Leaving no tip is ambiguous, you could be impoverished/a 'no tip on principle' person etc. Leaving 3p, unless it's attached to a post-it with 'for the grumpy swine who brought our food out'

If you are going to do that, may I suggest you laminate some A5 cards with marks out of ten to hold up en famille at the end of the meal (don't forget to do one for null point !)

Dang - should have read that back....leaving 3p........is a bit insulting.

Yeah, I knew it was insulting.

It was one particular occasion when the waiter (only one we saw all night so obvious it was for him) called into the kitchen "fish for the ugly bitch" in French, clearly not realising I speak French.

He deserved it.

In that case I would have gone to the toilets, collected a bar of soap and left that as a tip (for his filthy mouth)

What a git! Why did you not call the manager and have a traditional french barney?

Because I asked to see the manager and he laughed and said it was him.

Did write an awful Tripadvisor review though.

Ooh, how naice!!

Re tipping - my pet peeve is when a service charge is added to the bill, then they give you the credit card machine with the question 'Add gratuity?' displayed on it. Well, no, as you've already added it to my bill, thanks.

I do generally try to leave the tip in cash, as I have heard that sometimes credit card tips don't get passed onto the waiting staff - is this true?

Well you never tip the proprietor anyway so that would have been found.

fine, not found