How much do you tip? - Page 2

Yup you were right. 20% for good service.

For average service I give 15% or whatever it takes to round up to a 'solid' number ($18.50 vs $18.11)

It makes my dining experience more enjoyable i guess... I dunno other than that... it doesnt really make sense to me either - its just that thing where if your given two pictures... one of, say... Jessica Beil and one of, say.... Janet Reno. Which would you rather look at.

I dont plan on getting anything out of it and i dont expect to.

20% for really good service, or if I want to suck up to the waiting staff so as to make my future visits much enjoyable.

I've left $0.01, either in the form of a penny on the table or a large number on the credit card form, for exceptionally poor service.

I always tip $6.

standard service 15% or a bit more since I tend to round up before I calculate the tip.
good to excellend service, or a large group is always 20+%
crap service 5 to 10%, depending on how crappy.
really crap service, less than 5%.
outrageously bad service, $0 to $1 (this has only happened a handful of time).
I tip delivered food based on how quickly it arrives (if it arrives in under the quoted time the tip goes up), and I always tip take-out at least 5% if it's not a big corporate chain, 10+% if it's a place I eat at regularly.

Most of the time I eat in the same places and thus get good to excellent service. Building a reputation as a polite and low-maintenance customer who tips well is a great way to get special treatment. At one restaurant that routinely has hour+ waits to get in I could usually get a table within 10 minutes and the owner would often personally wait my table.

I'm surprised that many of you all are still tipping 15% as a default. I'd thought it was widely regarded to be 20% now. Maybe I just hang out with a lot of service industry types, or am in the pocket of the Wait Staff Lobby, but I don't think your average waitress would consider herself extraordinarily sucked-up-to by a 20% tip. p.s. and I'm not just some tipping sucker. I too have tipped a dollar on a $45 meal when the service was below incompetent.

15% plus/minus 5% depending on the service.

15% on total before tax, which is easy in Ontario, because the sales tax and GST add up to 15% anyway (or is it 14% now? I round up regardless).

15% is the starting point on dinner. Depending on where I am (the hook up) and the service, it might go as high as 30-40%. If the service is really bad, I'll leave he minimum and talk to a manager. I've found that stiffing bad service, while it makes you feel better, doesn't actually improve the service at the place. But getting pulled aside by a manager who asks how come you're fucking up again might.

Here in the UK it's very much simpler, 0%.

Always 20%, unless the server has been a completely innattentive ass. Even then, not much less than 20%. If they're inattentive but sweet and apologetic they get more. Excellent service gets around 30%, more if I feel they went out of their way. Looks only play a part if service is good. At bars, $2 per drink, unless I'm buying a round and then its about $1.50+ per drink. I never tip at Starbucks, unless he's cute and very friendly.

OK....so let's complicate things a little. How do you tip on the alcohol portion of a fine dining bill? 20% is a good approximation for decent wine, beer, or cocktails, but I'll be damned if I'd ever tip $400 for opening a $2000 bottle of wine. Some waiters will say that you shouldn't order it if you can't afford the tip, but I think it has less to do with cost than with what's appropriate for services rendered.

Here we go into that deep divide which is the tip debate...

but anyway, tipping in the US is both custom AND in some ways, law. I don't know how it is divided up but many types of servers get taxed a flat rate for their bills, I dont know the numbers but I heard a typical waiter who makes minimum wage and gets a 0 tip would be paying out of his own pocket for the taxes.

If the server gets taxed for that $2000 bottle of wine, that would be really a dick move not to tip them. again I dont know if it's true.

I've never heard of this, and I can't imagine the restaurant that would want to discourage the best waiters in town from working there by taking money out of their pocket from the get go.