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To: Gigantor
If you don’t like the system, then don’t patronize normal restaurants.

Misstated assertion, an invalid solution, and an unnecessary adjective pretending to be argument.

And for extra credit, an unsupportable anecdotal claim of person experience expected to trump actual scientific study.

If you want to go to restaurants where you need insurance against bad service that involves bribing the people who are supposed to be your servants, and be blinded by the facts of the marketplace, and ignore the evidence that brings into question your perceptions, that is of course your prerogative, and I won't pretend to tell you where to go or what to do.

The evidence is clear, both from study, and from logic. Service poorly correlates with tips, people are not motivated by random offers of cash that most often are unrelated to their performance, the modern customer is highly unlikely to appropriately tip relative to actual service, instead using a variety of unrelated decision points, and in too many cases, tipping is no longer sufficiently backed by social mores to ensure it's practice.

Caveat: You CAN manage to create a relationship with a specific waiter, if you frequent the same place and get the same staff. This is more likely in places like haircuts, where you ask for "your" staff, and they know how well you tip. But my argument following is for the vast majority of cases, not the few special ones:

Logically, you walk into a restaurant, get a server you have never seen. It is virtually IMPOSSIBLE for the service YOU get from this server to be related to the tip you are going to give the server as you leave the restaurant. I suppose that if you explicitly told your server up front exactly what tip you were going to give, and your criteria for raising or lowering your tip, you may well achieve your goal -- but virtually NOBODY does that.

Your server is not motivated by the tip, which if you are a civil customer is going to be 15% pretty much at base service, and at best 20% with outstanding service, and if you are an uncivil customer won't likely be anything at all -- because there is no convention that starts with "zero tip" except in cases of direct malfeasance. And the waiter has no idea if you are going to tip at all, or how much. TO the degree your waiter is trained to give better service for better tips, they will perform this service even if you leave NO TIP, since they have no way of knowing you are going to leave NO TIP until they are done.

In fact, your service is much more likely if at all to be based on how good the person just before you tipped. It is a classic case of the "commons", where at best you can hope that everybody is tipping well for good service, and therefore has trained the waiter before you arrived.

I don't fault you -- I am a crazy-good tipper, and I used to think that mattered. Now it is just because I know how much it sucks to be a waiter/waitress, and figure on the off chance I do happen back in and get the same person, they won't remember me and want to take revenge.

Last point: What people call "outstanding service"? That is what I EXPECT from a sit-down restaurant, every time. I can't think of one thing I could get with a huge tip known to be coming that I should NOT GET just for being in that seat.

To wit: The waitstaff should greet me promptly, take my order correctly, answer questions politely and completely, offer me suggestions if asked, tell me of specials, bring my food at the right times, at the right temperature, be attentive to needs during my meal, not pester me if I don't want to be, clear my table but not make me feel rushed, offer desert/drinks, refill my drinks and bread and whatever else is refillable, and bring me my check as soon as I am done.

There is no reason that every patron should not get this treatment, and little reason why any patron should get BETTER treatment than others through some luck of assignment. A good restaurant should get all of their staff trained to excellence.

127 posted on 07/19/2014 12:30:26 PM PDT by CharlesWayneCT
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To: CharlesWayneCT

Your rantings are reaching insane levels.

In the real world, working for tips, an exceptional server will make more in tips.

Now back to your rantings.


129 posted on 07/20/2014 12:13:49 AM PDT by Gigantor (The Fundamentally Transformed States of America)
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