Restaurants and tipping

Freddie_Snowbits

One tried once when I had a meal for my group in Cheltenham. To 50 puntser to place and was advised that a service charge would be made and we will get a wine waiter for the evening, as requested, bill for food, wine waiter to do drinks. (£80 for the privilege of this)

Night came, no wine waiter was available, ownber still tried to slap on service charge.

I said not, and left the appropriate cash and left. Two years on, said place no boarded up.

meritaten

hoyles10 wrote: »

I tend to tip about 10% of the bill but more if we've received a very good standard of service.

18 of us went for a meal over Christmas and we had a really good laugh with the 2 girls serving us. After a few drinks we paid the bill and left a tip which on asking the manager we were told that the tips were split between all the staff, so we asked if we could leave a bit extra for the 2 girls who served us and put up with us all night which he said they could so we all chipped in an extra tenner each so they got a £180 bonus.

A couple of days later we saw one of the girls in town who came over to say thanks very much to us, and after a chat it was nice to know that her and her mate got the whole of the extra £180 we left them.

I must admit if we hadn't had rather a lot to drink then they may not have got such a big tip

could you please tell me WHERE you and your friends go for your christmas meal so that i can apply for a waitress job there? :rotfl:

ellay864

We went out for a meal and had appalling service, we would have left if not for the fact that it was a holiday weekend and a small pub restaurant in the middle of nowhere so if we'd left we'd have gone hungry. When the bill came we saw it had included 10% service charge and we knocked some off - not the full amount but rounded it down, paying by cheque. The waiter was really obnoxious and said we had to pay it all. When we asked to see the manager he refused and handed our cheque back saying he couldnt accept a cheque for that amount. My OH ripped the cheque up and promptly wrote a new one for less, put name and address on the back and told him to get the manager to call if he had a problem. Apparently you're entitled to pay what you think the meal is worth and even the food hadn't been brilliant. Needless to say we didnt hear anything and if I encountered really poor service I'd not hesitate to reduce a bill that included a service charge

bigheadxx

villageidiot wrote: »

As someone who has worked in various restaurants all over the UK including London i'd like to give you the waiter's point of view.
Waiters work long hours,usually split shifts which means working lunch then having an hour or two off then coming back for dinner,and most weekends.
Tips are expected in most restaurants to make up the wages as most waiters are on minimum wage.If no one paid tips then the restaurants would only have to put the price of food up so they could pay the waiter's more as no one would want to work these unsocial hours,and put up with so much !!!! from customers for less than £6 p/h ,especially not in London.
Obviously if you receive bad service you shouldn't be expected to tip.
Another point to the person who said a monkey can do it.There are a massive variety of restaurants out there requiring different skills,from small fine dining to large,ultra busy themed restaurants,and believe me it's a skilled profession.

The staff in the kitchen also work split shifts and at meal times and also earn rhe minimum wage and work at weekends. Why should a waiter who is actually doing no more than picking up a plate and putting it down again get the tip for a product they actually had very little to do with creating.

A waiter who gets £40 p/w in tips is effectively earning nearly £7.50 p/h (as they dont pay tax on it) much more than many jobs that are more highly skilled.

I stopped leaving tips completely when the NMW topped £5 p/h. There is no shortage of people to fill these types of job, thousands of EU workers and international students more than willing to work for this amount of money and with a greater passion than their British counterparts.

boliston

I've noticed receipts often have "discretionary" 12.5% service charge added. Where on earth did they dream up 12.5%, I always thought it's normally 10% in the UK.

I'd be inclined to not leave a tip on principle if they had the cheek to add it to the bill claiming it's "discretionary".

diable

I check the receipt if its added on I leave nothing if it isn't I leave the tip in cash if I pay by card. In bars its another matter as the the exchange rate for tip = alcohol is more beneficial for me, £30 tip = 10 double JD's and coke ;p

qw3rt7

To the OP, yes i agree adding a tip by default is wrong, and adding a charity donation particularly bad, in this instance i would not pay a tip either.

To those that feel tipping is unnecessary, dont tip.

To those that feel tipping is unnecessary because 'any idiot can carry a plate' or 'my jobs much harder and i dont get tipped' etc etc, also, dont tip.
Though bear in mind your attitude is probably conveyed quite clearly to the staff you are demeaning, which will (due to human nature, whether you like it or not) inversely affect your chance of getting good service in the first place.

donquine

It doesn't happen to me very often, but if the service is poor, I don't tip the waiters and I don't go back. I have a limited amount of patience when it comes to incompetence.

If the service is excellent, I will tip up to 15%. If I take a long time to get my bill or the bill is incorrect, the tip goes down. As I said, I don't tip automatically. It's an additional payment and it has to be earned.

If a waiter complained about the level of tip, as was the case for the OP, I would consider that rude and I would not tip anything at all.

I don't always tip taxi drivers - but if one manages to find me a clear route out of heavy traffic or helps me with heavy luggage without being asked, I will tip. If the driver is grumpy and doesn't offer to help me with my things, he gets nothing extra from me. I do try to pay taxi drivers in small notes and coins as I find this is sometimes appreciated as much as tipping them!

I don't see why I should tip a pizza delivery guy. The Tesco.com guy who carries all of my shopping upstairs for me? I'd tip him, if I thought it was acceptable. As no money changes hands, it doesn't really feel appropriate, but he works much harder than the guy carrying one lightweight pizza box.