First of all, I cannot wait for people to take this the wrong way. Even as these are my first words, I know people will take this the wrong way. I don’t care, I’m going to talk about it anyway. The following are two completely made up graphs:
I could run a real survey, maybe, but the results would be pretty much the same. I think if I made any mistakes, it would be not giving the Maybes enough of a percentage in the non-restaurant workers group.
I’m a good person, I tip between 15% and 20% depending on how well I was treated (I just made several enemies saying sometimes I only tip 15%). I’d say on average, I give 18% (I just made several more enemies that realized I don’t always tip at least 20%). I’m confident in my choices, so I don’t have any shame over this but that doesn’t stop people from trying to shame me.
One time I was out at a bar and I ordered a drink. I tipped the customary $1.00 for my beer. The person I was with tipped $2.00 and had to tell me that he always tips $2.00 for the first drink and $1.00 for each drink after that. Great. I don’t even understand the logic there. Maybe if he tipped $5 on that first drink it would be a meaningful gesture but one extra dollar on just the first drink? I guess it’s still nice but seems unnecessary unless it’s for a cocktail and also for each subsequent cocktail.
The other day I was out at a restaurant and the bill came by and was for about $43 including tax and, after using this fun tool, would be about $39.50 before tax. (Tip, of course being calculated pre-tax, for those out of the loop.) A 15% tip on $39.50 would be $5.93, a 20% tip would be $7.90. We paid $50 in cash and waited for change for a number of reasons. The first being that there was a supposed 5% discount for paying in cash (I surmise that it was actually a 5% fee for using a credit card but this was never made clear to us). The second is that it was never specified nor asked of us if we wanted change, so the assumption is that we’ll be getting change. Thirdly, the service was nothing special, so an assumed 18% tip ($7.11) is not really okay. The change never came. We sat for a while in the restaurant and nobody bothered to address us. Realizing the change was never coming, I walked up to the cashier’s area for take-out and asked for the change. They said they thought we were settled. I wish I shouted, “You can’t tip shame me!” from the rooftop. Instead, we were paid our change and gave most of it back for tip because that’s how that works!
