I like saving money and getting a bargain but one area I don’t scrimp on is tipping. I was fortunate that my mom actually taught me about tipping with suggestions on how to figure the tip and who to tip when I was younger so it was something I grew up doing without really giving any thought about.
The first time I drove to a restaurant (when I was a teen) that had valet parking my mom told me to make sure to tip the valet parking attendant, which I wouldn’t have known to do had she not said anything. (I do wish she had reminded me to leave the keys in the car…!)
We know a lot of people in the restaurant/hotel business so occasionally a story will pop up about tipping and the other day someone told me about waiting on a table where the couple said they loved the food, thanked the wait staff profusely for a job well done and then left a dollar tip on a $60.00 meal. My first thought was “Was it possible the couple didn’t know how much to tip, or perhaps they really didn’t like the service and were trying to get a point across?”
I went to several websites that talked about tipping and was amazed at how many people (that leave comments) actually didn’t think they needed to leave a tip when they were already paying for the food and it was the job of the waiter/waitress to serve them. I found this article on tipping guidelines from etiquette experts, “A Cheat Sheet on Tipping Do’s and Don’ts”, and here’s my questions:
- What do you tip and who do you tip?
- Do you leave less of a gratuity when you’re not happy with the service or food?
- Do you leave more when you get excellent service?
- What do you think about the article’s tipping guidelines?
I think that many people don’t realize that in the state of Colorado, wait staff are paid $4.75 per hour and most all of their wages are tips. Makes you wonder if they did know that, they would change their tune? It’s a very sad thing when people put themselves above others based on position and job, very sad.
I try very hard to tip about 20% of what the bill cost. I usually pay the tip in cash when I can even if I paid the food/drink bill by a credit card. I will write in the tip section of my cc bill “cash” so the person doing the books at the end of the day knows that I did take care of my waitress/waiter when it may look like I didn’t. There are times (like the other day) that the service was less then ideal, but I still tipped her, it was only about 13%. Those people work harder then most people realize.
One day my preschool son wanted to go out to breakfast and that he wanted to pay for it. He chose the restaurant and I tough him how to not only go up to the counter and pay the bill but how to leave a tip.
Oh, I almost forgot. I’m not sure if Hallmark stores still sell these or not but they had a plastic card the size of a credit card that you could keep in your wallet that had the amount of the tip to pay based on how much the bill was. I think it was for a 10% tip.