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.

I’m really surprised at this thread, I always give 10% unless service is poor. If you’re doing well enough to eat out at table service restaurants you can afford to tip service staff surely. If it’s stated that service is included I would only leave for very good service.
i don’t think this is a recent thing, I’m in my 40s and have never not considered tipping.

Agree OP, If you want to reward the staff pay them a decent wage or add the cost on to the price of the meal. Optional Service charge no, I will not reward businesses expecting customers to make up a short fall or bonus for their staff.

As with any other job either do it well or employ some one who will. Its not my job to reward staff being paid to do a service they are employed and paid to do.

If you’re doing well enough to eat out at table service restaurants you can afford to tip service staff surely.

There's a wide range of table-service restaurants, though - you could be at the Ivy, a two-for-a-tenner pub or anything in between. Even if you are at the Ivy, I don't get why you'd be expected to tip somebody not really for their service but essentially because you yourself are wealthy.

I’m in my 40s and have never not considered tipping.

But then it ceases to be 'tipping' as such, which is surely meant to be a special, considered way of thanking somebody for great service, if it's just something you do automatically? Not getting at you: it's the norm for most people to do it automatically; but that's what I personally have been going on about throughout this thread!

So you don't eat out?

Yes, it counts as taxable income.
Which is why, in the 1st restaurant I worked in, we always preferred cash tips, because we didn't have to declare it. The restaurant should have declared cash tips of course but didn't, and I imagine that's still the norm when cash tips are distributed amongst staff, ie don't go through management. We were told if cash tips go through management they had to be declared. It depends on how the management operate which, as I said before, depends on how they choose to operate / individual in-house policy. It ain't a regulated system.

Above was in response to this Q

@OneTC no restaurant added a service charge years ago
Tipping is not new but always seen as a choice and the amount a choice
Years ago people also tipped bin men ,postmen etc not many younger generation do mow and they aren't allowed it
I asked at my local tip if I could take in some bits as couple guys were really helpful over and beyond as was told no

The optional service charge addition has been pretty common for at least 25 years.

I imagine some restaurants started doing it in response to the knots that people tie themselves into to describe why they want someone to have less money

And my one and only point is that stop making up reasons. You don't want to give someone some money. You don't need a reason. No amount of flannel makes a difference. I don't even care if people don't want to tip. It makes no difference to my life now

I do not agree with giving a tip. Why should anyone get extra for doing their job.

You made it on to my fb feed OP 😆

Miserable to leave nothing. Not BU to be annoyed it was added automatically.

And my one and only point is that stop making up reasons. You don't want to give someone some money. You don't need a reason. No amount of flannel makes a difference. I don't even care if people don't want to tip. It makes no difference to my life now

I can't speak for others on this thread, but I've been quite active; and I have repeatedly said that I don't want to pay less than the true/expected price. Instead of charging, say, £100 for our food and drinks and then expecting a socially-enforced additional £10 or whatever, just charge me £110, with no awkwardness, no making staff have to 'perform' for half of their earnings, no tax-avoidance (or temptation to do so), no PA judgment of people who can't read your mind.

It's not a difficult business concept to give a customer a price that they are required to pay in order to get goods or services from you.

Again, it's very telling that none of the white-collar professions are happy to customarily invoice for half-market rates and then risk half of their income on whether or not somebody decides to tip them.

Wow a whole £10 for bill of over £200. If I was the waitress & you left £10 Id give it back since your clearly hard up for cash 😑you are aware the waitress has no control over restaurant policy. So you took her too away for something that isn’t her fault.

I didn't read the whole thread but we always leave a tip. If I paid the whole bill it would have been up to my friends to tip.

Curious where this is as i live in the north east , but leaving a tip is bad i always do when i ate out as worked in that industry years ago and wages were terrible then for the hours put in and serving misserable customers

She left nothing in the end

So instead of being an adult about this, you left nothing having spent £60pp

what a bunch of tight tossers you are @Byz

all prices are going up and up, acts like yours will mean costs of eating out will go up.

those tips go to the people in the kitchen, cleaning dishes, chopping and preparing and giving up their evenings so you can go out on yours.

paying 10% to restaurants after everything they have gone through over the last few years is the LEAST we can do.

gratuities have been added to the bill for decades. Only a complete tool wouldn’t know this.

Yes I do eat out but I wont pay a service bill or tip. FYI MN rules do not exist out side of this eco chamber thank god 😂

So if the high an mighty on this forums don't like it, OH well!

Fact is that whether we like it or not, most staff in hospitality work for minimum (or very marginally more) wage. Tips are the one way that those measly wages stretch to make ends meet.
IF you wish to leave a tip, then I’d recommend leaving it in cash, rather than adding it onto the bill.
I don’t agree with the business adding the tip before you are presented with the bill, however, I think a £10 tip on a £230 bill is measly to say the least. Especially, if as the OP says, there was nothing that could be faulted with the food or service.

all prices are going up and up, acts like yours will mean costs of eating out will go up.

Surely, then, it's only wise for restaurants to put their prices up to ensure that their income covers their costs and profits, rather than deliberately under-pricing and relying on the (socially-enforced) altruism of customers to pay them extra and just hoping they'll get enough in?

those tips go to the people in the kitchen, cleaning dishes, chopping and preparing and giving up their evenings so you can go out on yours.

They aren't 'giving up their evenings' - they're doing a job to earn a living, just like most people do. If waiting staff only work in evenings - the busy time for restaurants - does that mean that their customers who do 'standard' 9-5 jobs are 'giving up their daytimes' so that the waiting staff can do what they like in theirs?

So you will reward business with your custom still?

Why am I not surprised

You are very unreasonable

and stingy

you spend £230 on a meal and begrudge a tip

horrid attitude

I'm willing to bet that all the people on here who are so desperate to cling to the existing restaurant model of under-pricing and soliciting tips would be absolutely horrified if the chancellor announced that, instead of any agreed, guaranteed pay rises to counter inflation, he was going to start urging all adults (or even just all adults in full-time employment) using the services of HCPs to tip them an average of £10-20 each visit, on the understanding that you would be widely considered 'tight' and socially condemned if you don't tip.

I know, imagine an imaginary situation that supports your argument

I know, imagine an imaginary situation that supports your argument

I think the way I phrased it made it obviously hyperbolic and that it clearly wasn't going to actually happen.

Fair enough if you like the idea of some employees having to rely on customers' goodwill in order to earn a large part of their income rather than have it guaranteed by an employer who sets higher, more realistic fixed charges to customers to ensure that it's safely covered and not reliant on hopes - I think we'll have to just accept that we very much disagree on that one.