Tipping.Follow

On my way home from work today, I was listening to some local news.

Apparently a woman was fired from her waitress job at a pizza restaurant (not a big chain) because she posted a strongly worded post on Facebook about a group of customers. She mentioned the place she worked at by name, which I guess was a big no-no according to their employee rules.

According to the radio, I guess the group of customers had stayed for a while at the restaurant (I believe it said like... 3 hours). And in the end the women felt under tipped. So the question is; When you tip, do you take into account time as well as bill? Being that this was a smaller, local joint, I'd wager a guess that locals coming in a sitting down and talking for a while is not that unusual.

The only time I've ever stayed at a restaurant for more than a little while is if I was in a large group at a nicer restaurant. Staying and having a few drinks after the meal. I didn't include any extra tip for the time I spent there...

Edited, May 17th 2010 6:06pm by TirithRR

No, but I don't spend hours at a restaurant either.

I try to, yes. It depends on if I'm actually taking up time from them (i.e. needing refills on drinks, etc.) while we're spending extra time sitting there, but ultimately I'm taking up space for another table that would be spending / tipping more than I will in that extra time. That being said, I typically don't sit around for long periods of time after the meal.

Also, I heard that one of her complaints was that they stayed over an hour past when she was supposed to clock out. That argument does not hold as much for me, because it is a fairly simple task to ask the table if they will cash out with the server and have whoever is closing take care of any further needs of theirs.

It was an exaggerated example, and i was assuming both were coming from the same restaurant.

I don't take how much time I spend there into account, but I often eat lunch alone at a sit down restaurant with a book, and I try to tip a little extra, because I know that if it were a party of two, they'd get more.

If I monopolize a table for three hours, and I can't begin to imagine why I would, I certainly hope I'd tip accordingly.

It's always possible that she exaggerated for effect, of course.

In before Ugly teaches you apes how to tip properly.

Did you get pissed off when I... I mean the 'patrons', would switch tables after ordering?

I never had that happen, so who can say.

This, and that's coming from a former server.

Generally if we linger for a while, we tip more than average because we are having fun and the service plays a huge role in that. We generally increase the tip (if service is good) during happy hour because we realize the bill reflects happy hour prices. We also have no problem leaving what the server would be taxed on if service is bad.

I usually do ~15% rounded up to next dollar unless the service is absolutely horrible or amazing. If I'm there for a long time (never +3hrs, but maybe a hour and a half) the server has almost 0 responsibility after the food is done, so I don't see why they would expect a higher tip for minimal extra work? I'm not generally at places where there aren't extra tables for them to tend though, I don't like packed restaurants.

Edited, May 17th 2010 9:03pm by shintasama

Because you are often times directly preventing them from getting more work.