This is what I leave face down on bad service.
Posted on 08/26/2005 9:02:02 AM PDT by EveningStar
Waiter, there's a service charge on my soup.
Customers at a high-end Manhattan restaurant soon will notice an extra expense when they get their bill, and not only for their soup course.
Beginning Thursday, chef Thomas Keller will charge customers a 20 percent service fee at Per Se, his year-old outpost in the Time Warner Center on Columbus Circle, where the views of Central Park are nearly as breathtaking as the prices.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
Any decent waiter knows about how much you make, how often you dine out and your marital status by the time you are halfway to his table. By the time you sit down, he's already performed the necessary calculations to know the approximate size of the tip.
If you're rich enough or dumb enough to go there then you deserve it.
Keller's people do earn it. If you raise your head, someone will be standing beside you before you literally have time to look around for them. The service is totally beyond anything most people have ever experienced.
So he is more worried about his tip than how well he serves you. Then he shouldn't be a waiter.
BTW If a lowly waiter is able to ascertain all this information only from you sitting down at a table, the waiter should be working for the FBI as a profiler of serial killers!
Maybe tipping teachers would be a real incentive for them to actually teach!!!! Great idea Michael.SF.!!!!
Because they only make $ 2.05 per hour, at least where I'm from.
One of the most fun places to eat was the Conveyor Belt Sushi Bar. You take a seat and in front of you, the sushi passes by. You watch for a minute or two and identify what you want, then take the plate down as it goes by. You just stack the plates as you go on to the next one, and they charge you for how many plates you've amassed when you're done. They also had a slice of melon on a plate of a different color so they knew how much to charge. We each ordered a beer, and that came on a red plate, which signalled a different charge altogether. My friend and I shared each plate (there were two pieces on each), and we ended up with about 8 plates of sushi, a plate of melon and two beers and it was only about 1700 yen (a little less than $17) and a large part of that was the beer because the sushi was only 130 yen a plate!
The quality or locale of a restaurant shouldn't change the percentage of the tip, since naturally that will reflect in the bill that the percentage is taken out of. It's not like an upscale Manhatten waitress will be making the same amount as a New Jersey IHOP waitress just because they both get tipped the same percentage.
"the views of Central Park are ...breathtaking..."
This fellow needs to get out of his big city gerbil loft and go meet some trees, birds, lakes and deer elsewhere in the country.
I only encountered one restaurant in Japan that did that, and it was a Vietnamese restaurant. I guess I wasn't eating in the places that do that. We mostly ate in neighborhood places-GREAT food!
I nevere could understand why the tip is realted to the price of the meal.
Isn't it just as much work for the waiter or waitress to serve me cheaper food as it is for them to serve me expensive food?
I was charged a 20% tip while I was in Memphis. The service sucked.
Someone didn't explain it properly, which happens all too often. The 8% taxation has nothing to do with waitstaff; it is an assumed rate upon which the restaurant gets taxed. According to federal law, waitstaff must report 100% of their gratuity earnings; they are then taxed on 100% of what they have claimed, in addition to what they are taxed on their regular earnings.
Very few servers claim anywhere close to 100% of their tips, and they underreport at their own peril. It is incredibly easy to catch who is lying about what they are making. If a server consistently earns, say, 25% of a total bill on their credit card receipts--which are automatically recorded--and then claim only 5-10% from their cash receipts, they are setting themselves up for a great big audit.
Until just earlier this summer, I worked as a waitress. There were about 25 servers on our staff. Only two of us, myself and one other waitress, ever claimed 100%. The other 23 servers, the ones who significantly underreported all the time, were always the ones who did nothing but b!tch about how their state-paid dental coverage got cut, how the price of their kids' assisted lunch payments was increasing, yadda yadda. Do I enjoy paying taxes? Of course not. But I'm not some damn tax evader. They knew what they were doing was wrong, too. We had staff meetings every single month; at each meeting, we were reminded that the law demands we report 100% of our tips.
/rant
Correct on the food, but I have never tipped in Japan, nor was it expected. Some American places in Okinawa may expect tips, but I try not to go to them.
The whole idea behind "tipping" is to leave the your waiter/waitress a little something based on their service to you. If you think it was lousey then you have the right to leave nothing, just as if it was near perfect you can leave up to whatever you wish (I personally have left up to 25% before).
This is what I leave face down on bad service.
What I did not respond fast enough for you? or did you forget that you asked me the same question in an earlier post? ;)
Obviously one does not know the 'career' of every one he waits on. But some are easy to spot:
Cops/firemen, nurses or doctors and teachers are examples. My comments were made based on my experiences mostly with lunches, when people do talk business and one gets a sense of what they do for a living. This is especially true when you see the same groups time and time again.
As for dinner guest, that was different, but here are some guidelines, I garnered over the years:
Older men with younger women usually tip well.
Women together, rarely tip well.
Expense accounts...... usually big bucks!
If the wife pays, the tip will be lousy
Prom nighters.......... better off to take that night off
Saturday night = amateur night
Sunday night - you will work half as hard as you did on Saturday and make the same dollars.
Consider it hazardous duty pay for putting up with boorish customers with an attitude ;-)
Your breakdown is correct, but you neglected to add the value of noticing the watch, shoes, tie.
According to the article, the cooks are to also share in this service fee:
"...the move is intended to reduce the wide disparity in pay between the service staff, such as waiters, wine stewards and busboys, and the sweltering souls who labor in the kitchen."
What do you think of that?
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