I love going to restaurants, but I’ve never understood the whole tipping culture. The more we spend on a meal, the more we’re expected to tip. It makes no sense. Shouldn’t our tips be based solely on the quality of the service?
Is bringing a 3 oz. lobster tail to my table somehow more challenging than bringing over a 2 lb. cheeseburger?
There has to be an explanation for this phenomenon.
Maybe expensive food has some kind of mysterious magnetic pull that makes it more difficult to carry.
Or… maybe we pay waiters extra for taking great risks. I mean, bringing water to your table is one thing, but a glass of red wine? That’s downright dangerous. One false move, and his uniform gets it.
And you think bringing over a mouth-watering filet mignon is easy? Do you have any idea how hard it is for a hungry waiter to fight the urge to eat it on the way to your table? It’s like giving a relay team of drug addicts a cocaine-filled baton.
I’d have to agree on this one. I think tipping in general makes absolutely NO sense. Like you said, it’s no longer about the level of service. Tipping is now this expectation that seems to bare no logic whatsoever.
Anyway, I love the analogies. The ‘cocaine-filled baton’. You don’t see those everyday.
Eric
I’ve never gotten the correlation either. Why 10% on what I order, whether it be tuna fish or filet mignon. Weird. Having said that, though, I have been a waitress and they live and die by their tips. So whenever possible, I’m a sympathetic big tipper.
What I’ve never figured out is how much to tip a taxi cab driver. No one seems to know. There’s no consensus.
I agree, it makes absolutely no sense, except I am acutely aware (from past personal experience) that waiters and waitresses are vastly underpaid for the work they do and the people they have to put up with. A gratuity of 15% (not 10%) is pretty much the standard for food service these days, but I tip 20% without fail. I tip cab drivers, pizza delivery persons, porters, gasoline pumpers and people working in other service industry positions as well. It’s part of the cost of living and I make sure to include it in my budget. Everyone wants to get paid for the work they do. Can you blame them?
p.s. It’s a great way to spread kindness! I think it makes more sense than dispensing toothpicks to diners at a restaurant. To be honest, I don’t want someone else’s fingers all over my toothpick.
=P
Eric Hamm: We’re on the same wave length.
The Lawyer Mom: I agree that waiters depend on their tips, and I am for tipping… I just don’t understand why ordering more expensive food warrants a larger tip and visa-versa.
Tabbie: I don’t blame people for wanting to get paid at all. I think it’s noble to leave a nice tip, I just think the amount should be based more on the service than on how much what I order costs.
It is indeed a good way to spread kindness.
@ Tabbie: You say,
“I think it makes more sense than dispensing toothpicks to diners at a restaurant. To be honest, I don’t want someone else’s fingers all over my toothpick.”
Apparently, my idea of kindness and your idea of kindness are light years apart.
That said… I do tip and I do so appropriately in accordance with the culture. But my bro does make a very compelling point. Why is the tip based on the price of what is ordered? It’s sorta strange.
I am going to have to disagree. It makes a lot of sense. Here is the math.
Check #1 Burger $10, cola $2. Total $12
Check #2 Steak $22, wine $7, wine $7, desert $8. Total $44.
Assuming a 15% tip. Check #1 tip $1.80. Check #2 tip $6.60.
The waitperson is essentially a sales person working on commission. The more they sell the more they make. I am always amazed when I am not offered a premium drink or a desert. Not a very good sales person if you buy this model.
The end result is that it while it might not make any sense to us it makes a whole lot of sense to the owner of that establishment. They basically have a wait staff that is motivated to sell. If that waitperson(salesperson) is successful….drum roll please…. it is the customer is paying the commission, not the owner who just increased is bottom line. It makes a lot of sense at least to one person.
A cocaine filled baton? ROTFLMAO! Awesome Llamafish, awesome.
Back in my early twenties (I feel so old when I say that) I used to be a waitress. I relied on tips – I was making minimum wage without them. Perhaps it’s not logical, but unless service is horrible, I always leave 20%.
Don makes a good point that the “waitperson is essentially a sales person working on commission. The more they sell the more they make.”
It makes all the sense in the world from the servers’ and their managers’ perspectives, but, yeah, I can see where it doesn’t make as much sense on the customer’s end.
Nevertheless, in American culture, most of us know if we go out to a restaurant or order pizza delivery, that tips–so long as decent service is provided–are expected.
It makes sense. Since most servers and food delivery drivers are paid at or often, well below, minimum wage, tips are the only incentive for people to do these jobs. And if people can’t make decent enough income from their tips, they won’t do the job, thus limiting the availability of these services.
Probably the only way their employers could pay them well enough to make tips irrelevant would be to raise menu prices dramatically.
So, to keep these services widely available for us to enjoy, we ought to tip well.
I’m far away from you in Germany, but I had the same thoughts last weekend. I think it was the the first time that I thought about tipping seriously, and my conclusion was, that giving a fixed percentage is not reasonable, because, as you said, more expensive food and drinks are not necessarily more work for the waiter.
Maybe it’s high time the world agreed on a specific figure and made it compulsory so that we all know it’s going to happen and we never feel awkward about it or spend any time dilly-dallying over how much to tip.
I vote for three English pounds and sixty-seven pence.
I guess part of the reasoning is that if you’re ordering a really expensive meal you can afford to leave a larger tip. Or maybe it’s just one of those random things that isn’t really supposed to make any sense
Nice site, my first visit, good stuff, I’ll be back!
Good points all around. One thing we make sure we do is to leave something nice in the tip jar when we go to pick up our takeout (Chinese, Outback, etc.). Even though we didn’t get the full waited-on table experience, they do a nice job of prepping our food, putting it in containers, and so on. It occurred to us awhile ago that not giving a tip is almost like penalizing the staff, who we would have tipped if we ate on-site.
Don: Viewing the waiter as a salesman working on commissions is a very interesting perspective.
Writer Dad: Thanks
Jesse Hines: Good point.
MaRie: We’re on the same page. Give my regards to Germany.
lain Broome: That would certainly make the world a more simplistic place.
Marelisa:I think it’s the latter.
Cody: Thank you. Glad to have you in the Pun Intended universe!
Emeraldas: That is a nice thing to do.