Depends on the place. A few of them have CC slips that read:
Total: x
Tip: y
Additional tip: ____
That’s probably ideal and clear as day. Most do put it on the check and I want to say it’s typically ~20%. And line item right before total that makes it clear. Vast majority do it right and charge 20% before tax, with the charge being not taxable. The rest are probably sleazy or negligently misinformed.
Edit: By taxable, I mean sales/meal tax.
I’m okay with a surcharge on the bill because of the min wage legislation if a few conditions are met:
If they did it like that, I would just adjust my tip accordingly like my original proposal.
Unless they pay their waiters a % commission on every bill, the restaurants that do a surcharge for a living wage based on a percentage of the bill would lose my business completely.
Why? If they do a 15% service charge, with the expectation that diners would (discretionary) tip a little more to make it ~18-20%, what’s your beef with that over the current system?
It makes it harder to give less than 15% unless you have a good reason. Ie. reduce cheapskates.
Because the waiter isn’t making 15% of the restaurant’s bills more per hour. The waiter is making a flat amount more per hour regardless of the amount of my bill.
If I go to a restaurant with a friend and our bill is $25, we’re tipping $5.
If I go to restaurant and our bill is $25 plus a 16% “living wage fee”, we’re tipping $1.
If I go to restaurant and our bill is $50 plus a 16% “living wage fee”, we’re tipping $2.
To go from $25 to $50, we ordered some combination of twice as much food and food that cost twice as much, but we didn’t use twice as much of the waiter’s time, yet the restaurant took twice as much ($8 vs. $4) for the “living wage fee.” And the waiter made the same hourly wage and only got $1 extra. Why should I support a restaurant that just made $4 more off me, but didn’t pay their waiter any more (and they are specifically acting like that extra money does go to the waiter)?
I already tip a percentage of my bill, which is dumb, because I should be tipping based on the amount of service I received. But I was okay with it because waiters willingly took a meager wage knowing I’m going to tip them. Now the restaurant is going to get in on the act of charging me a percentage, but that percentage goes to cover their increased labor costs (imposed by government). That’s fine, but only if the waiter is getting a percentage of that percentage. If the waiter is just getting their guaranteed wage, all the restaurant did was raise prices by a percentage and then lie to me about where some of that money is going.
That was one of my beefs with the specific restaurant. I saw no notice anywhere about the surcharge before I got my bill. Now maybe I just missed it… but when I’m buying food I’m not reading the fine print for the hidden fees…
Right so if its a “tip” then I assume that 100% of the money goes to the waitstaff.
If its a “surcharge” then I don’t know for sure but I’d expect that 100% of that money goes to the restaurant.
Tips shouldn’t be mandatory. So I don’t want to see a mandatory tip on the bill.
% based surcharge going to the restaurant is BS since thats just inflating their profits at no additional labor costs and not legitimately based (directly) on labor wages.
Either way I dislike em.
If a business wants to have higher prices and abolish tipping entirely then thats another matter. But I’d want some expectation that the waitstaff is paid decently. No fair paying waitstaff 7.25 and then raising prices 20% and abolishing tipping.
After experiencing restaurant service in Japan, I’ll never look at tipping as nothing but a retarded system.
There, great service is required/expected and included in the advertised price. Then wait staff are compensated with hourly wage normally. Honestly it’s much less stressful for all parties involved. Customers are not asked to rate their service via tips, pull out calculators, etc. Wait staff know how much they will be paid per hour, no surprises. Restaurant owners know how much their labor costs are ahead of time.
There are no gimmicks about what part of your tip goes to whom. No fighting over who waits on how many tables, who gets to wait on the best tipping customers, no artificially setting a low hourly rate knowing expected tips are supposed to make up for that deflated minimum salary, plus no under-reported cash tips on tax returns.
I think that might be more about Japanese culture and attitudes about work than about how exactly waitstaff is compensated.
Europe doesn’t really do tipping at restaurants and I don’t think that “great service is required/expected” by most standards there. People here in the US can make a minimum wage higher than wages in Japan and there is no real expectation of great service as far as I see.
I agree the tipping system is stupid but I dont’ think getting rid of it will lead to great service across the board as you might have seen in Japan.
I agree that there’s definitely an element of culture difference there. But I was more thinking that the system in Japan proves that you don’t NEED a performance-related pay system to get good service.
So I’d hope that it’d be totally possible to get rid of the tipping system without any change to the current level of service.
Get rid of exception to the federal minimum hourly wage, fold commonly accepted tip level into the wait staff (and kitchen staff) hourly wage, and if wait staff is not performing well, let restaurant management handle it (via discount/refund for the unsatisfied customers, and via disciplinary action (warning/wage reduction/firing) for poorly performing wait staff) like in almost all other industries.
And that’d have the advantage of leveling the waitressing field a bit. Let’s face it, it’s not night and day differences in skills required for performance between a cheap restaurant and a high-end one so there is no justification for the magnitude of pay difference between them.
Are you saying that you didn’t get great service in Europe? We had great service almost everywhere we ate while traveling through Germany, France, England, Italy and Spain. We spent a lot of time in smaller towns/countryside and tended to eat at smaller, mom/pop type places and service was great. Worst service by fair was in Paris and London, but even then it was probably on par with average service in the US and I wasn’t forced to tip so it wasn’t that bad.
No, I wouldn’t call it “great”. It was fine/good/ ok. shrug I was in London more and as you say it was the worst you saw. And its not to say I think we get “great” service in the US either.
And what I actually said was that “great service” isn’t “required/expected” in Europe. London and Paris are pretty good cases of that.
But sure individual experiences differ.
I don’t know if there is any real objective measure of service to compare countries.
It’s a different style of service, culturally. If you want something, you ask for it, rather than the waiter coming by periodically to check on you. Their leaving you alone would not be considered poor service.
Why can’t the food service industry (and a few other select tip inclusive industries) operate like any other industry? Other professions generally don’t receive tips but can still offer great services. If service is bad, it should be on management to identify and improve their shortcomings.
If people receive bad service and complain and no longer choose that location, that should be an indicator to the management team to improve performance, just like many other service related industries. If you ask me, tipping should be a thing of the past. If you receive excellent service, let their manager know, likewise if you receive poor service. Tipping overcomplicates things.
Don’t know what you’re expecting, but I’ve had good-great service at both places.
Some of the funniest, if not best, service I ever had was in Rome. I forgot and tipped a waiter for chasing down some ice for my Coke. The next time I walked into the restaurant, waiters were climbing over each other to bring a bowl of ice to my table. 
I’ll bump this up since I’ve got an interesting comparison point.
Two weeks ago, my wife and I were in Europe on a last minute trip. Business for me, pleasure for her. We went to London, Amsterdam, and Vienna. I’d say service was rarely bad, mostly good, but I can’t think of “great” service at any location we visited. We tipped a few euros here and there depending on service, what was ordered, etc. It was the same deal about 8 months ago when we were in Italy.
Right now, we’re in Hawaii on a long-planned vacation. I somehow forgot how ridiculous tipping is when you vacation in the US. Square is set up to ask for a tip everywhere - coffee shops, activities, even places where you order at a counter, have to go back to pick up your food, and then bus your own table. Several places tack on a 2-4% surcharge to pay for stuff like a “living wage” and “healthcare” and then expect you to tip 20% on top of that. It is a bit over the top.
“When tipping becomes mandatory, good service becomes optional”
I’ll never understand this dichotomy. Where else is is the perception that doing your job well is optional so prevaliant and given so much validity? Most everywhere else, it’d be considered grounds for termination.
I don’t see that as being the case in food service or in tipped jobs specifically.
I don’t think the management anywhere purposefully allows poor work.
I don’t think the employees in tipped jobs are especially lazy or incompetent.
I would say that people who make low wages in mostly thankless crap jobs are often not the best workers and thats market driven.
USPS (the retail counter people, not delivery people)