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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

About eating out and tipping

525 replies

Normalisavariantofcrazy · 17/01/2014 20:25

I've just endured a meal with the inlaws and fil insisted on rounding the bill up - not to the nearest £10 but to the nearest £20 before splitting it out evenly between us all.

The meal was a set price the only thing that varied it was the drinks.

DH and I only had enough money for our share of the bill (tight month) and yet FIL would not accept this and nearly started a row saying we should pay the extra as it was for a tip, the service was shit tbh and didn't deserve one.

AIBU to be angry with FIL for insisting we spend more money than we had budgeted for a)because he got pissed as a fart and most of the bill was his drinks and b) for him rounding it up without asking

How do you deal with group meals and splitting the bill? This has really upset me as I'm now utterly skint

OP posts:
MrsKoala · 17/01/2014 22:32

When i lived in Canada i once got asked by a group of Canadians, why British people were such mean tippers. I tried to defend it by saying that in the UK wait staff got NMW so people felt they didn't need or deserve the tip for just doing their job. They then said 'oh but your NMW must be very good then...' I told them what it was and they were even more disgusted that people wouldn't tip someone earning that little. Then i pointed out that a lot of the people who were dining also earned NMW, as do a lot of people in the UK. I swear they nearly got up a whip round for me. They looked so shocked we could live on that (which of course we don't we often need top up help). However, they saw it as no excuse. You either tip or you don't eat out.

LaGuardia · 17/01/2014 22:33

Why should we tip anyone anyway? I am a nurse and no-one bloody tips me after I spend a month making them better. MIL is mortified that I went to her hairdresser for a trim and never tipped, but it was the owner who cut my hair, and she is a lot richer than me. Good cut, I paid the listed price, I left. The very notion of tipping is complete bollox and should be outlawed immediately.

Wibblypiglikesbananas · 17/01/2014 22:33

I'm British but live in the US.

In the UK, I tip in restaurants if the service is good. I tipped my hairdresser. I think that's pretty standard.

Here, it's pretty much compulsory to tip for everything. Well, no one can make you, but you will be met with genuine shock and incredulity if you don't. People are most insulted if you don't tip, even for shitty service, and will run out of restaurants to ask why you haven't tipped if you don't (I've seen it happen).

If you need help, my diary conveniently has a list of suggested tipping amounts, much like the list of national holidays... I have to say, I find tipping for a service you've already paid for odd. My neighbour tips the dustbin men every Xmas, for example, despite paying taxes. I'd argue that that was what taxes are for.

Anyway, OP, I don't think YABU. (Unless you are secretly here in the US!)

Andro · 17/01/2014 22:34

If the service was really bad then YANBU, if it wasn't really that bad then...hmmm.

YANBU about your FiL though.

I do not tip for sloppy service, if the service is so bad that I refuse to tip I will also speak to the manager or Maitre'd - a thankfully rare occurrence! Where service is excellent I tip generously; I know I often cause the waiter/waitress a fair amount of extra work, so if they manage to keep a smile on their face (and any comments about me being a pain in the neck out of my hearing) I think it ought to be rewarded.

RufusTheReindeer · 17/01/2014 22:38

I don't think you can take one countries tipping habits and transfer it to another

Americans have a reputation abroad for being very generous, which is great in their country and most others but can backfire in other countries such as India

I read an article a few months ago saying that very generous Americans,and Canadians obviously, were giving huge tips to wait staff or porters and that was causing a lot of bad feeling. Some guides for example were earning more in a day than a doctor would earn for a month in the same country

hmc · 17/01/2014 22:41

I tip 95% of the time in restaurants - I don't tip for bad service but find that 95% of the time we get good service....and this is in an eclectic range of places certainly not upscale.

NearTheWindmill · 17/01/2014 22:41

I think you and FIL have been unreasonable. Him for drinking so much and insisting the bill was split and you for refusing to tip.

If you were that skint you shouldn't have gone out. But oth and DH and I are in our 50s with older teenagers, if we went out with the DC when they were grown up and knew things were tight for them there's no way we would ask them to pay a bean. We just wouldn't - and if they could afford it and made a fuss about a tip we would foot the bill and bitch about the lack of graciousness later between the two of us

lollerskates · 17/01/2014 22:41

How many people on this thread are aware that NMW for food service staff in the UK only became law a few years ago?

I had a waitressing job in 2008 that paid £2.50 per hour and it was entirely legal.

GinOnTwoWheels · 17/01/2014 22:41

Waiting staff get paid at least minimum wage, and get a similar amount to shop assistants, teaching assistants, care workers, cleaners and lots of other low paid workers.

All these other workers work at least as hard as waiting staff, and yet they do not receive tips. What do waiting staff do that makes them deserve tips?

If you look at the number of tables they look after over a shift, if everyone tipped even 10%, then they would get a huge amount over a shift, and most of the time I don't think service is that great in the UK TBH.

They pounce on you demanding your order within seconds of seating you, if you are not ready they don't come back for ages, they ask how your meal is when you have barely had a chance to try your food and get all flustered if you express a negative comment as they clearly have no idea what to do and then when you do want the bill it takes ages to get them to produce it.

SaucyJack · 17/01/2014 22:42

I don't tip. I didn't get paid extra for doing my poorly paid (and much more challenging) job, so quite why I should give other people extra money for carrying plates of food around is beyond me.

WilsonFrickett · 17/01/2014 22:43

The reason the thread has veered into a discussion about tipping is you didn't take out enought money with you to tip. You never intended to tip. Your fil was, granted, a dick about rounding stuff up, but basically your waiter could have crawled over broken glass for you tonight and you wouldn't have tipped, and you are cross that your FIL somehow managed to extract 'extra' cash from you despite your best efforts. Poor form.

Wibblypiglikesbananas · 17/01/2014 22:49

But it is actually the norm to tip in India. It's more of an issue in countries like China/Vietnam, where tips are often refused!

At the last company I worked for (large blue chip), the USA and India were the only countries you could claim back tips for on expenses.

ilovesooty · 17/01/2014 22:50

YANBU about your FIL.

However, I'm shocked by your attitude to tipping restaurant staff too.

TBH, I'd be embarrassed to eat out with anyone who was rude enough to not tip good service

Absolutely. The last time I went out with my sister and her family I bought the first round of drinks for me and 3 of them. A reciprocal round was not offered. At the end of the meal my sister and BIL were hunting through purse and pockets for the small change to make up the total. When I mentioned a tip my sister launched into a tirade about no one tipping her to do her job (within earshot of the lovely attentive staff). I was mortified and paid the tip for all four of us myself.

Her attitude to money is so mean it crops up in other areas now and I fear it might result in total relationship breakdown between us eventually.

lollerskates · 17/01/2014 22:50

How many people on this thread are aware that NMW for food service staff in the UK only became law a few years ago?

lollerskates · 17/01/2014 22:52

What do waiting staff do that makes them deserve tips?

Put up with rude cunts, mainly.

And advocate between stupid, rude, demanding customers and angry, tired, overworked, underpaid chefs.

lilyaldrin · 17/01/2014 22:54

Not quite lollerskates - NMW became law (for everyone) in 1999. However, until 2009 some restaurants used tip money to top-up staff wages to NMW level. Employees still legally had to be paid at least NMW though.

nickymanchester · 17/01/2014 22:55

OddFodd

We tip in the UK. It's 12.5%. Budget for it if you're eating out

What absolute rubbish. I'm sure your comment is just a wind up to get a reaction from people. Your comment does sound typical of something that a person from the USA would make.

Definitely YANBU

This whole idea of ''if you can't afford the tip then don't go'' is a VERY American attitude that is much more rooted in the very low pay - below minimum wage - that some restaurant workers in the USA receive. This does not apply in this country.

In this country, a tip is something that you give to show that you appreciate particularly good service - nothing else.

BTW ''discretionary tip'' means exactly what it says - discretionary. I have refused to pay these ''discretionary'' tips in a number of restaurants where the service has not been up to standard.

ilovesooty · 17/01/2014 22:55

I doubt if many waiting staff have much job security either. They work unsocial hours and I wouldn't be surprised to discover a lot on zero hour contracts.

lilyaldrin · 17/01/2014 22:56

Tips should be a nice, discretionary extra imo.

Who tips dinner ladies? Care assistants? I don't see the argument that waiting staff do a particularly difficult or valuable job or that restaurants shouldn't feel obliged to pay well.

GinOnTwoWheels · 17/01/2014 22:59

I'm sure that most people are not rude to waiting staff and those that are are probably equally rude to shop assistants.

I simply cannot see what waiting staff do that makes them a special case.

NearTheWindmill · 17/01/2014 23:01

I loved my stint of waitressing - moons and moon ago when I got paid £1 an hour and it was my responsibility to provide really good service and maximise my tips. I'd work from 7pm to 12 and rarely took home less than £25.00 - we're going back 35 years. It was bloody hard work though - and those were the day when a "Cafe Rouge/Carluccios" equivalent meant that dinner for two with wine and drinks rarely came to more than about twelve quid. But I had eight tables and it added up and the people who really looked after me got really well looked after when they came back. You know, that little word with the kitchen for the good end of the sirloin, and for fiver tippers funny how one's hand could slip on the optic if they asked for a brandy (and no that wouldn't be found out when the barman had a drinks problem and was fiddling any way). And you know those miserable bastards - well sometimes their glass of red came out of the left over dregs saved up for a marinade.

ilovesooty · 17/01/2014 23:02

I don't like the discretionary service charge appearing on the bill but I would choose to tip good service.

And there are a good few on this thread who sound just like my sister.

picnicbasketcase · 17/01/2014 23:03

I leave a tip if the service has been fine, more if it has been very good. I agree with the post above about where one would leave a tip - yes to restaurants, not usually in cafes or other places where you order at the counter. I've never tipped a takeaway delivery person, hairdresser, binmen, postmen etc though.

Andro · 17/01/2014 23:07

What do waiting staff do that makes them deserve tips?

Check almost every item of food I'd like to order, with the chef, to ensure that I'm not going have a serious allergic reaction.

Take meals back - on some occasions multiple times - when the offending allergen is present.

Act as the interface between me and the chef (some of whom would likely throttle me if they got near me).

One particularly good waitress managed all this as well as coordinating food and drinks for a table of 12.

She earned her tip - we just about ran her off her feet and she didn't make a single error all night, she was also just as cheerful and polite as we were leaving as she was when she introduced herself.

MrsKoala · 17/01/2014 23:08

I simply cannot see what loads of well paid employees do that makes them more deserving than other jobs. But our society has decided some things for us. I think to fight the trend doesn't make you look like some free thinking maverick, it makes you either look completely unaware of societal norms or mean.