Thoughts on Tipping
Fresh Orange Juice
I ate breakfast today at one of my favorite restaurants here in West Chester: Nick’s Cafe. It’s run by a Greek couple, and their omelets (and gyros, chicken souvlaki, sandwiches, etc) are out of this world. I don’t know what their names are, so at work we’ve decided they are Nick and Mrs. Nick.
After I sat down and was half-way through my first cup of perfect Sunday-morning coffee, a dude came in with his Macbook Pro and set up douche-shop at the table behind me. Clearly working on the Next Big Thing for the internet, he began furiously reading his killer design documentation (or Reddit or whatever). Mrs. Nick came over and took his order, which included orange juice.
He lost my attention for a few minutes until I heard him ask to exchange the orange juice (a bottle of Ocean Spray) for water, because he “thought it would be fresh, not bottled.” What the fuck.* I guess he normally eats at restaurants that have orange groves out back with dozens of young hipster women squeezing juice while talking about vinyl records and Jim Henson. I don’t know if he’s familiar with how most restaurants make the orange juice they bring to you in a glass, but it involves a machine that forces water through an eductor which picks up a small percentage of thick orange-based slurry and releases the mixture into your cup. A good use of Bernoulli’s Principle? Yes. Fresh? Of course not, you asshole.
After I finished thinking about what a fucking idiot that guy was, I got to thinking about tipping. You see, customers at Nick’s are served at their table, but walk up to the counter to pay their bill. On the counter is a tip jar, and I theorized that that is costing Mrs. Nick some tip money. I’ll explain, but first, let’s talk about the proper amount to tip.
More Than 15% You Ungracious Bastard
The standard used to be 15% for good service, but in these modern times there are several reasons that I tip more than 15%. Firstly, 15% has become a “minimum” and a waiter or waitress will interpret 15% to mean that they barely met my expectations of service. Then, since they know how well they did (and it’s rare that I experience poor service) they will then realize that my “expectations” are ridiculous and I’m a jerk. Since I like to think I’m not a jerk, I tip 20%.
Another reason that can be given for tipping 20% is that it’s easier to figure out in your head: you round up some, move the decimal one place to the left and double the result. For instance, take $27.83, round to 28.00, move the decimal left one place (2.8) and double it (5.6). Tip is $5.60. One could argue that 15% isn’t that much harder: round up some, move the decimal, then add the result to the result divided by two. Watch: 27.83, round to 28.00, move the decimal so you have 2.8, then take 2.8+2.8/2 or 2.8+1.4 = 4.2. 15% on $27.83 is about $4.20. It takes longer to explain it than it takes to do it if you practice enough.
Lastly, I am rarely paying for more than two people, and usually it’s just me. Therefore my bills are usually less than $50, and thus the difference between 15% and 20% is less than $3. On the rare occasion I do get poor service, I will reduce the tip as I see fit, but I’m always nice to waitstaff, and, surprisingly, this means they’re almost always nice to me. I know, it’s crazy! The one mistake I usually make is calculating the tip on the total after tax has been added, but I figure that that mistake benefits the waitstaff, and is therefore not a bid deal.
Back to the Tip Jar
So I mentioned that the tip jar on the counter at Nick’s is working against Mrs. Nick. My theory is that in places with tip jars (coffee shops, ice cream parlors, take-out restaurants) one normally doesn’t tip a percentage of the bill, but rather some change, or a dollar or two for take-out restaurants. It’s reasonable to assume that people will unconsciously drop a dollar in the jar at Nick’s instead of calculating 20% of their bill. Since the majority of bills are probably over $5.00, the Nicks are giving up potential tip money that they would otherwise make if they delivered checks to the table. In fact, this is the crucial part, and the tip jar wouldn’t matter if checks came to the table.
Diners usually have you pay at a register near the entrance, but the important thing is that your waiter or waitress brings you your check. This reminds you to leave a 20% tip and gives you time to do the math. Even if you pay at the register with a card, you have it in your mind that you will be adding 20% for a tip. Perhaps I am the only one with the problem, but reporting to the register for your total doesn’t give you time to remember to tip 20%. Now that I’ve thought about it, I usually remember to do so, but there may be people out there that don’t realize what they’re doing and tip a dollar or two for a full breakfast.
There is one more problem with the tip jar, and that is the lack of ability to send a message with your tip. I like to give 20% (or a little more) as a way of saying “thank you, you did a great job” or sometimes “you’re hot and I don’t have the balls to say something but I’m creepy enough to overtip you”. With the jar, your server usually doesn’t know how much you’ve tipped. This rewards poor tippers and punishes good tippers. Please reference the Seinfeld episode on this subject.
* The period here is not a typo. One would expect a question mark at the end of the sentence “what the fuck”, however there is a distinction. One often says “What the fuck?” because they are asking; the fuck is an object and they want to know what it is. If a dick-shaped bus drove by, you would say “what the fuck?” because you want more information. Who is being transported in a dick-bus? Do they even know it looks like a dick, or is the inside like a normal bus and they’re wondering why everyone is staring? When is the last time it went into a tunnel and was it as hilarious as I imagine? Do I need a special endorsement on my CDL to drive a dick-bus? How is the fuel economy on that thing?
Sometimes, though, one has all the information they need, and although it is not necessarily grammatically correct, one exclaims “what the fuck.” in a very matter-of-fact manner. This guy was an asshole and an idiot. I had all the information I needed. You can hear in your head the difference between “what the fuck?” and “what the fuck.” The voice rises at the end of the first, and settles, very much on the tonic of the speaker’s vocal ‘key’, in the second. What the fuck.
