Home › Forums › West Seattle Rants & Raves › rant – And another thing. . . .
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September 21, 2015 at 11:04 pm #818494
2 Much WhineParticipantI don’t care if a dog pees in my yard or if you put your doggie bag of poop in my garbage. I think most cyclists are courteous but when they are not it doesn’t usually bother me. I am not particularly threatened by dogs off leash or in restaurants. BUT, what really irks me is restaurants that use deceptive practices to get a bigger tip out of me. I appreciate those handy guides at the bottom of my bill. They indicate how much a 15%, 18% and 20% tip would be. What bugs me is that more often than not if you check your bill you will notice that their tip estimate is based on the meal cost plus tax. Why would I need to tip a percentage of the taxes? I realize that with taxes being about 10%, if I tip 20% on a cost that includes tax then I am actually tipping 22%. I know it’s just a few more bucks but to me it seems deceptive and wrong. It makes me not want to go back. Is it just my frugal nature? I still tip because it is not the servers fault but it makes me mad. If I say something I will sound cheap but if I don’t they will never know it might be part of a drop in business. Should I just have another beer and relax or should I make an issue out of it?
September 21, 2015 at 11:35 pm #828095
squareeyesParticipantYeah, it’s annoying to me too. I just ignore it and tip on the pre-tax total.
September 22, 2015 at 1:46 am #828096
SmittyParticipantEat at Ivars Salmon House!
September 22, 2015 at 2:22 am #828097
JoBParticipanti don’t make an issue out of it.. but i tax based on the pre-tax bill… with more thrown in if we didn’t order much and occupied the table overlong
September 22, 2015 at 2:40 am #828098
JKBParticipantIt’s a stupidity tax. Figuring 10% is trivial, and just double that for 20%. Then 15% is in between, and it’s probably okay to be off a tick. And if you want 18.3%, your phone will figure it.
If all the numbers are just too hard, ask your server to fill in what seems right. That’s the tax.
September 22, 2015 at 2:06 pm #828099
anonymeParticipantI was under the impression that 20% has been the norm for a while now. Have servers gotten a raise under the minimum wage law? If so, it seems like that should change the tip percentage.
September 22, 2015 at 3:38 pm #828100
SueParticipantI feel the same way, 2 Much Whine – it’s not a matter of not being able to figure out how to accurately tip and do math, but the fact that if everyone just tipped based on what those charts say, then they may not realize they’re tipping more than they intended.
September 26, 2015 at 8:07 pm #828101
mtnfreakParticipantCan you give me an example of when your tip would be significantly different with or without taxes added? For my tipping habits its irrelevant.
September 26, 2015 at 9:33 pm #828102
JoBParticipantanonyme..
while the minimum wage has gone up a bit it is still pretty minimum. unless you are in a place that has adjusted its pricing to raise wages significantly, the people who serve you still pretty much rely on that tip income to make ends meet.
as for that 20% norm.. it think that’s what the IRS assumes but i don’t think it’s the reality :(
September 26, 2015 at 9:37 pm #828103
JoBParticipantmtnfreak..
it would have to be a fairly substantial bill..
but let’s say your bill was roughly 100.. the tip on a 10% tax would be a couple of dollars.
i agree that in the larger scheme of things that i probably would plop down the extra couple of dollars anyway… but it does pop the tip to 22% instead of 20… i think. math is not my strong point today.
i would rather that a 22% tip is my choice based on the service i got rather than a suggested 20% tip on food and services that included the taxes as a base..
everyone likes to feel that they were dealt with fairly
September 26, 2015 at 10:04 pm #828104
anonymeParticipantI always just tip 20% of the total bill, after tax. It makes the math easier, and I’d rather err by tipping too much, rather than too little – even though my income is probably less than the server’s! Is it just me, or does it seem that those who are well off demand more and tip less, while us poor folk (who may better understand what it means to struggle to make a living) tip more?
September 27, 2015 at 12:12 am #828105
JoBParticipantanonyme..
i will agree. those who have less tend to appreciate how hard it is to earn those tip dollars.
September 27, 2015 at 1:59 am #828106
transplantellaParticipantI’ve seen a lot of discussion from restaurant workers since the $15 minimum wage was announced, many staffers blatantly said that if a customer couldn’t afford to pay a 20% tip, they shouldn’t eat out.
So we don’t.
So of the less than 20% we might have given them, they got nothing instead.
Problem solved.
September 27, 2015 at 3:21 pm #828107
JoBParticipanti would miss eating out. i don’t get to do it much but when i do i truly appreciate the event.. even if it’s clam chowder at spuds
September 28, 2015 at 4:47 pm #828108
waynsterParticipantI guess I’m a cheap sob… I still base the tip on service and the quality of the food not what it says I should tip at the bottom of the bill…..
September 28, 2015 at 11:23 pm #828109
SmittyParticipant“I guess I’m a cheap sob… I still base the tip on service and the quality of the food not what it says I should tip at the bottom of the bill…..”
That’s exactly the way it should be otherwise we are rewarding terrible service/food and not rewarding great service/food.
Just yesterday I had exceptional service at the “Bridge”. Place was packed and we got our food timely and our table was serviced perfectly. 25% tip.
Had we received snotty service, warm beer and cold food you are damn right I am not tipping 25%……although my minimum tip is 10% – unless there is something egregious – which honestly has never happened to me (50).
September 29, 2015 at 12:01 am #828110
skeeterParticipantGoing back to the original rant of tipping on pre-tax total vs tipping on after-tax total. I don’t see the problem or unfairness.
Let’s say your pre-tax bill is $100 and your after-tax bill is $110.
Customer A says: I’m going to leave a 15% tip of the pre-tax amount. $15.00 tip.
Customer B says: I’m going to leave a 13.63% tip of the after-tax amount. $15.00 tip.
So if the tip is arbitrary, I would also argue that using either the pre-tax amount and after-tax amount is also arbitrary. It means nothing and you often get to the same result as shown in my example.
Tips are completely made up. Some give 0%. Some give 10%. Some give 20%.
If there was a *mandatory* tip of a certain percent, I agree that we’d *need* to decide whether to apply it to the pre-tax or after-tax amount. But since the tip is completely discretionary, it actually makes zero difference whether you are basing it off the pre-tax or after-tax amount. It’s a completely made-up number.
Personally, I tip 55%. But I base the tip off of the cost of the ingredients used to prepare the food, not the labor involved in preparing the food and cleaning up. See – totally arbitrary.
September 29, 2015 at 2:38 am #828111
JoBParticipantskeeter..
i think the original OP was objecting to those restaurants who base their recommended tip printed on the ticket on the after tax total.. not the pretax total.
unfortunately, some restaurants that impose a mandatory tip on larger groups also follow the same practice.
September 29, 2015 at 8:14 pm #828112
2 Much WhineParticipantThanks JoB, you nailed it. I like to think that 20% is a decent tip but I get the feeling that when the waitperson sees that I left $18 on my $90 bill ($100 with tax) and the receipt says a 20% tip is $20 they’ll wonder why they didn’t get a 20% tip when they worked hard and “deserved” one. I guess I am reading too much into it and maybe they don’t care. It’s so much easier in Europe where you just pay a fixed cover charge of 3 to $5 per person and it is not related to the cost of what you order.
September 29, 2015 at 9:09 pm #828113
JanSParticipantbeing in a service industry where most of my “service” is generated by doctor referrals and paid by insurance, I can honestly say I get little to no tips at all. People figure they don’t have to when it’s paid by someone else. The competition for cash clients in my industry is unbelievable, and I simply don’t have many. Even then, people feel that what we charge is enough…no need to tip. I am usually surprised that I get one when I do. Yes…it’s arbitrary.
September 30, 2015 at 8:35 am #828114
HMC RichParticipantYour pretax 20% tip will be a post tax 18% tip (roughly) which is just fine. I will never tip 25% I will start waiting tables or tend bar if everyone tipped 25%.
September 30, 2015 at 1:50 pm #828115
JoBParticipantSeptember 30, 2015 at 8:23 pm #828116
JanSParticipantskeeter…you tip 55%? Seriously? Wanna be a client? lol….j/k
October 3, 2015 at 3:09 am #828117
WizzowMemberHi all,
I am a server/bartender, and while I wholeheartedly agree with the idea that patrons should tip based on quality of service, I do want to point out something that people either do not realize, or choose to ignore, when it comes to dining out.
As servers, we also have to tip our support staff out based on our POST-tax sales. This is not the case for every restaurant, but it is the case for every restaurant that I have worked in, and I have been in this industry for eight years. So take a look at this:
If I ring $1,000 in sales for the evening, my tip out would look like this (and again, the percentages and such are different for every restaurant, but it seems to average out about the same.) :
I add the $100 in tax, so my total sales are $1,100
I tip the busser $22 (2%)
I tip the host $6. (1/2%)
I tip the bartender $11. (1%)
I tip the food runner $11 (1%)
I tip the kitchen $11 (1%)
That is $61.00.
So if I had, by chance, made 20% tips on all of my tables (pre-tax,) then I would have made $200 in tips. Subtract the $61.00, and on a perfect night, with perfect tips on every table- I still only make $139.
So made 13.9% tips for the night, even though all of my tables tipped me 20% pre-tax.
So anyhow, I still tip out quite a bit- so even if I made the extra $20 if I were tipped after tax on all of my tables- it wouldn’t make a severe difference, but I would jump from making 13.9% overall, to 15.9%. Not too shabby!
Also- this is a reason that people stiffing on to-go orders, really gets my goat! I understand that we didn’t ‘serve’ you and probably don’t deserve a 20% tip, but to-go orders often account for a decent percentage of our sales,
Which we still tip off of!
So a small tip on a to-go order will at least make up for the $5 or so total that we end up tipping off of it.
And also, that food doesn’t package itself up. We take time out of helping customers that might tip us 20% to attend to the minutia of packaging up 20 different condiments for a to-go order than we end up paying literally out of our pockets to have taken, and packed.
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