How much do you tip?

[TXRams86]

and since we are on the subject, if you go to a barber shop, not a chain place like supercuts or whatever, do you tip the person who cuts your hair if they are the owner of the shop?

I’ve been going to the same barber for years and have tipped every time I’ve gone. He isn’t necessarily cheap either but I tip him well because to me there’s something personal about our relationship. He knows my head, lol that sounds weird, but he knows how high to take a fade, how short to trim the top, which way my hair naturally flows, ‘darker’ spots where my hair naturally grows out a bit thicker. Not only that but much of what @Selassie I was saying applies here as well. I can call my barber and he’ll squeeze me into his appointments - he doesn’t do that for a lot of people. He’s made a house call when I planned terribly just before a wedding I needed to attend. I even forgot my wallet once thinking it was in my coat and he still cut my hair right then and there and asked me to pay next time (obviously had to tip him exceptionally well that next time).

Sometimes I just need a quick cut before heading into the office so I’ll stop at SportClips since it’s on the way. I still tip a few bucks to the stylist even though I tend to leave with a pretty mediocre haircut.

Edited a few misspelled words.

 

[Loyal]

Welp, I've come to this page late in the discussion, but I think I've seen enough on this page alone to comment. For several years I used to drive cross country tours for Cosmos/Globus International. I'd pick groups in New York City and the tour would end up at the Santa Monica pier 23 days later. Only drivers who get requested do these trips, because they are a SONOFABITCH to do and it takes good dedicated drivers to do them. Both the driver and the tour director rely on a "final tip out" in Los Angeles for their compensation. Those from the Australia and the UK have to be groomed to tip, because it's not something they normally do in their cultures. These are the places I'd take them to see.:

Pick up in New York City
Philadelphia- Liberty square (Constitution Hall, Liberty Bell)
Washington DC - Tour of Memorials, and other sites.
Niagra Falls, Ontario (overnight)
Detroit, MI - Ford Museum (overnight)
Chicago, IL -City Tour, Dinner Trips, etc... (3 nights)
Minneapolis, MN - City Tour, Mall of America, Paddle Wheel Dinner Cruise in St Paul. (2 nights
Pierre, SD - mostly a travel day. Corn Palace in Mitchell, SD (overnight)
Custer, SD - enroute, Badlands National Park, Wall Drug, and Mt. Rushmore in the Black Hills. (overnight)
Yellowstone National Park- The Grand Tour, Niagra of the Yellowstone, Fishing Bridge, Paint Pots, Old Faithful, and more. (2 days)
Grand Tetons National Park
Salt Lake City, UT - Tour of Temple Square, Dinner at Brigham Youngs House next door. (overnight)
Bryce Canyon National Park
Zion National Park
North Rim of the Grand Canyon, stay over night in Cabins there.
Las Vegas, NV- stay at the Imperial Palace Hotel Casino (across from Caesers). City Tour and three days there.
Calico Ghost Town
Los Angeles Metro- Symbolic end of tour is at the Santa Monica Bridge, although a City Tour with dinner happens and Universal Studios.

Keep in mind, I am driving a 45 foot tour bus in the tightest places you can imagine, especially in the North East, where local police could give shyte about your schedule or the lack of parking. Idling a bus as you offload and load, mostly middle aged and senior citizens, could net you a $500 fine in a heart beat. Since there is no parking, bus drivers are forced to drive around the city while their people are seeing a site or eating. You must find time to get fuel and clean the bus, daily. That chemical toilet must be dealt with and you can't just dump it in the street.
It takes planning throughout a 23 day trip as to where you can do these things, especially when you tour the National Parks, they want a squeeky clean window to see the natural beauty and wildlife, and there are no bus washes, so you get to wash the outside of the bus after driving 500 miles at times. Driving is the fun part of the job for me because I had the greatest view of the country while working.
I mentioned the above to outline the amount of customer service involved and the resulting expectation of a nice tip at the end of the trip. Normally 40 people are on the tour and an average tip per person was about $50-$75 a person for cheap tippers. If I got $2500 - $3000 in tips, that was about normal. I also was paid my normal wage with a per diem, and so it was about the best paying work at my Kansas based charter company, but I wasn't home but maybe 2-5 days in the span of 5 months when doing these tours. The few days off were when I was passing through Kansas, driving an empty bus from LA to New York for the next tour. I did this year after year, until my wife worried about me and my health, and so I quit in 2009 to go to University and be home. As in other service oriented professions, the market wouldn't bear paying me a" living wage." Most days I worked 12-15 hours a day, except 2 days in Vegas, where it was just more relaxed in getting the bus cleaned and fueled.

 

[Mojo Ram]

 

[Loyal]

“Hey Mel, No Tipper on table# 9 wants the “choke n’ puke special,” with extra chunky saliva…” ~ Alice

 

[JustMe]

I have never quite understood the line of who gets tipped vs. who doesnt.

A waiter/bartender at a restaurant, I get it.

But why are we expected to tip the guy who pulls your golf bag out of your trunk and not the FedEx guy who lugs 100lb boxes to your front door.

You tip a barber but you give nothing to the kid who bags your groceries.

I never understood that line.

 

[Reddog99]

The wife and I only tip at sit down restaurants and theres no set amount. Just whatever we feel like their service was worth. I don't have very high of expectations either. Just don't let me sit there with an empty drink. $15-20 is usually the max for a tip from me but there been exceptions where we left more. Theres only been one time that I can think of that we left nothing.

My wife worked in a restaurant for years and at this specific place any tips that the waitresses got over the shift were pooled together and split evenly among all of the waitresses and cooks that worked that shift. She was excellent at her job and got many compliments and when we sit down and eat at a restaurant we make the tipping decision together.

Like another poster said we tip generously during the holidays. Around here we have alot of single mothers that work in our local restaurants and one of our holiday tips could be the difference between a kid getting nothing for Christmas and having a memorable one.

 

[snackdaddy]

As someone who has worked all sides of the restaurant industry, I have to disagree with you here.

First off, what you will find is that in most states where there is a lower service wage, you will find that the restaurant is able to pay more employees that serve the customer. That generally means better service to the customer.

Also, one of the toughest things to control in order to make even a modest profit, is labor. Not very many restaurant owners are laughing their way to the bank off the backs of their underpaid wait staff. Wait staff that has better support will generally make better tips and won't be as stressed. Customers that don't just see their server blow by them, are better served.

The federal tipped wage may be too low. But we could get into a bigger debate about ANY kind of broadly set rate. Clearly cost of living is not broadly set so...

But if you are working for a good restaurant and kicking ass, making $40-60 per hour on tips is not uncommon at all. Even in our small town, our servers were making $30 per hour (wage+tips) and that was based on them claiming the minimum 8% - less than half what they were actually making. Keep in mind, we didn't have a server wage, so at the time, about $9 of that was hourly wage.

Now... Back to me tipping. I have a somewhat set amount of 20%. I will go down to 10-15% for shitty service but there has to be something remarkably shitty about the meal or what the server did/didn't do.

Around Christmas, it's not unusual for me to tip 50% and wish the server happy holidays.

If the server is outstanding, I will add that to the 20%.

So in general, my minimum is 20% and it goes up or down from there. Generally significantly up. I'm not usually a grumpy customer, so I tend to get a good back and forth with the server. Eating out should be fun and you should make it fun for everyone else.

For delivery, it's generally 20% - but again, more around the holidays. If I'm picking up, I will throw in a few bucks but not much. Except when Covid was forcing them to do pick up only. Back to 20.

I don't do drive up coffee and I don't tip for fast food.

My grandson is 20 years old and worked his way up from bus boy to waiter. He works at a high end Italian restaurant. Well, high end for this town. High end at a big city is probably twice as expensive. He's made as much as 500 bucks in tips for one night. And in California minimum wage is now $14 for restaurants with under 25 employees. He's making so much money there he's been dabbling in the stock market. He still lives at home and his only debt is his cell phone and insurance on his car which is paid for.

On the subject of how much to tip, myself I generally try to tip a minimum of 20 percent. I will round up to the nearest dollar to make it 20 percent or more. If the bill is 47 bucks I round up to ten for the tip. I do that because most time the tip is cash. I prefer that over paying with the card. I pay for the meal with the card and mark "On Table" in the tip section.

 

[RhodyRams]

yeah..I always tip in cash if using a card to pay for the meal

 

[RhodyRams]

I tip every delivery (UPS Fed Ex or Amazon) driver at least once a month. Rainy days my packages are in a plastic bag guaranteed

I get a windows, siding or lumber delivery and the driver always gets a 10 spot at least. Then I know stuff is going to be placed where and how I like it and covered if I'm not there to accept the delivery.

 

[Mojo Ram]

I have never quite understood the line of who gets tipped vs. who doesnt.

A waiter/bartender at a restaurant, I get it.

But why are we expected to tip the guy who pulls your golf bag out of your trunk and not the FedEx guy who lugs 100lb boxes to your front door.

You tip a barber but you give nothing to the kid who bags your groceries.

I never understood that line.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wrwQ9G4epys&ab_channel=MrPink

 

[SWAdude]

I prefer to tip big.

TIP stands for ... to ensure promptness. You used to give the tip as soon as you sat down for that reason.

Really.........

I did not know that.

ROD continues to make me a smerter person.

 

[SWAdude]

I don't tip.

It confuses the dine and dash.

I don't want to be cruel.

 

[SWAdude]

I don't think I have ever posted three in a row on a thread but............

You tip the driver, but not the pilot.

Why is that?

 

[RhodyRams]

I don't think I have ever posted three in a row on a thread but............

You tip the driver, but not the pilot.

Why is that?

next time I fly SW I'll ask who the pilot is

 

[Riverumbbq]

Interesting subject.
As one of the two restaurant/bar owners that I'm aware of here in this thread, we have very different takes, and politics/'extreme capitalism' is at the heart of it imo. I'll do my best to avoid getting into the politics of it, but other western democracies handle restaurant tipping far better. They just avoid it, it's not really part of the culture, they will usually build in a service fee right on the check. Not only is American tipping confusing for them, but often considered barbaric. I once made the mistake of leaving a generous tip in a British pub and the bartender chased me half way down a street to return it.

I'm old, I was raised to believe 15% was the standard waiters tip in America, but the tip wasn't to be paid on the entire cost, just the food/drink portion, not on the tax or any other added fees. Back in the day I taught my employees this and they weren't all very happy about it, but they understood that this was a base that many customers worked from.

While it's true that wait staff who underperform are often weeded out, the same should be true for the actual restaurants themselves. Serve a poor product and you're soon gone, just the same for poor customer service from a waiter. The main problem comes down to competition from other restaurants, not employee salary. If one restaurant is paying a 'living wage' and their competition is paying $2-$3.00 dollars per hour, the one with the higher labor costs is going to quickly fold as those costs are absorbed by the customer. What people fail to realize is that most of our fellow citizens earning under a minimum or livable wage are collecting government welfare of some nature, increasing your net federal/state income taxes that you pay later, essentially subsidizing any business owner or corporation who isn't paying a livable wage. I understand that weeding out some restaurants might be the result, but if you serve a better product at competitive prices, customers will find you. One of the industry jokes is that just about anybody with a recipe will open a restaurant one day, they don't get the long hours and the difficulty in maintaining an extremely high standard day in and day out in an industry which also has a high degree of employee turn-over. I've read that the mortality rate for first year restaurants was near 90%, this shouldn't be taken lightly.

For me personally, I'd rather pay a fair wage than pay higher income taxes, but that's just me ...