In Canada and the US it's customary to tip 15-20% when dining at a restaurant. Now I understand that a lot of servers get paid less than minimum wage and depend on tips to make up the difference and then some depending on the restaurant. Usually I am happy to give 15% or even a bit more for great service is exceptional. Having said that, I've started to get annoyed by several aspects of tipping culture.

-Service seems to be getting worse and is often pretty bad.
   In this situation I personally find it tough to leave a petty tip or no tip at all and will begrundgingly still leave a 15% tip. If the food or service is beyond terrible I will omit tipping but it's few and far between and I often tip when I feel it isn't fully deserved. I also find this takes away from those who work hard and will often get the same tip from me as someone who is not as deserving.

-Fast-food joints and pick-up orders.
    Most places around here you manually have to enter $0 to bypass the tip option when paying with debit/credit. I don't mind leaving some petty change behind but I don't feel the need to tip 15% as the level of service is bare minimum. I don't mind a small, disclosed delivery fee (rarely get delivery) but when I order fast-food or pickup from a restaurant I rarely tip.

- The chump change for bartenders.
    I will usually leave some change after a drink or two but not always as I don't think pouring a drink or unscrewing a bottle cap is worthy of any extra tip, especially if I am at the bar itself. From my personal experience I have had several young, female bartenders make rude remarks when I leave no change. Not trying to generalize, it's just always been young women in my experience (many times in QC for whatever reason [probably because I'm English]). It's very frustrating as paying customer to feel guilty for not tipping for bare minimal service.


What about you guys? Hopefully that poll gets attached.

  

Haven't noticed that with the big chains (they tend to stick with minimum wage across the board), but some mom and pop joints either have a tip jar or a tip function in their POS station. I'll leave them a little bit for it if I like the place.

We order Dominos pizza 1-2 times a month for carryout. The store is less than 5 minutes drive away so I place the order online and leave, by the time I get there it is only a few mins wait.

I have noticed about 12 months ago they started to ask for tips on the reciept. For carry out??? With a "recommended" 20% gratuity! WTF.

I really dont mind tipping when in a sit down resturant or even a delivery driver, but when I carry out? Thats taking the piss...

Next its going to be drive throughs expecting a tip.

To be honest look at what theyre doing tothe Uber eats/Grubhub drivers.


Mr Pink = I don’t tip because society says I have to. Alright, I mean I'll tip if somebody really deserves a tip. If they really put forth the effort, I'll give them something extra. But I mean, this tipping automatically, it's for the birds. I mean, as far as I'm concerned, they're just doing their job.

Reservoir Dogs

I noticed the same thing with Dominos and alot of places that you can get carry out from. I just strike a line through the tip space. I aint tippin to pick up my own food. Though I think the reason it may be on the receipt at all might have more to do with the payment system/company that the food place uses rather than them purposley putting it there
 

I am slowly becoming more like this as time goes on, but as stated, I find it pretty tough to leave no tip for subpar service. I'll even go as far to tell the waiter that the service wasn't great and still tip them haha.

My default is the 15% tip regardless of service quality unless it's an absolutely horrendous service, in that case I'd leave a very small tip or none at all. That has only happened 3 times in my lifetime and it was 3 seriously bad experiences. But otherwise I do the minimum of 15%, but if it's a place I frequent often I tip extra every now and then or if the service was exceptionally good I tip a bit more. For non-dining-in establishments like Starbucks or fast food places I rarely tip unless it's some place I go very often and to the same location which is rare, but I often go to the same Starbucks, and don't uusually leave a tip but if I go a lot in a certain amount of time I might give them an extra $5 or something if everything is always good every time I go.

If my service is so bad that no tip will be left, there would be a manager involved first.

Most issues can be fixed by talking rationally with your server. I generally tip over 20 percent for full sit down service. If they're slow on refills, then 15-20 percent.

As far as tipping your bartender, it helps greatly if you're getting mixed drinks. Bartenders aren't usually paid as poorly as servers though.

Flat 15%, unless the bar gives us free drinks for whatever reason

Tipping is a way for customers, especially regular customers, to show appreciation for having things made just so... One of my regulars drops me a dollar every day because i nail her turkey sandwich every day. Someone wants a specific sandwich i have to drop everything to focus on, they typically tip.

If i am a regular with a tough order, I always tip well if they nail it. I want them to nail it again!

A sit down restaurant is usually an 18 percent tip. If at a chain with a table kiosk, my tip is usually significantly lower, as those table kiosks usually mean shitty slow service with servers that disappear after they take our dinner order.

Restaurants - 15-20% depending on the place and the level of service.

Bartenders - you tip them up front to get better service overall. But traditionally they get $1 per drink.


Carryout or fast-food...I can't believe that anyone thinks it is appropriate or necessary to tip in that situation.

Starbucks only had a tip jar for desperate guys to try and impress the baristas to get their number, or for regulars to leave an impression. Otherwise those servers are some of the best paid in fast food and are no more deserving of tips that the person at the drive thru window of Burger King.

I tip because I don't want to screw the poor saps working for tip wage but it's bullshit. It's not my friggin job to pay your employees for you. I also don't do self checkout at stores. Pay some cashiers you greedy scumfucks. I don't work here. Been to target when it was only self checkout. Left that shit in the middle of checkout lane.

If North America actually pays their employees a decent wage, we'd never have to worry about gratuity.

A wage based off a patron's subjective opinion on the degree of how they work is doesn't sit too well for me IMO. I mean, I get it, you want to be served well, but a person can be busting their ass off, doing the best they can and give great service, but once they're being held up by something beyond their control-- "no pay for you!"

I tip only because sympathize with the worker, not because they blinked wrong or couldn't get the food out fast enough, but because they do their job and try to take care of the customer despite setbacks. To the ones that don't, you can tell.

I tip 20% generally on sit down. Poor service is closer to 15, exceptional may go a bit higher. I also tip on how good my kids are. If they are a mess and leave crumbs and food everywhere I go closer to 20. My 3 year old spilled a water last weekend and I gave her 25% and apologized for the mess.

For carryout I tip nothing. On local mom and pop places I may round up to the nearest dollar on lunch. Example, a local Thai place with $8 lunches, I give them $9 during the week.

They're not poor saps making under minimum wage. If you were to somehow abolish tips and make minimum wage mandatory waiters and waitresses in NA would be in the streets protesting. They make more, and often FAR more than minimum wage, because of your tips. And the employers are more than happy about it because they get to pay under minimum wage.

Tipping hurts only the consumer. People in the service industry don't want it to change.

I am against tipping, but have done it occasionally when service is exceptional. Doing your job shouldn't mean your get extra money just because the company doesn't want to pay you themselves. Why not tip your doctor for that awesome surgery where you would have died otherwise? Why not tip your cashier for bagging and scanning your items? It's all part of the job they agreed to do, so I'm mostly against it. I would rather them raise the prices of the food to cover the extra need for wages (if that is even necessary at all am I right?) then have tipping at all.

I regularly tip about 20% because as easy as it is to get annoyed with service sometimes, I can't know how bad that server's other tables are, either in terms of being really demanding or really rude to their server, which can affect how they feel when they get to me. My girlfriend is a server at a restaurant in Time Square and if I had her job and experienced a fraction of the people she tells me about, with the kind of pay she receives, I would have murdered several people by now.

I almost always tip 20% when I dine in unless the experience is an absolute disaster. I also usually give a buck or two to non-traditional tip jars if it's just a bunch of teenagers trying to make a few bucks. It's one tiny tiny way I can help redistribute wealth since the government of the richest country in the history of the world won't.

I draw the line at sonic. If i drive thru to get a sprite zero, you expect a tip? Happy hour drinks are for a reason. Because they are cheap. Tipping negates the whole point in going.

A little over 20% at sit down restaurants, usually to any bill where I won't have to wait for change.

Flat $5 for delivery. It's dinner for 2 (my kid is less than 2) all within a mile of my house, so $5 to drive it to my door seems reasonable.

If the service is absolutely terrible at a place I'll rarely tip closer to 10-15%, but often just tip 20% and choose not to go back to the place again.

If service is shitty, I often associate it with shitty management.

Back when I was drinking it was $1 a drink and $5 a round.

Agreed that it's a slippery slope which is why I limited the discussion to the food industry. I've had movers and service workers at my house and often feel like I should give them a little something but where do you draw the line? I did give the guys who moved my stuff last time $40 so they (3 of them) could grab a cheap lunch.

I wait tables at Gus's fried Chicken in Downtown Memphis. Tip your server, people! It's what most of us lowlifes are working for.

Not tipping = Being flat out cheap.

You can use the excuse that you don't want to pay the employees when the company should be doing that instead. But that's just a thin cover for you wanting full service dining without having to pay an extra dime. If you don't like tipping, don't go out to eat. Pick it up or make it yourself.

This is aimed at all cheap bastards who have lame excuses for not tipping, not anyone in particular.

Always 15% - 20%, dine in that is. I don't tip carry out.

Here's another fun thread we had about tipping in 2014, long read: http://vintage.nintendoage.com/fo...