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.

£23 is a big tip. I wouldn't like that assumed.

Not really when you’re spending £230 on the rest of the experience

I don't mind if tips / service charges are shared as long as they go to the staff and not into the owners pocket.

The guys you don't see deserve their share too, the kitchen staff, and the guy behind the bar sorting drinks and coffees.

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.

Well, then we're getting into a whole different discussion about business models and exploitative workplaces: are we really saying that ALL restaurant owners/managers cannot be trusted to pay their staff to the extent that the staff have to collect money directly themselves if they're to make any kind of living? Is the restaurant trade as a whole basically crooked/borderline legal? I can't believe that it is - and it's quite a slur to imply that. In amongst the dishonest business owners, there are a huge number of fair and honest ones.

If we had good reason to believe that the trade as a whole were exploitative, then it would be our basic moral duty to boycott them entirely - like with questionable nail bars and hand car washes - not to condone their shady practices and turn a blind eye.

Changing the culture so that restaurants increase their prices and then pay their staff more on the understanding that tips are 'not a thing' at their restaurant would actually put more power into the hands of staff, as they would be told what their take-home pay would be, enabling them to actually have the knowledge they need to decide which one to apply to and which one to eschew. Restaurant A pays one wage, Restaurant B pays another and Restaurant C pays yet another. If all three of them increase their prices and two increase servers' wages whilst the other doesn't, guess which one will struggle to get any staff. Lidl & Aldi openly advertise their hourly rates when seeking new employees - which are presumably better than other supermarkets pay. Can you imagine if they said "we pay the same as the others, but you're allowed to ask for tips so that you end up with more"?

Like any job, it's up to the potential employee to take the best-paid job that they can get in their chosen field - so a restaurant paying below the 'going' or best rate would struggle to get staff and thus struggle to keep going, just like a business offering a salary of £30,000 for a CEO would have to function without a CEO and likely go under.

I've said it before on similar threads, but if charging an artificially lower price and then relying on tips from customers/clients to top it up really did work in the best interests of workers, then you'd have solicitors, chief executives and all other white-collar professionals charging significantly less and then asking for tips and/or adding 'optional' service charges.

I'm in the North East and it isn't normal to have the tip added to the bill anywhere I go. Probably about the standard of places I go to 😂

I hate that the tipping culture is coming over here. We pay NMW, why should be tip someone for just doing their job? Fine if they go above and beyond but just providing a service that they are paid to do? Then no tip should be expected. Also, why should the tip be a % of bill?

Two tables, one has burgers and lagers, one steak and wine. The work load for wait staff is pretty much the same surely? But one table has to pay more of a tip because their food and drink was pricier?

You left nothing? That's incredibly mean and tight fisted.

The place was full but mostly couples and only has 12 tables anyway. No reason we should have had to wait. Maybe she should have chatted less or focused on us more to earn that 10%.

Didn't you say in your original OP that the service was good?

Has it just deteriorated because you are getting a lot of criticism on here?

Lots of people very happy to ignore the fact nmw is not a living wage in this country. They're already supporting underpaying employees. Of course they resent any tip.

I always tip 10% in restaurants; you sound really tight op

Yep that seems the case, good service, then drip drip, waitress was chatting, waitress was messing about.

YABU OP, for not leaving a tip and for changing your story,

The waitress wouldn't have received it anyway . You probably should have left something on the table , and a tenner would have been fine ignore the idiots telling you how "embarrassing" leaving a ten pound tip is. She gets paid a wage this is not America.

Of course it’s their job to give good service. Not sure why you felt the need to be patronising and point that out to the rest of us that understand that.

You think 10% is a lot?

The OP stated she would have left 5% except she was annoyed with the restaurant management so the OP decided to leave nothing. So the OP took out their ire at the waitress as they are the one who missed out. Not the management. How are you not understanding this

So many on here are acting like NMW is a lot of money.

Do you leave less than 10%. Are you always this tight ?

So food and service were good til you were told it was unfair you didn't tip, now there's a litany of things done badly.15 mins for 4 cocktails, it's hardly a massive amount of time. The restaurant you describe sounds like a relaxed long dinner place not a chain pub that spits out cocktails at the rate of knots. YABU and your friends are as bad. If you were paying they could have put in a tip for the poor staff. I'm embarrassed for the 4 of you tbh.

It's mean not to pay the service charge unless the service was bad.

All this fuss over a tenner.

£14 an hour for a 35 hour week is about £25k a year. That is a very low wage.
Living wage for a 35 hour week is about £17k a year. That is a terrible wage for the amount of effort involved. It's about half of the average wage in the UK.

Wow, so the OP is able to treat her party to a £230 meal but begrudges £23 to the server, and nitpicks every little detail to justify not leaving it (using a cocktail shaker? Daring to have a laugh with one of her colleagues? Is she supposed to just avoid eye contact and say no more than “yes ma’am, very good ma’am”?) Sorry OP, you don’t come off well in this scenario.

The attitude against tipping for good service in this country is disgusting. Hospitality is a tough job and requires levels of skill and diplomacy way above and beyond the typical minimum wage servers and other hospitality workers get paid.

And I don’t buy this whole “But the price listed on the menu is the only thing I expect to pay” business. If you’re eating out in a full service restaurant, you should factor the tip into your budget. If you don’t want to do that, get a takeaway and collect it yourself.

It's not the tenner, she didn't even leave that.
It's the principle of service charge vs tipping?

It's a very small family run Indian restaurant, each couple got one curry between them and then we shared everything else. It's a very well kept secret locally as the food is amazing and cheap as chips, it's not the standard Indian restaurant menu for Brits, it's genuine home cooking. Hence why it's easy to pay so little.
And actually, £50 isn't that big of a deal when the food was just so authentic and hearty.

Ten pounds tip for serving a table for a couple of hours, along with all the other tables that are being served, is generous.

It works out as roughly an hours extra pay for just doing your job. It’s crazy. The whole principle of paying a tip based on a percentage of the total bill makes no sense. It takes no more effort to carry a lobster to the table than it does a garden salad.

All these people saying that the OP is tight are buying into this crazy system and trying to make out its compulsory when it’s not and it never has been. Tipping in this country is discretionary and that’s the way it should stay. I can’t understand why there seems to be so much support for a system that tells employers it’s ok to simultaneously exploit their customers and staff.

Do you tip carers / cleaners why if not? Do carers/cleaners not work just as hard as waiters ?