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Should tipping be banned?


Maltaran

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Do people normally get paperwork when they're buying drinks in a bar?

 

Assuming the by 'paperwork', we're talking about a bill or a receipt, yes, it's somewhere between 'pretty common' and 'standard' here in the US, especially at cocktail bars like the one AG is talking about.

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Do people normally get paperwork when they're buying drinks in a bar?

If you are running a tab and paying by card, then there's definitely going to be paper involved. If you pay cash they usually make you pay each round, and there's often no paper involved (aside from the cash). These are usually the two options but at places where they know me they run the tab under my first name, I don't have to give them a card, and I pay cash at the end. Sometimes there's paperwork, sometimes not.
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Back in the day, we had a couple waitresses running coupon scams.

We were a chain restaurant. As a result, coupons went out on a regular basis, usually of the 'buy one, get one free,' variety. Couponing was also used to fix customer issues: customer complained, they were offered a discount equal to whatever the coupon was. Because the coupons themselves were mass mailed, we kept a few extra ones around just for this sort of fix.

Customer would pay full price. Waitress (who was dang 'hot') would ring up purchase as if they had a coupon and pocket the difference. She was collecting something like an extra fifty bucks a day. Eventually, though, the higher ups started wondering at the spike in coupon orders (and the shortage of coupons). She was fired, but not prosecuted.
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I don't think tips should be banned but I would support a ban on the loophole that allows restaurants to pay under the states minimum wage. I recently had a relative who was working for one of the YUM! brand restaurants and when they hired him he was told his wages would never be less than the minimum wage. That turned out to be untrue. Thankfully the young man moved onto a more honest retail employer eventually, but in my mind he was being stolen from by a large corporation. Disgusting practice, but it does happen, especially in low traffic areas being managed by people barely making above a minimum wage themselves.

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We had our own unique scam going that then made the rest of our lives more difficult.  When I started serving tables the restaurant used a system that would not allow us to do split checks for one table without a manager's code.  We could not figure this out and it wasn't until a Christmas party that the DM let us in on why.  The problem with the system was that you could move items around between checks (because often you don't know who is paying for what until the end of the meal), and they would show on the receipt, but they didn't charge the restaurant until the bill was finalized.

 

SO, a person who put five sodas down on his first table could then, by running EVERY table he got as one large split check , move the drinks around for the rest of the night while only closing it out once at the end.  In effect, this system allowed him to pocked $1.85 for every soda he sold past his first table or two for the rest of the night.  No one knows how long he ran this but on a busy night this was worthy at least 50 dollars.

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Some bars have a "house tab" for comped drinks, so it's possible your drinks went on there and thus didn't show up on your receipt. (Or he may be stealing. Where I worked if we comped a drink it would be listed as $0.00 on the bill. I think this is better practice anyway so the patron can see it. Better for tips too!)

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  • 3 months later...
  • 11 months later...

Bumping this topic to ask a tipping question.  Scenario:

In a hotel in the UK.  Dinner served to room.  Like a nice dinner, not just ordering room service.  It is Christmas.

I feel that even though the UK doesn't have the tipping culture of America, this is a situation in which I definitely should tip.  The question is - what is appropriate?   Standard US style 20% of meal cost?  More since these people are spending their Christmas feeding / getting us drunk?

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10 hours ago, S John said:

Bumping this topic to ask a tipping question.  Scenario:

In a hotel in the UK.  Dinner served to room.  Like a nice dinner, not just ordering room service.  It is Christmas.

I feel that even though the UK doesn't have the tipping culture of America, this is a situation in which I definitely should tip.  The question is - what is appropriate?   Standard US style 20% of meal cost?  More since these people are spending their Christmas feeding / getting us drunk?

How fancy is this restaurant? I know some places (usually big chains) that add a 20% service charge automatically which goes towards the tip share out (in the case of the chain I'm talking about it all contributes to the tip share). If it's somewhere smaller that isn't likely to do this, I would personally tip whatever you feel the staff deserve. Yes they are working Christmas but if they make this obvious and are surly etc then they don't really warrant a tip.

I say this as someone who will be working Christmas Day in a restaurant so this isn't just me being the stingy student that won't tip

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IF there is no a good tipping system, yes...

Here in Serbia, there is no option to tip the waiter if you pay with the the credit card. So, every time I have to remind myself to take some cash so I would tip the waiter. I wish they update the system so we would all peacefully tip the waiter and not trouble ourselves with the fact whether you have the cash or not.

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26 minutes ago, Risto said:

IF there is no a good tipping system, yes...

Here in Serbia, there is no option to tip the waiter if you pay with the the credit card. So, every time I have to remind myself to take some cash so I would tip the waiter. I wish they update the system so we would all peacefully tip the waiter and not trouble ourselves with the fact whether you have the cash or not.

Hmm, should be able to still. Card machine doesn't need to be set up in a certain way. At the restaurant/pub I worked at over the summer we had a machine not specifically set up for tips, but if people asked to leave a tip they could. Just add the amount they want to tip when keying in the amount to the card reader, then the waiter/waitress takes the change out of the till and adds it to the tip jar.

I know, different countries, but I cant see why that couldn't be possible in Serbia. Tip is still in cash, that cash simply comes out of the till

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