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.

Were you a chef at MacDonalds?

I can't help but get the impression that whatever the waitress did would never have been good enough for OP.

Scrambling for a reason not to tip and leaving a bad review for non-issues is petty and mean.

@Conkersareback you criticised my spelling but your sentence makes no sense
Yes I was briefly also was married to one and have several friends who are
Chef is a loose term in some places though , cook is more appropriate in some restaurants I would say

I’d much prefer restaurants to pay their staff properly, up the prices and then leave no tip. But the restaurants won’t do that, and I wouldn’t punish a waitress because I disagree with the company policy.

That said, wouldn’t it be fab if a chain or two actually did this, and advertised it? I’d definitely choose to eat there.

McDonalds staff do not come to your table to get your order, they may occasionally cook to order and they may occasionally serve to your table or your car, most often because they've run out of item you order, so you're inconvenienced to have to wait! M

It is not a restaurant, it's a fast food establishment.

I'll still tip at a restaurant, not McDonald's.

You won't convince me otherwise.

@Conkersareback run out ? Yes because people have ordered them they don't cook 60 burgers and leave them sat there all night , yes its fast food but why do there staff not deserve a tip ? I know people who have worked there and said its one of the hardest job they have done?
You claim a waitress deserves it because of low wages ? Well why not tip everyone on a low wage who serves you ? Shop workers etc are often on NMW
And again i am happy to leave a tip but not be told what that tip should be
Many decent restaurants pay above NMW as well , its mostly the chains who don't and its often these places people don't tip

@Conkersareback inconvenienced to have to wait at maccies for someone to cook your food ? Its fast food not instant on the spot
If there busy they will be cooking more and having to wait for it too be cooked

It's they're not there 🙄!

You're over invested in this thread, step back?

I can't stand it when they add it to the bill automatically. I
Normally spot it early and asks for it it not to be added. If it's added I ask for it to be removed. I want to make sure it's going to the people it's meant for. I always ask if it's shared with everyone from the pot wash boy to the chef. If the answer is yes then I leave a tip. In your situation I'd probably have left £10 per couple if the service was good.

I'd only tip 10% if we were a large party say for a birthday dinner or something.

I'm a farmer employing people to produce the food they put in front of me. They don't get tips (and they should, they work hard unsociable hours in all weathers).

@Conkersareback better than being the grammar police especially when one of your own sentences made no sense
Your the one telling people they should leave a tip
Its optional and a personal choice

I would not pay £23 tip. I would give the waiter a tenner if it was great service
I always ask for it to be removed and then tip myself

As I've acknowledged!

You're the one trying to tell me I should tip at McDonald's!

I won't!

Is this the first time you've ever been out?? 🤣🤣

A service charge is not the same as a tip. But if you didn't want to pay it, just ask for it to be removed.

Also, get out more. You might understand social situations better.

its not being tight at all , what if you can't afford the tip are you saying people should never eat out then ?

In this instance if you can't afford 23 for the tip you can't afford 230 for the meal.

Do you think nmw or close to it is enough money? Or do you think restaurants should pay better in the first place? If that's the case then more people will be excluded as bottom line will be higher

All the people who are doing it because of tips will stop doing it, and they're the people that make your night good. They'd have to stay recruiting from the miserable nmw lot who begrudge others tips and then restaurants would be fucked.

I wouldn't have spent years in hospitality if I thought I was gonna get paid slightly more, I wanted to get paid lots more and I put the effort in to achieve that

I'm annoyed and I've just received an email from the booking site to review the restaurant so definitely going to mention it.

Mention what? That you were too much of a tight arse to pay a tip? Your poor friends were probably so embarrassed, I would have been. (And yes, they could have left a tip but that would have been pretty awkward after you asked for the service charge to be removed).

I hate this service charge -tip, why should i feel obliged to pay when this is quite clearly your job, to wait and offer a good service.

I think you should simply avoid eating out in future OP. You clearly don't understand how to behave.

If you can afford a £230 meal, you can afford a £23 tip... but I suspect your mean disposition is what enables you to afford a £230 meal in the first place.

And will people stop pretending this is something new that's suddenly been foisted on our culture, tipping is completely standard in hospitality, both restaurant and bar work for as long as I've been alive and as long as my 90 year old mother has been alive. Those advocating not doing it are simply saying let's pay people less, let's change the cultural norm.

Why do this?

There's a wealth of places that already cater to your ways, why not stick with em?

As a PP has said, tips encourage good service. If nobody got them, it's likely that service levels would fall; what's the point in going above and beyond when you can get away with the minimum? There's a big difference between not giving a tip on the one hand, and actively complaining about a server on the other. Similarly, it's easier to give a tip than to praise a server to the management, so tips can be seen as a proxy for a satisfaction rating. Even if the restaurant operates a tip-sharing system, the high-tip-earners will be noted by the business.

Health advice, oh come on, if you can afford 230 quid on a meal you can afford the tip

Like I said before prior say tight about non tippers because mostly the people that don't may have a hundred words to explain why they don't, but it mostly boils down to being tight, regardless of whatever they profess.

But you can't just assume you know people's motivations for their actions, even if there is a common cause. That just makes me think back to all the Brexit arguments, where it was taken as read by many that anybody voting leave was racist. Yes, I'm sure probably all the racists did vote to leave, but it would be faulty logic to take that to mean that all leave-voters were racist. Just like some of the Scottish independence supporters hate the English, but the vast majority don't in the least.

But I digress....

I mean you tip, so I don't know why you're arguing their side

I'm categorically not on the side of people who are rude to waiting staff and who blame them for policies made by management. I'm on the side of people who grudgingly follow a custom involving an opaque and (imho) dishonourable means of charging for goods/services - partly because of the narrow assumptions as you highlighted above but also because I don't want to ruin a waiter/waitress' day when they've come to expect being given extra as the norm - but who would far rather pay THE SAME AMOUNT OF MONEY AS YOU WOULD WITH TIPPING but presented in a fair, honourable and transparent way, not deliberately relying on social pressure, confusion and/or awkwardness - the same as most businesses seem to manage.

Higher bottom line price excludes more people. I appreciate the reason some people might be leaving me a fiver or a tenner rather than the 23

if you can afford 230 quid on a meal you can afford the tip

How do you arrive at that, though? Most people have a finite amount of money in their bank accounts (or on available credit, I suppose). They aren't able to keep magicking an extra 10% on top and then another 10% on top of that, and then another 10% on the grounds that 'well, if you could afford the original amount....'.

You can't just set an arbitrary threshold above which you assume people have unlimited funds. Even a billionaire with exactly £50bn can't afford to pay a fiver more without going into credit reserves.

I know you will probably say that you have to allow for the tip and presumably order cheaper meals than you would like in order to have leeway for the extra charge; but this is my whole point about tipping in general and additional charges for the basics (whether technically 'optional' or not): I much prefer the business owner to tell me how much they want from me in exchange for the goods/services on offer rather than leave me guessing and/or doing the maths on their behalf.

It's an absolute fundamental of business that you add up all of your many costs and overheads, add on the amount of profit you need/want, and then present a price to the customer. If they are able and willing to pay that price, they will; if they can't or won't, you clearly don't have a business agreement, so the transaction could never take place anyway.

Would you be happy if a petrol station advertised its prices at the roadside and then, when you got to the pump, there was a very small notice saying that there is a 10% surcharge for using the pump or for parking next to it for two minutes?

I ate out at lunch today. 12.5% tip was added to the bill. We only ate there because I had a 15% off discount voucher... the discount just about covered the tip 🙈