Gratuitous Gratuity Thread

[Steve]

Please tip your waiter or waitress on your way out.

[Long John]

I'm grandly grateful for the gratuitous gratuity you so graciously ingratiated.

[Gregg]

There is a fat pitch waiting for you in post #33 in the Gratuitous Religion thread.

[nullnor]

except exceptional service is now when the server doesn't eyeball and cuss you out for driving a huge hovercraft that you can't see over the steering wheel.

[Kevin Seitzer]

Except I expect exceptional service and will accept no exceptions.

[Long John]

In Belgium, there is no tipping.

[Gregg]

In Belgium, there is no tipping.

But there is legal business bribing.

[Gregg]

It's less common to tip in most places in the world than it is common. The United States easily has the highest tip % of any country I've been to. There is no tipping in Australia. Tipping is pretty uncommon in most of Europe. Tipping small amounts is okay but not necessarily expected (depending on the task) in South America and Southeast Asia.

So if you tip at any of these non-tipping places do you get the best service?

[B-Fly]

People are just shocked and usually try to give you your money back.

Service varies greatly from country to country. It's really good in Australia in the places we went despite the no-tipping. I have no idea why anyone would work as a waiter, personally, without tips. The minimum wage in Australia is an impressive $15.50 / hour so there are no such things as jobs that don't provide enough with a 40 hour work week to live on. That's pretty awesome.

From a performance management/performance incentive perspective, I think there is some value to establishing a tipping component/culture to remuneration for certain customer-service transactions.

[Gregg]

People are just shocked and usually try to give you your money back.

Service varies greatly from country to country. It's really good in Australia in the places we went despite the no-tipping. I have no idea why anyone would work as a waiter, personally, without tips. The minimum wage in Australia is an impressive $15.50 / hour so there are no such things as jobs that don't provide enough with a 40 hour work week to live on. That's pretty awesome.

It must be pretty expensive to eat out there?

[Gregg]

The thing that sucks here in the US for servers/waiters is that they get taxed on 15% of all sales, assuming that they get tipped 15% which is, of course, not always the case. So any time you short your server, he's getting taxed on money he never made.

The only time my server ever gets shorted is if they have a bad attitude and give bad service. I do not hold them accountable for bad food.

[heyelander]

The thing that sucks here in the US for servers/waiters is that they get taxed on 15% of all sales, assuming that they get tipped 15% which is, of course, not always the case. So any time you short your server, he's getting taxed on money he never made.

You've gotta have a pretty ****ty night to not average 15% though... even if one person doesn't hit it.

[Long John]

Plus, if one person walks out on a check, you're f***ed for the night.

[bryanbutler]

..........

[Long John]

They cut it off at the best part - where the old man comes in and basically makes Mr Pink put in a buck. Great scene.