You Should Tip

[madster11]

I work in the fast food industry (I make $21.98AU per hour, more on saturdays and sundays), I deliver pizzas, and while tipping is not as prevalent or expected as it is in America, we do occasionally get good nights in tips. I'm in Australia, and unlike what Evil Smurf said, tipping does happen, it's just not as common.

In Aus i've noticed that generally only the pizza delivery guys and the high end restaurant workers get tips, and only on occasions.
For example, when my pizza and drink comes to $24 i'll be like 'fuck it' and let the driver keep the $1, and when the servers in a restaurant where you're paying $300+ for a large meal with lots of people at your table have done a good job, keeping up with drink orders and such, generally you throw a $10 or a $20 their way.

 

[w9496]

I would bet that I do considerably more work than a waiter. I have to wait on people, operate the drive-through, and make drinks all at the same time. Much tougher than asking people what they want and having other people make it.

Well whether it's more demanding is debatable but that's not my point. If you make minimum wage or even above, tips shouldn't be expected. Provide outstanding service and I'm sure people will tip just like I do. You sound like you take your job seriously so that's probably a good indicator that you do it well and I hope you are in fact tipped but it shouldn't be expected is all I'm saying.

Yeah, I get your point. It shouldn't be expected for every sale, but if somebody drops $20 on coffee, I'm thinking they could spare a quarter.

 

[AngloDoom]

I only tip for exceptional service, or for a particularly nice transaction. If someone serving me isn't going out of their way for me then I shouldn't feel obliged to go out of my way for them.

That and many establishments where I've been won't allow their staff to keep their tips, but just pour it into the till or similar so there's often no reason to tip in the first place. Then again, as many have said, England gives a significantly higher wage to serving staff because it assumes they're not going to get tips.

 

[thiosk]

Removed for wrong post.

I tip traditionally tipped employees 20%. I don't go out of my way to give every person a buck.

 

[Mycroft Holmes]

No one should ever tip anyone.

Corporations and restaurants should pay them a living wage and determine which employees should be rewarded more than others. Tiping as a practice is retarded. Make me pay more for a hamburger if that's what it costs to pay the employees more.

What about delivery people? My paycheck's decent, but thanks to gas prices and regular car maintenance, I lost anywhere from 40-70% of it just keeping my truck running, and the couple bucks they give us per delivery don't make up for it. Without tips, I don't earn enough to get by on.

I said they should pay you a living wage. If they can not pay you a living wage which includes your costs on gas and maintenance then they should raise the prices and pay you a decent wage. You would not be getting less money by not getting tips, you would simply be getting it directly from the same source without all the added math for everyone, the random fluctuations in pay, and the advent of random variables that have nothing to do with service. Like 'that waitress is cute here have a larger tip.' granted usually everyone on a shift puts all their tips into a pot and then splits it evenly but its still a retarded criterion. And if prices need to go up to pay for it, then they should. Think of it as a mandatory tip included in the price increase and distributed through your pay check in an even amount based on how valuable you are to the company(and/or how strong your collective bargaining skills are.)

 

[Kefo]

I tip if the waiter deserves it. If we get dismal service or screwed up orders then you get jack all(unless you are new and learning the job, then some slack is cut as everyone makes mistakes)

As for your examples about not using flour that had spiders in it. Congradulations you did absolutely nothing of worth. As someone else said you are just a part of the problem. Next time you take photo proof or show other coworkers who have a backbone and contact your local health department.

For those who may get angry about tipping, yes I have worked in a restaurant setting for 3 years and currently I am QA in a meat plant where we do constant Listeria, salmonella and E. coli testing among other things to make sure people dont get sick or die and you dont see me demanding a tip for making sure your food is up to standard.

 

[lunavixen]

In Aus i've noticed that generally only the pizza delivery guys and the high end restaurant workers get tips, and only on occasions.
For example, when my pizza and drink comes to $24 i'll be like 'fuck it' and let the driver keep the $1, and when the servers in a restaurant where you're paying $300+ for a large meal with lots of people at your table have done a good job, keeping up with drink orders and such, generally you throw a $10 or a $20 their way.

That is what happens in most cases, I work in a gourmet pizza shop, i'm the only female driver there, but I do work in shop as well, the only thing I don't do is make pizzas because of my seafood allergy. Getting off track here, I tend to get tips on pretty much all the nights i'm working, and I've had some decent nights in tips, and the section i've bolded of your text is pretty much what happens all the time, but on some occasions people who pay with credit cards will tip us anyway. I've always believed not to expect tips, that way it's not a disappointment when you don't get them, but a surprise when you do

 

[MiriaJiyuu]

Tip the cashier for having to deal with your complaint. It wasn't the cashiers fault the fry cook sucks.

The cashier doesn't have to deal with my complaints, they just don't have to get my money again when there are other places to buy food.
And whilst its not the Cashiers fault that the burger is falling apart, it is their fault that there's icecream leaking out of my McFlurry, sticky sauce all over the sides, half my drink down my cup and various other problems that are becoming more and more common at my local fast food chains. People there these days don't care as much, and will just pump out stuff as fast as they can with little care for the quality. Doesn't happen every time, but these days its about 1/3 of the times I go, which is far too often for me to continue to use such services.

You know that if a person isn't nice when they order their food or whatever the person behind the counter doesn't give two shits whether it's right or not? In fact I've had people who were so rude when ordering their food I PURPOSELY screwed it up just so they would never come back, and if they did, well they certainly don't get better service but I will usually subtly, or perhaps rudely, suggest that they treat me like a human being if they want to be treated like one.

See here's my thing, you pull up to the speaker, I say "Hello, Welcome to (wherever), may I take your order?" From there, if you are nice, I will steadily be nicer to you, if you are rude, I will slowly be more rude to you. You start off neutral, and you get service in accordance with how well you treat me, I'm not going to smile to your face if your an asshole, I'm going to flat out tell you to leave. Golden Rule people, golden rule.

As for tipping myself, I always tip wherever I go, and I leave a good tip, and hey guess what? I get good, friendly service every single time I return. Anyone who expects good service for being an asshole is seriously fooling themselves.

 

[Joccaren]

You know that if a person isn't nice when they order their food or whatever the person behind the counter doesn't give two shits whether it's right or not? In fact I've had people who were so rude when ordering their food I PURPOSELY screwed it up just so they would never come back, and if they did, well they certainly don't get better service but I will usually subtly, or perhaps rudely, suggest that they treat me like a human being if they want to be treated like one.

See here's my thing, you pull up to the speaker, I say "Hello, Welcome to (wherever), may I take your order?" From there, if you are nice, I will steadily be nicer to you, if you are rude, I will slowly be more rude to you. You start off neutral, and you get service in accordance with how well you treat me, I'm not going to smile to your face if your an asshole, I'm going to flat out tell you to leave. Golden Rule people, golden rule.

As for tipping myself, I always tip wherever I go, and I leave a good tip, and hey guess what? I get good, friendly service every single time I return. Anyone who expects good service for being an asshole is seriously fooling themselves.

I am far too shy to even contemplate being rude. Indecision is the worst people get from me, but normally I'll be cheerfully ordering whilst talking with friends. I end up with sub-par service, along with everyone else who uses the restaurant at the very least during that shift, because the people behind the counter are either incompetent, even though they know what they're doing, or lazy. One night it was only half the shift being lazy. If you ordered from two of the five people serving, they would tell you the soft serve and milkshake machine was broken - right as the other 3 people decided to use it to get milkshakes/sundays/30c cones for their customers. I don't call them out on it, as said I'm too shy to be confrontational, but they didn't get my service again.
If I were to break social convention and actually tip someone, it would be for good service, or if I caused something to go wrong. Sub-par service is not deserving of a tip - your golden rule works both ways.

As for tipping everywhere you go, that's unconventional here. Few places even have a jar for tips, and absolutely nobody actually expects any. Good service is something that in all respectable restaurants you're expected to give if you want to keep your job. Sadly, in most fast food chains in my area, both the managers and the workers don't really care. I have sat beside people I know who work in such places whilst they proudly proclaim and laugh about what they did on shift last night, i.e: turning the radio up for "I just had sex" and dancing around back to it with the manager rather than doing their job.
As I'm sure I've said, it hasn't always been this way. Once upon a time, probably 2-3 years back, I got decent service at McDonald's, and I put any change I got into the donations box instead because of this. These days I don't even go to McDonald's because of how their service has changed. There are two fast food chain shops I go to now. One being a KFC that manages to provide good service, and the other being a Hungry Jack's that my friends work at as either managers, servers or fry cooks, and in doing so they try to keep the quality good when their on shift. When they're not, it does noticeably decrease.

 

[Creator002]

Being brought up and still living in Australia, I don't tip very often. If I get a pizza delivered to my door and it's $38, I'll give the guy $40 and tell him to just keep the change. At fast food restaurants like McDonald's or Hungry Jack's,[footnote]Australia's Burger King[/footnote] I let them keep change if it's a dollar or less unless the cashier's service was appalling, in which case I'll wait for even 5 cents change.
I use my debit card quite a lot, however, so there's usually no chances to tip in the first place.

EDIT - I just realised that if I tip for fast food places, the cashier and staff don't actually get the money I tip. It just goes into the register and then into the store's profits. I think I'll get that change back from now on. Put it into the charity boxes they have at the counter or something.

 

[ATRAYA]

Are you freaking kidding me? You think people should tip you because you work at a place of business that shouldn't exist in the first place? If the profit margins are too low to even keep a minimum level of acceptable standard, the place should be shut down. Either by the owners themselves or by the authorities. Places like that are the reason we need more regulation.

So your solution to his whining is that instead of making a little extra pocket money, he should LOSE HIS INCOME ALTOGETHER? Sounds like a plan to me.

No, I'm saying he shouldn't have a job there in the first place because that place shouldn't exist.

There are other jobs.

If there are so many other jobs available, why on EARTH would he still work there? Sorry, but some communities are so bad it's either pain and suffering for minimum wage or death.

Sweatshops in Indonesia shouldn't exist either, yet they persist. And you know what? If you closed them down, all the kids that work themselves to the bone for almost nothing would most likely have to be killed (so the family doesn't have another mouth to feed), or sold, since the family NEEDS the pitiful amount of income the child brings in.

 

[SushiJaguar]

Having worked at my first job for a while now and recently being fired for moving storefront displays around to aid disabled customers, this thread makes me feel so much better about the whole affair and my subsequent hard-on for tipping every damn person in the world. It's not always a lot, usually just whatever change comes out of a note, but now I can feel happier in going the extra mile and tucking a spare tenner in the waiter's sleeve when I go to a restaurant.

 

[Starik20X6]

It's my understanding that the 'tipping culture' only exists because the minimum wage in the US is so appallingly, catastrophically low. I think it's terrible that part of the reason wages are so low is the assumption that the workers will make up the difference in tips.

 

[The_R3d_Fury]

Pay them extra for doing their job? NO WAY!

However, I think that our minimum pay is higher, so if we had lower minimum wage then maybe.

 

[thePyro_13]

I don't tip, I avoid places that ask me to tip. The wait staff should be paid by their employer. That's the way things are in Australia.

It's a sad state that these places are able to charge full price for meals and then not pay their employees a reasonable wage. Then expect their customers to pay full price and then pay extra to cover the employees wages?

These places must be making a killing in the US if that's the way it operates. Many bushiness would love to stop paying their employees if they could convince customers to throw a few coins at them on the way out of the store.

 

[Vicarious Reality]

That is it, i am never eating fast food again

 

[Vegosiux]

So you're condoning child labor. Okay...

He's not and you know that.

I mean if his post would imply he condones that, your posts would imply that you are condoning letting people die of starvation.

Also, blatantly dishonest ad hominem attacks without actually replying to what people say? Report material, have a nice day.

 

[IamLEAM1983]

I feel like mandatory tipping culture is somehow stupid, like those sales jobs you get that pay per sale.

Go to any of the Atlantic Provinces in Canada and get a Coffee from Tim Hortons and not give a tip, and see how fast you get angry glares from your fellow customers, let alone the staff.

A large coffee is $1.79, you're most likely paying with a toonie, give the person behind the counter the $0.21.

This. If you're receiving a service, unless you're really, really, RIDICULOUSLY good friends with the waiter or service provider, you're better off tipping.

There's a restaurant my family and I has been going to for upwards of twenty years. We're not celebrities by any stretch of the word, but the management and waiting staff more or less knows when to expect me or my folks. I remember tipping a waitress who's almost freaking FAMILY to me; and this is the only instance where I've ever been able to get away with not calculating the rate properly. I suck at math, so I sometimes don't give properly scaled tips.

We've known each other forever, like I said, so it passed. She knows I suck at calculating tips, so she doesn't hold it against me or ask for the difference. I've bungled my tips in other restaurants before, however, and the glares...

Well, the glares are something to remember. Politeness iced over with a metric fuckton of frost, until you finally catch on to your mistake and realize it's too damn late to drop the missing twenty-five cents somewhere.

I can definitely agree with the notion that tips are serious business, in Canada.

 

[Divine Miss Bee]

i live in the states, but i never tip for fast food and if i do tip for delivery it's because the driver wasn't so late that the food got cold (a rare occurrence). i tip in a restaurant based on how good the food was, hoe clean the dishes were, and how good the service was. starting at a 20% tip and take off for each thing on my shit list, most servers walk away with a 10% tip from me. i pay a lot of money when i go out to eat, i'm not paying more for the privilege of being ignored by a server or for a driver to get high in the back of his car so he's late.

 

[Ed130 The Vanguard]

I find tipping to be a strange American custom, giving you extra money so that in return you provide decent service?

If you go above and beyond your duty to provide for the customers sure, but for just saying hi to me when I order...