Weblog Awards
Best Canadian Blog
2004 - 2007
Why this blog?
Until this moment I have been forced to listen while media and politicians alike have told me "what Canadians think". In all that time they never once asked.
This is just the voice of an ordinary Canadian yelling back at the radio -
"You don't speak for me."
homepage
email Kate
(goes to a private
mailserver in Europe)
I can't answer or use every tip, but all are appreciated!
Katewerk Art
Support SDA
I am not a registered charity. I cannot issue tax receipts.
Want lies?
Hire a regular consultant.
Want truth?
Hire an asshole.
The Pence Principle
Poor Richard's Retirement
Pilgrim's Progress
Trump The Establishment
“for the most part, people, on average tip between 15% – 20% and the restaurant worker actually has to claim 15% of that to the IRS.”
The worker ACTUALLY has to claim their income! Do people know about this?!? This is shocking, next thing you know someone will come up with a 9-9-9 plan and want EVERYONE to pay taxes!
What have we come to, wanting working people to contribute to the tax base…
Tips are To Inspire Prompt Service.
I want prompt service, service with a smile, and I want the server to ask me how the food is.
Why should food servers(only some food servers too) get to expect tips anyhow?
It seems to me that this is an enforced cultural expectation.
I think that mandatory tipping defeats the purpose of tipping.
I bartended for 6 years,and depended heavily on my tips,I had to be good if I wanted the cash.I have only hit a few places where the tip is included in the bill,and in both cases that fact was not mentioned,though there was a sign stating that,which was pointed out after I questioned the bill. First and last visit in both cases.
Now to contradict everything that I have written,remember to tip your mailman.
I think the postmenopausal ugly hags and the metrosexual fairies that serve as flight attendants on Air Canada should get half their income from tipping from the passengers.
That should improve things pretty quickly.
All that the restaurants had to do to implement this was raise prices by 25% and then give 20% of the revenues to the waiters. It probably would have been a whole lot less controversial (in fact, I wonder how many of the fools who patronize San Francisco’s restaurants would even have noticed).
In 1975 – I know, I know, that’s ancient history – I first experienced mandatory tipping. It was in the Bahamas and it was standard practice there at the time. 20% as I recall. Not unexpectedly, service was lousy – truly awful. They just didn’t give a damn (why should they)? Don’t know about now, I haven’t been back. And if San Francisco is stupid enough to do the same, I won’t go back there, either.
If the pols ever do something like this in my area that will be the end of any visits to restaurants for me and mine.
First of all, you should treat people as you expect to be treated.
Secondly, if one is being paid to provide a service, anything extra is as it is termed: a gratuity. Be very polite, efficient, ect, get a little extra.
Thirdly, this entitlement crap has got to go. No one has to pay you a tip, no matter what the prevailing culture dictates. Be happy you get anything at all and work for it.
Stick a fork into California. It’s done.
Tipping is awful. Just ban it. Then you can stop agonizing about how much you have to give some surly waitress somewhere to make sure she doesn’t spit in your drink next time. The whole thing is so fraught.
They don’t tip in Australia. “Oy! Hello! Ya left some change on the table!” – this honestly happened to me. Where would you rather live?
I have an awesome solution to this whole problem: don’t eat out. The food is generally crap from a can microwaved by unskilled teens, the place is generally noisy as hell, and the wait staff act like you’re in their way. I should pay money for this?
McDonalds is better, particularly if I eat in the truck, because then I get to pick the music. The food is essentially the same.
There is one rather nice restaurant in Cayuga, the Twisted Lemon. They try really hard to make the gastronomic experience worthwhile. Expensive, but their chef can actually make things better than I can at home. That’s worth going out for.
“McDonalds is better, particularly if I eat in the truck, because then I get to pick the music. The food is essentially the same.”
I give and I give and I give, and just occasionally, a little gratitude would go a long way…
I guess these people missed the lesson in demand elasticity.
Mandatory tips? What a moronic idea.
To Insure Prompt Service, guys. If you give me no service, you get no tip. Take your mandatory and shove it.
I have an awesome solution to this whole problem: don’t eat out. The food is generally crap from a can microwaved by unskilled teens, the place is generally noisy as hell, and the wait staff act like you’re in their way.
~the Phantom
Pretty much my restaurant experience.
Most restaurant music these days is bad for the digestion and seems to have been selected for the tastes of the staff rather than the diners.
When I go to a fast food joint, I expect food fast. When I go to a sit down restaurant, I expect great service along with a great atmosphere; and when I am expected to pay a 25% tip without a guaranteed great experience I’m staying at home.
It’s not mandatory to eat out by the way.
WORK for your money ?
no-no-no-no-NO…that’s not the new American Way.
The ‘new’ way is to be paid for doing nothing and demand that it be taken from anyone who has enough money to eat out becaujse they obviously need to ‘share their wealth’
in 5 years, the USA will be gone…if ‘bama and the moonbats win another term
Out here in lala land, watch out for Olive Garden and Boston Pizza.
Automatic tipping for groups of 10 or more.
If we go there (almost never) it is just the ma and kids.
Auto-tipping should be outlawed, but, hey, let the market prevail and put those premises out of business, all by themselves.
I put myself through university working as a waiter. The only time I expected a mandatory service charge was for large parties – where everyone argues about what they owe at the end of the night, and I end up stiffed – and on special nights, like New Year’s, when we had a prix fixe special and many guests just assumed service was included.
But I did learn something about human psychology. If I gave what I thought was excellent service – everything delivered promptly and just at the right time (i.e. not bringing out the main courses when the guests were still working on their appetizers), clearing dirty dishes quietly and efficiently, refilling wine and water glasses without being asked, etc. – my tips averaged about 12%. But, when I made a deliberate mistake, and then suddenly realized in front of the guests what I’d done, and promptly fixed it – my tips shot up to between 15-25%. This always amazed me, but it was pretty consistent.
BTW, one of my first paying jobs was pumping gas (remember those days?). I would run out to the cars, clean all the glass, check the oil, etc. I got tipped there, and I think I earned them.
Some Boston Pizza restaurants have a communistic type tipping system. All the tips are pooled and divided equally at the end of the evening. A bad server cannot be penalized because they will get a share of the tips regardless of how much or how little personality they brought to work that particular evening.
nold
many restaurants work like that.
Tim Horton’s, for one……and they do it because it’s ‘not fair’ for one person, to earn a special gift.
Our society is just on big crib full of crybabies
DanBC:
Don’t fault restaurants like Boston Pizza for requesting a gratuity for large parties (conflict alert: I know Jim Treliving, owner of BP, and like him). The logistics of accomodating large parties so as to ensure that everyone gets their food at more or less the same time can be very onerous. Much extra staff effort is required. I don’t think an extra charge is unreasonable under those circumstances.
Having said that, I have travelled extensively in Europe, where in a number of countries, a 15% gratuity was included in the bill. Not a problem for me except in Paris…the fact of having a waiter (who under different circumstances I’d probably punch out) sneer at me for my choices was grating….
The FIRST thing I know ask any waiter/ress who comes to my table at any place I eat out is “are you expecting a TIP”. If the answer is no,I stay.If no answer or some leftie tripe about service,I leave,and make damn sure the owner and other patrons know why.
And the few times I have been to BP or other such places,the good ones have gotten a tip,outside, as I asked them to hold the door for me.That way hopefully the other commies working there didn’t see and get a chance to rat them out.NEVER leave your bucks on the table as a tip!!
Tipping, one of those favourite subjects that everyone has a story or opinion on.
First of all, I’m sorry to hear Phantom’s sense of taste is gone. Anyone who thinks Mickey D’s stuff is food has my sympathy.
i remember pumping gas too. that’s when you gave good service with the gas. Bar tended too, and kept what tips I earned but always gave the bottle picker/swamper a cut if they earned it.
Been to Oz and daughter both waited and bartender there. Pay them fair wages they do and if anyone went above and beyond then they deserved any tips.
In most places the mandatory tipping for large parties is only to prevent the wait staff from being stiffed. I’ve seen more than one cheap bastard scoop up all the money on the table and then pay the cashier the exact amount and pocket the rest. Everyone else assumes their tip got to the deserving one. Daughter waited in Canada too and it happens more often than you think.
Also, in Oz, if the cab fare was $19.75 then by golly you got back change!
I tip when I think it is deserved, even at Timmies although, for average service my change goes to the Timmies Kid Camp box.
DanBC, you tip at Timmies? Why? I have to check EVERY TIME to make sure my bacon sandwich isn’t a sausage one, they should get tips for this?
I’ve only ever worked in restaurants in the kitchen. Cooks, the chef, the kids that clean up, none of them get tips. They just get paid. Worked for me.
Tipping is a decadent French custom from the time of serfs and Lords, I don’t think its decent in a free society of equals.
But then as I said above, I don’t eat out.
TC:
Anyone who thinks Mickey D’s stuff is food has my sympathy.
Off topic, but funny: In today’s National Post, there was a story about Russian mobsters in jail who paid off the warden to get special favours, such as plasma TV’s, booze, etc. But the funniest line in the story was about “the crime lords feasting on caviar and McDonald’s take-out”.
A tip is not a wage subsidy. Everyone from the tax pettifoggers to the cheapskate restaurant owners needs to realize that. You want to bring a mandatory 25% surcharge? I have a better idea: get the restaurant owner to bump up the wages he pays you and bump his prices up accordingly. Then we can look at the menu and figure out what the meal is going to cost us and decide whether his fare is worth the cost. In fact, that is the ONLY acceptable solution. The other way actually smacks of false advertising. That’s what it is when the price charged is different from the price advertised, isn’t it?
I know you’ve all heard this one before but just the same….Over 30 years ago a couple we know were in Vegas and they took a taxi downtown and left the driver a 10% tip, well just under 10%, a keep-the-change tip. As they were about to step into the casino they felt the change hit the back of their heads. “Keep your chicken shit,” the cabbie shouted at them, “I don’t want it”.
When you learn of some issue or trend that finds traction in Cali …. the only reasonable thing to do is mock it and the source.
Anyone who feels obliged to follow California trends in this day and age is just too effin stupid for words.
Some Boston Pizza restaurants have a communistic type tipping system. All the tips are pooled and divided equally at the end of the evening.
Posted by: nold at October 14, 2011 8:32 PM
I worked as a busboy in my youth at a fairly high class restaurant. They used the same system, because it wasn’t just one person waiting a table, it was a group effort. The Maitre d made sure no one gave bad service – anyone who did was out of there in a hurry. It was a good and fair system.
But mandatory tips? BS!
Some former schoolmates and I got together for a very small 25th anniversary grad reunion & golf weekend – there were only four of us, from a class of ten. We went to a local restaurant, where, quite frankly, we acted like jerks, keeping the waitress working hard with our stupid and boisterous demands for more drinks, etc. Yet the whole time, she never stopped smiling, and I never saw a look of disgust on her face from a distance. The steak was excellent and service never faltered. For a total bill of about $75, she ended up with an $80 tip! All we asked when giving that tip was to make sure the cook got something.
California is dead. Dying with a Marxist riddled America.
The food is generally crap from a can microwaved by unskilled teens, the place is generally noisy as hell, and the wait staff act like you’re in their way. I should pay money for this?
Exactly!!! I don’t eat anywhere I’m expected to tip, and I NEVER eat at McD’s.
There are plenty of other alternatives for much better, freshly cooked, counter service food.
If you want to see what’s actually served in most franchise restaurants browse the frozen entree [TV dinner] section of the grocery store. Very expensive crap.
If you want healthy food learn how to cook.
A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.
– Robert Heinlein
Isn’t “Saint of San Andreas” redundant?
Where markets are allowed to function, during times of high unemployment, there should be downward pressure on wages and benefits. Keeping wages and benefits artificially high keeps unemployment high. Kalifornia didn’t get the memo. They will get the inevitable consequences.
I’m a vile person, a really appalling excuse for a human being, and yet I always tip generously.
I know what you’re thinking. Ain’t it funny how slime tips away?