Is it a ‘thank you for prepping my room’ or ‘please clean my room today’? If you tip post cleaning, it’s likely going to someone else the next day. Many hotels now only do housekeeping on demand. How do employees feel about this - do they miss the tips or are they happy for a less stressful workday?
ETA- I’m in the US. Does the rest of the world tip housekeeping? I always have when traveling because I do at home, but I don’t know what the norm is.
The 15% of a meal thing never made sense to me either. Does it take any more work to carry a $60 steak to a table than it does a $15 steak?
It’s not My job to pay some company’s employees a living wage when I don’t even make a living wage myself.
I feel that way about bars - expensive wine is not harder to open than cheap wine. Had a fight with my husband about it because he once ordered a VERY expensive drink and then started to tip 20% on it.
In the UK a few pubs have started the “how much would you like to tip?” When you pay by card.
When I see that, it’s always the last pint I buy from there.
Tipping is not customary here. People tip if they think the service is exceptional or they might “buy the bar tender a drink” if they want to build a relationship as a regular. I’m not OK with this shitty American culture creeping in.
I’m not defending restaurants or owners, but I feel the need to say for the sake of servers that their hourly wage is usually “minimum tipped” which is lower than minimum wage and the business must make up the difference between minimum tipped wage and minimum wage if the worker didn’t make enough in tips to cross that threshold. Minimum tipped here in VA is $2.13/hour. My wife and I are DINKs in a 2BR apartment that charges $3k/month for rent and fees, no utilities included. We’re obviously not servers, but wouldn’t it be nice if it were a liveable wage here so that servers wouldn’t need to commute long distance from somewhere cheaper and farther away? Full time work in an area should be able to afford living in the area. That might help with the staffing issues which cause complaints, which would make customers have a better experience and be more likely to tip.
TL;DR: Servers don’t make shit without your tips, and your service is spotty because there are staffing shortages because nobody wants to work for peanuts and right now there’s a loophole that allows tipped employees to be paid peanuts.
Vote to remove the loophole and raise the minimum wage so your service can be better and we can remove the tipping culture you hate so much. Idk who is running with this policy in mind, but if you’re passionate about it and it’s nobody yet, run for some political office in your area. Change for the better starts at your local level.
if your getting the same service at a place that charges 15 vs 60 a steak that’s pretty bad. it’s not just carrying the food.
It’s a percentage because the $60 steak was assumably at a nicer restaurant where you received more in depth service.
Fine dining servers may only have a couple of tables at once, or even for the entire night. You’re paying more for more individual attention.
It also scales in reverse. A server on a shift with a $10 blue plate special will probably have 10 tables before things go off the rails. They’ll also put serious work into getting your ass off that table the minute your plate is clean.
The reason why restaurant tipping is usually percentage based is because the level of service expected scales with the price of the items on the menu. The expectations on servers in fine-dining is a lot higher than a neighbourhood pub and so is the price.
If I tip I generally do it based on the work/effort rather than the price.