Of course…I go to a lot of the same restaurants here in Portland…everyone knows me here on a first name basis, so I never get scammed and always leave nice, fat 20-25% tips.

That is sad.

Those words should never fall together under quotes.

“-as far as furiously scribbling “NO TIP FOR YOU!!” on a charge slip, i’d think twice before doing something like that. you may have received poor service, but passive-aggressive BS like that only makes you more of a mark the next time you come in. if you have a problem with poor service, go to the manager right then and there.”

Hmmm…I’m passive aggressive because I specifically state that the service was bad? No, passive aggressive would be to leave a dollar in pennies, or to spill a glass of water across the table (screwing with the busboys not the waiter), or taking a crap in the fake ficus plant and hoping it takes a couple of days before someone discovers the source of the stench.

Of course, if I wanted to get the person fired or reprimanded, I’d go to the manager. I didn’t. I don’t know if the waiter had a general bad disposition or if it was just a single day. My gawd, I wouldn’t want to be judged by a single day of my life…at the same time, I work with students, I have the occasional bad day, and I can’t allow myself to let my personal emotions get in the way. As such, I don’t feel bad when someone doesn’t perform, therefore I don’t feel the need to pay.

Again, not passive aggressive. I wish people who used this term actually knew what it meant.

I’ve had small jobs here and there serving people and in my experience many people treat servers like they are no better than a piece of crap. I think there is this strange belief that if you are serving food, you must be too stupid to get a “real” job somewhere else. And, as everyone knows, if your server is too stupid to know any better, its ok to order them around like a monkey and then give them a 5% tip.
I don’t think bad tips excuse fraudulent behavior, but I definitely think it encourages disgruntled and underpaid workers to move in that direction.

1) If you’re having to add up the dollar digits and then compare to the cents digit, how quickly does this actually work for you as a scanning mechanism? Also, what if you have a meal that ends up being $48 after tip? Do you make the last cents digit a 2 (ignoring the fact that the sum is actually 12), make the last digit of the cents a 3 (summing the numbers again until you get a single digit number), or other?

2) If you’re rounding to a dollar figure so you can see if someone meddled with your account because it doesn’t end in .00 or .25, are you also aware of what your dollar amount was? Can you be sure in a quick scan that $60.00 is not correct and it was actually $50.00?

I think the palindrome solution is cool, as long as you have an easy means of figuring it out, and aren’t worried about the waitstaff creating a higher-value palindrome. Combining this with a hard-to-modify number printing scheme seems like the best bet for a quick-scan tool and one that won’t be messed with after you sign the check.

~Oswegan

your passive-aggressiveness manifests itself by you leaving a “note” in place of a tip on the charge slip, and then you exiting the restaurant without having to confront either the server or a manager.

from Wikipedia (the fount of all info, right?):
Passive-aggressive behavior refers to passive, sometimes obstructionist resistance to following authoritative instructions in interpersonal or occupational situations. It can manifest itself as resentment, stubbornness, procrastination, sullenness, or repeated failure to accomplish requested tasks for which one is assumed, often explicitly, to be responsible. It is a defense mechanism and, more often than not, only partly conscious. For example, people who are passive-aggressive might take so long to get ready for a party they do not wish to attend, that the party is nearly over by the time they arrive. Alternatively, leaving notes to avoid face-to-face discussion/confrontation, is another form of passive-aggressive behavior.

note that last sentence. it’s exactly what you did. you ran from a confrontation that, in the end, would probably have been of benefit to you.

(I’m kidding, of course only the good, honest waiters read bb.)

That’s from “wikiHow”.

I’m a college student and have served at a couple of restaurants. I can tell you that many people leave 1% or 0% tips and if you ask them if everything was alright they smile honestly and say “oh yes!”. As a server where I live I make $3.50 an hour plus tips. It can be exhausting between the persona you have and the multitasking, it’s a job where you never stop running around, for eight hours on end sometimes.

And to the person who wrote “no tip for you”, that is a needless slap in the face for some one. Maybe they were awful but I can say that as a server it is such a passive-aggressive little mini-vendetta that only stresses out a person who is thanklessly working despite an understaffed kitchen, a sloppy manager and disgruntled coworkers, often enough. A small anecdote:

I worked at a family friendly business lunch sports bar. A man would often come in and order a virgin mojito. It is a real pain to muttle the mint and sugar for a drink that costs $2, while you have real things to attend to, and get a 50 cent tip, when a mojito costs $8. But I would always bother to do this for him, he was a regular. And so, as was obvious, we had no bartender until 5 o’clock. After that the bartender would take care of those at the bar and not at tables. My seven hour shift was ending at % o’clock and the virgin mojito man was sitting at the bar. I had served him already and now the bartender was there. Instead of asking the bartender for a drink he closed out his tap and on the credit card slip wrote “???? where is the bartender” in place of the tip. There is always to be an element of grace when dealing with other people. This guy was a real asshole and rode away on his Segway.

Please don’t be Segway guy. Don’t tip poorly and don’t yell at telemarketers and don’t get pissy at bus drivers. Just be straight forward, everyone works.

No 20% pending charge, no check-sum totals, no fraudulent wait-staff, no ass-hats playing on the expectation of a larger tip, and you can still tip if you want to. And if, because nobody does, the cost of the tip is just subsumed into the price of the food, well, I can live with that to get these advantages.

If this is at the end of the month, the statement will reflect the old amount as opposed to the corrected one…and maybe the next month you see a few $$$s added to the balance.

But again, with the instant access to the charges, it is a little freaky…and yeah, I have had a few dollars slipped in once or twice where I thought the waiter was lousy (and in one instance kinda hateful) and just didn’t tip at all or not much. I actually called the restaurant the one time I found this and notified them that I left nothing at all because the guy was horrible…they went in, found it was scribbled in over NO TIP FOR YOU and comped the meal in its entirety letting me know it was coming out of the waiter’s account for my trouble.

Anyhoo…

@UMBRIEL: Writing “CASH” in the tip line is a good idea, I typically just put a line through the field, I’ll have to start doing that.

It’s nice to see management stepping up and doing the right thing.

Hope you were able to go back and support them some other time.

coop

I’M SICK OF IT!! REVISE THIS STUPID SYSTEM!!

I had a really shitty waiter at an Applebees in Arizona once. So, naturally, I left him a .37 tip. (Yes, I realize this is extremely rude, but this guy deserved it.)

When I got home, I discovered that he had written in an extra 10$ for his troubles.

I notified the Applebees with no good response- only an offer to refund the 10$ sans apology. So, I followed my way up the corporate chain and ended up with a fairly decent gift card for my troubles.

They never let the guy go. It seems stealing from customer’s is appropriate behavior.

-if you use a debit card at a restaurant: if you are one of THOSE people who run home and login to see how much money you’ve spent while out shopping/eating out, the charge that will appear (for at least a few hours, if not 24 hours) will be your total bill plus a 20% tip. this is visa’s way of making sure you have enough in your bank account to cover a 20% tip. when the restaurant runs its batch at the end of the night, the ACTUAL tip (i’m relying on server honesty here) will then be posted to your account.

for example: your meal cost $78.16 and you left a $12 tip using your debit card (you cheap bastard!). if you run right home like a chicken with its head cut off and check your online statement, it will show as a $93.79 charge from that restaurant ($78.16 + 20% tip). this is usually NOT listed under POSTED BALANCE, as it is a pending charge. usually, by the morning, the bank statement will reflect your true charge.

-as far as furiously scribbling “NO TIP FOR YOU!!” on a charge slip, i’d think twice before doing something like that. you may have received poor service, but passive-aggressive BS like that only makes you more of a mark the next time you come in. if you have a problem with poor service, go to the manager right then and there.

However, the few times I’ve been tipped in some really odd change on a credit order, say $3.34 on a $15 order, when I enter my tip into the VISA machine I would just drop the weird change and change the tip to $3.00, for a total of $18. I don’t want your silly change, but I don’t think you can get made if I charge you less than you wrote down, right?

If you’re really worried, save your receipts.

Tips schmips I say. Down with guilt money.

I’m asking this question honestly, because I think you have an answer that I just haven’t understood clearly: in a non-tip system, how do I the consumer create an incentive for better service or penalize poor service without making it unsafe for me to eat there again (as it would be if I complained to management)?

I simply round up any tip to the next dollar. A more primitive check sum, I guess.

So, meal is 16.48 and the service was good, so, I’ll tip them 3.52, bringing the bill to a nice, tidy 20.00.