10% gratuity added to bill

[Byz]

AIBU to be annoyed by a 10% gratuity charge being automatically added to my bill at a restaurant?

Seafood restaurant in the North East, a little town, not a city.

For four of us our bill came to about £230 and a £23 tip was automatically added to the bill. It did state at the bottom of the menu an optional charge would be added but they didn't ask me before actually adding it.
When the waitress brought the bill over she reminded us about the gratuity and said she would remove it if we prefer but I think I should have been asked if I wanted it adding in the first place. It was quite embarrassing to ask for it to be removed. She was polite about it but did seem a bit surprised.

Food was good, service was good and I would have left £10 but it soured the evening a bit so I left nothing. I don't think tips should be expected in this country.

Standard to tip 10% and it not like the server made that system up herself about it being automatically added to the bill. Bad form OP.

Wow you sound bloody awful. I take it you've never worked hospitality?

Waitress pay is poor, and hours unsociable. The job is hard on the body, hard on emotional energy.

If we can't get FOH because of miserable, miserly, entitled people like you there will be no bloody restaurants.

I bet your friends were bloody embarrassed by you as well.

Do you mind if I humbly add to that? it's not me it's my 94-year-old mother in law originally from Easington, Co Durham, proving it's bollocks that people from the North East have never heard of tipping.

She had a variety of jobs in hospitality culminating in the 1960s/70s in a pub/restaurant with rooms with her husband where she did the cooking, her husband did front of house, head waitering and manned the bar and their equally hardworking staff did the waiting/cleaning/general skivvying for people who came to their seaside town.

I realise I am making it sound like Fawlty Towers but I know her so it wasn't.

She said many guests were lovely but there were a not inconsiderable number who were fucking tight cunts who'd want you to do a tap dance, quibble about fair bills and steal the towels. I hope I am interpreting her words correctly, I'm from the South East and her accent is so hard to decipher sometimes.

Not surprisingly she retrained as a physiotherapist where it wasn't appropriate to accept tips but where clients generally respected her more and didn't expect her to be grateful for their dubious custom.

She also says she's ecstatic her two children never went into hospitality but have still managed to learn how to tip.

I find it hard to believe you've not encountered this beforend 10% isn't very much.

I can see this country becoming more americanised despite the fact tips are becoming more and more toxic over there. Service costs are built into the prices in our restaurants so why should the customer effectively pay double? £23 tip is more than the minimum wage by a lot and I'm not sure the act of bringing out a plate really deserves that much? On top of a set hourly wage? And then add in other tables too and you have an exceedingly good wage for a low skill job (in general).
I am happy to tip when I think the service has been really above and beyond but mandatory tipping (pfft optional) really gets my goat.
Everyone says "but you get great service in America!". No, you get fake service and a whole load of actors who act like they are your best friend and then turn on you and bitch about you when you leave 15% instead of 20%.
I'd rather a real person come ask me what I want, then go get it when it's ready as per their job, and not bug me all the time so it appears that they are providing good service.
I also hate the way it was introduced to keep control over black and poor people in America. Don't pay them to work for you but make them pretend to be happy and love it to earn a living. It shouldn't have a place in modern society, and the fact we are starting to emulate this from a country with next to no workers rights and where they're all brainwashed so the customer is blamed for not paying you rather than the actual employer is disturbing. So yanbu. You had to face the embarrassment of saying no, which they know most people will just say yes because its embarrassing and they get away with paying their staff minimal amounts and controlling hours because the customer is the one that takes the fall for paying or not paying tips and the restaurant gets away with it.
And wearing your hair in pig tails gets you more in tips. Gross. Says a lot.

I get so annoyed when customers are the ones penalised for questioning tips when low wages and insecure work are the biggest problem facing service staff and that is an employers responsibility. Customers pay for the food, drinks and those prices ought to be enough for owners to to also cover wages of staff, if it doesn’t then their business model is failing.

I absolutely agree with you there.

Of course, I would never advocate being rude to the serving staff or blaming them for the policies of their employers that they're forced to be the public face of.

However, I'd love some of the people on this thread who are calling people 'tight' - even those of us who would be very happy to pay the full price that the business is wanting/expecting, but would just like to be given an inclusive price upfront - to explain exactly WHY they believe a tipping culture is a good thing in restaurants, when it isn't in almost all other NMW jobs. Not just to shout "Because it's tradition/customary" - because we have loads of traditions that haven't been maintained in modern times.

The tradition stems from putting the different classes in their place and forcing the working classes to rely on the arbitrary charity of the wealthy. NMW, although not amazing, was brought in specifically to entitle people to be paid a baseline amount and not to have to rely on altruism or charity for a living.

Anybody who has ever said "Why does XXX even have to be a charity and rely on public donations to do XXX essential work when it should be centrally funded by the government?" but who nevertheless actively wants to preserve the custom of tipping - not just as an occasional possibility for somebody to show gratitude for outstanding service but following the '10/15/20% is the accepted norm' line - I would ask how they square that manner of thinking.

If you want to campaign for a higher NMW across the board - or even just for restaurant staff, if they are your primary concern - then by all means go for it; but why is somebody a 'tightwad' for even questioning why they should have to pay the stated price of something and then be expected to pay another price on top of it in a restaurant?

Nobody says that if you only have £50 available, then you 'can't afford' £50-worth of shopping from Tesco, because you should somehow expect something priced at £50 to cost you £55 or £60.

I usually tip when I go to a restaurant, as I realise that it's customary, but I do not like this custom in the least. It's awkward and condescending if you do it, but because it's so ingrained, sends ambiguous messages if you don't. I am NOT looking to pay less, but I would really love it if restaurants would raise their prices accordingly and then make it abundantly clear that the stated price is an all-in price and is the total of what you pay - so you should settle your bill as given and pay not a penny more. Most other businesses can manage to do this - even other service/hospitality-based ones such as pubs and hotels - so why do we cling to this archaic, patronising, anti-egalitarian practice for restaurants?

It's not american thing to tip. Many countries tip! It's historically tied to the trade

There is actually a theory that it came from England in 17th century😂

Exactly! Tightness is not an attractive quality

I find it hard to believe you've not encountered this beforend 10% isn't very much.

So you wouldn't object if your council tax went up by 10%? You don't complain when petrol goes up 10%? Don't mind if (when) your supermarket shop goes up 10%?

I think the whole percentage-based thing makes it even worse, really, as it bears no relation at all to the service you've received. It isn't as simple as '10% isn't very much': 10% of 10p is very little but 10% of £1m is a huge amount.

And people keep referring to the waitress being on NMW. But we have no idea how much the OP earns either. Maybe she and her party are on NMW and saved up for this meal for ages. Why should one low paid worker feel obliged to tip another?

This, exactly. In fact, because of tipping, the waitress may well be getting more than another worker on paper with a similarly low wage. I've had a number of people tell me that when they worked restaurant jobs, the wages were just going into their bank account and they were actually living off the tips. That's nice for them, but the restaurant workers aren't /owed/ what's essentially a second wage or more for doing their jobs. In most jobs, we're not regularly paid well more over our official wages (sometimes there are bonuses, but I don't think that's really equivalent to tips day in day out).

OP, it is quite clear there is no way she could have 'earned' the 10%.

In your first post you said service was good, only criticism was the service charge, then later on you criticize her for doing the 'fancy shaking thing,' that is required to properly mix the cocktails you ordered, now you say the service was poor. It sounds like your character is poor and instead of taking the criticism you have received you are making excuses.

You did not have to tip, it was clear it was optional, but in the majority of good restaurants, it's common practice. You need to get used to asking for the tip to be removed without getting embarrassed or offended and certainly without taking it out on the waiting staff.

Can I ask those that tip do you in macdonalds? I mean they do bring it to your table. I'm a cleaner on nmw looking forward to all my tips off the parents for working hard cleaning the school their dc mess up daily.

Ask the individual who gives you the bill. Some restaurants it goes to management, some it goes to staff.
The waiters answer determines if I leave it on the bill or do cash.

I eat out every couple of weeks and the service is nearly always added at the end and presented with the bill. You have to ask for it to be deducted and then they bring the new bill. I think they do it in the hope that the awkwardness means everyone will just pay it regardless…

Very occasionally, they ask if everything was alright before bringing the bill which is a discrete way if checking if you’d be happy to pay the tip.

i have noticed that it’s usually cheaper restaurants, cafes etc where the bill has no tip added at all and they offer you the option to add a gratuity when they present the card reader or you leave some coins in the coin dish as you leave. Other places seem to take it as a given.

I used to be a waitress..tips were split between staff and hours worked, ended up.with around £13 a month (20 years ago) which was nice, but never expected as I had my wage.
I will give tips as feel I have to. However, I really can't understand why we do this (as not America, although a fair wage should be paid there), when there are those in equally or more demanding jobs for little money (care for example) who don't get these perks.
I'd love to get my head around why we do this

In USA it’s totally different as minimum wage doesn’t apply to servers

Actually it does, though it's a state's rights thing and some mandate more than others
No doubt some scumbag employers try to avoid even that, but then it becomes something for the employee to take up with them, since diners don't generally go out to interfere in someone else's contract of employment any more than they would with someone else

For those saying 'restaurants should just increase their prices', do you think the staff doing the ground work would see any of that? Increased profits go to the business.

So to summarize:

Service charge often doesn't even go to the waiting staff, but it is tight and harms them to remove it.

It is expected to add extra when things are satisfactory (=for bog standard good service), but the poor staff isn't responsible for majority of potential issues (waiting times, kitchen, billing system), so it isn't nice to deduct in case of less than satisfactory experience.

It is optional, but many claim they would unfriend if I opt out, so it isn't that optional.

I don't want to evaluate/assess/judge/employ fellow human beings in a restaurant. I want the owner to take care of it and just count everything.
And, I want everyone to pay taxes and insurance from their earnings, why should be waiting staff excluded.

For those saying 'restaurants should just increase their prices', do you think the staff doing the ground work would see any of that? Increased profits go to the business.
I'm happy to tip, and will often be generous in my tipping, but I expect that to come from me. Not from a company deciding to add on an optional charge on the basis that many customers will feel too awkward to remove it.

If they genuinely believe their prices don't reflect acceptable levels of service or allow them to pay staff what they consider an appropriate wage then they need to increase prices and pay higher wages.

It annoys me too OP... and I'm surprised so many voters think you are being unreasonable! £23 is a huge amount of money to tip someone (especially in this country where, unlike America, we actually have minimum wage!). Also, I used to work in a restaurant and never actually saw my tips. I'm never sure who actually ends up with the money- and in many cases it's shared rather than go to the person who gave you the good service so you don't actually always know who you are tipping.

A quick look on indeed jobs has just shown me the waitressing jobs in Manchester pay between £8.40-£14 an hour. Why does everyone think they're on a terrible wage?

I don’t understand why you must tip 10%+ on a bill, no matter what the bill is. Let’s say OP’s party of 4 likes bottles of wine that cost £80 each for 2 bottles and then the remainder cost is for their food.

Another party of 4 prefers the £20 bottles and has 2 on the table. Their bill is £120 cheaper.

What service did the waitress provide to the first table that was better than the second table to deserve an extra £12 tip?

Don't go to Italy then. They charge "coperto" (service charge) per person and then you're supposed to still leave a tip on top of it.

OP, you sound awful