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.

This is what I don't like about the USA, they don't have transparent pricing at all. You get to the till and have to pay sales tax plus 20 percent tip on top of the menu price. I hope that never becomes common over here.

was it always the norm for people in the UK not to tip or to be outraged at the expectation of tipping?

I know it is different in the US but growing up in Ireland if we went out for lunch or dinner, whether it was a hotel restaurant or a greasy spoon place, my parents would always have tipped - maybe not 10 percent but close enough. They are long dead now but they would think someone refusing to leave any tip at all on a 230 meal desperately mean.

once when we visited my very wealthy third cousin, I saw them saying thanks and tipping his live-in housekeeper when we left. I asked what they were doing and they said "well us staying her created more work for her so of course we tip her" I suspect they tipped my weekly cleaners too. My cleaners loved them.

I have a finite amount of money. When I eat out with friends, my budget for the evening includes the tip. If I couldn't afford the meal plus the tip, I either wouldn't go out or I'd suggest we dine at a cheaper establishment.

Dining out is a luxury purchase, in my opinion. It's not an essential cost, especially when money is tight. If OP can afford to foot the bill for a £230 food bill, she's not that hard up. Of course she could afford the tip. She freely admits that she gave nothing not because of a lack of funds but because she's a tight arse she chose not to.

I don't think the OP is tight wanting to have the service charge removed - it's optional, as is tipping and each to their own.

What is unreasonable, and honestly a bit nasty is how the OP is going to take out their discomfort and possibly embarrassment at wanting the charge removed on the waitress by leaving a poor review of her - even though she'd already said she was happy with the service, the waitress was attentive etc, she's actively gone looking for things to complain about here to alleviate her own feelings about asking to have the service charge removed. So many people do this, and not just about a service charge, they get themselves wound up over complaining if something is wrong and then go in all guns blazing, I had someone do it to me tonight over something really, really easy to solve and that I had no issues solving at all, they just assumed I would have and went on the attack.

That's massively unfair. As I said in a pp if you don't want to tip or pay a service charge that's your decision, but don't try and alleviate any feelings you may have about that by making out the person serving you was at fault.

She gave absolutely nothing though!

Maverickess - I 100% agree.

I feel like this is a reverse.

was it always the norm for people in the UK not to tip or to be outraged at the expectation of tipping?

I'm not really seeing outrage; but just because something is a custom, it doesn't mean that it should just continue forever unchallenged. If that were the case, we would still have men being paid proper salaries 'as they have to provide for their families' whilst a woman doing the exact same job would be given a few quid with the assumption that it's just treat money for her to spend on a new frock or a lovely hairdo.

In fact, we wouldn't have the NMW at all, as the previous custom until right up to the end of the last century was that, if an employee would work for what the employer was willing to pay (however desperate they were and however little alternative they had), everything was all just great and everybody can be happy.

I'm guessing that these two customs went hand-in-hand for a long time - like they still do in the USA - where, pre-NMW, a tip was in recognition of the fact that you were paid very little indeed. How come we're happy to get rid of the old custom of exploiting workers by offering no NMW protection, yet we still insist that we mustn't even question continuing the aligned custom of tipping waiting staff?

I think this is area dependent. Wages generally aren’t high in the North East. It’s much cheaper to get someone to fit a kitchen, or decorate a room, or cut your hair than it is in the South. That’s why £23 seems like a huge amount to give to one person for providing a service.

Does a cashier in a shop spend an hour, two hours, maybe more, attending to your needs? Providing personalised service? Recommending & possibly tailoring items for your consumption? Communicating with other departments (in the case of waiting staff - bar/kitchen/management) to ensure you have the best possible experience? Sort out problems? Take the flack when issues do arise? Chat to you if that's what you want? Take pictures of your party even though they have 10 other tables to tend to? Order a taxi for you when you're ready to leave? Recommend where to go next? Ultimately making a contribution to your enjoyment of your lunch or your night out? All the while making everything seem smooth & effortless, whilst doing the same for however many other tables/customers they need to take care of in the space of their shift, for hours on end, on their feet, with a half hour break (may be paid or unpaid / food may or may not be provided at a staff rate).
@sentientpuddle

Why thought? I just want to eat my meal. I don't need any photos taken or taxi ordered, I can read the menu and I know what are my plans after. I don't see the waiting staff as my personal servants thankful for a coin I might toss on them, I consider them part of restaurant organisation and want to deal with them in professional manner, and being able to set and communicate the price is part of the business.

You spent that that much on a dinner for 4 people, and you are complaining about a 10% gratuity? I would have paid the 10% and added another 10%, as I typically tip 20% for good service. That being said, I think the bigger issue is, that the waitress asked you if you wanted it to be removed, and did so while remaining polite, and you punished her for something that is the restaurant’s policy and not hers! Shame on you!

This is all over social media BTW. Very outing if the friends you ate with or restaurant staff see it

to be honest this answer doesn't help me understand the reaction on MN to tipping.

I understand the national minimum wage and customs and all that stuff but it just seemed to me that most people I knew growing up and being a grown up (I'm in my 50s) tipped waiters and waitresses. Nothing to do with the US or the NMW or anything - just it was the custom - and I don't see how tipping has anything to do with women being paid less or whatever.

Honestly, someone having a 230 bill for food not tipping anything is really really mean - and would have been in any decade of the 1900s and is still now. whether in the UK or whereever. We all know that. Not tipping on a 10 pound meal is one thing. not tipping on a 230 pound meal is just mean.

When did it become a thing that tipping a waiter is bad? When for decades in the UK it was the norm?

I understand the national minimum wage and customs and all that stuff but it just seemed to me that most people I knew growing up and being a grown up (I'm in my 50s) tipped waiters and waitresses. Nothing to do with the US or the NMW or anything - just it was the custom - and I don't see how tipping has anything to do with women being paid less or whatever.

When did it become a thing that tipping a waiter is bad? When for decades in the UK it was the norm?

That was just my response to the many people claiming that not tipping is tight because waiting staff supposedly earn very little anyway; and the idea that, because it's a custom, we pay it without complaining or even questioning why, because that's just what you do with longstanding customs, even though there are plenty of other longstanding customs that we've gladly seen the back of.

If we collectively happily accept the idea that being a waitress/waiter is a privileged job that deserves to be paid a lot more than other jobs - like retail (where it is very well-known that it's the norm to face customers who behave appallingly and often abusively); or cleaning toilets (literally dealing with people's messy poo); or caring (again frequently providing very personal care: cleaning up poo, wee and sick and often routinely looking after people with dementia, which may well cause them to shout/swear/verbally abuse/lash out at you); to name just three.

However, this makes no sense at all when so many people justify tipping waiting staff by claiming that they work especially hard and, paradoxically, earn especially little as a job - when, for the last 20+ years, they've been paid at least NMW, just like many other jobs (such as the three always/usually untipped jobs I mentioned above).

As I said above, the only 'reason' that so many people offer when defending expected and socially-enforced (i.e. 'what a mean, unpleasant person you must be if you don't) tipping of waiters and waitresses is 'because you must tip waiting staff' without questioning it. I don't see how this is really any different from the many, many years when the custom of paying male employees more was expected and socially-enforced with the equally circuitous 'reason' that 'it's because men need to earn more than women' - and those of us who are 'decent people' apparently just accept this without ever questioning it.

Apologies, the above confusingly-unfinished paragraph beginning 'If we collectively....' should have ended with 'to name just three - then all well and good, as long as we're all on the same page when it comes to how much we particularly value waiting staff as a more difficult and/or more important job'.

I agree. “It’s just the done thing” doesn’t make it right.

When you ordered, it would have been a good time to let the waitress know you didn’t want the 10% service charge added to your bill at the end of the meal.

you didn’t though, you could have said if you a add led for the bill.

strange that you were informed something was going to happen & are then upset it happens?

I would always tip 5-10% but I still think it needs to be optional. In the UK minimum wage applies and the cost of paying staff needs to be included in the prices. The tip is an extra. It's customary to tip but it's never been universal in the UK, plenty of people don't, and that is normal too.
Restaurant owners should include the cost of paying staff in the listed price just like any other business. Staff should do the job they are paid to without expecting extra money, just like any other business. I expect some places are doing this on response to a reduction in tips now everyone pays by card. But if you pay a tip on a card not much probably goes to the individual waitress. At best it gets split between all staff present at the time , at worst is goes to the owners of the business.

It’s absolutely been normal to leave a tip for a long time . The added service charge hasn’t though. At least you know leaving a tip on the table that it goes to the staff directly. And you can leave what you feel like , some posters are suggesting it’s embarrassing to leave £10. When lots of people earn that per hour , not just service staff .

I'm amazed at how many people think that tip goes to the waiting staff when it's added directly to the bill like this.

Ok always ask the waiting staff and they always say it does go to them. 🤷🏻‍♀️ Guess they could just be told to say that?

See the different reaction if you suggest they remove the tip from that bill and give it to them in full in cash. A small amount may go to them, but not all in the vast majority of cases.

Genuine question, if the service charge is split out between staff and added to their payslip are they taxed on that?

It just adds even more to the opacity of the transaction when, as appears to be common, the service charge doesn't go straight to the server - at least not in full. Plus, do we know that it's accounted for fairly for tax purposes?

If the restaurant owner is going to randomly split out the cost of somebody taking your order and bringing your meals, why stop there? Why not have an extra separate charge for using their table and a chair, crockery charge, charge for using the toilets, charge for benefitting from their light and heating, charge for use of the cooker and fridge? Absurd and unrealistic? Yes; but what's the actual inherent difference, really?

Yes, as far as I understand it. More detail on this page. I have just learned the rather wonderful word "troncmaster."

www.gov.uk/government/publications/e24-tips-gratuities-service-charges-and-troncs/guidance-on-tips-gratuities-service-charges-and-troncs