Asking to take the service charge off

[BridgertonToBe]

I have a friend who has a real bug bear about restaurants/eateries automatically adding the service charge on to the bill. She will always ask them to take it off.

While I can see her point, I would feel too awkward and embarrassed to ask this myself. I went out with her a few weeks ago and she asked them to remove it and they brought the manager out to ask her why she didn’t want to pay it and what the problem is.

I now want to avoid going anywhere with her that adds this charge as I find it embarrassing. She can’t see what the problem is. Is she right?

I always ask for the service charge to be removed from the bill because I want to be sure the waiter/waitress who has served us gets the money, and always leave a cash tip. But I don't think I would want to go out to a restaurant with anyone who is too tight to leave a tip.

Jeez who carries cash for tips these days?

I pay the service charge but never tip - tippping is really outmoded and feudal.
‘Service’ should just be part of the fee charged by the restaurant for proving the food to you.

This

Optional...
No way it is.

We have minimum wage in the uk so tipping should not be a thing. Why tip hairdressers and wait staff and not your postman, bus driver or checkout operator? It makes no sense and just ups the ante for everyone.

Adding it to the bill as standard is underhand practice and I wish they’d ban it to protect consumers from it on the basis that it’s coercive extortion. Your friend is right but your embarrassment is a common reaction which is why they get away it.

I also hate it being there automatically, but generally feel to awkward to ask for it to be removed - which I guess they count on. I can’t believe they got the manager to come out to query why you weren’t paying an optional charge!

The 12.5% particularly annoys me. I feel like it’s carefully chosen to be more than the 10% that I imagine the majority of people who tip would choose to tip, but not so high that more people ask for it to be removed, which might happen if it was >15%.

I worked in hospitality as a student and really appreciated it when people left a tip. It made me feel appreciated and I felt as if I was doing a good job.

Unfortunately, this is the reality for virtually all jobs nowadays, so serving in a restaurant is one of the rare privileged exceptions.

If you clean toilets for a living, you can spend all day scrubbing skiddy bogs and you won't get a penny in tips; you get your (probably minimum) wage and, hopefully, people won't complain if they think you haven't done your job well, to the extent that you lose that job.

I had a relative like this - no meal out was complete unless she had made a massive scene about the service charge, which always escalated into a contemptful nitpicking public critique of the food and service.

It was the highlight of the outing for her. She painted herself as some sort of altruistic crusader for integrity and excellence in the hospitality industry. Whereas really she thrived on feeling indignant and loved nothing more than humiliating waitstaff and making people grovel to her. She was excessively pleased with herself when she managed to badger restaurant managers into refunding her meal or offering her vouchers.

She was dreadful in a million other ways, too.

I expect the service and the whole experience to be noticeably good if I leave a tip these days. The high minimum wage means hospitality staff are paid well enough and the tip is not needed so much.

I have no qualms asking for the automatic charge to be taken off. Having said that, mostly I find service and my experience of eating out is good and I will leave the charge on.

Quite likely cash tips get pooled too.

I would prefer to tip young people who are not being paid the adult minimum wage - they work in a huge range of industries and carry out the same duties, often with more experience than new adults to the role.

Yes, I know businesses wouldn't bother employing them unless they are there to be exploited.

Tipping adults who already get full minimum wage - only if they have done something worthy of it.

There is no obligation to tip for any service of any kind in the UK. I find this encroaching discretionary service charge on restaurant bills really annoying, and ask for it to be removed. If service is OK or better I do sometimes tip, but will happily not tip.
We were forgotten in a restaurant a few months ago, and had to ask where our meals were.
At the end of the meal, the waitress informed us she would knock off the service charge from the bill as we had to wait. She seemed a little surprised when I laughed as I think she genuinely thought she was doing a good thing for us.

Yes that’s possible, but I think there’s more chance of the money going to the staff if it’s cash than not being passed on by the owner.

It's extremely insulting to assume that all waiters and waitresses will do a bad, careless job by default - meaning that, if they do do a good job, you should give them extra money, as if they were performing seals being thrown a fish or toddlers being given a gold star for managing to remember to brush their teeth before bedtime.

Why on earth wouldn't the expectation be that they would do their job well as standard - and thus fully earn their wages, like anybody else doing their job properly and with pride does?

Why not? They have charged her for what should come with the meal anyway?

Yes, absolutely. I know it does in the majority of decent venues. It is illegal to not do so.

She’s absolutely right to insist they take it off!! I will decide for myself whether the service deserves a tip…cheeky bastards! I tend not to tip anymore anyway, as I’m of the opinion that this simply reinforces poor wages. If we all stopped tipping, employers would (maybe/hopefully!!) be forced to pay a decent wage. But if not…then that’s still not my problem (or my job) to rectify.

@Sgtmajormummy

Do you people REALLY think the service charge gets split among the staff?? 🙄

Yes, I know it does (in some places anyway)

My son works in a kitchen and always gets his share of the tips which I think is great as the chefs are often the ones doing the legwork when it's ridiculously busy.