Friday, February 22, 2008
Food & Life Do you tip worth a damn?
Posted by Cliff Bostock @cliffbostock on Fri, Feb 22, 2008 at 3:31 PM
Tammy Joyner had an interesting front-page article about tipping in yesterday's Atlanta Journal-Constitution:
By now, it's pretty clear the economic good times have fizzled. Just ask any of the estimated 96,360 workers in Georgia who relied on the generosity of high-rolling customers when the money was flowing and the economy was flourishing.The national cash crunch has put the kibosh on tipping, forcing many of these workers to put in longer hours, take multiple jobs and make cutbacks of their own.
Belt-tightening helps waitress Ebony Thomas pay for groceries and other essentials. She used to earn $300 to $500 a week in tips working at the Depeaux restaurant in Decatur. Not anymore.
Read the entire article here. I'm e-mailing it to several friends who never seem to understand the need to tip good service generously. I admit that when I first started reviewing restaurants, more than 20 years ago, I infrequently tipped more than 15 percent on the bill before sales tax.
But after years of seeing how much difference good service makes, I rarely tip less than 20 percent on the bill, including sales tax. I never punish a server by leaving under 15 percent, as I've seen many people do. Service foul-ups are rare and usually have a rational explanation.
There have been many studies of tipping. Here's one summary of the usual findings, from the blog Marginal Revolution:
What do we know about tipping?
1. Two studies show little relationship between quality of waiter service and size of tip.
2. Hotel bellboys can double the size of their tips, on average, by showing guests how the TV and air conditioning work.
3. Tipping is less prevalent in countries where unease about inequality is especially strong.
4. The more a culture values status and prestige, the more likely that culture will use tipping to reward service.
5. Tips are higher in sunny weather.
6. Servers can increase their tips by giving their names to customers, squatting next to tables, touching their customers, and giving their customers after-dinner mints. (query: how do lap dances fit into this equation?)
7. Drawing a smiley face on the check increases a waitress's tips by 18 percent but decreases a waiter's tips by 9 percent.
8. In one study, waitresses increased their tips by 17 percent by wearing flowers in their hair. In general it pays to look distinctive albeit not freaky.
I'm wondering, especially with the current financial crunch, if American restaurants should go the way of European ones and include service in the cost of the food itself. Many restaurants already add as much as 20 percent for large parties, which seems fair to me.
Opinions?
Comments (8)
Showing 1-8 of 8
Touching customers is risky for a server. A lot of people don't like that kind of familiarity from a stranger. I always thought squatting next to the table was weird.
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There are so many walls around me and I have so many deep rooted emotional issues (mother, my other friends don't get "mommy's special sponge baths," why me?) that if a waitron DARED touch me on the shoulder or even show any kindness or empathy, I would probably go into a total rage. and for god's sake, never seat me at a community table.....
Oh no, it looks like the old Touched by a Waitron argument is rearing it's ugly head again, just like it did in the bitterly fought Calavino's dispute from last year: http://blogs.creativeloafing.com/omnivore/2007/10/02/calavinos-open-and-humming-in-oakhurst/ So many open wounds still unhealed. Can't we just accept that some folks aren't as comfortable with touchy/feely people as others? I'm OK, you're OK. I used to tip 20% of the bill after tax untill a few months ago when my wife told me she prefers to tip 20% before tax. I thought about how much it costs for me to fill up my gas tank these days and figured it might be nice to save a little, so now I tip 20% of the before-tax total (unless the service is exemplary - the I'm more generous).
As a former server(12 years), I never would actually touch the customer, however if the conversation was familiar, easy then I would "air-touch" the customer. Never making actual contact, but impling the familiarity. The name thing definantly works- it personalizes you to the customer. The squatting- I usually did this in a casual/bar type establishment but never when I worked upscale/ fine dining. The best kind of service is when the server can "read" the type of customer you are and adapt the approach ie more formal service for those who don't like intrusive service and jokey/conversational service for the more outgoing.
You're so right, dstenz. It always makes me laugh when people argue that there is only one appropriate way to act as a server. The top job of a server is to read the customer and give them what they want, and people want really different things. I think the most important quality in a waiter, after basic competence, is emotional intelligence.
Besha and dstenz are so right! Just last Friday my boyfriend and I ate at a romantic upscale steakhouse. We were having "Valentine's" dinner because his dad died on Valentine's so we devote actual V Day to going to church and taking kids to dinner to remember their grandpa. Just as the boyfriend gave me a beautifully wrapped little gift and I started to open it, there's the waiter, asking if we're ready to order entrees. (We had already put in appetizer and wine orders, so if he was trying to move us along, that was inappropriate.) We were having a very romantic, meaningful eye contact kind of evening, and he kept intruding ("Everything OK?") at special moments. It was ridiculous. We are normally 25% after tax tippers, which would have made up for us being slow (which we weren't), but this guy certainly blew it by not being able to "read" us. Fortunately, the food and ambience were exceptional (as always at Aspen's) so we had a wonderful eveing despite the annoying waiter.
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