I feel like there may be some missing information. For example, if the customer had a coupon or other discount. The tip should be a percentage of the total before the discount. If they’re “adjusting” to tip less- based on the post-coupon price, fuck them.
If your employees rely on tips to meet months end, your business model is shit.
whenever I see a “suggested tip for your inconvenience” I feel the urge to research (aka google) their reported earnings for the last economical year, calculate their profit margin and write that in the tip line and to pay their employees better instead of trying to shift the costs onto the customers with scammy guilty conscience. Fuck establishments like that, especially those who are then trying to conceive you ONTOP of the already bs tips
This may be anecdotal, but I ran into this exact same issue a few weeks ago. The suggested 20% was significantly higher than the 20% on the bill. It took me a little bit to figure out, but we were at the restaurant for a steak special and happy hour. The 20% tip was for the non-special price. For example, the steak and two sides special was $18, but the normal price was $28. The drinks were $5 but the normal price was $8. So the suggested tip was 20% of $36, not 20% of $23. These aren’t the exact numbers, and there were two of us, but you get the idea. The POS/Tip suggestion is setup so the servers don’t get the shit end of the stick when the restaurant is doing a deal/special. I’m not sure I fully agree with it, and I have my own beef with tipping culture in general, but I’m just looking to explain what might be seen in OP’s photo.
I don’t know if Groupon is still a thing, but at its peak there were posts online on a regular basis from wait staff who got stiffed, because customers would tip based on the balance they owed after the 90%+ discount Groupon voucher.
It’s not hard to include a disclaimer tip prices based on full price if that’s the case to avoid looking bad.
Understood, but not my problem. If it says 20%, it should be 20%. For trying to pull shit like this it is going to be a 0% from me.
The whole tip thing is a scam to begin with.
Tipping is a holdover from slavery. It’s a way to control service workers.
This doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t tip people who rely on tips, it means the system is fucking broken by design.
Tips are a big reason I stopped going out. Everybody wants one.
Every single time I see a fucking Square cash register… One of these motherfuckers:
Every single time I see that piece of shit, I know I’m about to hear the “it’s just going to ask you a few questions” line. And those “few questions” will be asking me to tip 25 goddamned percent on something that I’ve never tipped for before.
Tipping, specifically in the original context of restaurants, I will still do, simply because the government needs to change the minimum wage so that servers are included. They’re currently a protected group that is allowed to be paid far less than minimum wage, and they are supposed to make up the difference in tips.
In every other context, wow me and I’ll tip you, otherwise, don’t expect shit.
If you did your job as you are expected to do, then I don’t see why I need to tip.
It was always a dumb idea to pay servers LESS because they got tips. There was a time when tips were mostly cash and you didn’t have to claim them as income. But now that advantage is almost completely gone. And we should just end tipping. If you go out and don’t like the service then don’t go back. Just like it works with any other business.
You could easily get away with not claiming cash tips as income, that is.
No because I live in Australia where the govt forces restaurants to Pay their staff in full rather than outsource their wages to the customers directly.
Edit: Pay, not Pauly.
Pauly must be busy.
Wow must be cool living somewhere completely irrelevant to this post!
If only, the tipping crap is trying to leak in here.
we’re in a section called “shitpost” and you’re complaining about quality? also - its related by “tips”, but maybe you just wanted to practise your sarcasm.
Wait so you get scammed but still give 20% tips? This would be an automatic 0% tip
Yeah, what’s likely happening here is that the tip numbers were calculated off the subtotal intentionally. So say you buy a “happy hour” drink and it is $3 instead of $6, they tip is calculated before the “discount”.
Their machine could have actually been wrong, but using a total before discounts seems more likely.
On the surface, I can understand this. It’s not the server’s fault that they got the happy hour rush when everything is 50% off. If anything, they had to work harder because it was busier. Why punish them for that extra work with lower tip calculations? The drinks aren’t any easier or faster to pour just because they’re half off. It should at least be transparent, but I at least understand the reasoning.
What does bug me is when the tip calculations are based on the after-tax total. Fuck that, I’m already getting taxed 10% on this, you don’t need your 18% calculated from that extra 10%.
I don’t really follow this reasoning, so a drink cost X but you calculate Y because at other times it costs Y.
So if you go to a cheap restaurant you increase your tip because the restaurant next door has higher prices? The staff in the cheap restaurant works just as hard, maybe harder.
This whole tip thing need to die ASAP. If everybody just stopped tipping staff would get a normal pay or a better paying other job. But if you don’t tip, how do you show appreciation?? Well, do you tip your wife when she does something nice for you?? No, so people can show appreciation without money.
I’ll meet you half way, we’ll not suggest you pay tips on taxes, but you will pay a $2.99 dining room fee to use our facilities. You can avoid this by doing pick up with a $1.99 convenience fee.
No deal.
*Goes to the place across the street with no BS fees.
You think the wait staff setup the machine to do math wrong?
yes?
No, that would be the owner or the manager. The best thing to do is never go back and tell everyone you can that they try to rip people off.
Holding the owner responsible for their actions? Sorry chief best I can do is scream at the meakest looking waiter I can find until the police escort me out.
Fuck tips. 0 tips. Pay your people.
I’m all for refusing to tip, but be up-front about it. Let the server know ahead of time that you won’t be tipping. Hell, let the manager (or if it’s a smaller place, the owner) know too, so you can actually get your opinion heard by someone who may be able to effect change. Make it clear that your refusal to tip is not a reflection of the server, but a protest against tipping culture.
Hell, while talking to the manager, you should also ask if they require servers to tip out the back-of-house staff. If you’re refusing to tip, it’s entirely possible that your server is losing money on your order, because they’re required to pay the kitchen a percentage of your bill. If the server is required to tip out, be clear that you want your bill excluded from the tip out, since you’re refusing to tip based on strongly held personal beliefs. If the manager protests or says it isn’t possible (it is possible, but they’ll lie to try to get you to tip), then they can serve you personally.
You’ll still get served, but it’ll be with the level of service that the waiter thinks you should get, rather than with the level of service that you think you deserve. If you’re going to refuse to tip, at least take the mask off and be honest so your server can do the same.
If you’re willing to do that, then more power to you. Believe it or not, many servers will be chill about it, and treat you the same as any other customer. Especially if you’re there when it’s slow, and they don’t need to tip out the back of house staff. They’re not losing any money by serving you, and they aren’t super busy so they have no reason to ignore you. But if you’re afraid to be honest because you might get worse service, then you’re just a scab who is leeching from the tipping culture and only hurting the working class.
You pay for the service of being waited on… don’t want to tip… then go to McDonald’s! wtf! 🤬
It’s not a “service”. All I want from the staff is to tell them what I want to order and to bring the food. That’s all. I don’t see what extra “service” I’m supposedly paying for
I like prompt refills. I’m happy to tip for that.
Do you tip for the service for customer tech support or similar customer facing industries as well?
the restaurant pays for their staff… should you pay for having a table and chair too? staff is a basic requirement of a restaurant
Is there an option to pick up my own food at the counter? I’d gladly do it.
I went to a restaurant recently with my wife for our anniversary. Had great reviews on Google Maps above 4.5 stars. Yes I know this should not be the only indicator of a good experience, but the food sounded good and it was in a neighborhood we don’t often go to. Something new.
When we got the bill, the server came to us and skipped past the food prices to the tip screen immediately. That should have been my red flag to stop and ask why she did that, but I didn’t. I tipped 20%, then later found out that they already included that in the bill. So I tipped 20% on top of the total that already included 20%. Needless to say I won’t be going back.
Smart businesses know that the key is “customer retention” and they don’t screw you. Dumb businesses operate on “one and done”. “We’ll screw them and they probably will never come back”
It wasn’t the business that did this. It was the server looking for a one time bonus.
Do a review on Google maps, and TripAdvisor, if you are in a touristy city. Warn the world, and put the ownership on notice.
Oh we did
Also consider complaining to the secretary of state perhaps? Idk, it’s not city tax revenue so not likely, but it’s still fraud. But I would definitely consider a chargeback. This is just like in the old days when managers or severs would scribble in a different tip and total on the merchant copy.
This seems like it is probably more of a server issue, and not a restaurant issue. The server has learned how to increase their tips, I doubt that’s company policy. This is Management’s problem to solve, not the government’s.
This is bad logic. Every industry has a thousand things they solve by regulation to establish a sane baseline that you experience every day mistaking this hard won normalcy for a self occurring default.
The behavior that is described is actually fraud and if you consider across just this one employees year it probably is thousands of dollars in fraud. It would be normal to report such to the city government which reports such to the business which in turn fires the server and trains the rest not to defraud customers.
This is one server, in one restaurant, not an industry-wide issue. Expecting some kind of regulatory remedy over an anecdotal issue is not the answer. I’m not a right-winger by any means, but even I know that the government isn’t the solution to anything. There already is a law against this, so the local gendarmes are as far as this needs to go.
Remember when your mom told you “Don’t make a Federal case out of it?” This is the kind of thing she was talking about, literally.
It actually already does cover it. He’s tricking folks into tipping twice by failing to disclose that they have already tipped. It’s simple fraud.
Right but the fraud is with the server, or possibly the restaurant, not the industry as a whole. I just think getting the government involved to deal with a dishonest server is going a bit far. Just make the manager and corporate aware. They’ll deal with it.
Bullshit. Hopefully it’s one server and management should take care of it. But it’s appropriate to complain to the right authority so they can see if it’s a pattern in need of enforcement.
This is how things get done. A single instance of food poisoning can be a mistake, but a pattern of food poisoning is potentially in need of enforcement and remediation. But they can’t see a pattern if no one complains
I call and complain for crap like this all the time now. I make sure to let them know I bitch to all my friends and coworkers about it too.
My latest crusade is restaurants that put 4% service fees to help pay for people’s health insurance. Just raise the price on the individual items on the menu. Making me math out what you are actually charging like that is bullshit.
I would have gone back and not left until I had both 20%s in my hand. Call the police? Please do!
Restaurant tries to scam customers, yet they still give a 20% tip?
Pretty sure the waitress wasn’t the one who fucked with the register. Probably the restaurant trying to ensure they don’t have to pay the difference if the tips come up short and leave the staff below minimum wage.
I feels like reasoning like this is why it would never end.
Shafting the waitress is not going to end it either. Most people wouldn’t notice this, so they’d still keep doing it if you didn’t tip.
The play here is to tip the waitress in cash if possible and slam the establishment on every review site.
If the worker or anyone else not gonna unionise or protest the government for a better minimum wages, then the culture gonna continue. Slammin and jammin the establishment will do absolutely nothing, as with all non-disruptive protest.
I swear tipping is fetishized by american.
It’s logical, it’s not the wait staff’s fault. You’re correct though that it’s an endless circle, with the only solution being that everyone stops supporting places that don’t pay employees well. Which means don’t go to any US restaurants, or any retail. There is the bigger endless circle, trying to get the masses to all participate in such a boycott.
Right?
Most people just pay it out of obligation, and the occasional nerd calls us out politely.
Gee, whatever shall we do?
You think place like that distributes tips honestly?
The “I’m just doing my job” defence. Nice.
Are you comparing the waitress not proofreading the math on a preprinted receipt (arguably not their job) to soldiers actively committing war crimes?
No. Soldiers are very much protected from such orders in most countries. They can’t be held responsible for refusing to follow an illegal order.
I mostly hear the argument from civilians helping their employer commit crime.
“Fuck you restaurant for trying to scam me, now I’ll only pay the correct 20% extra on top of my bill”
They also paid it on the tax. Supposed to figure off the subtotal
Yep, that’s a solid 0% for me
Yeah that restaurant owner will certainly learn from the fact that they don’t legally have to pay their servers minimum wage and you still paid the owner what they would have gotten whether or not the server got a tip
As another commenter said, in this situation pay the server in cash, and then review the restaurant badly everywhere you can
The solution is to never step foot in the restaurant again not punish the server.
For the longest time, I’d find a tip between 15% and 20% which would result in a final total that was a palindrome. That was about 20 years ago and that’s the first thing I noticed in this picture.
Not saying this isn’t real and completely scummy, but sometimes the tip is calculated before discounts, gift cards, and whatnot. I always tip based on what our total order was even if what we paid was less. If this is truly trying to fudge the numbers to take advantage of people then that’s shitty.
Also, the restaurant probably has no control over those numbers. The software might give them a Yes/No option on showing suggested tips or not at best.
My only exception to the “pre-discount” price is when places have a “buy 1 get 1” deal and they try to make you tip based on that, but the single item price is way overpriced because of it. Happens around me a lot where they’re like 3pack tacos, buy 1 get 1 $21, like yeah that’s great price for 6 small tacos, but I wouldn’t be paying $21 for 3 tacos, so I’m not gonna tip whatever crazy amount for a bill that “would have been” $75 or something for some tacos and a drink. Granted these are usually carry out orders, but don’t try to artificially inflate my bill to get better tips because you discounted it to a lower price.
Edit before people give me flak: I still tip fairly, but if a place tries to give me some “your bill was 100$, but we discounted it to 20$ that’ll be a 20$ tip though” they can fuck off. I’ll tip right, but don’t try to guilt trip me with a discount when you know I wouldn’t be here at all of it wasn’t for the discount.
Is that usd? A great price for 6 small tacos is 6 bucks, 21 is ridiculous.
It looks like the percentages are based of a total of $37.95, so it’s possible there was a discount included that made their total closer to $30.
Always tip on the subtotal. If your server worked their ass off for your table but you had a coupon for, let’s say, 50% off 2 entrees and a birthday dessert, that’s just devalued their effort by about $50.
Also, the tipping culture is broken, and this is bonkers.
I came from a tipping-optional culture and worked foodservice. If I got good tips, they went back into the bar at the end of the shift, or into my savings jar at home. It was never make-or-break on whether I got to pay rent or not.
The tip is not their salary, it’s an optional gratuity. It doesn’t devalue shit. They should get paid a living wage, and that’s it. That or you better stop being a hypocrite and start tipping tech support as well.
tip what is appropriate regardless of the bill
there’s no reason for somebody to get $10 more because I bought the premium beer instead of what’s on special
Does the waiter work much harder to bring a lobster than a Mac and cheese? Tips are dumb in general, but if anything they should be based on time, not food price. And they should be called a wage while we’re at it. At it should be enough to live decently.
Maybe a comp’d desert (or app) that’s ~$8 ?
Stop tipping!!! no more
I like tipping. The service is better, and servers are paid more than they would be without it.
Laughing in European
Stop tipping culture. If you just stop tipping people who rely on tips, you just make their lives much harder
Ok genius, tell us how to stop tipping culture without stopping tipping?
Pass a law that removes the minimum wage exemption for “tipped” professions.
What a coincidence I just put on my lawmaking socks!
Quite obviously through regulation.
That’s socialism!!1!
Try to avoid services that rely on tipping? Don’t go to restaurants or order food delivery where you’re expected to tip.
I understand it’s not an easy thing to fix, and I sure as hell dont have the solution, but not tipping someone who is relying on tips is just a dick move
Part of the problem is that it’s considered the customer’s responsibility. The real dick move is on the employer not paying a decent wage.
Complain loudly while you tip?
give the tip directly to the worker, and also hand them a pamphlet about organizing a union at the workplace
Don’t use tipped services if you’re not going to tip. There are alternatives. You’re offloading your “political action” at the expense of the worker, while the owners won’t care. Support legislative change, don’t use your politics as an excuse to harm the workers of a service you chose to use.
It probably won’t stop until everybody starts asking for tips, so that those that traditionally receive tips are losing it on tipping everybody else.
I think the only chance this will work is moving somewhere it’s not a thing.
