Tipping

[float_6969]

It's not so much illegal as that the IRS has taken away it's ability to be unclaimed taxable income. The reason resturants are able to pay less than minimum wage is because the servers are SUPPOSED to claim all of their tips. Anyone who has been in the foodservice industry knows this is rarely done, and is one of the VERY FEW "perks" of food service. No restaurant is going to want to give up the ability to pay the servers less than minimum wage, so they won't charge the fixed gratuity for large tables.

I can tell you from being a server, forced gratuity is a double edged sword, and it's ALWAYS a gamble. Some tables will flat you tell you that forcing the tip on them made them tip less than they would have otherwise, others are fine with it, and make up the difference between the tip charged and the tip they wanted to give you, and other times, it was the ONLY way you would have gotten paid by that table.

[PapaSmurf2k3]

Yeah that was a pretty interesting article. I'm always caught off guard when I see the auto gratuity added in. Usually I don't catch it until after I've already tipped 20% haha.

[Rogue One]

Yeah that was a pretty interesting article. I'm always caught off guard when I see the auto gratuity added in. Usually I don't catch it until after I've already tipped 20% haha.

Got a quick story. Friend that owns a local sandwich shop near the beach told me about a woman that went off on him for charging for Gravity. She said he couldn't charge for something God provided for free!

[themadscientist]

She probably spells god with a W.

[frapjap]

I'm in the 15% to 20% range.

I'll never go below 10% unless the server offends me or pisses me off.
I'll go over 20% if the server is really fun and on the ball or goes out of their way to be above and beyond normal.

One thing I struggle with.. and I'm curious about what other people think.. I tend to adjust my percentage based on the price range..
If I'm at a local breakfast diner and the total bill is like $15 or something for 4 of us.. I'll tip higher than 20% I think the server deserves more than $3 for taking care of me and my family. On the flip side.. On one of those very rare occasions when my wife and I might go out to a higher end place that might cost $80 or more for just two of us.. I have a hard time tipping a 20% ($16) or higher.. I tend to gravitate to something closer to 15%. I don't think the high end restaurant server deserves 5x more tip than the cheap neighborhood diner server. The latter probably works harder.

Anyone else adjust tip based on the total bill? Am I off base on that?

Totally justifiable, I do the same thing. Feels wrong to tip the server less than you normally would just because they're on a different shift.
One thing I also adjust for is "food and beverage tax," or "hotel tax," or "convention tax," etc. Some of these taxes can be up to 18%, alone of combined, (screw you, Chicago/Boston) and I typically will not tip on the full total based on taxes, and even less so if the service is mediocre.

[Looneybomber]

I'm with Eikon,

If I order a cheap $6 breakfast with water, and they bring me numerous glasses of water (always thirsty in the morning), then should they get a dollar for a 15% tip? Flip side, I went to a restaurant where the steak was $30 and each side was $5. If I had one $6 beer should they get a bigger tip than "breakfast" server? No, they did less work. I like to tip by the amount of work they do.

Here's a quick story. On an $83 bill I left ZERO tip and the final $3 was in pocket change. We were in NY at some restaurant for about 2hrs. We saw our server once to take our order, and maybe again to bring out some of the food, otherwise it was kitchen staff that brought out the food in their dirty clothes and occasionally refilled glasses. Horrible.

On the flip side, I've tipped over 100% when squatting places for hours after drinking at the bars, waiting to sober up enough to drive.