Tipping

[deird1]

Read an article on tipping (with, yes, quite a lot of discussion about Aussies) this morning, and got interested...

Poll #4972 tipping

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 27

View Respondents

How much should you tip in restaurants?

View Answers

0%
0 (0.0%)

0% ...but then, I'm Australian
4 (14.8%)

5%
0 (0.0%)

10%
5 (18.5%)

20%
15 (55.6%)

25%
0 (0.0%)

30%
0 (0.0%)

50%
0 (0.0%)

ridiculously huge amounts
0 (0.0%)

it really depends on the service
3 (11.1%)

Tipping...

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sucks
5 (19.2%)

is great
5 (19.2%)

is annoying, but can't be helped
12 (46.2%)

I'm Australian, and laugh at people who tip
3 (11.5%)

I'm a waiter, and glare at people who don't tip
2 (7.7%)

why be stingy?
15 (57.7%)

why not just pay the waiters properly?
17 (65.4%)

ticky!
12 (46.2%)

tip!
7 (26.9%)

ticky again!
9 (34.6%)

My general position:
- America, for some insane reason, underpays people and expects them to earn most of their salary through tips. Were I in America, I would (reluctantly) tip everyone. After all, it's not their fault their work conditions stink.
- Luckily, I am in Australia, where tipping is not expected. So I don't tip - unless the place was really brilliant, in which case I might add my spare change to their tip jar...

Comments

[peroxidepirate]

I'm American, hate the system... and work in restaurant management, so I can see both sides of it. YES, we should just pay servers what their job is worth. But if we did that, we'd have to raise our food and drink prices by 15% to 20% -- so an $11 burger would become a $13 burger, a $5 beer would become a $6 beer -- and nobody would pay it. It's an annoying system, but there's no good way out of it.

Though you do see a lot of restaurants adding an "automatic gratuity," usually 20%, to large tables.

[next_to_normal]

and nobody would pay it

But would they really? I mean, if one restaurant decided to do it independently and ended up having prices that were 20% higher than their competitors, then yeah, they'd probably go out of business.

But if restaurants were held to the same minimum wage standards as every other industry, then all restaurants would be raising their prices, so it'd be a level playing field.

I seriously doubt that people would stop eating out altogether. They'd complain about the prices, of course (but they'd do that anyway) and maybe eat out a bit less, but on the whole, people would certainly pay it.

[deird1]

This is why your government should make laws requiring a higher minimum wage for restaurants. Then everyone would have to raise their prices simultaneously...

[next_to_normal]

Agreed!

But then, there are a LOT of things our government should do that they never seem to get around to...