Are tipping expectations increasing in the UK

[opticoner]

It was my birthday on Friday and yesterday DH took me out to lunch at a local restaurant I like to celebrate. We don't eat out a lot so it was a nice treat. The bill came to just about £44. Dh paid cash and gave the waitress 3 x £20's so £60. She took it off and we got ready to leave while waiting for her to come back with our change. However she never came back and we had to flag down another waiter who went to check and then out waitress came over, my husband then asked about his change and she said "oh so do you want your change?" My husband said yes of course and so she went off to get it and brought the £16 ish back to us dumped it on the table and walked off. We had been planning to leave her a £5 tip but due to how presumptuous she was Dh didn't leave anything.

Isn't it a bit rude to expect to keep all the change in this instance? I have heard that tipping expectations are increasing so that where 10% was once seen as a good tip it is now seen as bare minimum and I saw that some places are adding in other charges like a "branding charge" ( I don't know what that is) which is in addition to any tips or service charges.

Perhaps they thought we were being a bit stingy in our ordering as we only ordered one soft drink each and then a starter and a main but we didn't sit for ages hogging a table we were in and out within an hour.

We did go to a noodle place last year where they added a 15% service charge even though service was actually very limited, it wasn't bad as such but it was very basic. I understand that hospitality struggles but I'd prefer if tipping either wasn't a thing at all and places just charged enough to cover their costs and a fair wage for their staff and then I could see before booking if I could afford to eat there or not. Either that or keep tipping to the 10% it has always been.

Did she maybe see you getting ready to leave and so assumed for that reason you weren’t waiting for change?

I think if you’re both standing up, putting coats on, fiddling with car keys etc (assuming this is what you were doing as you say you “got ready to leave while waiting”) after handing over cash then it’s a pretty fair assumption that you’re leaving without wanting change. I also think if you’re just handing over cash and were planning on a £5 tip then most people would have said something along the lines of “just £10 back please”, so she would have known that of the £16 change £6 was tip?

Edit to add- I didn’t think tips were ever typically 10%, I was always taught 15-20

I definitely don't think they should have expected you'd want to leave a £16 tip!

Jeez 😱😱

@Mrsttcno1 Well we sat back down after we got ready and she would have seen us still sitting at our table as she was still on the floor, it also doesn't change the fact that it is presumptuous to expect to keep £16 change.

Also I don't know where you are from but tips are typically 10% in the UK.

Exactly!

Well I think £44 for a quick lunch for two is quite a lot and I'm not sure what the person bringing the food is actually doing that deserves a tip when they're slow to bring your change like that.

After all, there's a lot of jobs that pay the same as restaurant work that doesn't attract any tips at all, eg care work.

She presumably did have other tables though, so I can see where if she got to the till and looked over to see you both stood up, coats on, car keys in hand, then she’d have assumed you were leaving.

I’m from Newcastle and have always been told 15-20 and when I worked in a restaurant while at uni that was typical so maybe it just depends.

That’s ridiculous and rude. As I understand it, they should bring back your full change first, and then you leave what you want to tip.

I don’t tip anyone anything in the UK, and tips being added to my bill really pisses me off. Like Gordon Ramsay’s burger place where I still had to go and get my own drink from a drinks machine.

In that scenario I would have said 'round the bill up to (insert amount)' or even simpler 'just bring us (insert amount) back'.
As it is I no longer tip, servers in the UK actually get a decent wage.

Tips were rarely 15-20% in the UK, 10% or therabouts is more common.

I don't tip at all. I gave it up long ago. Nobody tips me for doing my job.

£16 would be over 35% of a £44 bill though.

I've always felt that 10% is fairly standard.

In London yes, its now more common to get 15% service added to the bill. Outside London I'd say there is less expectation of tips now most people use a card to pay.

Expecting to keep £16 on a £44 meal is just being a CF.

The barefaced cheek of her!

I'm finding where places have a service charge the staff make next to no effort now so I always ask for it to be removed. We pay a living wage, it's incredibly expensive to eat out, and a tip needs to be earned for good service, not expected.

I don’t regularly tip full stop .

Hospitality staff are on NMW , like many , many other people , retail, care, TA’s beauty ..

I generally tip 10% as it's simple to calculate, but tips in the UK were traditionaly absolutely optional and generally rounded up to the nearest 10 if anything (obviously your idea of "traditional" will depend on age).

Even in the US when I was waiting tables years ago it was 10% at lunchtime, 20% in the evening.

Whatever, it's NEVER acceptable to assume a tip and change should always be brought unless you explicitly say.

Yes, but is that because you're a Traffic Warden? 😂

I rarely tip, maybe like 3-5£ at the most, in table service restaurants and taxis, but that is only if they’ve been polite/good service sort of thing.

i don’t tip anyone else.

USA and Canada we’d tip maybe 13-18% depending on service, if the service wasn’t good they’d get a $1 at most.

i certainly wouldn’t be happy with them taking 16£, especially if I’d only spent 44£. I’m not even sure I’d particularly give 16£ if I’d spent 150-200£, unless it was particularly fantastic, but to be fair I wouldn’t be spending 150+ on a meal anyway.

We usually tip around 10 pct, sometimes rounding it up a little if the service was very good. But more and more places now add a service charge, generally 10 pct again, to the bills on the understanding that this goes to all the staff, which is fine by us.
In central London I've noticed that in more expensive, fine dining places the service charge can be 12-1/2 to even 15 percent sometimes. A bit steep for DH!

(You can always ask them to take it off if you're unhappy.)
But to try to keep £16 as a tip for a £44 bill is defintely over the top. I think I'd complain about that.

Ha if there was ever a thankless task it's that one!

£16 tip was very presumptuous of her so YANBU

I'm not in London but it was a nicer than average place but we were also not drinking alcohol so we just ate our meal and left to go to the cinema.

Thanks everyone, I do feel that we were right to be a bit miffed at her expectation to keep all the change and that it does seem like tip expectations are creeping up. I'm not opposed to tipping or for servers getting a higher wage (I understand it can be a tough job) and prices increasing to cover that, as that would be fairer on the customer as well if we didn't have to tip on top of that. Everything would be up front and transparent.

The thing is I worked a tough job when I was younger for minimum wage, you were on your feet all day in hot conditions and had to be "on" constantly to avoid mistakes and I did it for £5 an hour no tips. While she seemed to expect to make probably more than her hourly rate in a single tip. I suppose she may share tips with kitchen staff which would bring that down but I still think just charge what it costs to pay your staff well enough to live and then let customers decide for themselves if they can afford to pay that and if the food and experience is worth it to them.

She completely took the piss

She was obviously a grifter. The expectation of tipping puts me off a lot of things to be honest. The etiquette of this stuff stresses me out.

Paying in cash is a faff these days though. She'd have had to bring your cash back only for you to leave some of it. How is she going to know what sort of change to give to you. Much better to say eg "just £4 change please keep the rest as a tip"

It isn't a faff at all just bring back the full change in the little folder things they use and then DH would have taken the £10 and probably left her the rest. Instead she got nothing.

Its never been an issue until now and nobody has ever made such a presumption before. And none of that you say is an excuse for her imagining she could just keep all the £16 change.