tipping the waitress

[mummysmummy]

I have a friend that I sometimes meet for coffee or lunch. she rarely tips and when she does its miserly. I feel so embarrassed about this, I make up for it by making up the tip to an acceptable amount and sometimes secretly giving all of it. AIBU to think that tipping, particularly for staff who are low paid, it a good thing to-do.
maybe i should manup about this and tell her not to be such a skinflint

user, really? Now just imagine applying that to nursing staff, carers and other essential professions who are on NMW.

I'd happily give up eating out if the service became crap. The restaurants though would find other people to do the waiting service - or fail themselves.

Tipping should be for excellence, not merely doing a not-too-difficult job.

May I ask what jobs are comparable?

there are many where people spend plenty of time with the customer. But why does that even matter?

I'll start with nursing. Poorly paid (for the work), incredibly difficult and you spend tons of time with people.

I do tip. But...as a waitress in a couple of places over the years I only saw a portion of my tips. In one place my boss kept all tips and gave us an extra quid or two at xmas. Other place tips were shared equally between floor and kitchen staff dependent on hours worked. So I never got my whole tippage.

I tip if the service has been very good or if I'm in another country where I don't know what their minimum wage or tipping customs are like. I don't tip if the service has been great but a service charge has already been added.

Likewise if the service has been dreadful I ask for the service charge to be removed. Call me tight for that one, having already paid the restaurant the will be paying their wage, why would I pay extra for bad service?

User : "May I ask what jobs are comparable? I'm sure there are some but I can't think of any off hand. What makes them less comparable is that in waiting - you are generally with the customer for a longish period of time, not many other CS jobs are like that."

Midwifery?

Sometimes the FOTB will bung the staff a few extra quid if they've been outstanding

No it wasn't a "what happens at weddings" type of question, it was specifically to those who are insisting that wait staff in restaurants should be tipped, do you also tip wait staff at functions and weddings? Or do you check if the FOTB has first

I never tip in the UK for brunch/quick lunch/coffee etc. If I'm paying cash, I might round it up to the nearest pound. If it's a 3 course meal and I've had really great service, then I will probably tip.

I hated it in Singapore where a 10% service charge was automatically included. Because it was such a widespread practice, no one ever argued against it, people even believed it was mandatory. This has led to the absolute worst customer service across Singapore in general.

Now I live in SA, I always tip, even for coffee/cake because I feel that it actually means more to the service staff. I can't recall bad service I've had here either.

Have you ever taken a food order for 8 people, with 3 courses, different drinks and then delivered the correct order to the correct people after you've carted it back from the kitchen?

Is this a joke? That's pretty standard for waitressing. And yes, having to serve more than one table, and yes remember the specials, and yes get all the drinks right, and yes, take special requests to the chef (who will bite your fucking head off) and yes be a cloud of air that the chef and sous chef can walk through while you relay orders and take dishes out to customers and then return and dump beside the porter in a tiny kitchen. That's a Tuesday evening. Nothing special about that.

From my own experience, waiting staff really, really like having their bosses made aware of excellent service. I've done that a few times, e-mailed their managers and really spelt it out what a difference that service has made to me and how valuable I think that member of staff is.

Valuing somebody, seeing them as more than a faceless person delivering your product, is what really counts. Far more than leaving a few pounds on the table.

I'm just trying to think of the cash tips that I've given that are 'remarkable' in that they were unexpected and were genuinely received with delight...

• One was my fab hairdresser who has left to travel - she had £30 which was all the cash I had.
• Incredible member of staff who stuck out like a sore thumb at a Brewers Fayre - did his job but with such panache - £20 at the end of a week's stay. We stayed at that location last week and his absence was really noticeable. I hope he's got the job of his dreams somewhere because he totally deserves it and was wasted at Brewer's Fayre.
• Fab postman who used to hide parcels and leave comprehensive notes about where they were - £30 when his baby was born.

I really think that we're ok with mediocre/acceptable service - I am too, it's satisfactory - but it's not excellent and shouldn't be rewarded as if it were because it just endorses not striving for better.

Wow I just RTFT and can't believe some of the comments!

However, it's still more skillful than advising someone on what kind of lip gloss to buy.

User, I think the ladies on the MAC counters (etc.) would disagree. They need to understand things about skin tones, textures, etc. They need to know how to apply the makeup to customers that want to test it out and then teach them to do it for themselves. They often have people pretending they're interested in a product just to have their makeup done for free and then buggering off.

in fact, may restaurants wouldn't be able to find enough staff to be able to run the place.

STOP!! You're cracking me up!!

My DP and I always leave a 10% tip if we received table service and thought it was good.
At Christmas, we will leave a tenner for the bin men and postman as they each go out of the way to leave parcels in safe place and empty our bins even if I have not technically put them to the curb.
I think it is nice to tip people who provide you with a service that is better than you could necessarily expect, but in the UK no one should expect it or feel they have to.

I don't think waiting staff necessarily work any harder than cleaners etc but there is,a tipping culture in the UK for waiting staff, hairdressers etc. Not tipping is basically saying the service hasn't been up to scratch.

We have a restaurant we go to a lot and we do tip generously but they treat us very well so we benefit from it.

My husband will tip people far too generously for a mediocre service. It's nice that he is generous but I wasn't happy when he was tipsy and gave a bartender a tenner for bringing our food over

I tip my hairdresser, taxi drivers, food delivery people and wait staff but I mostly do that just because I feel awkward when I don't tip, even if I really don't want to.

user1470043860s

service jobs that are comparably paid to a waiter and I would imagine you spend more time one to one with-
taxi driver
-hairdresser
-beautician
-1-to-1 TA/carer for child with additional needs
-carer at nursing home or at home care provider
-customer service advisor at a bank/utilities provider - e.g. i spent over an hour setting up my new eon account. And they get a lot of abuse

• sales assistant at somewhere like a jewellery shop (e.g for things like wedding rings often spent at least an hour with individual customers - and no we didn't get commission!)

-healthcare assistants

just a few off the top of my head....

Again, I've waitressed (in both 'exclusive' restaurants and pubs) and I've done shop work. One isn't better or more skilled than the other.

Fuck me there are some miserable bastards in the world

Miserable because of not tipping or miserable because of the general tone of the thread emily?

I tip, but don't like doing so. I'd rather pay more for the price of the meal and not tip to be honest. I like to know what I'm paying for and not feel obliged to pay more.

On holiday in Jamaica, I was at an all inclusive hotel which we were paying a lot of money for, and it was expected that you'd tip at every meal even breakfast which was self service (with coffee/tea to table), bar staff, bell boy etc. Everyone. I later found out that the staff were all on bare bare minimum wage, something horrendous like the equivalent of 50p/hour, and made enough money to live on through the tips. It really annoyed me that the hotel were basically getting guests to pay the wages of the staff in this way, whilst creaming all the money off for themselves from what we'd paid to actually stay there which was around £200/night.

It was an american owned hotel, american guests. Its normal for them though.

www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/aug/23/restaurant-tipping-policy-forces-waiters-to-pay-to-work

This is why I always tip, it's not limited to these chains that front of house have to pay 3% of the sales they make. If we don't tip, it's coming out of their wages

www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/campaign-to-end-tipping-and-pay-waiting-staff-a-living-wage-gathers-pace-10488787.html

I think we need this. Proper wages paid to staff and no tipping.

100% agree. It's shit that people in service jobs on minimum wage are expected to tip people in service jobs on minimum wage because they're more "worthy".

I've worked an NHS reception on minimum wage and that's fucking hard!

Maybe there should be a list of restaurants that pay proper wages to their staff - and we could patronise those instead.

Let the customers-pay-the-wages-through-tips places fall by the wayside. It's not the way we should be doing things AT ALL.

One thing I could never understand is why the tip is linked to the value of the meal? How does the the waiter work harder bringing me a £30 lobster than a £10 pizza?

I do tip for coffee if the server has been nice, spoke to me, pretended to laugh at my jokes etc. You don't always get that, so to keep people jolly why not tip them a quid.

However the tipping in the US is a piece of shit. I had a taxi cab driver start shouting at me because I refused to tip him - he had driven us around aimlessly for 20 minutes, then pulled over at the roadside and said "just get out here, I don't know where the place you want to go is". We were further away from our destination than when we started! And he wanted a tip on top of the already undeserved fare! Same when someone got my order wrong as they were chatting to a co-worker, huffed about changing it and then wanted extra money for doing a shit job.